urad daal aur sowa ke pakode | lentil fritters with dill leaves

Daal ke pakode is a winter snack made with tea or coffee in the evenings or for weekend breakfasts in many homes. Weekend breakfast mostly becomes a brunch for us but we normally don't cook elaborated meals on weekends and make something that we enjoy eating in leisure but simpler to cook. So mostly it is something like a platter of hot pakode or crisp cooked methi or alu ke paranthe in this season or a huge bowl of salad in summers. Newspapers and such comforting meals make our weekend mornings very relaxed, usually very late mornings in fact, stretching out well till afternoon.

I had soaked urad ki daal (split and skinned black beans) last week to make some kanji vada to be soaked in the kanji that was fermenting on my kitchen counter and a relaxed Saturday brunch of sowa wale daal ke pakode. But on Friday evening one of Arvind's friends called and came to visit us on a short notice for tea. I decided to quickly fry some daal ke pakode and harey lasun ki chutney with chai and as it turned out, this snack became our dinner that day. Not that I am complaining, I did fry some plain vadas and soaked them in the kanji to make the much craved for kanji vadas.

Sowa bhaji is a fragrant leafy green that is usually mixed with spinach or methi (fenugreek greens) to make saag or stir fries. We love it in our daals, raw chutneys and even in lehsun sagga. It was after a long time I made pakodas with these dill greens. All of us loved this impromptu meal of pakodas.

ingredients 
(enough pakodas for a gathering where no one minds portions)

urad daal 1.5 cup soaked overnight or minimum 3 hours
chopped dill greens 2 cups packed
minced green chillies 2 tsp or to taste
minced or grated fresh ginger root 1 tbsp or a bit more
coarse pepper powder 1 tsp
anardana powder 1-2 tsp (optional)
salt to taste
mustard oil for deep frying

procedure 

Discard the soaking water and grind the soaked daal to a smooth paste. Whip some more while still in the mixie jar to make the batter light. Do not add water while making this paste else the batter will get runny and the pakodas would absorb too much oil while frying.

Mix this batter with all the other ingredients except the oil and start frying right away. Keeping it for long makes the batter runny and it absorbs more oil while frying.

Heat the oil in a deep kadhai and fry small portions of the batter to make pakodas. You can use a rounded dessert spoon or soup spoon to scoop the batter and drop it in hot oil to make pakodas, depending on what size of pakodas you want.

Take care to fry them at medium flame so they cook thoroughly, these pakodas do not soak much oil as urad daal is quite sticky and the surface of the pakodas get sealed quickly in the hot oil.

Serve hot with any green chutney but this green garlic chutney works really well with this dill flavoured daal ke pakode.

To make this green garlic chutney mix a cup of chopped green garlic (leaves and some of the bulbs) with a cup of chopped green coriander leaves along with 3-4 green chillies, 1 tsp chopped ginger, salt to taste and lime juice to taste. The chutney is so good you would want to make it everyday with all your meals. We eat too much green garlic in this season.

These urad daal ke pakode are irresistible. I suggest you to make it a meal always as such snacks feel guilty if one is heading for a meal after this. Or serve it as starters for an elaborate meal for guests and see how fast they fly.

Harey lehsun ka achaar | Lehsun-sagga...

Garlic greens and Dill leaves come together in winters and there is a genius recipe that makes use of both these aromatic herbs together.

Lehsunsagga.

Yes, this is the name of an intriguing pickle of Garlic greens. The green garlic shoots or hara lasun as it is called in HIndi. Made into a fresh chutney or a pickled chutney, called as achar as it keeps well for the whole year. A childhood favorite, my grandmother used to make it quite frequently and it was considered healthy being green and being the ever so popular condiment that is Garlic. A good measure of Ginger in it and a lot of aromatic Dill greens, it was the most favored pickle till it lasted. Yes it lasted just a few weeks thanks to a few greedy prying eyes to the glass jar. My Daadi would clean a large bunch of greens once again and chop it, pound it in the stone mortar and pestle to get a nice flaky texture in the pickle.

When I stared pickling, it was a challenge to get it right because chopping the greens finely didn't work to get that texture, blending them in the food processor just chutnified them and killed that achar feel of it. But I was hell bent upon bringing that texture of flaky greens of garlic, macerated well but not too smooth to loose a tangy bite. Got it right with a chopper attachment of my Morphy Richards hand blender. The chopper did a fine job when the green were put into it after chopping them. Later I would do the whole hog of using a stone mortar and pestle too to get the texture right.

Long story cut short, I tried every method in the book to macerate the chopped garlic greens well so they seep well into the Dill aromas and the Ginger heat.

I have taken a few step wise pictures last year of the making of this pickle, but couldn't find them in my albums when I started looking for them. Someone on a foodie group on facebook wanted the recipe and I decided to post it without those pictures.

The pictures have been added later**

ingredients...

Garlic greens cleaned 200 gm
Dill greens 200 gm
fresh ginger grated 200 gm
green chilies 50-100 gm depending on how hot you would like it
salt to taste (ideally 15% of the total weight of the other ingredients to preserve it)
lime juice 1/4 cup
mustard oil 1 tbsp (optional)

an electronic chopper or a stone mortar and pestle so the chopped herbs can be thrashed to macerate

procedure...

Make a tight bundle of all garlic greens and the dill greens together in your hand and chop them all together on a wooden chopping board or any which way you are comfortable chopping them. Retain the thick but soft stems of Dill greens, just discard the woody stems if it has. Discard the fat white bulb if the garlic greens have it at the base, use it for other recipes.

Make a coarse paste of the green chillies and ginger too if you wish. I prefer the ginger to be chopped very fine. You might like to grate the ginger. Keep these two aside.

Now whiz the chopped greens into a chopper by pulsing action so it doesn't get smooth, just macerated. Or put it all into a stone Mortar n pestle and thrash the whole mixture for about 5 minutes or till the texture is your preference. Adding salt while doing it would help the maceration process. Add mustard oil if using. Mustard oil tastes great when this pickle is consumed within a month, after that the raw mustard oil aroma vanishes.

Now mix everything together in a sterilised glass mixing bowl, I sometimes use even stainless steel bowl to mix.

Pour lime juice over it and press down to make sure all the liquid released acts as a brining medium. No need to sun this pickle, gets ready instantly if you like the sharp flavors. The sharpness gets milder as the pickle ages.

The lehsunsagga gets more sour, more mild and more dull in color as it ages but this pickled chutney ages really well and the olive green coloured lehsunsagga in one of these jars is 6 years old and still tastes great.

This olive coloured sample is 6 years old garlic greens pickle, the Lehsun-sagga, still as fragrant as the dill stays aromatic, the garlic sharpness has mellowed down.

The green pickle can be used as a chutney, as a pickle in sandwiches and burgers, even in some salad dressings. Sometimes a generous dollop of this pickle is mixed with boiled potatoes to make an instant Aloo paratha.

Don't miss getting some green garlic shoots and Dill greens (Suwaa bhaji or soya ka saag) together and take out half an hour from your busy routine to make this. You would love yourself for making it. Believe me.

matar ki ghugni lasun wali

Talk about tender peas and any Banarasi will instantly jump to either chuda matar (a peas and pohe recipe, essentially a Banaras specialty) or matar ki ghugni. Tender peas cannot taste better any other way for us. Nimona will be a choice for meals.

Hara lasun is another winter green, available for a short period of time and with this combination it's like hara lasun gets moksh in Banaras. Hara lasun is also called sagga lasun (as spring onions are also called sagga piyaz) and as soon as it is seen here in Delhi I just grab it and my lasun sagga saga begins.

This time I used it for a green mishmash pickled chutney of hara lasun and for this ghugni, a wonderfully flavorful dish, generally a breakfast dish but we can have it any time of the day, with anything as accompaniment or as it is. It is simply delicious any which way you have it.

ingredients...

tender green peas 2.5 cups
potato (naye alu) 1 no. chopped in small bits (here I used about a cup of cubed new potatoes)
garlic greens (shoots) n bulb 2 nos.
coriander greens 10-12 stalks
green chillies 3 nos.
salt n pepper to taste
turmeric powder 1/4 tsp
mustard oil 1 tsp
cumin seeds 1 tsp

procedure...
Ppound the garlic greens, coriander greens and green chilies together in a mortar n pestle or make a coarse paste in mixie..

Heat oil in a kadai and tip in cumin seeds into it, wait till they splutter and then tip in the chopped potatoes and salt, cook covered for 2 minutes and then add the green peas, turmeric powder, pepper and the green paste. Mix well, add 2 tbsp of water and cook covered till it gets dry. The peas will be cooked quickly as they are tender. Mature peas may take some more time but please don't use mature peas for this matar ki ghugni.

Crush most of the the potatoes after cooking so that the green mixture with mushed up potatoes clings to the green peas beautifully, making it more flavourful and even the texture gets comforting.

The ratio of peas to potato can be changed depending on what you want that particular day, here I have added more potatoes than usual as the husband loves naye alu and wanted to have more of those.

Serve hot as you wish, as a side dish, as a stand alone breakfast or a standalone anytime meal, a stuffing in grilled sandwich.

Just don't make any changes if you make this matar ki ghugni for the first time and you will see that it has become a favorite in your family too.

This time it was a weekend brunch in the garden for us. Masala chai and this garlicky alu matar ki ghugni, weekends mean the simplest of foods in my home, flavors not to be compromised.

And it's not difficult when you choose the season's best ingredients.