India House: Home of Artery-Clogging Goodness

A couple weeks ago I went to India House, a restaurant in downtown Chicago. I'm so predictable that of course I ordered baingan bharta (the creamy, smoky eggplant dish I have made in the past, accompanied by a co-chef who is sadly also past history).

Regarding this dish: a good friend of mine, Lana, sent me photos of her own chana masala and baingan bharta, based on the recipe provided in the blog. Her char-roasted eggplants look amazing. Thanks, Lana!

Baingan bharta is usually creamy and buttery. The way India House makes it takes creaminess to a new level, such that I alternated between gobbling it up like a rabid beast and clutching my stomach with pain.

A series of delicious dishes, with eggplant in the middle, all of which are basically the same color for some reason.

Don't forget the chutneys!

You can see the ghee pooling on the surface.

Overall, I would say that this bharta is totally delicious, but so rich that you can only eat a small amount. If I ate any more than that, I felt similar to the time I recklessly ordered a slice of cake AND a milkshake in a diner -- that is to say, disgusting.

Finally, as long as I'm on the topic of Indian food, I'd like to share the exciting news:

I just fermented stuff for the first time! AND I'M STILL ALIVE!

I made Indian lime-pickle from scratch, and it turned out great. Wedges of lime with vinegar, turmeric, mango powder, and tons of salt sat on the countertop for five weeks. Then I mixed it with spices and oil in a pan and voila!

The fermented limes with oil and spices, briefly cooked on the stovetop.

Let it sit for a few more days, and it's ready to eat! Delicious!

I made an Indian dinner to accompany my pickle: rasaam soup and garbanzo-pea-sweet-potato stew, along with rice and yogurt.

A feast! But there's not an eggplant in sight, so this is clearly a lengthy non-sequitur.

And with that, I'm going to Germany. So long, farewell, aufwiedersehen, goodnight!

Chillin and Grillin

Madness. Sheer madness.

This is a fairly accurate description of my life in the past few months, which explains the dearth of eggplant entries for the last long period. It's not as though I have more than about five regular readers, though, so the cumulative disappointment must be pretty minimal.

While I haven't been posting lately, I HAVE been accumulating photos. Not only this, I'm departing for Germany and Austria this Monday (AAAAAUGH so many preparations), and thus the time is now to generate a massive Aubergenius photo-dump. It remains to be seen whether Germany and Austria contain notable eggplants, and whether blog posts will appear over the course of my trip.

DID YOU KNOW?
It's grilling season.

I myself don't have a grill, and therefore grilled my first eggplants a few weeks ago using a friend's barbecue.

I was excited to grill these little baby eggplants.  They're just so cute.

 Unfortunately, grilling does in fact involve a learning curve. I started by grilling these various skewers, slabs of zucchini, barbecue-marinated tempeh, and eggplants doused in what I thought was a generous amount of olive oil. It turns out, however, that it's NEVER enough oil. The eggplants turned out rubbery and spongy, even after they'd grilled to the point of char, and the few that tasted good were the ones from the bottom of the bowl. Later on I tried slathering a few with barbecue sauce, but they were equally disappointing.

Not only that, but the slices were so thin that we lost about half of them through the grate in an attempt to turn them over. (We didn't have tongs, i.e., the meat-eaters got meat-juices on them and we had to use a spatula instead. Whooops.)

Suffice it to say that I need more grilling practice. But I think that they would have turned out perfectly if I had used enough oil.

More posts a-comin' up!