everyday subzi : bottle gourd stew in coconut milk | lauki coconut milk subzi | Lauki Olan

Bottle gourd is the best suited vegetable for summer season and I try to make the most of it. Even if you don't know how this vegetable helps in Indian summers you would realise once you eat it 3-4 times a week during hot summer months.

Lauki or bottle gourd is watery vegetables that fills up the plate, satiates hunger, hydrates the body and keeps the digestive system healthy. The only reason why many people avoid eating this humble vegetable is that they don't like the bland taste and mushy texture. But trust me you can make the most of it's mushy texture and bland taste, just flavour it the way you like the bottle gourd wont disappoint you.

Try this Bengali style Lau shukto if you want to experiment. And this coconut milk lauki will be another in the same category.

This curry is inspired by the Pumpkin Olan I make. Not the authentic Kerala Olan but a tweaked version that I find very delicious. Adapting the Kerala Olan recipe again with lauki, it is made using the Ash gourd (Petha gourd) in Kerala but since we rarely find Ash gourds here it is better to use some lauki.

One can use up any mature lauki that was bought a week ago too for this recipe.

ingredients..
(2 large servings or 4 small servings)

Lauki (bottle gourd) peeled and cubed in bite sized chunks 600 gm
coconut milk 150-200 ml
ghee or coconut milk 1 tsp
pinch of hing (asafoetida)
mustard seeds 1/2 tsp
methi (fenugreek seeds) 10 grains or so
whole dry red chillies 2-3
curry patta 5-6 springs, leaflets separated
salt to taste

procedure ...

Cook the cubed lauki along with salt and 1 cup water till the pieces get soft. You may need very little water if the lauki is tender, this one was a week old lauki so I Used water to cook. This step can be done in pressure cooker to save time but take care not to cook the lauki to complete mush.

Add the coconut milk and simmer for a couple of minutes.

Prepare the tempering by heating the ghee or coconut oil, add the hing, methi, mustard seeds, chillies and curry patta in that order and let them get aromatic. Add all of this at once to the cooked curry and give it a good stir.

Serve as required. We like it with roti or some rice but I can eat these curries on their own so it becomes a one pot meal for me mostly.

You may want to serve some beans or okra stir fry with this curry to round off an Indian meal along with rice and roti etc.

In Kerala this kind of Olan is a part of a huge meal spread called Sadya. Such light curries make sense when there are too many dishes on the table.

guar dhokli ki subzi | cluster beans cooked with chickpea flour dumplings in a yogurt based curry

Guar phali or cluster beans would be undoubtedly one of my favourite vegetables. I know what you are thinking, how guar can be someone's favourite but it has a texture and a hint of bitterness that I love. This is one of those vegetables I have experimented with a lot too, reason being I see guar or cluster beans being used in various cuisines across the country and want to try them all. The simplest bhujia that I make with guar phali is with just garlic and green chillies and pair it with kadhi to make a comfort meal for ourselves.

I would admit it is me who loves guar phali more and keeps buying it by the bagfuls. But a stir fry style salad with guar phali and peanuts converted even the husband and he started enjoying the vegetable. There is a recipe of guar and dried shrimp in the drafts to be shared but I have not been getting time to share recipes here, although I intend to share at least one recipe a week. I cook every single day and keep experimenting a lot, keep cooking old recipes a lot too and there is a lot to share.

I know I am not being good with the blogs. I must get back to sharing recipes asap.

I love gatte in subzi, the curry made with chickpeas flour (besan) dumplings so popular in Rajasthan and known as dhokli in Gujrat. I have shared one guar dhokli ki subzi that uses the same besan dumplings but is very different from this version. Since I like gatte ki subzi so much I started making it with different vegetables and one of those is bottle gourd.

So technically this guar dhokli is also guar gatte ki subzi as much I understand. Although purists may differ. I would wait to hear from them if they are interested in sharing more about gatte ki subzi and dhokli ki subzi nomenclature.

Since I have already shared how to make the gatte for gatte ki subzi, I will skip the steps to make gatte. Once the gatte (the dumplings) are ready this curry gets ready in about 20 minutes.

ingredients...
(2 large servings)

guar phali chopped 200 gm or 1 cup
cooked and chopped gatte 3/4 cup
finely diced onions 1 tbsp (optional)
ginger garlic paste 1 tsp
red chilly powder 1/2 tsp
everyday curry powder 2 tsp
turmeric powder 1/2 tsp
sour yogurt 1 cup
salt to taste
mustard oil 1 tbsp
fenugreek seeds 1/4 tsp

procedure 

Heat half the oil in the kadhai (I use iron kadhai), smear the oil all over the kadhai surface with the spatula. Tip in the cut gatte and toss to cook them lightly again. Searing them lightly and briefly so they soak up more flavours. Remove from the kadhai and keep aside.

Now tip in the fenugreek seeds, the chopped vegetables (including onions if using). the ginger garlic paste and the powdered spices all together and toss till it all gets mixed up and lightly aromatic. Since we are suing a little amount of oil we need to do this on low flame. This step takes about 5 minutes.

Now whisk the yogurt, dilute with 2 cups of water and pour slowly into the kadhai. Let it simer for about 10 minutes or till you get desired consistency. The gatte or dhokli will soak up water and become bigger, the guar cooks really fast so that will be taken care of automatically.

Garnish with coriander if you wish but it is not required.

You need tender guar for this curry, mature guar will taste awful any which way.

This curry tastes great with any Indian breads and even plain boiled rice. It makes a complete meal with just a little rice, I suggest you eat more of this curry and less of rice or roti and enjoy the meal better. Some green salad or just a few slices of onion suit this meal well but this is one of those frugal meal kind of curry.

The sourness of the yogurt balances the slight bitterness of guar really well and soaks up into the gatte to make them soft and melting.

If you are cooking the curry with lauki or bottle gourd as above, just fry the gatte, add the spices and toss till aromatic. Pour whisked yogurt and simmer. Add precooked lauki in the curry and let it simmer a little to get the flavours integrated.

Gatte or dhokli can be cooked with almost all vegetables but some of the combinations will definitely be your favourite. I like the gatte ki subzi with roughly chopped spinach too.

The boiled and lightly fried gatte keep well in the fridge for about a week and they freeze well for almost 6 months. So make gatte when you have time and cook the curries with whatever vegetables you like. Try gatte with guar once and I am sure it will become a favourite in your home too.

everyday subzi: mungodi wali lauki or bottle gourd curry with mung fritters

Mungodi wali lauki is another simple curry that can be cooked for everyday meals. I have been posting a lot of everyday curry recipes lately, and that is because I have been getting loads of requests for simple home style curries that one eats everyday. And to tell you the truth, I have been getting reminded of so many favourites I have tasted in my life so far. Some of them I learnt from my mother, some from my grandmother, some from friends but this one I learnt from my MIL. She used to cook mungodi wali lauki quite often but she would always use dry store bought mungodis for convenience.

Later I tasted a mungodi subzi (without lauki) cooked by a friend and tried adding those freshly made mungodis to the plain lauki subzi and the result made me so happy. I keep going back to this subzi because I eat lauki a lot and I need variation every day. There will be more and more lauki recipes on this blog very soon, now that I have been posting every day curries with a new zest.This mungodi wali lauki is a jain recipe because no onion or garlic is used. You can fry the mung daal fritters in a large batch and keep them frozen to be used again to make a quick mungodi wali lauki or a mungodi wal kadhi too.    

Recipe of mungodi...

Soak a cup of mung daal in enough water for 4 hours. Drain and make a paste along with 1 tsp cumin seeds. Do not add water while making a paste. 

Heat oil for deep frying. Drop small spoonfuls of mung paste into hot oil and fry on medium heat so the mungodis cook thoroughly. Drain on kitchen tissue and keep aside.

Recipe of mungodi wali lauki..

ingredients

lauki peeled and cut into large cubes 300-400 gm
about 2 dozen small mungodis or as many you want
cumin seeds 1 tsp
chopped green chillies 1 tsp
minced ginger 1 tsp
turmeric powder 1 tsp
ghee or mustard oil 1 tsp
salt to taste

procedure

Heat oil or ghee in a pan or pressure cooker. Note that the freshly fired mungodis behave well in an open pan but the frozen ones would need to be pressure cooked or cooked for a bit longer if cooking in a pan.

Tip in cumin seeds and ginger and green chillies and quickly add the turmeric powder and cubed lauki. Toss and mix well. Cook for a couple of minutes tossing all the while.

Now add the salt, the mungodis and a cup of water for each dozen of mungodis. They soak up a lot of water and get doubled in size. Cover and pressure cook till the first whistle blows. Let the cooker cool down on it's own and serve hot with or without a garnish of green coriander leaves.

I can polish off this curry as it is. The mungodis make this subzi a filling meal.

Note : These mungodis do not soak up oil while frying but you need to be careful to keep the mung paste thick and make the fritters uniformly smooth all over. Loose paste (batter) or uneven surface of the fritters allow them to soak up oil and make them heavy.

Everyday subzi: Lau-er shukto or lauki ki doodhwali bengali subzi

Bottle gourd is Lauki in Hindi and it is one of my favourite vegetables. Tender bottle gourd is a delight to cook and eat in summer days and I try and include loads of this gourd for my everyday meals. Finding tender bottle gourd can be cumbersome if you don't know how to choose the tender ones, check this post if you want to know how to choose tender lauki for better tasting lauki ki subzi. Even for this lau-er shukto the tender lauki is best to use. If you are stuck with a hard and mature lauki you better make a raita.

This lau-er shukto recipe looked delicious when I first saw it on a Bengali recipe forum on facebook. So much so that I cooked it almost the next day and was so delighted by the delicate taste of this curry that I ate the entire potful all by myself. The recipe was shared by Dipta Maitra and I have made minor adjustments to suit my taste. He jokingly accused me of harassing the recipe when I suggested I might add paneer to make it a complete meal for myself. I wouldn't mind this punjabification of shukto you see.

According to the discussion about shukto on the Bengali recipe forum, shukto is a curry that includes some bitter taste like karela, bramhi leaves or methi seeds, some ginger paste added in the last and some green chillies. Never to add red chillies and turmeric powder to shukto I learned. I am not complaining.

ingredients 
(2 servings but it made a full meal for me)

one whole medium sized lauki (about 400 gm)
milk 250 ml
salt to taste
ghee 1 tsp
fenugreek seeds 1/2 tsp
green chillies broken 2
fine ginger paste or ginger juice 1 tsp or a little bit more
roasted mustard powder 1/2 tsp (can be roasted quickly and powdered in mortar and pestle)

procedure

Peel and cube the gourd in large sized cubes.
Add the lauki cubes in a pan (kadhai) along with 1/2 cup of water and salt and cook on low flame for about 10 minutes.
Add the milk and cook on medium heat till the vegetable is cooked well.
Now heat the ghee in a ladle and tip in the fenugreek seeds in it. Let the fenugreek seeds get browned and aromatic and pour this hot mix into the cooking curry.
Next to add is the broken chillies and ginger paste. Mix well and simmer for a couple of minutes.
Finish with roasted mustard powder and serve immediately.

This subzi would tempt you to consume more vegetables in a tastier way. So go ahead and cook some lau-er shukto for yourself now. The best suitable accompaniment to this lau-er shukto is plain boiled rice.

I tried this milky lau-er shukto without the roasted mustard powder too and liked it both ways. The interesting thing is, as much as I loved this delicately flavoured milky lau-er shukto, Arvind refused to taste a milky curry as he thought he wont like it. His loss completely.

There is very mild bitterness of methi in this delicate curry and that tastes really interesting. Ginger imparts a lovely depth and roasted mustard powder was a surprise for me in this milk based curry. I actually added more milk than usual and loved the way milk incorporated the flavours of the frugal spices.

May be Arvind would also come around to some lau-er shukto next time I cook this as I am going to repeat this many times now. I even tried it with tinda (apple gourd) but it was not as good as the lauki version. I will keep making the original version of lau-er shukto for sure.

Lauki ki tamatar waali subzi...and how to choose the right bottle gourd..

Someone asked me how to choose a tender Bottle gourd as all of them look the same on the shelf.

Here are a few pointers...

• Look for fresh green stalks like the picture above. The stalks are generally long when the fresh produce arrives in the stock, the sellers keep nipping the dry ends as it goes on drying. So a stale stock would generally have shorter stalk, browned or bruised, indicating the gourd has been plucked long time back.

• The skin of the guards should be shiny green.Not pale green or whitish. It is tender to touch and not very smooth. Note those light ridges on the surface in the picture. These light ridges disappear when the gourd matures and the skin becomes smoother but harder. No wonder it was used for making vessels by the wanderers of older times.. This shape of metal Kamadal is evolved from a round bottle gourd kamandal of older times.

• If you push the skin using your nail, the nail should pierce the skin easily and there should be a pale watery exude ooze out slowly.

• When you peel the gourd with a potato peeler, it slides smoothly over the skin, peeling a thin uniform skin. The mature guard would be harder and the peeler wouldn't slide on it smoothly, resulting in broken peels.

• Last but not the least, freshly plucked and tender Bottle gourds have a fine hairy cover at the base of the stalk. See the picture.

Now when the selection of a fresh tender Bottle gourd has been sorted, let's see a recipe that uses a slightly mature one. With tender edible seeds. Even if you have got a gourd with mature hard seeds, just discard the seeds and peel off a thick layer of skin and cube the flesh to make this curry. Pressure cooking ensures the guard is cooked to become tender. Although the peculiar taste of bottle gourd is lost when it is too mature.

This curry uses the not so tender gourds. See the pan cooked version of a simple Lauki ki subzi here.

 ingredients...

Bottle gourd about 700 gm ( few potato cubes can be added along with it too)
2 large tomatoes about 200 gm
ginger grated 2 tbsp
everyday curry powder 1 tbsp
turmeric powder 1 tsp
red chilly powder 1 tsp or to taste
salt to taste
mustard oil 1 tbsp

procedure...

Make a smooth paste of all the ingredients together except the bottle gourd. Chopping the tomatoes before blending everything together in a blender would be convenient.

Peel and cube the bottle gourd in large chunks.

Heat the oil in the pressure cooker pan and tip in the tomato and spice paste into it. Add salt and let the paste cook for 2-3 minutes with the lid placed over the pan. Do not lock the lid for this step. Later , open the lid and cook the paste till it gets reduced a bit. Takes about 3-4 minutes more.

Add the Bottle gourd chunks , toss and mix well. Add about 2 cups of water , close the lid and cook till the whistle blows.

If the BG was hard and tough, you would like to cook it on low flame for about 5 minutes after the whistle blows.

Let the pressure release on it's own, open the lid and serve the curry hot. A garnish of fresh green coriander suits this curry very well. I didn't have the greens when I cooked this curry. Don't miss it if you have.

This curry goes well with chapatis and parathas . I like as a dinner soup as well.

Lauki ki saadi subzi...

 Saada is plain in Hindi and Urdu and saadi subzi means a plain subzi (may or may not be a curry by western standards). Lauki is Bottle gourd. Lauki ki saadi subzi is a regular in most UP homes all through the summer months.

This Lauki ki subzi is a plain jane in many ways. No complex recipe, no extensive spicing and quick cooking. Also, this is the one subzi you cook when you get the most tender Bottle gourd in the market. A mature gourd with seeds and tough skin is not suited for this subzi and if you have got one of those, think about a pressure cooked curry with spices and tomatoes.

So this subzi is an unspoiled taste of tender Lauki, enhanced just with hing and jeera. Ghee adds to the flavor so do not compromise on that.

Though some people feel chopping the lauki this way takes a lot of time, I feel this is one of those vegetables which doesn't require stringing and arranging in bunches to be chopped finely. So just peel it and get it chopped in whatever way you want.

Chopping them finely would result in better taste if you are making this kind of plain subzi in a pan or kadhai. You might like the lauki to be chopped even finer if you have time and the skill to chop them that way.

This medium fine is the way I chop it, more because it saves me time and does taste great as well.




ingredients...

a Bottle gourd weighing around 700 gm
pinch of asafoetida
a tsp of turmeric powder
a tsp of whole cumin
2 whole dry red chillies
a tbsp or some more ghee




procedure...

It's a simple recipe and yet we need to be careful with flame intensity etc. Most importantly the salt should be slightly on the lower side. If you choose a tender Bottle gourd you wouldn't require to add water while cooking. Tender Lauki is the only one suited for this subzi as i indicated earlier.

Heat the ghee and tip in the hing, jeera and red chillies in that order. Wait till they all splutter and sizzle before adding a tsp of turmeric powder. Immediately add the chopped lauki over it and mix well till all the chopped pieces get coated lightly with turmeric and the ghee tempering.

Add salt to taste, always lesser than you think is okay , mix well and cover to cook on low flame. Open the lid and stir after 4-5 minutes and check if the pieces have become soft and moist. There should be some water collected in the bottom by this time. If not, add half a cup of water to it and let it cook for about 10 minutes.

It should be cooked and mushy after 10 minutes or might take a few more minutes depending on how tender is the Bottle gourd. You might like to thrash the subzi a bit to make it mushy.

Serve hot as a side dish or just with hot chapatis and some light daal or raita or plain dahi. This is a minimalist's favorite subzi , great with just chapatis too...

Some people even like it with just plain boiled rice. In that case it is a nice detox meal for you.

Summers call for cooling food and this is one of those easy to cook subzi that saves you from stove as well.
The sponge gourd subzi (Nenua ki saadi subzi) is another of this category.

Check out another Lauki ki subzi cooked in pressure cooker with tomatoes and curry powder. This one is for those mature Bottle gourds with a few seeds and tougher skin.

Do you like such simple food?