sookhe alu | a slow cooked potato stir fry with everyday curry powder

Potato is the most underused vegetable in my kitchen even though the husband is very fond of potatoes. In winters the new potatoes make great alu paratha but we don't eat potatoes in summer at all. Some alu parval ki bhujia is made sometimes but apart from that there is no potato on our summer menu.

This recipe of sookhe alu becomes an exception sometimes and we both enjoy having it with a relaxed weekend brunch. Our weekend brunches are invariably relaxed and simple meals, something  weboth like.

This sookhe alu was made a few weeks ago when I noticed I had not used the potatoes that I had grown in my garden. This recipe became the excuse to eat the home grown potatoes. I remembered my research guide Dr. Maya Goyle a lot when I was cooking it. Her step daughters in Denmark used to love this and call this as brown potatoes because of the brown masala used. The brown masala is nothing else but the everyday curry powder that has prominent notes of coriander, tejpatta and cumin with mild heat of black pepper. With a tart hint of amchoor and aromatic kasoori methi this sookhe alu becomes a treat for the senses. 

Incidentally, I always end up making this sookhe alu whenever I grind thee masala mix of my everyday curry powder. The aroma of this freshly milled spice blend always reminds me of this dry stir fry and I give in to the indomitable pleasure of potatoes.

I think sooke alu made with boiled and cooled potatoes is a genius recipe and I can't take credit at all. It is the recipe I learnt from Dr. Maya Goyle and its taste still connects me with her, now that she is no more in this world.

ingredients 
(2 large servings or 4 regular servings)

400 gm potatoes (boiled with skin and cooled, preferably refrigerated for a day)
handful of kasoori methi
(the best you can find, else skip this. Do not substitute with fresh methi leaves)
2 tbsp everyday curry powder 
1/2 tsp amchoor powder 
1/2 tsp red chilli powder (or to taste)
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 tbsp mustard oil
1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds 
salt to taste

procedure

Peel and cube the potatoes.

Heat oil in a pan and throw in the cumin seeds, let them splutter and get aromatic.

Tip the cubed potatoes with salt and turmeric powder and stir fry on medium heat till they turn golden brown. The slower this step is the better the potatoes taste. So take your time, make this sookhe alu when you are doing something else too in the kitchen.

Add the curry powder and red chilli powder once the potatoes looks adequately browned and fry some more till the masala becomes aromatic, sprinkle amchoor powder, mix well and it's ready.

Serve with paratha and pickle or eat as a snack. Trust me this sookhe alu mostly becomes the appetizer in my household.

Here you see the sookhe alu with pyaz ka paratha and a Gujrati pickle called Methiya athanu. I will post the recipe of Methiya athanu soon.

The slow cooked potatoes with this spice blend becomes magical if you trust me. There is no onion garlic in this recipe and the flavour is absolutely rustic and robust, kasoori methi giving it a slight bitter whiff. This is far better than any French fry of the world, and you don't even need any tomato ketchup with it.

This sookhe alu tastes great even if stuffed in a grilled sandwich. Actually this was the most common grilled sandwich we used to make with evening tea back home.

fasting recipes | sama ke chawal ki tahiri | vrat wali tahiri

 Sama ka chawal or Samak chawal is actually a millet called Barnyard millet that is mostly consumed during Navratri fasting. Barnyard millet cooks really fast when soaked and can be made into sama ka Jeera rice, Sama ka Upma, Sama ki Idli and Sama ka Dhokla easily. Making sama ka Dosa is also easy once you know how to use this millet. We love sama ki kheer too.

Sama ki tehri or tahiri cooks quickly once you have soaked sama in the fridge. Yes it is advisable to soak sama overnight either in water or thin buttermilk and refrigerate so it can be used to cook meals quickly as the soaked sama ke chawal lasts about 3-4 days. It is particularly convenient in Navratras if you are fasting.

ingredients 
(2 servings)

1/3 cup sama ke chawal (Barnyard millet) soaked in 1.5 cup thin buttermilk overnight
2 cups mixed vegetables chopped into small cubes
1 tomato pureed
one small potato chopped in small cubes
1 tbsp ghee
1 tsp cumin seeds
pink salt (sendha namak) to taste
pepper to taste
chopped green chilies and chopped ginger if required
chopped dhaniya patta to garnish

preparation 

Heat the ghee in a wide stockpot (or pan) and tip in cumin seeds. Let the cumin splutter a bit.

Add the potatoes and stir and cook for 2 minutes. Now add the pureed tomatoes and all the chopped vegetables, salt and pepper. It will be better to add the other vegetables one by one according to the time they take to cook. I added carrots first and then zucchini after the potatoes and carrots were done. Toss and cook them all together.

Now add the soaked sama ke chawal, mix everything well and cook covered on low flame. No need to add any additional water as there is enough water in the ingredients to get cooked. It takes about 5 minutes for this quantity to get cooked after adding the soaked sama ke chawal.

Fluff up once cooked, sprinkle with chopped dhaniya patta and chopped green chilies and ginger if using. Serve with cucumber raita.

Green chilies and fine julienne of ginger taste really good in this tahiri but you can avoid if you like it a little plain. You can always add some roasted nuts or paneer cubes on top to add some proteins. I normally like it lighter but it also depends on how hungry you are for the meal or whether you are serving this sama ke chawal ki tahiri for lunch or dinner.

chukandar ke patton wala rajma | palak wala rajma | kidney beans cooked in beet greens or spinach gravy

I love rajma and make it in so many different ways that whenever I soak some rajma to cook I have to plan the way I will be cooking it the next morning as I rarely depend on one specific way to cook my rajma.

It doesn't mean I don't like the traditional rajma but I love experimenting more. I keep buying so many varieties of rajma it will be criminal to use them all in a singular way.

The badarwahi rajma from Jammu is usually cooked the traditional way or with beets puree added to the bhuna masala mix. The Jammu badarwahi rajma also tastes great with a simpler buttery gravy, the Kashmiri rajma.

The Uttarakhand rajma is cooked usually with a very light curry which is onion based as that was the way I loved it when I tasted in Uttarakhand. The big sized Uttarakhand rajma is very soft and creamy though it takes some time to get cooked in pressure cooker. I love the Uttarakhand variety with spinach puree added to bhuna masala mix.

The rajma cooked the Himachali way with spinach is also one of my favourites.

I make a variation of rajma that is called Gogji Rajma and is made with either Turnips or Knol khol. These Kashmiri recipes are so simple to cook and so delicious that one finds comfort in them even though one is not grown up eating them. Such is the case with me at least.

The recipe of Gogji Rajma will be shared soon but the pureed beets and beet greens and spinach rajma is not much from the recipes used all over north India, hence sharing them together to give you an idea of how a single dish can be nourishing and yet easy way to accommodate vegetables and beans in one.

ingredients
(serves 3-4, depending on side dishes or the lack of it)

200 gm raw kidney beans (rajma), soaked overnight
1 tsp salt, add more later to adjust
1/4 tsp soda bi carb
1 liter water
500 gm cleaned spinach leaves or beet leaves
60 gm or 1 large sized red onion roughly chopped
15 cloves of garlic
2 inch piece of ginger chopped roughly
2 large ripe tomatoes chopped roughly (or 1/3 cup thick yogurt)
2-3 red dry chillies or to taste
2 tbsp everyday curry powder 
garam masala powder to taste
1 tsp turmeric powder
2 tbsp mustard oil
pinch of hing (asafoetida)

procedure 
Drain the rajma, transfer to pressure cooker pan, add salt and soda bi carb and water and pressure cook for 20-25 minutes. Cool down before opening the cooker. Rajma should be well cooked and cracked.

In the meanwhile, prepare the greens and the spice mix.

Chop, steam, cool and puree the spinach or beet leaves. You can use a mix of both or just boiled beets puree instead of the leaves. I use boiled beets puree when making rajma with badarwahi (jammu) rajma.

Make a paste of onions, ginger, garlic and red chillies and keep aside. In the same blender puree the chopped tomatoes too. Or blend the yogurt if using. Keep aside.

Heat the oil, add hing and wait till it gets aromatic. Pour the onion paste and bhuno till the mixture looks glazed or oil separates.

Add the powder spices and bhuno again for a few minutes or till the mix becomes aromatic.

Now add the tomato puree or whipped yogurt and bhuno once again till the mix becomes glazed. Add garam masala powder and let it incorporate. Do not bhuno much after adding garam masala.

Add the spinach or beet greens puree (or boiled beets puree if using) and simmer the mix for 5 minutes or so. Add the cooked rajma with all the cooking liquid and simmer for 10-20 minutes. The rajma soaks all the flavours and the curry gets delicious.

Sometimes I add half puree and half chopped greens to get a nice texture. See this spinach rajma cooked with yogurt.

I need very little rice with my rajma and here is how my mug meals look like. This mug is 700 ml capacity and most of my soupy meals are enjoyed like this. Hot and comforting.

Always adjust seasoning too, because some mature leafy greens are a little alkaline in taste and you may want to have lesser salt in them and balance the alkalin etaste with some added yogurt or lime juice.

Serve with some butter on top of plain old ghee, or without any topping as the rajma itself is so flavourful.

This kind of rajma is best served with plain boiled rice but it tastes great with thin delicate chapatis or thick millet rotis too. Try this kind of rajma with some crisp hot parathas to break the monotony.

Some days you must try these rajma recipes enriched with the goodness of greens. It does take some time to cook but you can always cook in a large batch and serve 2-3 times over a week. Or just keep some bhuna masala for convenience and make any rajma recipe quick. We always find a way to eat what we like.

recipe of sepu wadi, a delectable rustic treat from Himachal Pradesh

Sepu wadi is a rustic yet aromatic recipe from Himachal Pradesh, cooked mostly for wedding feasts as it is supposed to have been a recipe from the royal kitchens of Himachal Pradesh. The recipe of Sepu wadi was closely guarded by the royal cooks as I have heard some Himachali folks say but now that this wadi is available in the market even in dry form, it proves how popular it has become with everyone in the region, and with those who get to taste it. Count me in.

I used to cook sepu wadi after I had seen the recipe on one of the TV shows I used to follow long long time ago. And then I lost the recipe and used to crave for the same taste. Then I saw dry sepu wadis at Himachal stalls at trade fair and wondered if those are the same as in the TV show the wadi was made fresh.

I was puzzled about this dual identity of sepu wadi for a long time until I saw it again when it was being cooked at the home stay (Raju's Cottage) at Goshaini. Lata ji, the lady of the house cooks all meals for the guests and is a great cook. I had requested her to cook some of these Himachali dishes and she obliged. That's when I saw her soaking dry sepu wadis to cook them with spinach. The wadis are deep fried and sold in markets for convenience. A genius enterprise of the local cottage industry I must say. I had only seen dehydrated Amritsari wadis or wadis from other regions of India but deep fried sepu wadis are a step ahead regarding convenience of desi foods.

This is what I saw at Raju's cottage.

I loved the wadis cooked in spiced spinach puree and took the recipe too. Thankfully there is loads of spinach growing in the garden and needs to be used a lot.

I prefer freshly made sepu wadi as I find the texture better suited for my taste. Of course I wouldn't trust the quality of oil they use to deep fry the ready to use sepu wadis. So I make my own fresh sepu wadis. Once you have planed your work well and work on it rightly, this recipe wouldn't be so time consuming as it looks.

Recipe of sepu wadi..

ingredients for the wadis...
urad daal (skinned black lentils) 1 cup to be soaked overnight
(this makes a lot of vadis for about 6-8 servings, the leftovers can be frozen for later use)
cumin seeds 2 tsp
peppercorns 2 tsp
ginger grated 1 tbsp
dry red chillies 3-4
mustard oil to deep fry the wadis

ingredients for the spinach gravy (2-4 servings)
spinach cleaned, chopped roughly and steamed 2 cups packed
yogurt 1 cup
mustard oil 2 tsp
cloves 4-5
black cardamoms 2
cumin seeds 1/2 tsp
coriander seeds 1 tsp
asafoetida (hing) a pinch
fennel powder 2 tsp
turmeric powder 1 tsp
chilli powder 1/4 tsp or more to taste
dry ginger powder 1/4 tsp
salt to taste

Procedure..

To make the wadis, you can divide the work into 2-3 days. Soak the lentils overnight and grind with the cumin, peppercorns, ginger and dry chillies without adding any water to it. Blend well so the paste gets fluffy. The paste can be left to ferment for a few hours or you can go ahead and make the wadis right away.

The wadis can be made the next day and even after making them they can be refrigerated and used whenever required.

To make the wadis, boil about 2 liters of water in a deep vessel with a little salt. Make smooth balls the size of ping pong balls from the lentil paste and drop them in the boiling water. Let them all boil for about half an hour. Fish them out and let them cool down.

Once cooled, cut them into bite sized pieces and deep fry in hot mustard oil. These deep fried wadis can be refrigerated for a week or frozen for a few months to be used when required.

To make the spinach gravy, blend the spinach along with yogurt and salt and keep aside.

Mix the powder spices with a little water to make a paste and keep aside.

Heat the mustard oil and tip in the whole spices. Let them splutter and get aromatic before pouring in the powdered spices soaked in water. Mix well and let them fry till a bit fragrant.

Pour the spinach yogurt mix, add sufficient water to make the gravy of desired consistency, keeping in mind that the wadis will soak up a lot of water. You can also add water as the curry cooks.

Let the green gravy come to a boil. Add required number of wadis, 4-5 wadis per head should be enough but go by your choice. It will be good to chop the fried wadis further if they are too big or too hard.

Simmer the curry till the wadis soak up the juices and become bigger and spongier. Adjust seasoning and serve hot with plain boiled rice or rotis of your choice.

We loved it with makki ki roti more than rice.

Note how this curry looks almost devoid of any oil in it. Not that it is a low fat recipe but there is not much oil even if the wadis are deep fried. The reason is that the the urad daal wadis don't soak much oil while deep frying and if we use less oil for the gravy, the overall fat percentage will not be too much. Although you can always use more oil for taste and convenience of cooking.

This sepu wadi curry is so flavourful you wont feel like having any other side dish with it. Just a few raw slices of tomatoes and onions will be great, just like the frugal desi meals we love so much.

The flavours of fennel, cloves and black cardamom is so potent in this curry and the tartness of yogurt just balances everything nicely. I like this curry slightly hot with a god chili kick but you can always tone down the heat to your preference.

Apart from the taste and texture of the wadis in this curry, I love the spinach gravy a lot. And since I have loads of spinach in the garden right now, I have been making this same gravy with boiled rajma (kidney beans) as well.

For the same amount of spinach gravy I add a cup of boiled kidney beans and simmer till fragrant. This becomes a filling meal with just a spoon of rice in it. I don't want to dilute the flavours I like it so much.

Cook the spinach curry sometime even if you don't have the patience to boil and deep fry the sepu wadis. You can use chickpeas or mixed lentils for this curry and see how much you like it. This will give you an idea of what flavours sepu wadi packs in.

These are some of the desi flavours that I love and you would be glad to know how healthy these meals are. Out traditional food is mostly gluten free and uses the seasonal produce so efficiently and optimally.

I always feel we don't need to use any produce being transported from faraway places or out of season as we can cook so much variety or flavours with just the few produce we get in every season in every place. I have experimented enough to conclude this.

Sepu wadi will remain a favourite for several reasons. Thanks to Lata ji at Raju's cottage, Goshaini for reviving sepu wadi in my kitchen.

bisibele bhath : the southern khichdi we loved even in the simplest way

Bisibele bhath recipe used to feel very complicated whenever I saw it on other blogs or when friends explained it to me. Roasting a lot of spices separately, powdering them and then cooking a few more things separately to mix them all together to make a khichdi that tastes divine, that was my impression of Bisi bele bhath or BBB as it is called by BBB admirers. Yes Bisibele bhath has admirers, you realise when you talk about it to someone who has grown up eating this. I used to feel really out of place even though I love everything that looks like khichdi, be it our bhuni khichdi, mung ki khichdi or risotto, the firangi khichdi. Even Haleem that we love so much.

Bisi bele bhath is no less than Haleem mind you. The dark beauty it is, packed with flavours that makes the meal deeply satisfying and worth admiring too. And this was a short cut recipe that my friend Nirupama typed for me in a hurry one night so I could make a decent Bisi bele bhath with the fresh Pigeon pea lentils she had packed for me during my Hyderabad visit 2 weeks ago.

Yes we were in Hyderabad for a week and experienced harvesting, cooking and eating a farm to table meal along with other things one does in a city seeped with history and old world charm. I met a few dear friends, made a few new friends and brought back some really good stuff home. I bought pickles and kalamkari fabric and my friend Nirupama packed some more foodie gits for me, one of the gifts was this bag of fresh pigeon peas that they call Kandulu in Telugu, Thuvaram in Tamil and Arhar phalli or Tuvar phalli in Hindi. I was amazed to see heaps of this lentil being sold on roadsides towards airport along with seasonal fruits, mainly papaya, oranges and pomegranate.

We never get to see this arhar ki phalli in north Indian markets, fresh green peas are very common during this season and hara chana (fresh green garbanzo) also starts coming but just imagine if we get fresh pods of all the lentils we grow. I think I will use one or the other fresh beans everyday in my cooking.

Fresh Pigeon peas are also called Toor lilva and is used extensively in Marathi and Gujrati cuisines. Some day I will cook all of those things for sure. A proper Undhiyo has been on my list for ever although I have cooked lame versions of Undhiyo a few times.

We had enjoyed this fresh Pigeon peas at Aiyor Bai farm by just boiling them in salted water and snacking on them warm. But this was the first time I was eating these lentils fresh and I wanted to experiment more.

Nirupama recommended the Bisi bele bhath, typed a recipe for me and I mustered the courage to make it for the first time. The divine tasting BBB did not disappoint me even though it was a simplified recipe that Nirupama told me so I could manage to make a decent one.

ingredients
(2 meal portions with some yogurt and papad on the side)

white short grain rice (or broken basmati) 1/4 cup
fresh pigeon peas 1 cup
dry grated or desiccated coconut 2 tbsp
whole coriander seeds 1 tbsp
2-3 Bedgi chillies broken
cinnamon stick 1 inch broken
sambhar powder (ready made from a packet) 1 tbsp
cashew nuts 2-3 tbsp
diced onions 1/2 cup
curry patta 2-3 tbsp
mustard seeds 1 tsp
hing 1 pinch
ghee 1 tbsp

chopped vegetables in bite sized pieces 2-3 cups (I used carrots, cauliflowers and brinjal)

tamarind extract to taste ( I boiled 1 tbsp worth of tamarind with a cup of water, mashed when cool, filtered and added the watery extract to BBB)

procedure

Boil the fresh pigeon peas along with a cup of water and salt to taste in pressure cooker. About 5-8 minutes under pressure (after the first whistle blows). Cool down, open the cooker, add the chopped vegetables and simmer till the vegetables are soft. Add some water if required.

Cook the rice with a cup of water till done. The rice will be watery even after cooking but this is intended.

In the meanwhile, dry roast the broken chillies, cinnamon, whole coriander seeds and the coconut together till they all become a little dark and aromatic. Add the desiccated coconut later if using, grated coconut can be roasted along with everything else. Add sambhar powder in the end and switch off the gas so the powder gets roasted in residual heat. Let them all cool down. Then make a coarse powder and keep aside.

In the same pan, pour ghee and tip in mustard and hing. Let them crackle before adding cashew nuts and fry them till pinkish brown. Add the onions and curry patta and fry till translucent.

Mix the powdered mix with the fried mix and stir well.

Add this mixture to the cooked lentils and rice together, add the tamarind extract, adjust seasoning and simmer for 5 minutes till everything comes together.

The resultant dish will be very aromatic by now. Fry or roast some papad and lay the table. You can't wait for long once the Bisi bele bhath is ready.

I had fried alu ka papad which is a Banaras specialty and a vadi made with puffed rice called Aralu sandige that Nirupama had packed for me. Such meals are enjoyed with extended family most.

I always feel we love such flavours best when there are more people around. People you have grown up with, have made memories together and have eyed the the last yummiest morsels of food from the table together.

Bisi bele bhath will be licked clean by the end of the meal no matter how much you serve. Even this short cut recipe thanks to Nirupama is a keeper and I will be cooking this version a lot. But I will be making the elaborate version of Bisi bele bhath very soon.

Feeling encouraged by the first success of my Bisi bele Bhath.

easy diwali mithai : kaddu ka kalakand or pumpkin kalakand recipe

My Diwali greetings to you all with this easy recipe of pumpkin kalakand. May you find more light, fight darkness successfully and lead others towards light too. Diwali brings that kind of vibes if we are open to it. And there is some mithai, some diyas and candles after a mandatory spring cleaning exercise. The woollies will be out soon and we will soon eat some chooda matar with the fresh tender green peas. Every banarasi starts dreaming of chooda matar breakfasts as soon as there is the first sign of winter.

I have been away for quite a long time, was traveling for the good part of it and then got caught up with pending work that had to be finished on priority. Thank you for writing back to me and let me know you all were missing my posts here. I shall try and write more regularly and bring the food we love. Will come back with storied from Mysore too.

I hope you would like this pumpkin kalakand. Kalakand is a soft cheesecake like dessert with granular solids of lightly curdled milk if I have to describe it, but the good thing is that kalakand can be made with many shortcut methods with very minute difference in the resulting taste and texture. Since the milk is reduced first and curdled lightly in the traditional method of making kalakand the texture is richer with the traditional method. But then we make the recipes suitable for a modern lifestyle, to be able to cook them in lesser time, make them healthier etc etc. and try and replicate the original.

This short cut kalakand recipe that also includes some good fiber and carotenes is very close to the texture of original kalakand with added taste of ripe pumpkin and a hint of nutmeg. I had made an apple kalakand (in microwave) last year and many of my friends and readers had made that at home within a couple of days. And I remember how I kept getting requests regarding how the recipe can be adjusted to stove top method and if one could replace the milk powder with something else.

In the last year I have made that apple kalakand several times both in microwave and a heavy bottomed pan and recently I taught that recipe to the volunteer Chefs at ISKON Mysore as well. Even they wanted an alternate recipe of such an easy and tasty mithai so I decided to work on another kalakand recipe that is fairly easy and takes a little more time than the apple kalakand.

Using grated pumpkin was on my mind for some time and I had to do it. I did two trials and found that precooking the grated pumpkin works better. I microwaved a cup of grated pumpkin for 2 minutes before using it for kalakand and used freshly made paneer for it. Minimal sugar to sweeten it as always.

Total time that this recipe takes would be around 30 minutes of grating pumpkin, making paneer (chhena) and cooking again and about an hour of refrigeration to set the kalakand properly.

ingredients
(for 16 regular sized kalakand)

grated pumpkin (use the orange fleshed ripe pumpkin) 1 cup packed
whole milk (6%) 1 kilo
fresh cream 3 tbsp
lime juice 2 tbsp diluted with 2 tbsp water
nutmeg powder 1 pinch
sugar to taste. I used 4 tbsp
chopped pistachios to garnish (or any other nuts)

procedure

Microwave the grated pumpkin for 2 minutes or cook them till they get limp and soft but not mushy. Keep side.

Heat the milk in a large pot till a thin film of fat starts forming on top. Wait till the point where the milk is just about to boil. Add the lime juice 1 tsp at a time at this point and keep stirring the milk. Stop adding the lime juice as soon as you see curdled milk and clear whey.

Line a strainer with muslin and keep it over another pot to collect whey. Pour the milk into the strainer and let the whey separate (the whey can be used to knead bread dough). Collect the milk solids and crumble it using a potato masher nicely.

Now place this crumbled paneer (or chhena) into a pan along with the half cooked grated pumpkin and sugar and cook for about 5 minutes on medium flame. It would release some water and start drying up. Add the fresh cream and nutmeg powder together and cook till it is all dry but moist.

Empty the contents on a greased tray or plate and flatten the mixture using a flat knife. Make the edges smooth and shape it so you can cut uniform pieces. Or just use a suitable square dish to spread the mix. Sprinkle chopped nuts and press them so they stick well.

Refrigerate this plate for an hour or so. Cut pieces and serve as required. This kalakand stays well in the fridge for 4 days easily. Keep it in an airtight container lined with butter paper.

The texture of this kalakand is crumbly as it should be but it binds well and doesn't break into your hands. If it breaks while lifting it means it needs some more cooking so cook it again and let it dry a bit more and let it set again.

You can add any spices of your choice to this kalakand as pumpkin takes spices really well in desserts. You would be surprised at how well it works with this kalakand. A mild hint of nutmeg and a deep rich taste of pumpkin with taste and texture of a regular kalakand. That's how this pumpkin kalakand tastes.

Make this diwali healthier with home made mithai I must add. We never buy any mithai during festivals as there is a lot of spurious stuff added to them during season of high demand.

Ever wonder how much milk production do we do in the country not to disrupt regular milk supply and still convert the world into a big mithai shop during festivals?

everyday subzi: making lauki ki muthia and using it in many ways

Muthia is a steamed dumpling made with grated vegetables and chickpea flour which is made into a dough and then rolled into sausage shaped 'muthia' before placing them on the steamer. The traditional muthia is made by pressing a portion of dough inside the fist (muthhi) hence the name muthia. It is a Gujrati tradition but popular all over India in some or the other form. Muthias get steamed quickly and can be cut into small pieces and served along with some green chutney.

Or the cut pieces of muthia can be shallow fried along with some tempering to be served as a tea time snack.

Lauki ki muthia is an easy way to make the meals filling and nourishing. Since we use besan (chickpea flour) to bind the muthias it makes a gluten free meal too. Please note that the recipe is easy and takes just about 20 minutes if you are making muthias for 3-4 people. And these steamed muthias can be refrigerated and used later to make tea time snacks or even kofta curries.

If you get the lauki (bottle gourd) grated in a food processor or get it done by the maid (we are spoiled in India :-)), the procedure will be even more quick.

ingredients

grated lauki 2 cups (about 400 gm)
besan or chickpea flour 3/4-1 cup or a bit more
ginger paste 1 tsp
garlic paste 1/2 tsp
cumin powder 1 tsp
ajwain seeds 1 tsp
turmeric powder 1 tsp
green chillies minced 1 tsp or more
salt and pepper to taste
oil or ghee to smear the plate and hands while working with the dough

procedure

Mix all the dry ingredients with the grated lauki and massage them together so the water from lauki helps make it a dough. You might need to add a little more besan or little more lauki depending on how fresh and tender the lauki is. I recommend the freshest lauki you can find. See how to choose the right tender bottle gourd.

Now grease a ceramic or pyrex dish and your hands too. Pinch portions of the dough and shape them like 2 cm thick sausages or press portion in your fist to shape them like traditional muthias. Arrange all such sausages (or muthias) on the greased dish.

 Now cover the dish with cling wrap loosely. Leaving some space for the steam to escape. Make cuts in the cling wrap otherwise.

You can cover the plate with a dome shaped plastic lid meant for microwave and steam it for 5 minutes too. With the cling wrap too it takes the same time.

The muthias get cooked as steam condenses on the cling wrap. Peel off the cling wrap and use the muthias as required. These can be enjoyed right away with green chutney or with any sauce or salsa you like.

These can be steamed over the gas stove too. See this post about another steamed dumplings to get an idea how a simple contraption can be used to steam these.

Once cooled, the muthias get firm and can be shallow fried along with mustard seeds, hing and some sesame seeds for crunch. Sprinkle some amchoor powder or lime juice and have these with some warm salad for a meal. Here I served it with a beans and carrot poriyal and pickled cucumbers.

We sometimes use these muthias to make kofta style curries too. Just deep fry or shallow fry these muthias and curry them with a north Indian style bhuna masala.

I normally shallow fry these muthias cut into one inch long pieces, and pressure cook them along with some bhuna masala and water. Add enough water to the muthia as they soak up a lot of water and double in size when cooked into a curry.

Refrigerated (2-3 day old) muthias behave well in pressure cooker as they get firm and do not break. You can cook this curry in an open pan if using freshly made muthias.

This lauki muthia kofta curry tastes great with roti, paratha or plain boiled rice but you can always make the curry light and thin and have it as a one pot meal as I do sometimes.

We love this kind of kofta curries better than the fried round koftas (like this kele ka kofta). This muthia kind of kofta works better for lauki and is healthier as well. I don't remember if I have cooked a traditional lauki ka kofta ever in my life. But I love besan dumpling curries so this lauki muthia kofta style curry is one of the favourites. The taste and texture is quite different and so is the health quotient of this curry.

Let me know whenever you try making muthias this way in the microwave. It will be the easiest healthy snack to munch on and some spicy curry can be whipped up in a jiffy.

Gooler, the country fig: a medicinal fruit that can be cooked in many ways | gooler ka chokha and other recipes

My article about Gooler, the country fig or the Indian fig was published in Down to Earth magazine. I am posting the detailed version of the article, the magazine article was a downsized version of all the research I did with gooler and it's properties.

I remember my grandmother telling us bedtime stories and taking us to unknown lands of fantasy. Her stories involved birds, jungle animals, trees and their conversations and we grew up considering these ‘characters’ as our companions. One of the stories that stuck in my mind was when she told about Gooler ke phool  ( Fig flowers) in a story, that these flowers are seen by rare lucky people and whoever is able to see Gooler ke phool finds a treasure or a lost kingdom. This story stayed with me in my childhood and I often enquired the wild fig trees around to find a flower. No wonder I could never be lucky, I came to know later when I studied inflorescences in my biology class much later. The small figs we saw on the trees were actually inflorescences (cluster of flowers) and this special type of closed inflorescence is called as Syconium. There are more reasons why I associate Gooler with my grandmother, she relished Gooler as food and introduced us with the ways it can be eaten.

In the last few years we have seen the fresh plump ripe figs appearing in the upmarket stores, the fruit being sold at a premium price as it is deemed exotic. These fresh figs are the Ficus carica species, this fleshy variety of figs is either imported or grown as exotic fruit only in a few places in India, one variety grown around Maharashtra is called 'Poona figs' (ref. Handbook of Indian Agriculture). This fruit variety is highly perishable and hence most of the produce is dehydrated to form discs that can be re hydrated and used as required. Many of us have been relishing these figs in the dehydrated form called sookhe anjeer, those flattened and dried sweet discs filled with crunchy seeds and chewy dry flesh. Many 'sugar free' desserts including the kulfi and ice creams use sookhe anjeer.

Most of us have forgotten the smaller, more common variety of figs that grows wild all over India and is seen on roadsides or along old buildings. This one is called cluster fig or country fig, Ficus racemosa is the small Indian fig that is equally nourishing as the fruit fig. Goolar is the more common name it is known as in north India. The fruits are loved by Macaques, Squirrels and most birds, particularly Barbets, Tree pies and Parakeets and that is how the seeds get dispersed and this fig variety propagates easily.  

The last time I had the fortune of tasting Goolar ki subzi was a couple of years ago when I was visiting Banaras. The spicy meaty Goolar ki subzi has been a family favourite and my mother had cooked that for us. We miss Goolar here in Delhi though we see it growing around our colony. Goolar is a great shade tree, home to my favourite birds but the fruits were never accessible somehow, this time I asked the gardener to bring me some and he obliged. I cooked chokha and kababs first and then pickled a few for the first time. The pickle is doubly nourishing as it gets some probiotic flora along with the naturally occurring prebiotic fiber.

Considered as cooling, blood purifying, anti inflammatory and healing by Ayurveda practitioners, the raw fruits are valued as a tasty and healthy vegetable. The fruits contain tannins and the soluble and insoluble fiber found in the fruit is prebiotic in nature. That is the reason the raw fruit used as a vegetable was considered extremely good for stomach ailments. I remember my grandmother who lived a healthy and active 105 years, always brought some goolar whenever she had upset stomach. She would make goolar ka chokha mostly but she loved the spicy meaty curry made using goolar as well. People of her generation knew what to eat day to day ailments.

The goolar ka chokha is considered cooling during summer months, a raita mixed with buttermilk is cooling too and highly recommended for stomach upset caused due to amebeosis.

Interestingly, goolar was never cultivated as vegetable or fruit but the abundant bunches of fruits were foraged during harsh summers and beginning of monsoons when the green vegetables would become scarce in the olden days. Ripe fruits used to be plucked by children as they are quite attractive and aromatic, some children would eat the fruits but the taste is not as good, so most of the ripe fruit would get wasted. 

Raw fruits are actually an inverted flower filled with stigma and stamens and hundreds of insects that pollinate this closed inflorescence called Syconium. These insects would complete their life cycle till the fruit is ripe and would escape leaving the ripe fruit empty. This is a great example of symbiosis between a fruit and insect.

To cook the raw goolar, one has to cut them in quarters, clean the interiors of all the fibrous floral parts and the insects and the fleshy envelope of the fruit will be parboiled and then either curried or mashed to make bharta or chokha.

Many vegetable vendors would collect the goolar from nearby jungles and sell them to earn some profit, there was always a demand for goolar as folks knew it is good for health. Even dehydrated raw goolarwould be stored, its powder was used with sugar candy to cure E. coli infection. 

The fresh milky discharge (latex) from the leaves is considered healing for epidermal wounds when applied 3-4 times a day, it helps many kinds of infections of the skin (source). The enzyme ficin present in the fig latex is responsible for its anthelmintic activity and can be given with great benefit in worm infestations especially ascaris and tricharus types (source). Apart from the usage in traditional medicine, scientific studies indicate F. racemosa to posses various biological effects such as hepatoprotective, chemopreventive, antidiabetic, anti inflammatory, antipyretic, antitussive and antidiuretic (source).

Gooler ka chokha recipe 

ingredients 

1.     cleaned, quartered and seed removed goolar 1.5 cup

2.     finely diced onion 1/4 cup

3.     minced garlic 1 tsp

4.     minced green chilly 1/2 tsp or to taste

5.     salt to taste

6.     mustard oil 1 tsp

Procedure

1.     Boil the chopped cleaned goolar in sufficient water till soft. Strain and reserve the gooler.

2.     Mash with a fork or blend in blender and mix the other ingredients after blending.

3.     Serve with khichdi, daal rice meals or as a side dish for any Indian meals.

Gooler ka Kabab recipe 

ingredients 

1.     cleaned, chopped and seed removed gooler 1 cup

2.     roasted chickpeas flour or sattu 2 tbsp

3.     minced ginger, garlic and green chillies 1 tsp each

4.     garam masala 1 tsp

5.     chopped coriander and mint greens 1/2 cup

6.     salt to taste 

7.     ghee to shallow fry

procedure

1.     Boil the cleaned gooler in sufficient water till soft, drain and cool. 

2.     Mash with other ingredients except ghee to make a dough like mixture.

3.     Shape lime sized balls and flatten them between the palm. Arrange to be shallow fried in batches.

4.     Shallow fry using ghee or any oil of choice. Serve hot with green chutney or tamarind chutney.

Gooler pickle recipe

ingredients

1.     cleaned and chopped gooler 1 cup

2.     white vinegar (preferably with mother) 1/2 cup

3.     salt 1 tbsp

4.     chopped green chillies 1/4 cup

5.     crushed mustard seeds 2 tsp

To make the pickle, boil the cleaned gooler till soft, drain the water and let the gooler cool down. Then mix everything together and store in a sterile glass jar. The pickle is ready to eat in 3-4 hours and keeps well for a month or so.

honey chilly sweet potato finger chips : baked finger chips

These could well qualify to be called as Shakarkandi ke gutke, which is a sticky chaat made using tamarind and black salt, some red chilly etc etc. These sweet potato finger chips are a diantier, drier version of them. Shakarkandi or sweet potatoes as we call them in India, are actually a yam. We get the purplish skinned, pale flesh variety here but the Vitamin A content is not compromised much. This is the season for sweet potatoes and I love getting all fresh produce that I see in the markets. After all the fruits and vegetables come packed with nutrients when they are at the peak of their growth or fruiting stage.

Shakarkandi is roasted on charcoal traditionally in winters and is tossed up in a quick chhaat with either kala namak and lime juice or with slices of star fruit that comes in this season too. I make several versions of chaats and salads with sweet potatoes and add them to a few curries as well. Yes I learnt adding sweet potatoes ever since I tasted the famous Labra that Bengalis make and the winter special Undhiyu that Gujratis make. I feel I am a sucker for rustic foods from regional cuisines and can't get enough of it.

But this recipe is beautiful to look at, dainty chips that won't let you rest in peace until you have polished off the last crumb. I usually make it for our weekend teas or as a part of an elaborate meal sometimes. But a healthy snack it is when the two of us are alone at home, the snack sometimes gets too much and we skip the next meal. It's a free world you see :-)

I would say the recipe is very simple. Now, a simple recipe is not a new thing on my blogs, you probably come back to my recipes because they are simple and doable, healthy and tasty. Please say yes. I will feel happy.

ingredients
(makes 2-3 large servings, as a filling snack)

one large fat sweet potato with skin, about 200 gm
2 tbsp honey
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fine red chilly powder
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp melted butter
2 tbsp sesame seeds

procedure

Discard any spotted skin from the sweet potato and brush it clean. Now chop it in batons 1 cm thick. You wont get nice and crisp finger chips if you cut them thicker, but the taste will be great, so don't worry if some of them are a bit thicker.

Toss all the ingredients together and spread them evenly all on a baking sheet. Adjust seasoning before you bake, it's all a matter of personal taste and there should be a good balance of sweet, sour and hot in this recipe.

I use silpat but you can use parchment paper or a nonstick baking pan or a glass or ceramic baking dish. Bake at 200 C for 10 minutes, toss once and bake again for 7-10 minutes or till you see almost dry finger chips, sesame gets crisp so you get the idea. The chips are softer inside.

Great accompaniment to tea or coffee. You can always serve it along with some cream cheese or feta cheese as an aperitif.

Let me know if you try the recipe. We have been having them regularly this winter, taking advantage of season's bounty. Who cares for fried snacks when we can bake them right.