A trip to Urdu Bazar to hunt for old cookery books resulted in finding two absolute gold mines.
One was a book from royal Awadhi families and another was on North Indian cooking.
The Nawabs of Awadh were of Persian descent and Persian customs and traditions were prevalent there.
Of course Persian cuisine would also have been assiduously followed.
One of the recipes I found was the rather grand sounding Kuku-ye Bademjan
This led to investigation of the terms.
Kuku – Persian: کوکو, Azerbaijani: Kükü is a Persian and Azerbaijanian dish similar to the Italian dish frittata or an open-faced omelette. Iranians make many different types of kukus with a variety of flavorings.
In farsi/ Persian Egg is called tukhm murgh تخم مرغ
And there is a mode of dishes like omelette called ‘کوکو ی مرغ ‘ – kuku e murgh and , scrambled eggs which are calked khageena- ‘ خاگینه ‘
As children we often ate khageena. Now we normally have rumble tumble or scrambled.
The most commonly made Omelette is ‘kuku-e-sabzi’
frying in Persian is called biryaan, joshaneedan, surkh kardan: کباب کردن , بریان کردن , سرخ کردن , جوشانیدن
Another word for fry is daagh
pukhtan’ is to cook, bake.
Eggpkant is calked bademjan in Persian
Method
Peel a baigan/eggplant ( the one we use for baigan ka bharta)
And cut it into long slices and sprinkle salt on it. This is to remove bitterness.
Leave it for 20 minutes.
Rinse and dry.
Taking a little bit of olive oil fry the slices till tender. You can put a little bit of oil on it and bake it too. I used only enough oil to coat the non stick pan.
Then mash it up well and add a bit of oil.
Chop 1 onion and a few cloves of garlic finely and shallow fry.
Taje 4 eggs and beat it up well. Add salt a bit of baking soda and add the mashed mixture.
(I added green chillies and green coriander too to give it a tang)
Heat oil in a non stick pan and pour tge mixture in it. Cook covered for 5 min on very slow flame. Turn it over gently.
I also baked half the mixture. I pre greased the pan and pre heated the oven to 150 degrees F.
I preferred the baked version but both tasted very good.
