Gutti Vankaya Kura | Stuffed Brinjal Curry

Gutti Vankaya Kura or Curry is a specialty dish from the Andhra Cuisine. Small, tender, purple brinjals are filled with freshly made spicy, peanut filling and cooked in a delicious tamarind gravy. Gutti Vankaya tastes best with some hot rice and a dollop of ghee.

Andhra special stuffed brinjal

Gutti Vankaya Kura is a popular Andhra dish. I am a big fan of Andhra cuisine. Mainly for the spice and flavours 🙂
This particular recipe was shared by my best friend, Swetha’s mother. They are originally from Andhra Pradesh, now living in Tamil Nadu. Aunty is such an amazing cook. The last time I tasted her food was over 7 years back. But I still remember how tasty and flavourful those dishes were.

I often ask my friend to share recipes from her mom’s kitchen and this is one such amazing recipe of hers. Though the ingredients are almost similar to most recipes online, the method of preparation is a bit different. That’s where the actual taste and texture comes from.

Gutti Vankaya

I have tasted this dish in many restaurants and have found it too oily and greasy. That’s just not my thing. This particular recipe is perfect home style. There is not too much oil or masalas. The curry is neither too dry nor too liquidy. It’s neither too coarse nor too smooth. There is a balance of everything which makes this particular recipe very special.

The most important part of getting this recipe right is the freshly ground spice powder with peanuts as the main ingredient.
The next most important thing is cutting the brinjals perfectly and stuffing them with the freshly made masala.

Let me tell you the truth. I am very bad at getting the cutting part right. Most often, my brinjals break during the first cut itself. Haha. So, I always give this cutting and stuffing job to my husband. He is a perfectionist and in fact, loves doing this. He has fond memories of helping his mom prepare this dish and keeps telling me how she trained him to stuff the brinjals perfectly. To me, it’s definitely an art. My mother in law was an amazing cook as well. So, the inputs that my husband gives while preparing such traditional dishes definitely comes in handy. Also, he had lots of time in hand so agreed to be a hand model for a couple of pictures. Yay 😀

My love for Brinjal

Brinjal is one of my favourite vegetables. My mom makes such amazing baingan bharta. That was one dish that made me fall in love with all brinjal recipes. Another family favourite brinjal recipe is a simple home-style brinjal fry. It tastes the best with some hot radish sambar and rasam. I often try different recipes using eggplant and aubergine. Not many are fans of this vegetable category. Some don’t like the texture and some don’t like the slight bitterness that brinjal has. But if cooked well, the dishes can turn out so well!

Ingredients & Preparation for gutti vankaya

The recipe may look a little intimidating at the first glance. You may think, wow it’s got so many steps. But it’s actually not that difficult. The spices are made fresh and stuffed in the baby brinjals. Later, the brinjals are cooked in a spicy tamarind based gravy. Simple, isn’t it?

So, to make the fresh peanut spice powder for the filling, we need peanuts, coriander seeds, sesame seeds, cumin seeds, red chillies, cloves, cinnamon & fenugreek seeds. The beauty of this recipe is, we need to grind half the powder coarsely and half finely. It definitely has a huge impact in the final outcome.

The next job is to cut the brinjals perfectly. I use the whole brinjal with the stem. Baby brinjals work perfectly for this recipe. We just need to cut the brinjals in X shape without cutting the stalk. I sometimes don’t get the heart to cook it. Look how beautiful it is 🙂

Next, we need to stuff the brinjals with the spice powder. Do this carefully without breaking the brinjals.

After stuffing the brinjals with spice powder, we need to prepare a gravy base using onions, tamarind water and basic spice powders. The stuffed brinjals are then cooked in this gravy till fully done and served. I serve this gutti vankaya kura with plain hot rice and a dollop of ghee or sesame oil on top. This is such an amazing combination and you have to try it. Also tastes good with Roti, Idli.

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