Recipe - Curried Eggplant Strudel

1 lg Eggplant peeled/ minced
One half teaspoon Salt
1 cup Chopped onion
1 tablespoon Olive oil
1 Garlic clove minced
1 tablespoon Curry powder
1 teaspoon Ground cumin
1 teaspoon Chili powder
1 cup Chopped canned tomatoes
2 tablespoon Sugar
One fourth teaspoon Ground saffron
One fourth cup Vinegar
One half cup Roasted peanuts chopped
1 pound Frozen phyllo dough (24
Sheets) defrosted
Three fourths pound Unsalted butter
Clarified
1 cup Plain yogurt

Toss the eggplant with the salt and set aside for 30 minutes. Wrap in a
towel and squeeze out any excess moisture. Set aside.

In a skillet, saute the onion in the olive oil over medium heat until soft,
about 2 minutes. Add the garlic, curry powder, cumin and chili powder, and
cook 2 more minutes.

Add the reserved eggplant, tomatoes and sugar. Mix the saffron into the
vinegar and add to mixture. Simmer for 15 minutes, until the eggplant is
soft. Add a bit of water if the mixture should become too dry.

Add the peanuts and cool completely.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Place a sheet of phyllo on a clean work surface and drizzle lightly with
clarified butter. Layer five more sheets, drizzling a bit more butter atop
each layer. Brush the top layer with butter.

Place a quarter of the filling over the sheets, mounding more of it along
one of the longer sides. Roll the sheets up jelly rollstyle, starting at
the edge with the mounded filling. Place seamside down on a greased sheet
pan and brush with more cla rified butter. Make three more strudels using
the rest of the phyllo and the remaining filling and butter.

On sheet pans, bake in the preheated oven until golden brown, about 25 to
30 minutes, moving the pans front to back and top to bottom halfway
through. Let rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Cut the strudel in 1inchthick slices and top with yogurt.

Per hors d'oeuvre: 64 calories, 1 gm protein, 5 gm carbohydrates, 5 gm fat,
10 mg cholesterol, 2 gm saturated fat, 61 mg sodium

Andrew Schloss is a cookbook author whose "Dinner's Ready," written with
Ken Bookman, was published earlier this year by William Morrow.

The Washington Post 12/20/95

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini