Begun Bhaja

A Bengali measure of mustard oil

If you want to know whether a Bengali household keeps real sarson ka tel, watch how the begun bhaja behaves. The aubergine should crisp at the edges, hold its shape, and finish with a faint pungent breath of mustard that you can read across the dining room. With refined oil it does none of those things.

The bhaja is bhaja — fried, slow, on a flat tawa, with the oil deep enough to puddle but not so deep as to immerse. The marinade is salt and turmeric; the rest is heat and patience.

Method

1. Slice the aubergine into round slabs 1 cm thick. Rub each slice with salt, turmeric, and chilli powder if using. Leave for ten minutes — moisture will bead on the surface.
2. Heat the Bharat mustard oil in a heavy tawa until it smokes. Reduce to medium-high. The smoking step is essential to kacchi ghani oil — it tames the sharpness into the round, nutty flavour the dish is built on.
3. Pat the aubergine slices dry. Slide them into the oil in a single layer. Do not crowd the pan.
4. Fry for four to five minutes a side, undisturbed, until the underside is deep mahogany and the edges have begun to caramelise. Flip once, fry the second side.
5. Lift onto absorbent paper. The slices should be crisp at the rim, yielding in the centre.

Notes from the kitchen

• Serve hot with bhaat (rice), dal, and a quarter of lime. In a Bengali household, begun bhaja arrives first — before the fish, before the curry — as a small reproach to anyone who has not turned up on time.
• The oil that’s left in the tawa is the pan’s perfume for whatever is fried next. Use it for aloo bhaja or save it, covered, for tomorrow’s dal tadka.
• Outside the round Bengali variety, brinjal or chinese aubergine both work. Avoid the long thin Japanese aubergine — it goes soggy.