Crispy fried eggplant Bengali style – Baingan Bhaja recipe

 

There are so many new flavors to experience here in India, different types of cuisines, different ingredients (I still discover ingredients I have never heard of) or different cooking techniques. I know I keep saying it, but really, it’s never boring cooking Indian food.

Speaking of new ingredients, there is one I particularly want to talk about in this post: mustard oil.
I know that most of my non Indian readers probably saw mustard oil labeled “for external use only”, being banned for cooking use in US, Canada or Europe, due to the high levels of the allergen erucic acid present in mustard oil. However, the research is based on animal studies but there is no real evidence of harm to humans.

Mustard oil has been used in Indian or Nepali cooking for centuries. Most of the Bengali cooking is done with mustard oil. It’s a pungent, yellow-colored oil that comes from pressed black mustard seeds. The raw mustard oil has a bitter pungent flavor, a strong smell, but once it is heated to the smoking point, the pungency goes away. There is no oil that comes close to it, in smell or taste. In India it is used mostly in deep-frying and also as a natural preservative in many pickles and chutneys.

A little trick if you don’t find easily mustard oil – add a pinch of mustard powder into the regular vegetable oil and you will get a similar mustard oil taste.

The recipe I’m sharing today it’s a Bengali style deep fried eggplant – Baingan Bhaja – a simple, yet delicious dish of eggplant slices, marinated with spices and deep fried in mustard oil. It’s a quick way to have an exotic side dish for rice or roast meat.

Step by step Crispy fried eggplant – Baingan Bhaja recipe

Start by washing and slicing the eggplant. For a better flavor, soak the eggplant in water with salt for 10 minutes. Then rinse the eggplant in plenty of water to remove the salt, and pat with paper towels to make sure eggplant is dry.

Into a bowl mix all the spices and salt. Cover the eggplant slices with this powder mixture. Keep it aside for 10 minutes.

Put some rice or besan/gram flour into a plate and keep aside.

 

Into a frying pan heat mustard oil, on medium flame. Take each eggplant slice and coat it with the flour, on both sides. Then fry the eggplant (baingan) slices on both sides till they turn crisp and golden-brown in color.

Once fried, place the fried eggplant slices on kitchen paper towels, to absorb excess oil.