Stuffed Aubergine Curry

After a few months off Taste and Create I was pleased to be back again this month and even happier when I saw I had been paired with Pavani at Cook’s Hideout.   Her blog is packed with delicious Vegetarian Indian food and there were so many recipes I would have loved to make.   In fact, as well as this I also tried her quick and easy egg curry.   It was the first time I had made an egg curry and I enjoyed it, but not as much the stuffed aubergine curry, which I absolutely loved.   My husband doesn’t like aubergine much but it is one of my favourite vegetables so I made it while he was away doing a course for work.   I probably ate enough for two anyway, and was more than happy that I didn’t have to share it with anyone!   The peanuts add a delicious flavour and as I didn’t have any sesame seeds I used tahini instead, which worked really well.  The end result was nutty, spicy and filling.   So delicious.   I loved the nut and spice paste so much that I ate quite a lot of it raw as I was stuffing the aubergines.  It was a bit like a spicy peanut butter. The only thing that didn’t look right was the picture, it didn’t look very appetising at all, so I’ve shown the aubergines before they were cooked.  But,  if you really want to see them, there’s a tiny picture right at the end of the post!

It may sound a little fiddly to stuff all the aubergines and may also be difficult to find baby aubergines.    If so, the  recipe can easily be adapted and a normal aubergine can be used and diced into large cubes.   The stuffing can then just be used as a paste.

To see what other people involved in Taste and Create have been making, have a look at the Taste and Create Website.  It’s currently run by Min of the Bad Girl’s Kitchen and each month participants are paired with another blogger and make a dish from their partner’s blog.

Ingredients – Serves 1-2 (For cup measurements and the original recipe,see Pavani’s original post)

6 baby aubergines (use 8 if serving 2 people, but there will be enough of the other ingredients)

1 tsp tamarind pulp

Salt

50g peanuts (I was a bit generous and threw in a few more)

1 tsp tahini or 30 g sesame seeds

1/4 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp ground coriander

2 cloves

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp chilli flakes or 3 dried red chillies, crumbled

How to make Stuffed Aubergine Curry

1. Wash and dry the aubergines.  Make a slit lengthways down the aubergines and another short slit widthways.

2. If using whole spices, dry roast them, then grind before the next step.

3. I used ground spices so I placed all ingredients in a blender with a little water and ground to a paste.  Taste and adjust anything if necessary.

4. Stuff as much of the paste into the aubergines as possible.

5. Heat a little oil in a saucepan and add the aubergines.  Cook over a low to medium flame until the aubergines are beginning to soften.

6. Mix a little water into the remaining paste until it is a thick liquid.   Pour over the aubergines and continue to cook until they are soft and the sauce is bubbling.

7. Serve with rice.

 

Shakshuka

Who doesn’t like to have a  cooked breakfast every now and then?  And however nice bacon and eggs are, it’s nice to have a change occasionally, which is partly how I came to make Shakshuka.  Shakshuka, or chakchouka, is a dish of poached eggs, cooked in a tomatoey sauce with onions, herbs and spices, sometimes with peppers, aubergine and chickpeas as well.   Variations of it are eaten throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but it is thought to come from Tunisia originally, which is the second reason why I decided to make it: I needed a Tunisian dish for My Kitchen My World.   If you haven’t heard of My Kitchen My World, it’s a fantastic event where a different country is chosen each month and participants make a dish from that country.   As I love discovering new dishes, it’s a perfect event for me.

I loved the finished dish.   Adding chillies to anything always makes me happy, cumin is one of my favourite spices and I love fresh coriander, so I would definitely make this again.   It reminded me very much of huevos rancheros which is the closest thing to this I’d eaten before.  I’m sure from now on I’ll be making the two dishes so many slight variations I won’t actually be able to say which dish I’m making.  Not that that matters of course.

Ingredients – Serves 2

400g tin chopped tomatoes

1/2 red pepper, sliced

1/2 green pepper, sliced

1/2 onion, sliced

1 clove garlic, finely diced or crushed

1 chilli pepper, finely sliced

2 eggs

1/2 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp paprika

1 tsp dried parsley

1 tbsp chopped fresh coriander

Salt

Black pepper

How to make Shakshuka

1. Add a little olive oil to a frying pan.   Add the chopped pepper.  Fry for a few minutes then add the onion, garlic and chilli.

2. Add the tin of chopped tomatoes along with the dried herbs, spices, salt and pepper.

3. After a few minutes make two hollows in the tomato mixture.    Add the eggs and continue to cook until they have set.

4. Before serving, sprinkle over the fresh coriander.   Then serve with warm pita bread.

 

Middle Eastern Marinated Chicken

This month for Secret Recipe Club I was paired with Denise from Eat Laugh Love, who loves cooking for family and friends and even teaches cooking classes, which is something I would love to do one day. And since writing that last sentence I’ve had to stop and have a little day dream!

As always, I spent a while browsing through her recipes but it was one of the first ones I looked at that most caught my eye and that I kept coming back to.  Denise named it chicken shawarma as her chicken was thinly sliced, but as I cubed my chicken I feel I’ll have to give mine a more generic name and so am sticking with Middle Eastern Marinated Chicken, which is a bit long, but never mind.

Anyway, however the chicken is cooked, the marinade is absolutely delicious and I loved the tahini sauce too.  I altered some of the quantities slightly from Denise’s recipe and I also missed the crushed garlic out of the tahini sauce as I’m finding pregnancy has altered my taste buds and garlic is much more powerful than usual at the moment.   I made some humous a couple of weeks ago using the same amount of garlic as usual but found it completely overpowering.    Luckily my husband was happy to finish off what I couldn’t eat.  And luckily with this meal, nothing was too overpowering, the chicken was full of flavour and I would say definitely rivaled the kebabs from my local  kebab shop.

To see Denise’s original recipe click here.

Ingredients for the Marinade

1 tsp dried parsley

1/2 tsp crushed chilli flakes

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1/4 tsp ground coriander

Pinch salt

Pinch black pepper

2 tbsp plain yoghurt

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 garlic clove, crushed

Ingredients for the Tahini Dressing

2 tbsp plain yoghurt

1/2 tbsp tahini

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 clove crushed garlic (optional)

Black pepper

Salt

Other Ingredients

2 chicken breasts

2 pita breads

shredded lettuce

How to make Middle Eastern Marinated Chicken

1. Make the marinade for the chicken by mixing all the marinade ingredients together.   Taste it and adjust any flavourings if necessary.

2. Chop the chicken and cover with the marinade.   Put in the fridge for at least an hour.

3. Make the tahini dressing by mixing all the ingredients together and again taste and adjust if necessary.

4. Put a little oil in a pan and add the chicken.   Alternatively you could grill it.

5. To serve, warm the pitta breads.  Open them along the side, add the chicken, the sauce and the lettuce.

To see what other Secret Recipe Club Participants have made, click on the link below:

 

Jamie Oliver’s Favourite Chicken Curry

Last week I was flicking through Jamie Oliver’s Happy Days with the Naked Chef when I realised I had never made this curry recipe.   Now, being a big curry lover, I normally avoid curry recipes with this type of title, by that I mean, just curry, rather than a type of curry.  This is probably why I hadn’t made it until now.  I suppose it was the shameless use of the word favourite that did it.  If this really is Jamie’s favourite curry recipe (which I doubt, it is) I assumed it would be pretty good.    And was it?   Well, yes, as you would expect, it was a good curry,   I enjoyed it.   I liked the coconuty tomatoey sauce and would happily eat it again, but like the rather generic title, it was a rather generic curry.  None of the flavours were quite strong enough to wow me.   It needed just a bit more spice or a bit of zing.   I would say that if you don’t often make curries, this is a perfect one to start with as it’s fairly quick and easy without too many ingredients, and despite what I said, it does taste good.   But if you make a lot of curries, you might prefer to be a bit more adventurous.   Sorry Jamie.

Ingredients

1 tsp mustard seeds

1/2 tsp fenugreek

2 chillies, sliced

Handful of curry leaves

Small knob of fresh ginger,diced and crushed

1 large onion

1/2 tsp chilli powder

1/2 tsp turmeric

2 tsp ground coriander seeds

1/2 400g tin tomatoes

1/2 400ml tin coconut milk

Pinch of salt

Oil

Handful of spinach

2 chicken breasts, diced

How to Make Jamie Oliver’s Favourite Chicken Curry

1. Put the onion and ginger into a food processor and blend till finely diced.

2. Heat a little oil in a pan.   Add the mustard and fenugreek seeds, chillies and curry leaves.

3. As the mustard seeds begin to pop, add the onion mixture.   Cook for about 5 minutes until they have softened.

4. After adding the onion to the pan, use the blender to blend the tomatoes to get rid of any lumpy bits.

5. Add the chilli powder, turmeric and coriander to the pan, followed by the tomatoes and coconut milk.   Add a little water too.  Simmer for about 5 minutes.

6. Add the diced chicken and continue to simmer for about 10 minutes.   Then add the spinach and stir in until wilted.    Serve with rice or naan.