Baked Spiced Eggplants with Tamarind Dip

Are you a scary movie person?

Most of my friends aren't. They won't watch scary movies, even if theirs life depended on it. Sous chef is a huge scary movie fan and will watch whatever guaranteed to scare the crap outta him. I am half and half. I like watching scary movies, in broad day light (no fun, eh?), or late a night with a huge group of people....and...to be exact, I just watch the top right corner of the screen whenever a super scary scene is anticipated. If the scary scene is visible everywhere on the screen, including from the top right corner, I would simply close my eyes. HAHA. Yes. I am a timid little mouse with a tiger's taste.

I love classic scary movies involving mystery of spiritual world...and I hate aliens in scary movies (I stopped watching The X files when they started to blame everything on aliens). My favorite scary movie of all time is The Exorcist. I remember watching a rerun of the series on TV with my dorm friends in my uni days, after which around 6 of us would snuggle in one bedroom being scared. Hmmm...so far this post has not done anything to build up everybody's appetite, aye? LOL.

I simply wanted to share this as I just got back from scaring and sickening myself watching an early 10:35 AM scary movie screening at a cinema nearby. The movie is called REC, a little predictable but they've done a great job keeping everything so real. There's one thing I hated about this movie, which was the camera movement. Although I've closed my eyes 30% of the whole movie, it still managed to cause me motion sickness which lasted the whole day, I barely had any appetite, which is almost NEVER (haha). The movie was really not suitable to watch while eating...even pop corn.

But here's something I like to snack on while watching my favorite chick flicks ^_^

Baked Spiced Eggplants with Tamarind Dip

Recipe

The Baked Eggplants
- 1 long eggplant, sliced around 5 mm thick
- 5 tbsp all purpose flour
- 1 tsp salt, a dash of pepper, 1/2 tsp sugar, 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp ground corriander
- 1 egg, beaten
- bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 200C. On a plate, mix flour with salt, pepper, sugar, cumin and ground corriander. In a bowl, beat an egg and on a separate plate, mix bread crumbs with a bit of salt and pepper. Grease an oven tray, dip eggplant pieces into flour, then egg, then bread crumbs, and lay on oven tray in just 1 layer. Bake until golden brown, flipping just once.

The Tamarind Dip
- 2 red chilli, sliced thinly
- 1 small clove of shallot, sliced thinly
- 1 tbsp tamarind paste
- 1 piece palm sugar
- fish sauce, light soy sauce

Dissolve tamarind paste and palm sugar in hot water, add chilli, shallot, fish sauce and light soy.

If you don't mind deep/pan frying, these taste even more fantastic fried. Hehe ;)

I am submitting this to Wandering Chopstick's event, Weekend Wokking. Hosted this week by Marija from Palachinka. Check it out more eggplants recipe!

Now let me think of a lame excuse not to attend next week's sickening scary movie screening. Any ideas? Hehe