Eggplant (brinjal/kathirikkai) curry

Kathirikkai curry happens to be one of my favorite dishes. I love it so much that I made it the first time my husband visited me and then found out how much he doesn't like brinjals!!! Over a period of time he seems to have started liking it :)

Ingredients:

15 small to medium sized brinjals
1 small to medium sized onion
2 tsp salt
2 dry red chillies
1/2 tsp Mustard seeds
1/2 tsp broken urid dal
2 tsp curry powder
5 tsp oil

Directions:

1. Chop the brinjals into small cubes and soak them in water. As you continue to chop them just dump the pieces in water. This helps avoid oxidation and thereby preserves the color.
2. In a pan, add 2 tsp oil and add red chillies and mustard, once mustards start cracking add the urid dal. When urid dal turns golden brown add the onions and saute them until they turn golden brown. Now drain the water and add the brinjals. Don't drain completely. Retain some of the water so that you could use it to cook the brinjal.
3. Add salt at this point and continue to add water in very small amounts to cook the brinjals. Keep stirring them every once in a while to prevent them from sticking to the bottom.
4. When brinjals are almost cooked add the remainder of the oil. To make sure the brinjals are cooked, you can take a piece of brinjal in your hand and see if it deforms when you simply touch it. In addition, cooked brinjals turn almost dark gray in color.
5. At this point add the curry powder, I add curry powder at the end because it helps absorb some of the excess water in the curry.

My husband and I sometimes mix this with rice and have it as our first course, it's excellent with paruppu sadam and all the other courses like samabar, rasam and curd.

Note: All the Indian curries come out nice and good when cooked in a kadai/wok rather than a nonstick frying pan/sauce pan.