Eggplant Curry / Kattharikai Kari
Whoops, I forgot to post yesterday’s recipe. Please count this for Tuesday — I don’t want to break my daily streak! 
Last night, I cooked this eggplant curry to take to my Global Asian Studies start of semester potluck; I wanted something luscious and richly satisfying, for vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores. Lovely with rice or bread; I happen to have naan in the freezer, so I’m going to grab that and bring it along.
Don’t hesitate to use plenty of oil for the first stages, so the eggplant fries and browns well — that’s where you get a big burst of flavor. If it’s starting to stick to the bottom of the pan, just add a little water and scrape up the browned bits; that’ll make a lovely sauce.
If you have excess oil at the end, you can always drain it off. You can spoon the oil out, but I’ll usually just tilt the pan and let any extra oil collect in one area, then blot that up with a paper towel. Easy!
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Eggplant Curry / Kattharikai Kari
(30 minutes draining time + 30 minutes, serves 6)
My mother’s eggplant curry was always a huge hit at Sri Lankan dinner parties, and is particularly popular with vegetarians.
1 lb eggplant, roughly 1-inch cubes
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
2 onions, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup oil or ghee
1 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp black mustard seed
1 dozen curry leaves
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp Sri Lankan curry powder
1/2 cup coconut milk
1. Prep eggplant — rub with turmeric and salt and then set in a colander to drain at least 30 minutes, which will draw out the bitter water. Blot dry with paper towels.
2. Sauté onions in oil on medium-high, stirring, with cumin seed, black mustard seed, and curry leaves, until golden.
3. Add eggplant, sugar, and curry powder, and sauté for another ten minutes or so, until eggplant is nicely fried. (Add more oil or ghee if needed.)
4. Add coconut milk and simmer for a few minutes until well blended. Serve hot with rice or naan—particularly nice for a vegetarian dinner with lentils as the main protein.
Variation: Eggplant and bell pepper work well together in this dish; just add chopped bell pepper about five minutes into frying the eggplant for a nice sweet element to the dish. Sometimes I make a nightshade curry, adding potatoes and tomatoes as well — small cubed potatoes would go into the onions first, then eggplant and spices, then bell pepper, then tomato, with a few minutes between each addition.
Cucumber Salad
Cooking doesn’t have to be complicated.
Feel free to adjust the seasonings — this salad is very lightly flavored as a base recipe, since it’s meant as a complement to curries and other richly flavored dishes, but you can certainly add more salt / pepper / sugar / lime juice/vinegar to your taste.
I didn’t happen to have English or Persian cucumbers on hand, so I used a regular cucumber, and it’s a little seedy, but tastes just fine.
*****
Cucumber Salad
(5 minutes, serves 8.)
A cool, refreshing bite, slightly crisp.
1 English cucumber (or 2 Persian cucumbers), sliced into bite-size pieces
½ cup thinly sliced onion
1 green chili, chopped fine
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. freshly ground black pepper
¼ tsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. lime juice or rice vinegar
2 Tbsp. coconut milk
Combine and serve with rice or uppuma and curry, with perhaps a nice mango pickle on the side.
Stirring the Green Mango Curry
Stirring the last 15 seconds of the green mango curry; this is how thick you want the coconut curry sauce at the end.
Green Mango Curry / Maankai Kari
If you don’t happen to live in a tropical paradise, sometimes you go to the grocery store with a desperate desire for mangoes, and there is nothing resembling a ripe mango to be found — there may be canned mango (good for making mango fluff, my daughter’s favorite dessert), or even frozen mangoes (which are decent in smoothies), but the fresh mangoes either aren’t there at all, or look very unlikely to ripen into anything delicious.
But what you CAN do, if they happen to have green mango (whether still unpeeled or already cut up), is cook green mango curry, which is sweet and fruity and coconut creamy, with just a hint of spice. It is not a small consolation.
(Note: I was tired and didn’t feel like chopping garlic and ginger, so I used two tablespoons from a jar of ginger-garlic paste, a staple around here, and thankfully now available in my local grocery store, so I don’t have to trek out to the Indian neighborhood the way I used to. Not as good as fresh — I wouldn’t use it if I were serving guests. But it’s fine for just me.)
*****
Green Mango Curry / Maankai Kari
(30 minutes, serves 6)
This dish can be traced as far back as the fifth century, when it was served at the court of King Kasyapa of Sigiriya (famed for his luxurious Sky Palace).
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
3 small onions, minced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tbsp. ginger, chopped
3 tsp. black mustard seed
2 stalks curry leaves
3 green chilies, chopped
3 Tbsp. vinegar
3 tsp. Sri Lankan curry powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
3 large green mangoes, peeled and cut into long, thick pieces
1 can coconut milk
½ cup water
1 Tbsp. sugar
1. Heat the oil in a pan and sauté the onion, garlic, ginger, mustard seeds, curry leaves, and chilies until the onions are soft.
2. Add the vinegar, curry powder, cinnamon, salt, and half a can of coconut milk with ½ cup water—stir to combine.
3. Add the mango slices, bring to a boil, and simmer until the mango is just tender, about ten minutes.
4. Add the rest of the coconut milk and sugar to the curry; bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for about five minutes. The gravy should be thick enough to thoroughly coat the mango. Serve hot with rice or bread.
Morning Glory Mini Muffins
Morning glory mini muffins, mostly using the King Arthur Flour recipe, simplified to take out the things my kids don’t like. I made a double batch and froze half of it. The hope is that having these around will mean that Kavi will actually grab something for breakfast before school. She had one while doing dishes tonight and liked it, so I’m hopeful.
The next question is how long a double-batch will last. I’m betting on two weeks.
Let Them Cook
You might think the potatoes are ready when they look like this, but you’d be wrong. That sauce is still too liquid. Give them a stir, put the lid back on, let them keep cooking.
11 seconds of bubbling.
Stirring the Deviled Potatoes
This is what the deviled potatoes look like when they’re done! Nice thick curry sauce, rounded edges to some of the potatoes.
13 seconds of stirring.
Deviled Potatoes
On the podcast interview this morning, they asked me what was a good starting dish in Vegan Serendib — I said if you like spicy, you could start with deviled potatoes, which was one of the dishes I learned in college, as a very novice cook. It’s incredibly easy, but also incredibly yummy. I still find it addictive now, thirty years later, and Kevin loves it too.
And yes, it uses ketchup, because that’s what Amma used. If that offends you, you can take chopped tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, and salt, and cook those down until they’ve turned to ketchup, and then use that.
*****
Deviled Potatoes
This was the first vegetable dish I learned to make, and I still find it addictive. It’s great with rice and another curry, but also works quite well mashed up as a party spread with triangles of toasted naan or pita. For a little more protein, you could add canned and drained chickpeas when you add the potatoes.
3 medium onions, chopped
3 Tbsp. vegetable oil
¼ tsp. black mustard seed
¼ tsp. cumin seed
1-2 Tbsp. (or more to taste) cayenne
3 medium russet potatoes, cubed
3 Tbsp. ketchup
1 rounded tsp. salt
½ cup coconut milk, optional
1. Sauté onions in oil on high with mustard seed and cumin seeds until onions are golden / translucent (not brown). Add cayenne and cook 1 minute. Immediately add potatoes, ketchup, and salt.
2. Lower heat to medium and add enough water so the potatoes don’t burn (enough to cover usually works well). Cover and cook, stirring periodically, until potatoes are cooked through, about 20 minutes.
3. Remove lid and simmer off any excess water; the resulting curry sauce should be fairly thick, so that the potatoes are coated with sauce, rather than swimming in liquid. Add coconut milk, if desired, to thicken sauce and mellow spice level; stir until well blended. Serve hot.
Tamarind-Lentil Rice Topped With an Egg
Today’s breakfast: tamarind-lentil rice topped with an egg, over-easy. (Plus a banana, not pictured.)