BAKED Aubergines, Brinjals, Eggplant, Melongene, Garden Egg, Guinea Squash

I love brinjal!  Baked, curried, fried, in dips, lasagne's and salads  It's a vegetable that is versatile to prepare and low in calories.  Below the health benefits, in the Recipie for baked brinjal chips, see the pictures to the process involved.  I hope you enjoy making and eating it as much as I do :) 

The nutritious eggplant, also called brinjal or aubergine, hails from the nightshade family of fruits and vegetables that includes potatoes, peppers and tomatoes. Botanically, the brinjal is a fruit, not a vegetable and the brinjal plant grows just like tomatoes as vines. For its utility in the kitchen or rather, for cooking purposes, it is considered a vegetable. Just as other colourful veggies, this vegetable too has a host of health benefits.  Even though not many people are fond of this vegetable, it is a wondrous vegetable with a horde of benefits. So do ensure to make it a part of your weekly diet.

Health Benefits of Brinjal/Eggplant:

• Helps keeping diabetes in control
• Helpful to the heart by lowering cholesterol levels and stabalising blood pressure
• Helpful to the brain by preserving memory function
• Facilitates weight loss as its high in water content and low in calorie count
• Helps in digestion as its high in fibre and prevents constipation
• Healthy skin and hair due to the high water content, hydrating skins & hair
• Keeps chronic diseases at bay by reducing the risks of cardiovascular diseases & strokes
• Helps quit smoking due to it's small nicotine content that assists those giving up
• Anti bacterial properties  of vitamin C  content which make it an effective anti-viral and anti- bacterial source

For the purposes of this BAKED BRINJAL recipe, I used 2 brinjals, exactly like this:

 

 

 

It's always best to choose brinjals that are fresh and firm, smooth and shiny. The caps of leaves surrounding the stem must be fresh. The skin of the brinjal should be  firm yet springy to the spring test - press your thumb on the skin of the eggplant. You want the skin to bounce back after you press your thumb on it. If it doesn't, it is old or picked too late. If your press your thumb on the eggplant and the skin doesn't move at all, it was picked too early.  The brinjals that are picked to early or too late are the ones to avoid, as they are generally bitter to the taste, your safest bet would be to look for medium sized brinjals like the picture above.

 

 

Ingredients

2 medium fresh brinjals

2 tblsp extra virgin olive oil

Freshly ground Himalayan or natural sea salt to taste

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Optional:  Freshly sliced garlic and / or roasted and roughly ground cumin seeds

 

 

Here's How

• Wash, top and tail the brinjals
• Cut lengthwise with a large sharp knife
• then cut into desired width
• Lay out on a baking tray - see picture below

 

Sprinkle the olive oil and salt over (at this stage you may add the optional extras) and mix all well like this

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees celcius for about 20 minutes if crispiness is desired, then turn up the heat to about 220 degrees celcius in the last 5 minutes of cooking time.  Depending on the type of oven, cooking time may be reduced so watch carefully.  While in the oven almost cooked, the brinjal chips should look like this

Your end result - Baked Brinjal Chips should look like this

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Note I deliberately left some un-crisped, to demonstrate the fleshy soft succulent pulpy inner