Baigan Choka – Your New Favourite Eggplant Dish

Baigan Choka! Eggplant is referred to as baigan in Trinidad and Guyana. It is also referred to as Balanjay in Guyana. So this is Baigain Choka, my rendition of it. 

There are several different ways to make baigan choka and best practices depending on how you grew up eating this dish.

Baigan Choka Basics

If you have a base of flame roasted eggplant, garlic, onion, hot pepper to taste, and salt to taste, mashed together (and/or chopped together) and finished off with hot oil, you have baigan choka.

I LOVE roasted garlic, so quite frankly, used close to a whole head in the entirety of this dish, you can use much less. Onion and garlic are not always added to the hot oil used to finish off the choka, but I have seen other food bloggers like @cookingwirhtria doing this method and thought it was a nice addition. I have also seen geera (cumin seeds) tempered in the hot oil and added in to the baigan choka. 

Tomato can be added though is an optional ingredient. For me, I love the addition of a bit of acidity to a dish, so I didn’t skip on tomato. 

Finally is addressing the addition of chopped herbs. Adding any herbs are necessary for this dish to be complete but in Trinidad shado beni is often used in dishes and it has a distinct flavour that added a lot of freshness to a dish. I have seen it added to baigan choka or even tomato choka recipes. When shado beni is not available, people will often sub it for cilantro in recipes though they are NOT the same herb. There is often confusion about this because an alternative name for shado beni is culantro, which is very similar in spelling to “cilantro”. Conclusion, don’t add herbs for a simpler recipe, add to taste it you wish.

As for the pepper used, people most often opt for a hot pepper to taste, so I have used a scotch bonnet here, but habanero or even milder pimentos would be good for this. Sada roti deserves another post, but it is the flatbread of choice when it comes to eating choka and it is very simple to make! 

Last note, this dish and my rendition is very similar to another dish Murtani aka Upar Gaar or Pepper Choka though I have not included okro which is a must for Murtani. 

Baigan Choka

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Course Appetizer, Breakfast, Main Course

Cuisine Trinidadian

Ingredients

  

• 2 large purple eggplants
• 1 head of garlic or to taste
• 1/2 tablespoon finely chopped shado beni plus more to taste (cilantro is a popular herbs with a similar flavour profile as the Trinidadian leafy herb, shado beni). Optional.
• 1 habanero or scotch bonnet pepper
• 1/2 large onion very finely sliced
• 1-2 medium to small tomatoes optional
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt or to taste
• 3 tablespoons – 1/3 cup olive oil or other vegetable oil

Instructions

 

• Wash and dry all your veggies.
• Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
• Make slits into your eggplant and wiggle the knife in there so there is space to fit garlic cloves. Halve about 3/4 of your peeled garlic cloves and shove about 4-8 pieces of your halved cloves in each eggplant. If you are heaving trouble stuffing garlic in, you an either cut the cloves even small, or simple roast the garlic wrapped in tin foil.
• Lightly oil your stuffed eggplant, hot pepper and tomatoes and place on a baking sheet.
• Bake for 40 minutes, turning half way. You may need to remove the hot pepper and tomatoes at the 30 minute mark or before that because they are significantly smaller and cook faster.
• Turn on your broil feature of your oven and broil your eggplant for an addition 10-15 minutes until he outside is very blistered and charred or close to it. Use long tongs to help you reach in the oven to turn over your eggplant every 5 minutes while it is broiling.
• When your veggies are roasted let them cool slightly so you can touch them. Peel your eggplant (remove the flesh which will include your roasted garlic that was stuffed in it) and place in a bowl. Peel your tomato and place in the same bowl and remove the stem, finely dice your habanero or scotch bonnet. You can use the whole pepper or add half and taste finished product before mixing in other half.
• Use a fork to mask your eggplant, tomato and hot pepper together. If you are having trouble mashing with a fork, you can remove the larger eggplant pieces and chop them on a cutting board and return to a bowl. Alternatively, you can place all your peeled peeled/chopped roasted veggies in a food processor and pulse until it is chunky but well mixed.
• If using add in your Shado Beni or chopped cilantro and mix well.
• Season with salt and taste and add half or your finely sliced raw onions on top of your mashed eggplant mixture.
• Finely slice any remaining garlic cloves you have.
• In a small sauce pan, add your oil, and heat it up on medium heat. You can add up to 1/3 cup of oil or as little as 3 tablespoons. The amount of oil I add depends on the overall quality of roast veggies I end up with. There should not be so much oil that is does not mix in easity. Add in the other half of your finely sliced onion, and your sliced garlic cloves and cook in the hot oil until the onion start to brown. Make sure to not burn the onion and garlic because it will cause a very bitter taste and you will have to start over.
• Pour the hot oil with fried onion and garlic over your eggplant mixture and mix it in well.
• Serve hot with Sada roti but it can stay in the fridge for up for a week in a air tight container.

Notes

For a simpler bagian choka, omit the shado beni or cilantro.

You can omit the extra fried onions and garlic added to the oil. Traditional Baigan Choka is always finished with oil though, typically plain oil or oil with geera (cumin seeds). 

 

Keyword baigan, choka, eggplant, spicy