You start by washing the small eggplants and then putting them into a bowl of water for the next ten to fifteen minutes. In the meantime you can prepare your spices. If you did not find fennel powder, you need to grind your fennel. Mix that powder and all other spices except for the cumin. Add salt according to your taste. Now you add a little bit water to the spices to make it a nice paste which will be the filling for the eggplants later.

Heat up one tablespoon of olive oil in a wok. When it is hot, put the paste of spices into the wok and fry the paste while stirring. This can take up to five minutes and you will notice that it is ready when the paste does not stick to the pot anymore and has changed its colour to golden. Take the paste filling out of the wok and let it cool down a bit.

While it is cooling down, you can take the aubergines out of the water and prepare them for their filling. For this you take a sharp knife and make a deep cut on one side of the eggplants. Now you fill your spice paste into the eggplants.

In the next step you have to put your wok back onto the stove and heat up the remaining three tablespoons of oil. Add the cumin and then put your eggplants into it. Keep on turning them while frying on medium heat. In that time you need to be a bit careful with turning so that the filling does not fall out but you will notice that with a little bit of practice it is not that difficult. Turn them until they are fully cooked which depends on how big they are. The smaller they are, the quicker they are soft inside. You can check whether they are done by pressing the top side, where their stump is. If that is soft, it is fully cooked.

Enjoy!