Eggplant dish with yogurt sauce

Ingredients for 2 servings:

• 2 small eggplants
• 400 g tomatoes (can), chopped
• some olive oil
• 6 large garlic cloves
• 2 m.-sized onion(s)
• 1 piece(s) ginger, approx. 3 cm
• 1 handful of cranberries or alternatively raisins
• e.g. salt and pepper, Pul Biber (hot paprika spice)
• Curry powder (tandoori curry powder)
• Coriander, ground
• 1 cup basmati
• 2 small tomatoes, firm, deseeded, finely diced
• 1 cup of natural yogurt
• 1 handful of coriander greens, finely chopped
• ½ lime(s), the juice

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour 30 minutes; Total time approx. 1 hour 30 minutes

This dish is, as far as I know, an Indian dish. However, I ate it at a Mediterranean restaurant. Since I couldn’t find the recipe anywhere, I tried to recreate it, and this recipe is the result of my experiment. One more tip: It’s not difficult to prepare, but it does take a long time. So, plan plenty of time! I recommend preparing all the ingredients as directed and keeping them handy so you don’t have to stress while cooking. Wash the eggplants and cut them into 1/2 cm thick slices. Then add salt and set aside. This will help the eggplants absorb water and prevent them from tasting like rubber soles. Peel the onions, slice them thinly, and fry them gently in a pan with olive oil (but don’t let them brown). Peel the garlic and finely chop it with a good knife, then set aside 2/3 of it for the tomato sauce and 1/3 for the yogurt sauce. Peel and finely chop the ginger. Deglaze the onions with the canned tomatoes and add 2/3 of the garlic and the ginger. Season the tomato sauce with the spices. Now add the cranberries or raisins and simmer gently. Allow the tomato sauce to thicken until it reaches a paste-like consistency, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, pat the water off the eggplant slices with kitchen paper. Brown the eggplant slices in a pan with olive oil on both sides. Layer the eggplant slices between pieces of kitchen paper (to catch the fat!) on a plate and set aside. Now you can preheat the oven to 200°C. Next, prepare the yogurt sauce: Season the natural yogurt with a little lime juice, the remaining garlic, and half of the chopped coriander. Keep the yogurt sauce refrigerated until ready to serve. Now alternate layers of eggplant and tomato sauce in a baking dish. Braise the eggplant and tomato dish in a preheated oven at 180°C – 200°C fan/convection oven for about 15-20 minutes. By now, the flavors will be exploding. In the meantime, prepare the basmati rice according to your preferred method or the package instructions (I cook it in double the amount of water and then drain off the excess water). While the eggplant and tomato dish is braising in the oven and the rice is cooking, wash, deseed, and dice two small tomatoes. Mix the diced tomatoes and the remaining half of the chopped cilantro into the cooked rice. Serve the eggplant and tomato dish with the rice on plates and serve with the chilled yogurt sauce. As the recipe suggests, the consistency of the eggplant and tomato dish will be rather mushy. In this case, however, this is not a problem; it’s intended. The amount of ingredients should actually be enough for more than two people, but despite all our intentions, we never have more than a “goodie” left over.