This spicy eggplants with curry leaves is my aunt’s recipe that my mom recently shared with me. I love it so much. I usually cook eggplants in curry, or sometimes grill it and make a sambal (chili-based sauce popular in Southeast Asia, typically red in color) and pour on top of it. This recipe also uses chili, however the chilis used are not red. They are green bird’s eye chili, cut into long strips (seeded or not, it’s up to you). The eggplants are coated with flour concoction and then deep-fried until they are crispy and then topped with the green chili concoction along with dried shrimps (ebi), curry leaves, garlic and shallots. Though the eggplants are deep-fried, but the flour coating make them taste so light and crunchy (which is kind dangerous at the same time lol). The whole combination is so so good. If you are into spicy stuff, I can assure you will eat more rice than you normally will. Even if you are not into spicy stuff, you can still opt out on the chili and you still get a great dish.
Spicy eggplants with curry leaves
Ingredients
- 1 lb purple eggplant washed and keep skin on, cut into 1/4-inch slices
- Oil for deep-frying eggplant
- 15-20 green chili seeded if you want and cut into strips
- 10 shallots finely sliced
- 3 cloves garlic finely minced
- 2 Tbsp dried shrimp /ebi soaked in water to soften and then drain off water
- ¼ cup of curry leaves
- 2 Tbsp oil
- Salt to taste
- FLOUR COATING:
- 1 cup rice flour
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- ¾ cup water
- ½ Tbsp salt
Instructions
- Preheat oil in a medium size pan for deep-frying the eggplants. Meanwhile, mix thoroughly the flour coating ingredients together and add the water a bit by bit. The mixture should be a consistency of a pancake batter (not too runny, and not too thick) add more water if you need to
- Once the oil is hot enough, coat the eggplant one by one and deep fry until golden brown on both sides and set aside on absorbent paper towel and repeat until you are finish with all the eggplants. Arrange on serving platter
- In a medium size pan, preheat 2 Tbsp of oil and saute the shallots, garlic and dried shrimp until fragrant. Add in the green chili and curry leaves and continue to saute until the shallots and chili are limp
- Pour the chili on top of the eggplants and serve immediately
Notes
