Eggplant tomato turmeric stew
Andy B. does it up right
I’m a Bon Appétit fan girl. I keep every issue. They’re piled all over my house, marked and post-it noted up. Tonight’s dinner was from this month’s issue and it was gooooooooooood. Thank you @AndyBaraghani 😘 Since marrying into a Greek family I’ve come to love eggplant and this dish really does it justice.
Tonight’s takes:
Husband: “I liked it. It was good. Could have used a longer cook to deepen the flavours. This is the kind of meal that’s always better on the second day.”
Helen (5 1/2 years old): “There is too much parsley. Otherwise it’s good. Flavour good. Spices good. It’s delicious.” Plus this note after dinner:
Hector (3 years old): I like my yogurt and my milk. I don’t like the cauliflower.” There wasn’t any cauliflower in this dinner 🙈
From the mag:
What I used:
Stew:
4 Japanese eggplants (2 small and 2 large)
1 medium yellow onion
1 796ml (28oz) can whole tomatoes - I had always planned to use canned tomatoes instead of fresh ones (because it’s October in Canada) but I thought I had tomato paste at home; turns out I didn’t. So I just used the canned tomatoes.
1 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 cup basmati rice
1/2 bunch parsley
Plain yogurt
Lime
What I did:
Got Le Creuset on the stove, on medium heat, with lots of olive oil in it.
Peeled and sliced eggplants. Mine were really long so I sliced them in half and then halved them agin.
Browned eggplants. Made sure not to move them once I set them into the pan to keep them from tearing apart. Salted each batch when they were in the pan.
Took me 3 batches. And man do eggplants really absurd oil. I added oil after each batch. I should have gone lighter on the olive oil for the first batch as I ended up having to add oil for each new batch.
Put finished batches on a paper towel.
Diced and sautéd onions until translucent.
Added spices and toasted for about 1 minute.
Added can of tomatoes and scraped up brown bits from the bottom of the pot.
Added 6 cups of water and nestled eggplant into the broth.
Had a quick taste and added a bit more salt.
Brought to a simmer. After 10 minutes the kids were getting hangry so I simmered it a bit more aggressively 🙄. In all I only simmered it for 30-minutes, instead of the called for 40-50 minutes.
Once the stew was simmering, started the rice:
Brought 1 cup rice, 2 cups of water, big pinch of salt, and few bulbs of vegetable oil to a boil.
Put the lid on and turned the heat down to medium-low. Cooked for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, took the rice off the heat but kept the lid on for 5 more minutes.
Finished the stew with some diced parsley.
Done!
Herb tip: as soon as you bring herbs home from the grocery store, wash, dry, and store them in your salad spinner in your fridge. I get almost a week out of fresh herbs this way.
Served with yogurt and lime as per Andy’s recommendations.
Next time:
It was fine with the can of tomatoes and no tomato paste. I’d do this again - saves a step and having to have one more ingredient at home. I’d add twice the spice amounts - 2 tsps turmeric and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. I’d definitely let it simmer for 40-50 minutes (as per the recipe). And I’d only add 4 cups of water instead of 6 - I added all the juice from the canned tomatoes so I feel like I had a bit too much liquid. The yogurt and lime didn’t add much to the final dish, I’d skip them next time if I didn’t already have them in my fridge.
I’ll definitely make this again - it was yummy 🍆🍅🍚
😋😋😋
-Ellisa