Bharli Vanghi is a very typical recipe of the Maharashtra Indian cuisine: eggplant stuffed with peanuts. Incredibly aromatic and very tasty! Here’s the recipe 🙂.
I learned this recipe several years ago from a cook in Maharashtra and unfortunately never recreated it until now. A shame because it is quite a brilliant dish! I love eggplant and Indian cuisine, and this dish especially!
Bharli Vanghi – eggplant stuffed with peanuts from Maharashtra – comes in two varieties, once in curry and also a “dry” version. I like the latter better and it is also shown here for re-cooking 😀. There are of course, as so often, countless family recipes, all with slightly modified ingredients. Always the same: eggplant, peanuts and red chili.
With eggplant, there are many more varieties than the big ones you get in European supermarkets. Just check out an Asian grocer. Either take eggplants that resemble mine in the photos (whether striped or dark purple doesn’t matter at all). These are slightly smaller than tennis balls. Or you can use thin, elongated eggplants, if they are the only ones you can buy. These are probably harder to stuff, though, but the dish should succeed.
But please don’t take the big eggplants, they would take way too long to cook and probably won’t absorb the flavor of the spices as much. Also please don’t take green eggplants, that would be the Thai ones. Whether they are a different variety or just unripe eggplants, I unfortunately don’t know.
By the way, you can buy the grated coconut frozen in an Indian grocery store. You don’t have to struggle there to grate an expensive coconut from the supermarket.
Rice with dal is a great accompaniment to this dish. I wanted to make a Maharashtra dal to go with the Maharashtra stuffed eggplant as well, here you’ll find the recipe for Vatpachi Dal. But of course you can serve others with it, you can find all the recipes of my dals here.
Bharli Vanghi – eggplant stuffed with peanuts
Equipment
- stand mixer
Ingredients
For the 1st roasting
- 1 cup peanuts shelled
- 5 cloves
- ½ tsp black peppercorns
- 1 in cinnamon stick
- 4-6 kashmiri chilis
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
For the 2nd roasting
- 1 cup coconut grated
- ¾ Tbsp ginger grated
- ¾ Tbsp garlic paste
For the preparation
- salt
- 1 tsp jaggery or brown sugar
- 8 eggplants small
Instructions
The 1st roasting
- Put the peanuts in a large pan with the spices and roast everything well. The nuts should brown and the spices should release their aroma well.
The 2nd roasting
- Now set the nuts and spices aside and roast the grated coconut, ginger and garlic.
The preparation
- Now put all the previous ingredients together in a stand mixer and roughly chop everything.
- Cut a deep cross in your eggplants. Cut it up to the stem, which you leave on.
- Now fill your eggplants with the mixture, heat oil in your pan and put the eggplants in it. You can fill your pan well.
- Fry the eggplants briefly on all sides and then steam with the lid closed until cooked. Then add a small dash of water to create steam and then steam with the lid closed until cooked.
- This goes great with rice and a yellow dal.Bon appetite 🙂
Please rate my recipe before you leave 🙂:
Cooked with lots of love ♥ on From zero to curry. Thanks Shoba!
