Eggplant, Melongene, Bygan, whatever you call it its one good, yummy, healthy vegetable that can be made into a lot of good dishes and cooked a plethora of different ways.
Eggplants are one of my favorite vegetables to cook with. I can curry it, fry it, steam it, bake it or like todays dish, roast it!
Roasting Eggplants brings out the creamy, smokiness of it. In Trinidad we call an Eggplant bygan. This is just the West Indian way of calling it. Hence the name for this recipe is called Bygan Choka.
Normally you would roast the eggplant on the stove top, add raw onion, salt and pepper and that would be the dish. A few years ago I visited a friends home and her mom who is Guyanese, made this and she added a dab of butter to it…OMG it was delicious! It literally brought out the creaminess of this dish!
Add the roasted tomatoes is just my twist on it. I love adding tomatoes to my Eggplant Choka. Frying the onions softens it so that you are not eating raw onions and then going to have long conversations with people or even worst going on a date later on!
This Eggplant dish is also vegetarian and low carb, for the healthy folks. Serve with Paratha Roti.
Have a great weekend all!
2 comments
I remember growing up eating eggplants fairly regularly because by Aunty was a kitchen boss. But we lived in the country side with a bit of land and had a few acres of vegetables my uncle planted regularly after harvesting quite many variety. We had quite a bit of eggplant nevertheless among allot of vegetables.
Having lived in the U.S now for quite some time, i can honestly say if there is a list of heavily under used vegetables that eggplants will definitely be on that list. I never see many eggplant dished either or on any cooking shows. Many people have no idea what to do with it or how to use it and many others have no idea what eggplants are. I guess all add up to why one never see’s many eggplant dishes. So i’m at least glad to see you do a few eggplant dishes. I certainly didn’t remember the Choka from memory, but on seeing it things all came back to mind as i’ve had it before.
All the great blog posts are greatly appreciated. I know there aren’t much commenters here, so i’ll make the appreciation known for all those that never posts and just read. However i appreciate ya! You should also start a Flipboard act and flip Tastesspicy into it. It would look rather very glossy and just another way to reach more readers.
Henry! Yes you are my number one fan! I have downloaded app I’m going to try to figure out how to use flipboard.