One of the brinjal recipes of my mother that I like is the brinjal salad. Her recipe is an adaptation of her grandmother’s recipe.

Brinjal salad

Time taken: 15 – 20 mins

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• Brinjal – 1
• Chilli or capsicum – 1, chopped
• Onion – ¼ , chopped
• Pepper and salt, to taste
• Freshly scraped coconut – 2 tbsp (Optional)
• Lime juice, to taste

Method:

1. Wash the brinjal and then wrap the whole brinjal, in tin foil.
2. Boil a half-filled saucepan of water and then drop this tin-foil wrapped brinjal in the pan to cook for 10 minutes.
3. After the brinjal is cooked, remove from the pan and unwrap the foil. Peel the brinjal immediately as it will otherwise be difficult to remove if cooled.
4. Mash the cooked brinjal.
5. Add the chopped onion, chilli, optional scraped coconut and the salt and pepper seasoning. Mix well
6. Add some lime juice and serve with rice.

Note: My great-grandmother used to roast the brinjal, wrapped in a leaf, inserted among the firewood stove so I can imagine that the salad would have had a nice smoky, roasted flavour. So, translated into today’s world, roasting the brinjal wrapped in tin foil in an oven would be the equivalent.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.