Spice Goddess Feast: Golden Eggplant with Sweet-Pea Sauce, and Tomato-Mango Salad

This weekend my sister Shannon, a devoted reader of Lairdriin's Food Blog (teehee!), came to visit me.  I put her to work helping me fix some delicious food for lunch on Sunday (as she said, she was my "sous chef").  I have been watching the new Cooking Channel show 'Spice Goddess' regularly, and there were a couple of recipes from that show that I wanted to try out. 

The Golden Eggplant is made similarly to frying eggplant parmesan.  The eggplant batter uses a mix of wheat and chickpea flours, and a little garam masala.  The eggplant came out golden-brown and with a very nice texture from the chickpea flour.  We all thought it was great, but I think it would also be good with even more garam masala.  The sweet-pea puree was very simple, just blanched peas, yogurt, water, and seasonings, blended in the blender.  A squeeze of lemon really went well over the eggplant and pea puree.

On the side, we had tomato-mango salad.  Instead of red onions, as it was made on the show, I made the salad with green onions.  It also includes fresh mint and cilantro, and a dressing of mango juice, lemon juice, olive oil, and spices.  Despite having a not-quite-ripe mango, I thought the salad was very good.  I wish I didn't have to limit my potassium intake (tomatoes have a ton of it), or I would have had more!

I think next time I make the pea puree I will add more yogurt than I used this time, and perhaps add lemon juice directly to the puree in addition to the lemon wedge served with it.  Overall, I'd definitely say these new recipes were a success.  I'll be making all of it again for sure.

Happy eating!