Gutti Vankaya/Stuffed eggplants in peanut and sesame sauce

Eggplant is one vegetable that can be cooked in 100 different ways. I have said this before too in one of my eggplant posts and now I'm saying again. In India if you go to the vegetable market, you can see some 10-15 varieties of eggplants. the colors ranging from light green to dark purple.


Gutti Vankaya or stuffed brinjal(we call eggplant as brinjal in India) is an authentic south Indian dish. Different spices are stuffed into brinjal and then cooked slowly on a low heat. Again when it comes to stuffing brinjal there are different combinations of spices you can stuff that leads to different varieties of stuffed brinjal.
If you ask my mom for a recipe of stuffed brinjal, right away she can give you some 5-6 varieties you can do it.


Most of the times the spices are added along with onions to get the gravy.
Here I made an onion free stuffing. You may ask me why onion free? No specific reason....I am an onion lover in fact! I can't make any dish without onions. Sometimes I go into the kitchen, open my fridge and stare at the vegetables thinking what to cook. Then I start cutting the onions without a second thought, still thinking which vegetable to cook. That is to say that onions are default in any dish I prepare. So I just start cutting them without a second thought. So today decided to give onion a break and made this onion free stuffing for the eggplants with peanuts and sesame seeds. The result was just YUMMY! That is all I can say.
If you don't believe try it for yourself and let me know.





Ingredients:


Peanuts: 1/4 cup
Sesame seeds: 4 tsp
Cumin seeds: 1 tsp
Coriander seeds: 1tsp
Red chillies(broken): 3
powdered Jaggery: tsp
Cloves: 2
Cinnamon bark: small piece.
Salt as required
Red chilli powder: 1 tsp
Eggplants(small round variety): 6
Chopped cilantro: 1 tbsp
Tamarind: small marble size.

Seasoning:


Oil: 3 tbsp
Mustard seeds: 1 tsp
Cumin seeds: 1 tsp
Curry leaves: 5-6
Turmeric: 1/4 tsp
Asoefetida(hing): a pinch


Procedure:

1. Wash the eggplants throughly in water cut the stems off.
2. Now make two slits in the eggplants vertically perpendicular to each other.
3. Keep the eggplants in water and set them aside.
4. To prepare the stuffing dry roast the sesame seeds along with cumin, coriander seeds, red chillies, cloves and cinnamon and set them aside.
5. Now dry roast the peanuts and set them to cool.
6. Soak the tamarind in water for 5-10 minutes and extract the juice.
7. In a spice grinder grind all the dry roasted ingredients.
8. To the spice mix add the tamarind juice, jaggery, slat and red chilli powder.
9. Divide that mix in to two parts. Stuff one half into the eggplants and use the remaining for the gravy.
10. Add oil to a pressure pan and when the oil is heated, add all the seasoning ingredients in order and when the seeds start spluttering add the spice mix and add 1-2 cups  of water. Let that water come to a boil and the add the brinjal stuffed with the spice mix. Put the pressure pan lid and pressure cook until you get 1 whistle.
11. Make sure you do not over cook the brinjal.
12. Once the pressure comes down, open the lid and adjust t he salt. if the sauce is too think at this point, add some water and cook for few minutes.
13. Garnish with coriander.