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How to make Doi Begun - 4

Doi Begun

As described by Kankana in the book, this is not a typical Doi begun recipe. Instead of cooking the yogurt with the spices and then adding the eggplant to the sauce, over here, the yogurt is tempered with the spices and topped on the fried eggplant slices.
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Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Total Time 50 minutes
Course Vegetarian
Cuisine Bengali, Indian
Servings 4 people

Ingredients
  

  • 1 no medium sized eggplant or begun
  • 2 tsp Salt
  • 1 tsp Turmeric Powder
  • 3 tbsp Mustard Oil Kankana uses 2 tbsp and 2 tsp of oil
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 2 cups thick greek yogurt I used 490 gms of regular yogurt and hung it in a muslin cloth for an hour to take the excess water out.
  • 1 tsp Sugar
  • 10 nos fresh curry leaves
  • 1 tsp black mustard seeds
  • 1 tsp chilli powder

Instructions
 

  • Cut the eggplant into slices, about 1 cm thick. Sprinkle some salt and the turmeric and smear them on both sides of the eggplant and keep them aside for half an hour.
  • After half hour, you will notice that the eggplant has released some moisture. So just drain the water out.
  • In a frying pan, heat 2 tbsp of mustard oil and when the oil become hot, place the eggplant slices evenly in the frying pan. There should be only one layer of the discs. Cook for 2 minutes on each side or until the eggplants have softened. Remove them from the frying pan and place them on a serving dish.
  • Dry roast the cumin seeds on a separate pan and grind into a fine powder using a mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder. (see notes)
  • In a small mixing bowl, mix the yogurt with the cumin powder, sugar and salt to taste. Whisk it thoroughly till you have a smooth yogurt mixture.
  • In a small tadka pan, take 1 tbsp of mustard oil and heat it. Add the curry leaves, mustard seeds and chilli powder. (See notes)
  • Swirl the pan till all the seeds start to splutter and then pour half of this oil into the yogurt. Whisk the yogurt once again and pour this flavoured yogurt over the eggplant slices using a spoon.
  • Make sure that all your eggplan slices are coated with the yogurt. Finally spoon in the rest of the infused oil on the eggplants and allow it to sit for 15 minutes before serving.
  • This dish tastes great with steamed rice.

Notes

  1. One needs to prepare everything and assemble them only before serving. Reheating in the microwave leads to the yogurt loosening up and changing texture. It becomes qyite watery and does not taste the same.
  2. The recipe,as per the book has cumin seeds which needs to be roasted and then ground. In my kitchen, I always have roasted cumin seeds ground in a container. Hence I used little less than a tsp of cumin powder.
  3. Finally, while adding the mustard seeds for tempering, I also added 1/2 tsp of cumin seeds to the same.
  4. I have used 2 medium sized brinjals cut into slices and the rest of the ingredients remained the same as per the book.
  5. I have written the recipe, exactly as the book. So feel free to follow the same or to make small changes as I had done.