Recipe for Aloo Parathas - Potato stuffed Indian Flatbread

Alu paratha or potato stuffed Indian flatbread is possibly the most popular stuffed paratha. I have never met anyone who did not like a hot alu paratha straight off the tava, served with a cube of butter that melts in the heat of the paratha to make a small pool of fatty goodness to top the carb indulgence.

Perfect for an indulgent breakfast or as a part of lunch or simply heating up the leftovers for an anytime snack, alu paratha is simply unbeatable. I have fond memories of my grandmom preparing alu parathas for my school picnic lunch box. It was a kind of ritual, picnics meant alu parathas in the tiffin box. Over a period of time, I have perfected the recipe for the best homemade alu paratha and instant yeast is the secret ingredient that gives the most soft and fluffy outer casing, and it stretches beautifully, allowing you to stuff a great deal of filling without the covering dough tearing. You can try this with any other stuffed paratha recipe.

Here, I have served with spinach raita, raw mango and onion chutney and green chutney. You can serve with whatever pickles you have at home or even plain yogurt is perfect.

Recipe for Alu Parathas / Aloo paratha 
Makes 4-5 large parathas

Ingredients
For dough:
1.5 tsp instant yeast
1 tsp sugar
1/2 cup water
1.5 cups atta (whole wheat flour)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp oil

For filling:
2-3 medium potatoes, boiled, peeled and mashed
1 tsp oil
Pinch of asafoetida (optional)
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp amchoor (dried mango powder) (optional)
1/2 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp salt

Watch my video on how to prepare alu parathas:

To make dough: 
First activate the yeast. In a small bowl, add yeast, sugar and 1/2 cup lukewarm water. Stir well and keep covered in a warm place for 10 minutes until frothy. Yeast is ready for use. You can watch a video on how to activate yeast here. 
In a large bowl, place the atta, salt and add the activated yeast mixture. Bring together to make a dough, using sprinkles of extra water to bind to a smooth dough. Knead well for 5 minutes, using 1 tsp oil towards the end. Cover and keep aside until doubled in volume.

To make filling:
In a pan, heat 1 tsp oil. Add the asafoetida, cumin seeds, mashed potatoes, along with all the dry spices and stir until well combined. Remove and cool to use as stuffing.
Lightly punch down risen down and divide into 4-5 equal portions.
Proceed with the recipe as shown in the video above.

To make parathas:
Roll out each portion into a 3 inch circle. Place a generous portion of stuffing in the center. Add a pinch of dry flour on top of this. Bring together the edges and pinch the top to seal. 
Flatten this stuffed ball of dough on your palm lightly.
On a floured board, with a gentle pressure, using a rolling pin, roll this out into a paratha.
Take care to stretch out from the edges and not thin out the center as it may tear and filling will come out.

Heat a tava and place the rolled out paratha on the tava. Cook on medium heat for 1 minute or so. This depends on the thickness of the paratha.
Turn over and cook the other side, meanwhile apply oil or ghee to the first cooked side and turn over again until the first side gets golden spots and the paratha puffs up on the tava, by pressing gently with a spatula. This process is very simple and easy to understand if you watch the video above.

Remove onto a plate and eat piping hot served with raita, pickle, chutney or all of them!

Recipe for Baingan Bharta - Punjabi roasted eggplant curry

Punjabi menu - Baingan Bharta, Dhabewali Dal, Parathas

For someone who hated brinjals all through my childhood, my present love for Baingan Bharta is something that surprises me no end. I don't recall when I tried making this first or whether I ate it at a restaurant that led to this love. Whenever I'm ordering vegetables, I make sure there are big brinjals in the list so one of the dishes in the weekly menu is always baingan bharta. It is surprising that I have not shared my recipe for the same on the blog in the last 9+ years. 

Baingan Bharta is a popular Punjabi dish that pairs superbly with plain rotis /parathas and the large eggplants are often charred in a tandoor in the highway side dhabas to prepare this dish. The curry is prepared with a mix of onions and tomatoes fried with ginger, garlic and other spices, the end result being a thick puree like dish and not the typical watery or creamy curry base.

While a lot of recipes will say it is okay to roast the brinjal / eggplant in the oven, I am of the firm belief that nothing compares to the smoky aroma that roasting it on a direct flame (or even better, on charcoals) imparts to the dish. With a light coat of oil all over the brinjal with its stem intact (which you can use to rotate the brinjal from side to side), place on the flame, and keep rotating it until it is charred and black on all sides. When a knife or skewer inserted in, goes through smoothly, it is ready. A fellow food blogger, Nikhil Merchant has this excellent tip of making tiny slits in the raw brinjal, inserting a clove of garlic into each slit and then roasting this on the flame. The roasted garlic when mashed along with the eggplant gives a big boost of flavour to the dish.

For kitchens without an open flame cooking system, the oven + grill is the next best option. Slit lengthwise, coat with oil and place cut side down on a baking tray. Keep the tray under the grill / broiler for 15-20 minutes. Another tip to avoid messing up your cooking stove with the skin and juices of the eggplant is to wrap the eggplant in 2-3 layers of heavy duty foil and then place it on the flame, rotating once in a while until the whole vegetable is soft.

Baingan Bharta

Recipe for Baingan Bharta | Punjabi style roasted eggplant curry
Serves 3-4
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: less than 20 minutes

Ingredients
500 grams globe eggplant (2 medium sized) 
1 tbsp oil
pinch of asafoetida
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
3 large cloves garlic, crushed, finely chopped
1 tsp finely grated ginger
2 medium onions, finely chopped
2 large tomatoes, finely chopped
2 green chillies, slit lengthwise
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tbsp dhania-jeera powder
1/2 tsp garam masala powder
1 tsp salt

Directions
Directly roast the eggplants on the flame until completely charred from all sides. This needs to be monitored to ensure that eggplants are rotated over to all sides and get uniformly charred. A knife can be passed through the eggplant at the end of 7-8 minutes, to check if it is cooked inside. In this case, knife will pass through smoothly, in case eggplant is uncooked inside, you will feel the resistance. Remove the eggplants onto a plate and cover with a large bowl and keep aside.
In 5 minutes, the eggplant will be cool enough to handle, and you can peel off the skins by merely tugging at them. Mash all the flesh, discard the stems and keep aside.
In a heavy bottomed kadai, heat oil.
Add the asafoetida, cumin seeds.
Once cumin seeds splutter, add the ginger and garlic and saute for 30 seconds. 
Add the finely chopped onions, toss well, sprinkle a pinch of salt. Cover and cook until onions are soft, around 5-7 minutes. Add the tomatoes with the remaining salt, and dry spices, cover and cook until tomatoes are completely soft and mushy. Stir this well.
To this, add the mashed eggplant flesh, around 1/2 cup water and bring to a simmer.
Sprinkle garam masala powder towards the end and bring to a final simmer.
Garnish with fresh coriander and serve hot with chapatis.

The recipe for Punjabi Baingan Bharta is part of the endeavor to create a collection of recipes of Traditional Indian Cuisines in collaboration with a few bloggers who share the same passion of cooking. Find more Traditional Recipes from Punjab by #TheKichenDivas all April. Follow our Pinterest board where all these recipes can be easily accessed and bookmarked.

Also check:

 Meethe Chawal from Fun Food Frolic

Lahsuni Dal Tadka (with Pumpkin) from Archana's Kitchen

Good Food Reads this week

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This is something new I'm starting on the blog this year, sharing with you some of the good food reads from this week. Some are informative while the others inspiring. With so much food writing being churned out each week by food websites, newspapers and blogs, I'm thinking it will be fun to present to you a curated mix of stuff. Consider this as a prelude to a newsletter :)

a most superb cup of filter kaapi had at Hallimane, Bangalore, this morning

The James Beard Foundation has announced its list of 2015 Book Award nominees. Check out the cookbooks in contention for this prestigious award. 

How to make the best French Press coffee - right from choosing the kind of grind to temperature of water to blooming time to brewing time, this one is for perfectionists and coffee connoisseurs.

The Eating Well test kitchen baked over 400 cookies to see what effect different sweeteners have on cookies. Whether you love chocolate chip cookies or not, this is an experiment worth reading about. 

5 unexpected ways to use Tahini 

PRINTABLE: A weekly menu planner that includes breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner PLUS workout. Simple and beautiful design from Back to her Roots blogger, this one asks to be printed out and used. 

All you need to know about Pisco  - a brandy popular in Chile and Peru

On the Instagram blog, Nigella Lawson writes about her favourite follows . Are you following me on Instagram, for sneak peeks into my daily kitchen to what's the latest news in my kitchen garden, you'll find it all there. Excuse the occasional selfie though :P

Ever wondered why you want to reach out for steaming hot rice and rasam with some ghee when you're feeling low and nothing else can make you feel so? Read why comfort food comforts.

Lastly, an interesting read on alcohol in India, the laws, the prohibitions, where Michael Snyder explores the laws and permits in Bombay, Gujarat and the cities in the North East - The cost of a drink on Lucky Peach.

Recipe for Dhabewali Dal - Punjabi mixed lentils

To be honest, I've never eaten in a 'real' dhaba. But yes, I can claim to have eaten in a few mock dhabas, starting with Pritam da Dhaba at Dadar (Mumbai) in my childhood with Amma and Appa. It was one of the few restaurants we would eat out at.  I remember staring at the side counter of their open air section, in complete awe of the chefs throwing the roomali roti in the air to stretch it out. The seating was authentic dhaba style, rope cots with colourful cushions and waiters in the Punjabi kurta and dhoti. I also remember the copper plates and tall copper glasses that they served food and chaas in. It was an amazing place to dine out for me as a kid in the 80s. Post 2000, we saw a slew of such dhaba themed restaurants open in Mumbai, but none to match the wonder that the first one held for me. 

Dhabewali dal is a hearty dish using black udad dal and rajma, and sometimes a mix of some other lentils as well. It is reminiscent of cold evenings in the North of India, sitting in a busy dhaba by the side of a highway, smoke billowing from the tandoor, the aroma of burning coals and fresh out of the tandoor rotis, and a few hearty dishes brought to the rickety table and a large glass of lassi to wash it all down.

There is another variation of Dhabewali dal, which is Langarwali Dal served in the community meal service called Langar in Gurudwaras (Sikh place of worship). That can be prepared similarly by using equal parts of split udad dal and chana dal (Bengal gram dal). The soaking time can be reduced, as compared to rajma, used in Dhabewali Dal.

P.S. Just did a quick check on Zomato while typing this, and Pritam da Dhaba still exists! I've mentally added this to my to-do list while in Mumbai for the next 5 weeks, just for nostalgia sake, if not anything else. If you have any reccos for me in Mumbai AND Delhi, leave me a comment or Tweet to me @saffrontrail :) 

Recipe for Dhabewali Dal
Serves 4-6

Equipment required:
Pressure cooker
Heavy bottomed kadai

Ingredients
3/4 cup split black lentils (split udad dal) [you can even use whole udad with skin]
2 tbsp Kashmiri rajma (kidney beans)
1 tbsp oil + 1 tsp ghee
1 tsp cumin seeds
4 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped
1 tsp grated ginger
pinch of asafoetida
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 tomatoes, quartered and pureed
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp red chilli powder
1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp garam masala powder
Coriander for garnish
Lemon wedges to serve

Directions

1. Wash and soak the split udad dal and rajma in plenty of water for minimum 6 hours or overnight.
2. Drain the soaked dals and place in a pressure cooker with 4-5 cups of water.
3. Close the pressure cooker lid and after 3 whistles, keep on sim (lowest flame) for 10-15 minutes. After this, turn off the flame and allow the cooker to cool.
4. Meanwhile, heat the oil+ghee in a heavy bottomed kadai.
5. Add the cumin seeds. Once they splutter, add ginger, garlic, asafoetida and onions. On a medium flame, cook this until onions are lightly golden and soft. 
6. Add the pureed tomatoes, turmeric, red chilli powder, salt and bring to a simmer.
7. Simmer for 5-6 minutes, add the cooked dals from the pressure cooker, salt and bring to a simmer.
8. Allow this to simmer gently for another 5 minutes, after which you can sprinkle the garam masala powder, stir well and then remove from heat.
9. Garnish with lots of finely chopped coriander.
10. Serve hot with tandoori rotis or steamed rice.

The recipe for Dhabewali Dal is part of the endeavor to create a collection of recipes of Traditional Indian Cuisines in collaboration with a few bloggers who share the same passion of cooking. Find more Traditional Recipes from Punjab by #TheKichenDivas all April. Follow our Pinterest board where all these recipes can be easily accessed and bookmarked.

Rao ki Kheer (Sugarcane juice kheer) from Sinamon Tales

Dal Makhani from Fun Food Frolic

Pindi Chole from Archana's Kitchen

Recipe for Shikanji - an Indian lemonade

Summer has hit Bangalore hard and sent us hurtling to our freezers, to pack our drinks with ice. I'm not a big fan of ice in my drinks, but come summer and it changes everything. Today, three of us food blogger friends drove some 25 kilometers in search of props for food photos and thanks to the heat, by the time I came back home, I was like a rag doll that's gone through an extended cycle in the washing machine. In short, completely drained out. If something refreshed me, it was this tall glass of shikanji, and I can tell it is going to be a life-saver in the coming few weeks.

I've never been fond of aerated drinks except for a short phase in school days when I used to love Limca and Gold Spot. I suppose that was more so because they fell in the prohibited foods/ very occasional treats category and as kids we always loved such foods. Give me a good homemade lemonade and I'm a happy girl. My aunt always has a bottle of homemade lemon concentrate that she serves with roasted cumin powder and black salt and it is absolutely refreshing for the Bombay summers. This is my take on the Punjabi shikanji, that I've had in some of my favourite Punjabi restaurants. A shot of vodka or gin won't go amiss in this one, if you're looking at something more potent for a day time drink. Call it our own Indian version of Pimms ;-)

Traditionally, Shikanji or Shikanjvi (nothing to do with our South Indian kanji :P ) is a spiced lemonade, which has lemon juice, ginger, roasted cumin powder. My recipe for Shokanji has a twist by way of adding tusli and mint. Mint is the best cooling herb for summer, tulsi is great for any respiratory allergies and for building immunity, plus these two are currently growing like crazy in my garden, so I wanted to put them to good use. By grinding them to extract their juices, the drink acquires a lovely green colour along with the intense flavour of mint, and the mellower notes of tulsi (holy basil). If you find that the taste of Black salt or kala namak does not suit your palate, by all means use regular salt. I buy bottles of liquid jaggery or nolen gur (when in season) from our local grocery suppliers, and it saves me the trouble of making sugar syrup for such drinks. It's also a consolation that jaggery syrup is a tad healthier than sugar syrup.



You can also check out my summer coolers playlist on youtube, which has Korean Boricha (barley tea), Vietnamese iced coffee, green tea cooler, lemongrass iced tea etc.

Recipe for Shikanji / Shikanjvi / Indian Spiced Lemonade
Makes 2 glasses

Ingredients
2" knob of ginger, peeled and sliced
generous handful of tulsi leaves, washed and cleaned
generous handful of mint leaves, washed and cleaned
Juice of 2 lemons
1/2 tsp black salt
1/2 tsp roasted cumin powder
4 tbsp sugar syrup or jaggery syrup or nolen gur syrup

DirectionsIn a small mixer, grind the ginger, mint and tulsi with 1/4 cup water. 
Using a fine meshed sieve, squeeze out all the juice, with the back of a spoon.
Add to a mixing bowl. Add the lemon juice, black salt, roasted cumin powder and 2 cups of water.
Add the sweetener of choice, mix well.
To serve, add 2-3 ice cubes in a glass and top with the drink.
For a more fun presentation, serve in recycled jam jars or pickle jars! Serve chilled.

The recipe for Shikanji is part of the endeavor to create a collection of recipes of Traditional Indian Cuisines in collaboration with a few bloggers who share the same passion of cooking. Find more Traditional Recipes from Punjab by #TheKichenDivas all April. Follow our Pinterest board where all these recipes can be easily accessed and bookmarked.

Gobhi Paratha - Archana's Kitchen

Increase traffic to your foodblog in 7 simple steps

This is my 10th year of food blogging and along the way there have been quite a few learnings. There are more 'wish I had done that' moments than I'd like! As a theme for this month, I am going to share some secrets, some learnings and some mistakes which may help other food bloggers in a small way.

The first post in this series is the one thing all blogs/bloggers love - TRAFFIC.

While we all crib endlessly about the traffic in our respective cities, the only place where traffic is welcome are our blogs. Be it for increasing readership or for showing better stats or because it results in better monetization, whatever be the reason, we all love to see a jump in the number of visitors to our website.

All blogs start with a handful of readers - siblings, parents or your partner (whom you've emotionally blackmailed into reading what you've written) and then the audience gets wider to include friends and friends of friends (thank you, Facebook) and so on. This post is to help you cast a wider net and reach out to a larger audience. To be able to capture the attention of the audience and keep them coming back to your blog of course, is another matter altogether and that's all to do with kick ass content. There's of course SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which makes your blog posts appear as a result whenever someone searches for a recipe you have written about. But since I have said 'simple steps' let's stick to the simple things you can get started on right away.

1. BLOG AGGREGATORS
Blog aggregators are like Google reader (sigh, this is no more) service, where all latest posts from the blogs submitted to the service are displayed automatically. All you need to do is submit your blog link to them. People who love to read food blogs (and these may include fellow food bloggers) can catch all the most recent posts in one page. Foodworld, run by the RedChillies is one of the popular blog aggregators for Indian food blogs and if your blog is over 2 months old, they accept your submission. Saffron Trail has been a part of this aggregator for a long time now and the traffic from this has been encouraging.

2. WRITING FOR WEBSITES OTHER THAN YOUR BLOG
As a blogger, you anyway spend quite some time thinking about new content for your blog, cooking up recipes, taking photos. What if some of this existing effort you put in, can help you get more audience? Writing for blogs, websites with a better reach than yours, can help you draw the attention of more people - think local food & drink websites, Huffington Post etc. and ensure they carry a link-back to your blog and your social media coordinates. You can experiment with collaborating with other bloggers too so you do cross posts on each others' blog, thereby getting the benefit of a wider readership. While most of this writing work may not pay, some allow you to repost the same content on your blog once it has been posted on their website, so it gives you added content for your blog as well, not to mention the extra traffic.

3. PINTEREST

A lot of food bloggers seem to swear by Pinterest for giving their traffic a mega boost. Although I was an early adapter on Pinterest, I mostly used it to curate interesting stuff around food, home decor, parenting ideas and never quite thought of using it with a single minded focus of showcasing my blog. Mistake. Over the last few months, I diligently pin every new recipe photo to my Pinterest boards and I do see a spike in traffic coming from there. A few pointers here - make sure you have a few different boards which talk of the various categories of recipes on your blog. Think of it as a recipe folders and showcase your blog's recipes in each category. Use best quality photo for each recipe with recipe name clearly captioned on the photo. Studies show that people tend to click more on photos with captions as against photos without them. Make sure that you use the widget to add the 'Pin this' button to your blog photos, so when your readers pin them to their boards, your blog gets visibility in their circles too.

4. FACEBOOK GROUPS
I see that quite a few cities have at least 2-3 highly active food-centric Facebook groups with a clued in audience. While most of them prevent sharing your blog links, it is a good idea to be a part of such groups, because these are the kind of audience you are looking at for your blog- people who love to think, eat and discuss food. Be a part of food discussions, ask questions, offer your inputs and engage genuinely. It wont be long before they discover your blog. 

5. FOODGAWKER etc.
I've discovered this very very late in the game. Foodgawker, Tastespotting, Finding Vegan are just some of the sites where you can submit your food photos with a link to your blog post. These websites get thousands of photo submissions each day and it can feel like a million people trying to book train tickets on IRCTC at the same time. It can get frustrating sometimes, trying to fit your photos to their criteria, especially when you get reasons for rejection such as 'awkward composition', 'underexposed', 'low lighting', 'composition too tight' on a loop. But you can treat these as stepping stones to clicking perfect food photos and you'll definitely see your accepted:declined ratio skew favourably. Once you have more and more of your food photos accepted on these sites, they are a steady source of traffic to your foodblog.

6. TWITTER
You can either love Twitter or hate it, but you cannot ignore it. A lot of foodbloggers auto-connect their blog to Twitter, so each time a post is published, a link gets auto-tweeted. While that is a good way to ensure that each one of your posts gets tweeted out with a link, it's better to have a catchy one liner to introduce your post. For example, instead of "Recipe for Badinjan Burani" Vs "Read my post about a recipe that traveled from Persia to India" - you know which one you are more likely to click. Also, engage with your audience, connect with fellow food bloggers, answer questions, ask a few of your own and your Twitter audience is more likely to make your blog their go-to-space for recipes.

7. INSTAGRAM
Foodblogs' appeal is mainly visual. People cannot taste your recipe, but if the photo spells delicious, then there's a good chance your audience will keep coming back for more. Instagram provides the perfect platform to show your food pics, behind the scenes, clicks while your dish is being cooked, or a photoshoot set up. It displays a lot of your personality as a food blogger. While Instagram doesn't allow for any clickable links yet, you can link up your blog in the profile and it's a great way to expose your blog to a world wide audience. Make sure the photos are decent, even though you've taken them from your phone. You can get more details on how best to show off your food photos on Instagram in a tongue-in-cheek piece I wrote for a news website last year.

Once you've managed to tick off these 7 boxes, you will definitely see a surge in traffic, provided of course that you are conscious about producing quality content post after post!
If you are a food blogger and a certain avenue has helped you get quality traffic, do share in the comments below. Do let me know what else you'd like to hear from me on the subject of food-blogging and I shall try and line it up this month!

[traffic jam image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lingaraj/2415084235 modified with caption]

Pomodori e Melanzane | Italian recipe for eggplant in tomato sauce

David Rocco, the famous Italian chef on tv, prepared this recipe in one of the episodes of his show David Rocco's Dolce India. He gave it an Indian tadka using green chillies, coriander and garam masala. While that sounded exciting, I prefer the clean Italian flavours to mixing them with Indian flavours. Also, the eggplants fried in oil have a capacity to drink up copious quantities and since I wanted to take the healthier route, I used the airfryer to bypass the deep frying step. You can easily do this in an oven as well. I have described this in the recipe below.

You can either use this dish as a sauce for pasta or as a juicy filling for a sandwich. You can even eat it as it is with a slice of garlic bread or so, for a light lunch. It also makes a delicious topping for bruschetta, as an appetiser.

With very few ingredients, it is an authentic Italian dish that is great to have in your repertoire of vegetarian Italian recipes. If you want to add more punch to this, by all means add a few chillies to the olive oil while sautéing the garlic.

The original recipe does not use bell pepper, but I find that orange bell peppers add a lovely contrast and sweet juiciness to the dish. If you don't have bell peppers on hand, you can prepare this dish just with the eggplant and tomatoes, and possibly add a finely sliced onion along with the garlic. This has become one of my favourite eggplant recipes, so do give it a try!

Pomodori e Melanzane - Italian style fried eggplants in tomato sauce
Prep time: 20 minutes | Cooking time: 20 minutes
Serves 2
Serve with pasta, bread or in a sandwich

Equipment required
AirFryer (optional)

Ingredients
1 medium sized globe eggplant 
2 tbsp olive oil, divided 
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 small orange bell pepper, diced (you can use yellow too)
5 medium tomatoes, blanched and peeled
2 tsp mixed dried herbs
1 tsp salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Fresh basil leaves and capers to garnish

Directions

1. Keep a big bowl of water with 1 tsp of salt ready.
2. Cut off the stem end of the eggplant. Cut into thick slices and uniformly dice each slice to get 1 cm cubes.
3. Immediately immerse in salted water.
4. Roughly chop the blanched tomatoes and keep aside.
5. In a heavy bottomed wok, heat 1 tbsp olive oil.
6. Crush the garlic cloves with the back of a knife. Add to oil. Don't brown this, within the next few seconds, add the bell pepper and saute over medium flame for 5 minutes.
7. To this add the dried herbs, salt and chopped blanched tomatoes.
8. Bring this to a simmer.
9. Meanwhile, remove eggplant from water, squeeze thoroughly and add to a large bowl. Toss in 1 tbsp olive oil.
10. Preparing fried eggplant in airfryer :  Preheat airfryer to 180°C and place the oil tossed eggplant in the wire basket. Set the basket in the slot and dial the timer to 15 minutes. At the end of this, eggplant should be well cooked and golden.
11. Add these golden eggplant cubes to the simmering tomato sauce. Check for salt, season with some ground black pepper and remove into a bowl or add to cooked pasta.
12. Garnish with fresh herbs and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

Oven method:

If you don't have an airfryer, preheat oven to 190°C (convection mode). Line a tray with heavy duty aluminum foil. Place the oil tossed eggplant cubes in a single layer, place in the center rack and bake for around 25 minutes or until eggplant is golden and soft. Proceed with recipe.

Stove top method:

If you don't have an oven, take 1 inch of olive oil in a fry pan, fry the eggplant cubes on medium flame until soft and drain well on kitchen paper.