Persian-style Eggplant Yogurt Salad

This Iranian dish, called Borani-e Bademjan, is one of a variety of eggplant-yogurt salads that are easy, delicious, and – after cooling the fridge for a few hours – refreshing in hot weather. One can easily vary the seasonings to reflect different cuisines: paprika and parsley for Turkish, garam masala, coriander and cilantro for Indian, miscellaneous spices for Miscellaneous. The dish is especially good with the stiff, dense yogurt sold in Iranian groceries, such as Golchin brand, but is delicious with runny varieties as well.

This dinner, which consisted of yogurt salad, a greens salad, and homemade flatbread, was aided by sous-chef and photographer Dan, whom I also credit with conceiving the name “Aubergenius.”

And also credited with discovering a really great $8 wine.

The flatbread I made was tasty, but not quite good enough to post a recipe, so I’ll just recommend that you use your favorite bread recipe or storebought pita.

This flatbread recipe called for the breads to be cooked dry in the pan, but they were improved by frying in olive oil.

Ingredients

1 large or 2 medium/small eggplants

12-16 oz plain yogurt

A handful of fresh mint leaves

1 clove garlic

Salt, cumin and coriander to taste

Cut the eggplant into slivers by slicing down the length of the eggplant, cutting long strips, and halving the strips.

Roast the slivers on a baking sheet at 350°, coating them with a generous quantity of olive oil (i.e., if they don’t turn yellow-green, it’s not enough oil). Be sure to toss the eggplant slices every 10 minutes. Cooking time takes about 20-30 minutes total. Meanwhile, mix the yogurt, diced (or scissor-snipped) mint leaves, crushed garlic, and salt to taste. Add a small dash of cumin and coriander – I prefer a small quantity of spice to avoid overwhelming the mint flavor.

Use of an oversized, red plastic bowl is imperative.

Remove eggplant slices when they are soft all the way through, without any spongy patches, and have a nice golden brown sear.

The proper state of oily mushiness.

Mix eggplant slivers with the yogurt sauce and add more salt if needed.

This salad is delicious warm and cold. If you wish to make a richer salad, you can mash up feta into the yogurt in lieu of salt.

Sous-chef, an empty bowl, and a kitty strung out on catnip.

Fab Four, Episode 1: Indian eggplants with date chutney

(See previous entry, “Fab Four,” for the premise of the next four entries.)

 My first recipe will feature the wee little Indian eggplant. These eggplants have a naturally sweet, fresh taste and they cook quickly to the ideal state of mushiness. This improvised recipe worked well, the only shortcoming being that it was rather oily. Try coating the pan with a thin layer of oil, rather than frying in steeper oil as I did... in the meantime, I’ll continue to experiment with ways of making these eggplants less greasy. The flavors, however, were delicious. ("Were," past-tense, because I ate them all.)

I should mention that the onion date chutney is inspired by a near-identical dish served at Marigold, a Chicago modern Indian eatery. Mine is tastier, however, due to the addition of more salt and several hefty squeezes of lime.

The final result.

Recipe #1.  Fried Indian Eggplants with Raita and Onion Date Chutney

Appetizer, serves 2 – be sure to double or triple the recipe unless cooking for self or romantic candlelight dinner

Ingredients

4 Indian eggplants

1/4-1/8 c chickpea flour (can substitute wheat flour if desired)

pinch of salt

turmeric, paprika, cumin, coriander

1/2 c plain yogurt

Some carrot

Some cucumber

ca. 15 pitted dates

1 vidalia onion

crushed red pepper

1 lime

olive oil

peanut, corn or canola oil for frying

Eggplants

Remove the leafy flaps from 4 Indian eggplants, leaving the stems attached. Trim stems down to a stub.

Combine chickpea flour with salt, turmeric, paprika, and cumin. 

Moisten the surface of each eggplant and dip face-down into flour. Pour a nice-sized pool of frying oil in pan and heat on medium-high. Fry eggplants face-down in oil until browned, then turn and cook other side; the eggplants should cook very quickly. Remove from oil and place on paper towel to soak excess grease.

Raita

Mix yogurt with shredded or chopped carrot and cucumber, coriander, and salt to taste.

Onion Date Chutney, the highlight of this dish in my opinion

Note: this recipe makes a LOT of chutney, enough to feed a whole family of chutney gnomes.Try halving or even quartering the recipe if you don’t anticipate spreading chutney on your toast for the next two weeks.

Coarsely chop vidalia onion and sauté in olive oil until caramel-brown. 

Add ca. 15 dates, 1/2 cup water, a good dash of crushed red pepper flakes and paprika. 

Simmer on low-medium for about 10 minutes, adding water to avoid burning. Add salt to taste.

 Place stewed mixture in food processor and squeeze in the juice of 1 lime. Purée until smooth.

The resultant combination is great as an appetizer, or could be coupled with a bowl of rasam soup, roti and some salad for an Indian lunch. 

Rasam, eggplant and red pepper relish, yogurt, lime pickle, cucumber
and greens salad -- all possible companions to fried eggplants with chutney and raita.