Update 5/25/13: I updated this a little. Gosh I love this dish. My husband finds it a little too sour for him, but I could eat the whole pan!! Hey, more for me 🙂

Okay I have a confession. I’m getting a little attached to this blog thing. I am so glad I was out of town when it went down or I would have been so sad over the weekend! I still don’t know what happened. I started typing on Wednesday early morning and went back to finish it in the evening and I couldn’t get into it at all. Not the site, not the wordpress login page, nothing. Anyways, it was back up a few days later, but Yahoo never did tell me what happened.

Enough about that. We had a Monday dinner party! Asha was in town and it was DJ’s b’day so we threw together a small feast.

Tejas made his fabulous gobi shak, which I posted separately, and I made masoor dal with goda masala which I also posted separately (I never know if I should combine recipes on one post or not, but I figure it is easier to look up separate recipes!), and then I tried a new eggplant recipe that I thought was fantastic!!! US Masala is such a wonderful blog and her pictures are beautiful! The Kasmiri dahi eggplant is the first recipe I have tried and it has definitely made me want to try more! I made about a recipe and a half and mine does not look anything like hers, but it was tasty 🙂

2 big eggplants thickly sliced
Oil for shallow frying
3 cups yogurt
Salt
2 teaspoons fennel
1 1/2 teaspoons ginger ground
1/2 teaspoon tumeric
2 teaspoons kashmiri chili powder (Kashmiri chili powder is really red, but not as spicy, you can substitue with less normal chili powder)
1 tablespoon oil
Pinch hing (asafoetida)
3 cardamom
Pinch sugar (optional – if your yogurt is really tart, the sugar will cut it a little)

1. Slice the eggplant and then shallow fry until soft and brown. Drain on paper towels. I tried to broil these to be a little healthier, but looked like they were drying out in the oven, so I gave up and went the shallow frying way. Sometimes a little oil is okay.
2. Whisk yogurt and salt together.
3. Toast the fennel lightly and grind in a coffee grinder. I actually ground the fennel with the other dried spices because the coffee grinder seems to work better with more volume.
4. Heat the 1 tablespoon of oil in the same pan and add the hing and cardamon. Then add the powdered spices.
5. Whisk in the yogurt.
6. Add the eggplant and heat through until the yogurt separates.