West Indian Eggplant And Rice

Photo by Heaven's Gate (John). Flickr

My husband's friend who is a native of St Lucia, located in the Caribbean, cooks up the best West Indian Cuisine I've ever had. On a few occasions, he's come to our home and prepared a few delicious meals from his homeland for all of us to savor and enjoy. One of my favorite dishes is his eggplant over rice. The last time he was over visiting, I watched him make this for us. Since I've been harvesting my eggplant daily, I figured this would be a great time for me to try and make this Caribbean vegetable recipe myself. Obviously, I had to call him once while I was whipping it up, to ask him if I had added all of the accurate spices needed to flavor the eggplant. To my surprise my meal turned out fabulous and both my husband Paul and I, were very happy with the outcome of our West Indian dinner. If you are going to try making this yourself, You will have to figure in the amount of each ingredient by tasting it, rather than measuring everything out with measuring spoons.

Ingredient;

8 medium eggplant chopped and set aside

Olive oil (enough to cover bottom of a sauce pan and more for adding later)

5 large cloves of chopped garlic

2 large white onions, chopped

Cumin

Coriander

Curry powder

Whole Cloves

Turmerac

Saffron

Abodo

Your favorite hot sauce

Salt and pepper to taste

Basmati rice
salt
4 chopped cloves of garlic
1/4 cup of chopped cilantro
black pepper
Wash and chop your eggplant, then set them aside. In a medium or large sauce pan, cover the bottom of the pan with oil. Set your stove to medium high.Heat the oil and add all of the spices to the oil . Keep stirring the oil for about 3 minutes. Add the chopped garlic and onion to the oil and saute for an additional 5 to ten minutes . Avoid burning the garlic. Take your eggplant along with the hot sauce and add everything together. Do not cover your pan. You will need to stir this all in well. At this point you may want to add more olive oil to coat your eggplant. Once your eggplant starts to soften, you will begin mashing it often as it continues to cook. This is the time you should lower your heat to medium, then eventually to medium low. You may want to taste everything at to see if the spices need to be adjusted. You can also add more oil if it seems dry. Continue to cook the eggplant till it is the consistency of paste. This may take up to 45 minutes. The key is to keep stirring and mashing often the whole time it's cooking. You will also want to stir in any browning that you are scraping from the bottom of your pan as you are cooking.

While waiting for the eggplant finish you can prepare the rice by following the directions on the back of the package. When the rice is complete, you can add your chopped garlic, chopped cilantro and salt to taste. Stir it all together well and serve the eggplant over top of your rice.