Eggplant-Tomato Curry

Eggplant-Tomato Curry ( Vankaya-tamata koora, in telugu ) as the name says, is made of eggplants and tomatoes with some spices.
This is the Andhra style of making eggplant and it tastes heavenly.
I made this curry with the long eggplants, but you can make it with other types of eggplants as well.

Ingredients :

• Long Eggplants - 4
• Finely Chopped Onions - 1 medium
• Finely Chopped Tomatoes - 2 medium
• Ginger Garlic Paste - 1 tsp
• Oil - 2 tbsp
• Oil - for shallow fry
• Cumin Seeds - 1/2 tsp
• Hing - a pinch
• Curry Leaves - few
• Turmeric Powder - 1/4 tsp
• Coriander Powder - 3/4 tsp
• Chilli Powder - to taste
• Red Whole chilli - 1 or 2
• Peanuts - 2 tbsp
• Sesame Seeds - 1 tbsp
• Salt -to taste

Directions :

• Cut the eggplants , we shall semi cook them , not totally cook. In a pan, heat some oil and shallow fry them and keep aside.
• In the same pan, you might have some oil left, in that add cumin seeds and let them splutter.
• Add curry leaves, hing, red whole chillies, chopped onions and ginger garlic paste. Let it fry till onions are translucent and the raw flavour of ginger garlic paste goes away.
• Add chopped tomatoes, and cook it covered till they are tender. If the mixture gets too dry add one or two tbsp of water.
• Add turmeric powder, coriander powder, chilli powder and salt and cook for couple more minutes.
• Now add the semi cooked eggplants to this mixture and cover it and cook on low-medium flame. We had semi cooked the eggplants to speed up the cooking process.
• While the curry is getting cooked on slow flame, take another small pan and dry roast the peanuts.
• After the peanuts are roasted, add sesame seeds and fry for just one minute till they turn slighty brown. Sesame seeds cook very fast, so make sure you keep stirring it and turn off the flame in just a minute. Let it cool.
• Grind peanuts and sesame seeds into a coarse powder.
• After the curry is cooked, sprinkle this powder on it mix well and cook just for a couple of minutes and turn off the flame.
• Eat with rice or chapati..

I just love this recipe. In the picuture, you can see I was way too generous with the oil. You might want to be little careful. After shallow frying, if there is too much of oil left in the pan , you might want to throw some, which I din't and result of which I ate only salads for the next two days ;)