Hello and welcome to this, my sixth edition of What’s That You’re Cooking, Thea? - a newsletter. Today I’m sharing a Sri Lankan aubergine dish, which I don’t think is strictly a curry because it’s not saucy. I usually serve it with a couple of curries, rice and bread on the side. This is one for the sour-heads.
As sure as I will never use the abbreviation ‘EVOO’, aubergine will always be my favourite vegetable. I’ve been cooking this for nearly a decade, and the recipe has only changed slightly in that time. I first tried to make it when I tried the aubergine dish at Cinnamon’s Canteen in Melbourne CBD, and did some digging around on the internet trying to work it out. I later became a devotee of THE aubergine curry of all aubergine curries at Everest Curry King, Lewisham (long-time friends will know this is my favourite restaurant in the world). I tried to edit mine to get it a little more Everest-like in nature, but the truth is it’s still nothing close. What it IS is sour, simple, and invigorating.
Since I first used to make it, I’ve gone longer and slower on the onions, toned down the vinegar ‘cause that tamarind is sour enough, and found my beloved King’s curry powder. If anyone has any advice on how to make it more like Everest’s, I’m all ears…
The Sinhalese word for aubergine is wambatu which is a particularly cool word, don’t you think? So Wambatu in Tamarind, here we go…
Aubergine Not-Really-A-Curry
Serves 3-4 with other dishes
2 large or 3 smaller aubergines
1 tsp turmeric powder
2 big red onions, or 4 banana shallots, cut into segments
Canola/vegetable oil
1 tbsp nigella seeds
1 tsp brown mustard seeds
6 curry leaves
3-4 skinny green chillies
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tbsp tamarind pulp, soaked in 1 cup boiling water
1 tbsp sugar (brown/palm/jaggery)
2 tsp Sri Lankan roasted curry power (I like King’s)
Cut the aubergines into one-inch pieces, and toss them in a few pinches of salt and the turmeric. Heat up your oil in a wok or pan (I usually fill my wok a little under halfway with oil) and fry the aubergine in batches. Put them aside on kitchen roll as you go.
When all are fried, remove most of the oil so you’re just left with a tablespoon or two in the wok or frying pan and put it on a medium-high heat. Add your nigella and mustard seeds. When they start to pop, add the segments of onion. They will seem like huge chunks, but as they start to cook the layers will separate. Stir every so often.
While your onions are cooking (this will take around 20 minutes), thinly slice your chillies, and break down any large lumps in your softened tamarind pulp liquid (you could use scissors or your fingers).
When your onions or shallots are soft, add the chillies, and cook for a minute or so. Then add the tamarind water, vinegar, roasted curry powder, sugar, and curry leaves and let it simmer away for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Now add the fried aubergines, and let the dish cook for a further 2 or 3 minutes, so that everything comes together to create a not-quite-saucy/not-quite-dry, silky dish. You can add a few more splashes of water at this stage if you’d like. Taste, and season with a little salt if necessary. Garnish with coriander.
Jamie’s ‘Eton Mess’
It’s not the gesture he thinks it is, is it? Earth to Jamie: obese children exist because of poverty, not because a few toddlers saw some adverts for jelly babies or crisps and tugged at their parent’s shirt sleeves at Co-op. A youth spent watching a miserably overworked parent scrambling to get you a hot meal… and those snacks you picked up on the way home from school because living in a household marred by financial stress is disturbing (ever heard of comfort eating?) probably have a bit more to do with it…
If Jamie wanted to help children he could be fighting to eliminate the poverty behind the crisis, not making a big PR stunt out of a fly in the ointment policy that isn’t going to touch the sides. And this is by the by, but Eton Mess fucking sucks. Meringue hurts your teeth and who wants to eat a cold sickly sweet pile of cream after dinner? Not me.
So Jamie… start fighting the economic system that sees a parent on a low income working two jobs and trying to get their kids fed and bathed on £40 a week, and then come back to us.
P.S. Next time you want to pretend to be like the rest of us and use Eton as a slur, tell us what school you send your kids to. I’m pretty sure it’s not the local Essex comprehensive.
GOODBYE.
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