Secondly, I could cut up the squash differently-because it is a different texture than eggplant. I would cut young zucchini into thin slices on a slight diagonal so that the slices would be ovoid, rather than round.

I would dredge them in a tiny bit of regular flour, besan (ground chickpea flour) or chapati flour, before frying them. This would give them a crisper texture and it would help the outside of the vegetable brown effectively. This would give a great flavor to the squash that would go beautifully with the spices and the methi.

It would not need to fry as long as the eggplant, if cooked in this way, so adjust the cooking time accordingly. You may need to fry the squash in batches–so start out with the oil, fry the squashes until they brown on both sides–turning once or twice, and then drain them on paper towels. Then, cook your onions, spices and the like as directed in the recipe above, and then, when the onions are nice and brown, add the squash to heat it up, and then add the methi, and continue cooking as directed.

It will take a slightly longer cooking time, and an extra step or two, but I really think that this dish would be very worth it. So much so, that I think I am going to try to make this this weekend.

I will let you know how it tastes!

This looks delicious, but for the fact that I get sores in my mouth when I eat eggplant. I think I’ll try substituting zucchini — we’ve got scads of it right now. Do you know if the moisture content of baigan is significantly lower than zucchini? I’m a little concerned that it will come out mushy to cook zucchini this way, so if you have suggestions about how to prevent that I’d like to hear them. Thanks!

In the meantime, I mostly enjoy it as aloo methi, but I will give this a shot one of thse days…