Brinjal, also known as Eggplant in North America, Australia and New Zealand and Aubergine in British English, is widely used in cooking all over the world. Cooking methods include steaming, roasting, boiling, baking or frying (pan-fry or deep-fry). Usually, I will either steam or deep-fry them and sprinkle some fried garlic, chili padi and spring onion on them. Sometimes I stir-fry them with minced meat and bean paste. At times I will stir-fry them with sambal petai an okra while at other times I will cook them in vegetable curry.
An interesting way of cooking brinjal (and I bet very few people does it} is to make omelette with them. Like all other kinds of omelette, they are easy to make.
Ingredients
- 1 medium size brinjal
- 3 eggs
- 1 red chili padi
- seasonings - salt, light soy sauce and pepper
Method
- Wash the brinjal.
- Cut it into very thin round pieces.
- Sprinkle salt on them and let them sit for about 30 minutes. This step is to draw out the moisture out from the brinjal, leaving them to be more tender, less bitter and, therefore, more palatable. It will also make them less prone to absorbing too much oil when cooking.
- Rinse the brinjal to remove the salt and drain them dry.
- Break the eggs into a bowl and beat them.
- Season the eggs with salt, light soy sauce and pepper (according to individual taste).
- Add the drained brinjal into the bowl.
- (Optional) Chop the chili padi and add them into the bowl.
- Mix the brinjal well to ensure that they are coated with the eggs.
- Heat up the wok with some cooking oil.
- Pour the brinjal into the wok. (If there is too much brinjal, you may keep half to be fried after the first round.)
- Spread out the brinjal into a single layer.
- Let them cook over very low fire.
- Once they are soft and cooked, flip them over to brown the other side.
- Dish out and serve.
