I'm still running a month behind on writing posts for all the countries I've cooked for! A month ago I made food for Maldives, an island country off the coast of India. It's the smallest country in Asia, both by land area and population, and is sadly disappearing due to climate change causing rising sea levels.
Being so close to India, many of the dishes of the Maldives are similar, but with a seafood-centric spin. I decided to make an eggplant curry called bashi hiki riha. I was also going to make baiyaa, Maldives version of a samosa with tuna, but I didn't have the time.
The recipe starts out with deep-frying the eggplant. I didn't go this route and instead just sauteed the eggplant until it was soft.
I then sauteed onion and garlic for the base of the curry.
I then added the eggplant back in, along with some spices--all the usual suspects: ginger, cardamom, chili powder, cumin, curry powder--and a minced habanero.
People in Maldives put smoked tuna on just about everything. They probably eat it for dessert. So to replicate the taste and texture, I added some roughly chopped tofu along with some chickpeas.
I served it on a bed of basmati rice, topped with a bit of parsley to add some freshness.
And that's it! This is a short post because it was a short process. This wasn't my favorite meal, but only because I ended up using too much oil to cook the eggplant and the whole thing ended up way too oily and gave me a stomachache. Purely my fault, as I started the recipe thinking I would fry the eggplant, decided against it, but didn't want to waste the oil. I thought I could just drain the eggplant and it would be fine, but they soaked up too much. But at least the flavors were there!
Recipes Used: Bashi hiki riha
留言