Late summer recipes are my favorite. See, on the one hand, you’ve still got all kinds of delicious summer produce available — in fact, September is probably the time of year when produce is at its peak. Yay for veggies! And on the other hand, it’s just starting to cool down, especially in the evening. There’s less daylight and you can feel the season beginning to wind down. That means I’m ready for heartier, cozier meals.
This eggplant curry is exactly the kind of meal I love during those last few weeks of summer. It uses late summer eggplant, with hearty lentils, juicy tomatoes, and lots of warming spices.
My inspiration for this dish was baingan bharta, which is a favorite Indian restaurant dish. I’ve tried a bunch of recipes, but never been able to recreate the dish perfectly at home, so I decided to throw recipes out the window and create something of my own. So whereas baingain bharta roasts the eggplant until it falls apart, I opted to sauté my eggplant and then simmer it up with lentils and tomatoes. The result was excellent — a saucy, spicy curry that highlights some summer produce, but has a nice stick-to-your-ribs feel that I’m sure I’ll enjoy when the weather really starts to cool down.
When you cook this one you might be tempted to throw the dried lentils right into the curry instead of cooking them separately, but please don’t! A while back after having a batch of chili simmer for what seemed like forever I found that the lentils were still hard. I later learned that the acid in tomatoes prevents them from cooking fully, which is why you need to simmer them separately in this recipe. If you can find canned lentils, feel free to use them instead.
Prep Time:
10 minutesCook Time:
35 minutesTotal Time:
45 minutes Yield:
4 servingsingredients:
instructions:
About Alissa
Alissa Saenz crafts vegan recipes for her blog Connoisseurus Veg. When she’s not cooking and blogging about it, she’s probably engaging in some form of yoga, arts & crafts, or lawyering.
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Comments
I made this tonight. It was really good. I was a little short on the eggplant that I had on hand, so I threw in a small zucchini too. I did the cooking in an Instant Pot.
I’m glad you enjoyed it and that it worked out well in the instant pot – I hear such great things about them and hope to get one for myself soon. 🙂
Did you just dump all the ingredients in the instapot or follow the steps prescribed just in the instapot?
You have to give baingan bharta a try! You could roast the large eggplant on the barbecue along with cloves of garlic stuffed into it ( make slits on the eggplant). Then remove the skin amd mash the pulp. And cook it with a base of onion, lots of green onion and garlic and a little tomato paste. Spices – salt, coriander cumin powder, red chilli powder and garam masala.
Thanks for the tips! I haven’t tried it on the barbecue grill but that sounds like a great idea. I’ll have to give it a try!
I am most excited about finding this recipe, thank you so much, some of the spices I do not have and hope not too hard to find. I do not think my husband will like this but I know I, and possibly my daughter will. Thank you so much 🙂
Very welcome! I hoped you enjoy it!
Today I’ve got red and green lentils available – which is better to substitute for the brown lentils that this recipe calls for? Thanks!
Either would work, but green would probably give you a result that’s closer to the original recipe. Red would make it more like a dal with eggplant chunks (which I’m sure would also be delicious!).