Sweet & Sour Baby Eggplant – with Jyo’s Spice

Another Karma Chef original! This turned out real nice. Good party dish. Only problem is these baby eggplants are seasonal and available only at the Asian grocery store. Next time I will try it with regular eggplant sliced up – should work just as well. We eat this with Trader Joe’s Truly Handmade Tortillas (wheat ones) and raita. I am not “desi” enough to make my own chapattis, thank you!

Whole cumin – ½ tsp
I medium onion- thinly sliced
Oginga Fried Spice – 1 tbsp
Jyo’s Spice – 2-3 tsp
½ cup diced tomato or thickened Tomato Puree
1 tsp tamarind paste
Brown sugar – 1 to 2 tbsp
Salt to taste
Chilli powder to taste
Cillantro for garnish

Slit baby eggplants crosswise, drizzle with oil, pack up in foil and throw on the bar-b-que. While they are grilling, prepare the sauce. Heat oil in pan, add cumin, let it sizzle/pop then add onion – brown nicely before adding Oginga paste, Jyo’s Spice, tamarind and tomato puree. Fry spices till oil separates then add ½ cup water, salt, sugar and chilli to taste. Check on eggplant, they should be softened by now. Add them in gently to the sauce. Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes. Taste sauce and balance the sweet/sour/hot taste (sorry to be so vague, I am hopeless with measurements) Garnish with cillantro.

Incredible Pork Chops

This is what we had for dinner tonight. The most unbelievable pork chops made with all my mix&match spices. Think I hit the jackpot on this recipe. Don't miss the artistic squiggles on the plates - dinner almost got cold I was so busy messing around trying to make it all look fancy.

For Marinade:
1 tbsp Oginga Spice
3 tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
5 Tbsp Worcester sauce
Crushed Black pepper
Drizzle of Olive Oil
Salt

3 pork chops (fat juicy ones from Costco)
Marinade in above in covered glass dish for one hour

Leftover Green Chutney (with yogurt added)
Leftover Tamarind/Date Chutney

Fire up grill to high and grill chops (oh please don’t ask me for how long, I just happen to know my grill really well and know when it’s done) When almost done put generous amount of chutney on chops and turn over once (I put green on one and tamarind on two. I had tried the tamarind on chops before – the green was an experiment. It is REALLY good. Not sure which one I like better)

I had some leftover Basmati rice, which I tossed around with some butter, parsley, onions and veggies from Trader Joe’s with a squeeze of lemon to finish it off. That was good too.

Karma Chef Spice Secret#1: Oginga Fried Spice

Indian cooking can be time consuming messy and needs preplanning. I have certain spice combos handy or readymade in my freezer and can whip up restaurant style dishes with very little fuss. Here are some of my spice secrets:

1) OGINGA* - Onion/Ginger/Garlic fried paste

The Oginga Spice mix is a staple in Indian cooking. Several Indian curries require that you fry a fresh paste of onion, ginger and garlic. The trick is to ensure this mixture is fried well enough. The process is smelly, messy and time consuming, I have devised a way to make this spice beforehand and freeze it – I find it works just as well as fresh. I make a boatload of it as you can see from the picture (I have doubled the portion below)

I cup garlic peeled
¾ cup ginger peeled/chopped
1 medium red onion
2 dried red chilies
(Blend all above to smooth paste in blender with little water)

½ cup to ¾ cup oil

Take a heavy bottom pan (with lid: this is important, as the splatter can be life threatening, I kid you not)

Mix paste in oil and cook on medium high scraping all the time to make sure it does not stick to bottom. You will know the spice is fried enough after the oil begins to separate and floats to the side – don’t panic when you see so much oil come out in fact feel free to add a little more. The oil creates a nice flavor base/marinade with the fried spices for your dishes. Cool completely before transferring to a Tupperware and freezing.
(*Oginga is my madeup name to describe this fried spice)