Northeast Indian
Bhorta (Roasted Pumpkin & Brinjal Mash)
Bhorta (Roasted Pumpkin & Brinjal Mash) is Northeast Indian home cooking, eaten at lunch and dinner. On the plate it is the condiment and the cooked vegetable. Below is what usually sits beside it, what it does and does not contain, and what else to cook once you have made it.
Ingredients
- 2 cups pumpkin
- 1 brinjal
- 1 tbsp mustard oil
- 1 red onion
- 1 green chili
- 1/2 tsp salt
How to cook it
- Cut the pumpkin into chunks and prick the whole brinjal a few times with a fork.
- Boil or steam the pumpkin until soft, about 15 minutes; roast the brinjal directly over a low flame or under the broiler, turning until the skin blisters and the inside collapses soft.
- Cool the brinjal, peel off the charred skin, and mash it with the pumpkin until roughly combined.
- Finely chop the onion and chili and mix them in with the mustard oil and salt.
- Mash everything together with a fork, leaving some texture, and serve at room temperature.
Serve it with
A Northeast Indian dinner is a plate rather than a single dish. These are the courses that normally sit beside Bhorta (Roasted Pumpkin & Brinjal Mash), read from the same composition Dinejot builds a real meal from.
-
The dish at the centre
-
The protein alongside
-
What it is eaten with
A course labelled with another kitchen's name comes from a cuisine in the same family, which is where this plate usually borrows it from.
Safe at your table
Dinejot tracks ten allergens and tags every one of them by hand. Bhorta (Roasted Pumpkin & Brinjal Mash) carries none of them. That is a checked answer rather than an ingredient list nobody read.
| Allergen | In this dish | Cook this instead |
|---|---|---|
| Peanuts | No | |
| Tree nuts | No | |
| Dairy | No | |
| Gluten | No | |
| Shellfish | No | |
| Eggs | No | |
| Soy | No | |
| Fish | No | |
| Sesame | No | |
| Coconut | No |
These tags are set by a person rather than inferred from an ingredient list, and they describe the recipe as written here. Read the labels on whatever you actually buy.
What it brings to the plate
Bands, not numbers. Dinejot does not weigh anybody's food, so it says light, moderate or hearty and stops there. This dish was read and set by hand.
- Calorie band
- Light
- Protein
- Low
- Food groups it covers
- Vegetables
- How this was set
- Hand audited
When to cook it
Bhorta (Roasted Pumpkin & Brinjal Mash) takes about 30 minutes from a cold stove to the table, and the cooking itself is easy going. It is eaten at lunch and dinner. Nothing in the calendar rules it out, so it is a year round dish.
Watch someone make it
Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play. Until then this is one still image, which is why the page opens as quickly as it does.
More to cook
Cooked from the same things
Other dishes built on pumpkin and brinjal.
From the same kitchens
More cooking from Northeast India.
Does the same job on the plate
Swap any of these in when you want a meal the same shape.
Cook this with your whole family
Dinejot plans breakfast, lunch and dinner as whole plates, built around the cooking you call home and filtered for the allergies at your table.
Meal suggestions support your goals. They are not medical advice. Please ask your doctor about your family's health needs.