RecipeMuncher

imma confess something to you: i’m a terrible asian cook. what i mean by that is that i don’t mess around with most asian ingredients like galangal, whatever animal blood, the various million varieties of curry pastes, fermented random stuff etc. yeah i enjoy me some asian foods but my pantry is well stocked with western ingredients. i stand in Hmart’s condiment aisle and i have mini anxiety

This is yet another spur of the moment dinner, inspired purely by what I had left in the fridge - namely a pack of chicken thighs and an aubergine. I had to be out the door within the hour too - so it had to be ready in half an hour… and it was!

After the slight confusion from Tuesday’s use of the word courgette (zucchini!), I think it may well be wise to explain up front that an aubergine is none other than the North American eggplant. What I didn’t know, is that brinjal also means aubergine in India and South African English! (I always assumed it was an Indian ingredient that I couldn’t get here!!)

Want more? Well, aubergine and brinjal have etymological similarities, both deriving from Arabic/Sanskrit. (The Sanskrit vatin-ganah begat the Persian badin-gan and badin-gan begat the Arabic al-badinjan and al-badinjan begat the Cata…