Cherry Tomato Gratin

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If anyone is wondering what’s happening to my past post recipes and they look a little incomplete- you might be right in thinking so.

There is some problem with the easy recipe plugin I have and some of the text and all the pictures under the recipe part of my posts are somehow not showing on the site. The recipe are complete in my drafts, but on the site they do not appear complete.

Take the last post, for example. Spicy Buffalo Chicken Pizza. The recipe is incomplete. It’s there in my drafts- complete with all the instructions but it doesn’t show on the site. I am working with the plugin guys and hopefully this problem should be resolved soon. But in the meanwhile if you are planning to make anything from the blog and feel it is not complete, do let me know and I will mail you the recipe till all this gets sorted out!

Amidst all this confusion, I really wasn’t going to post today. But my friend has been bugging me to share this recipe I made over the weekend. A cherry tomato gratin.

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Garam Masala Tuesdays: Baingan ka Bharta

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Marriage changes you. It influences your personality, and your responsibilities and priorities change. Your partner’s personality rubs off on you a little and vice versa. I have definitely become more calm, and patient after marriage. Things that would bother me earlier, still do bother me, but to a lesser extent. I would not attribute all the changes to V, although his role is undeniable, but marriage brought with it certain changes which have changed me, for the better. So, yes marriage changed me.

Marriage also changes your eating habits. I have seen a change in what V eats. He has started accepting mushrooms in his diet- he is still not crazy about them but has made his peace with mushrooms. All for me.

I too have adjusted my taste buds to his. From someone who wouldn’t touch bharta with a ten-foot pole, here I am writing about it on GMT.

That’s Change.

That’s Growth.

Baingan bharta is a dish made from roasted eggplants cooked with onions, tomatoes, chillies, ginger and garlic. Some people also add peas and other various vegetables to it.

Baingan (pronounced bane-gun) is what Indians call eggplant in hindi. And bharta (pronounced bhharta with the first “a” in bharta pronounced the same way you pronounce “u” in mud. Pardon me, but phonetic symbols are not my strongest point!), is the hindi word for roughly mashed/pureed vegetables.

This dish can be prepared two ways with roasted eggplant – one with accompanying raw ingredients which typically includes mustard oil and the other with cooked ingredients. The recipe below uses the latter method.

Honestly Baingan ka bharta was my least favorite dish growing up. It was hardly made at home, and when made, I never ate it. I wanted to like it, because eggplants are good for you, but I just found it too slimy to look at.

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