Wanga bhaji recipe

By | December 6, 2016

I found a few recipes floating around on scraps of paper in my laptop case. I’m sorry if you don’t care about the recipes. My dish today is wanga bhaji. Wanga means eggplant in Marathi.

Fun Fact

Tween-Thriftygal once tried to play “wanga” for the question of which pizza topping starts with the letter W. It was in a board game called Scattergories. We ruled it a disqualification because it was in a different language and not because you can’t put eggplant on pizza. What can you put on pizza that starts with a “W” though?

It’s weird, the things we remember.

img_20161021_181453

Ingredients

  • 10 baby eggplants. Indian eggplants, I think they’re called.
  • 2 small onions
  • 1 medium-sized tomato
  • A few bunches of cilantro
  • 2-3 cloves of garlic

Spices

spices

spices

  • 1/2 tsp each
    • mustard seeds
    • cumin seeds

Powder spices

  • 1/2 tsp turmeric
  • 1 tsp each
    • cayenne pepper
    • garam masala
    • coriander powder
    • salt
  • 3 tspns of roasted peanut powder. The same stuff from steps five and six of this recipe.

Directions

1. Cut the eggplant by cutting off the stem, turning it over and cutting an “X” through it. Stop before you make it all the way through the eggplant. Here, let me show you a picture.

Don't cut all the way through.

They’re soaking in some water so they don’t get brown.

2. Mix all the powder spices together in a dish.

3. Take the spices from the second step and stuff it into the eggplant from the first step.

This picture makes me happy.

4. Dice the onions, garlic and tomatoes.

5. Heat some oil in a medium pot on the stove.

6. Put in the mustard seeds.

7. When the mustard seeds make some noise, a “pop” sound, add in the cumin seeds.

8. Add in the diced onions and garlic.

9. Let cook until the onions are translucent.

10. Add in the tomatoes.

11. Add the stuffed eggplant you made in step 3 to the pot.

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12. Let cook and add water periodically. I added about 1.5 cups of water. It depends on how much gravy you want. I love gravy.

13. If you have any leftover spices from step 2, you can add that here.

14. Let cook on low heat. Maybe 20 minutes.

15. Throw in some cilantro.

16. Enjoy with, you guessed it, thecha and yogurt and basmati rice.

masala wanga

masala wanga

Acceptable Deviations

  1. You can use green tomatoes if you don’t have eggplants. Medium-sized green tomatoes.
  2. You can omit the red tomatoes if you don’t like gravy.

12 thoughts on “Wanga bhaji recipe

  1. Ingrid

    I have tried several of your recipes and I always love them! Just had Cauliflower Bahji a couple of days ago. Keep them coming!

    Reply
  2. Linda

    Love your recipes, pls keep them coming! (I just made a chana masala & spicy bhartha — a friend is coming to lunch tomorrow. Both are new-to-me vegetarian recipes) I cannot wait to try your cauli bahji and also your recipe for tapioca –that one completely intrigues me. You and your Mom are making me a better cook. 🙂 Thanks!

    Reply
  3. Gerard

    I think what I like best about this is the idea that you can sub in green tomatoes. That sounds like an excellent idea!

    Reply
  4. taemoo

    +1 on the recipes, please continue. I think big part of the accumulation phase to FIRE is to eat in as often as possible. Pressure cooker + indian recipes = great food with major savings

    Reply

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