Babaji’s Eggplant with Potatoes
YIELD: 6 CUPS (1.42 L)
This is the very first dish I learned how
to cook when I was just 10 years old. It
was my paternal grandfather, Babaji,
who gave me my first cooking lesson
one rainy Saturday afternoon when he
and my grandmother were visiting from
their village in the heart of Punjab,
India. I’ll never forget how he stopped
me from throwing away the green,
woody stem of the eggplant, saying that
it holds the tastiest meat of the
vegetable. To this day, I cook eggplant
with the woody stem, and I was amazed
when at one meal my 6-year-old,
unprompted, took a stem and sucked