alu sem tamatar ki bhurji

 Bhurji is a dry stir fry vegetable preparation which is scrambled roughly while cooking so that the vegetables get mushed up together a bit to let the flavors mingle together . A mishmash . It's up to your choice how mashed up you want your vegetables or you want them just lightly bruised to take on the flavors of each other. This one is just like that . Potatoes and broad beans are cooked together on low flame to allow cooking in it's own juices and are lightly thrashed with tomatoes to make a colorful mishmash . Healthy , low fat and no spices at all . Spices are great and i love spicy food but it's not always you want spices to be used in your food , this is for such times. Or when the main course is high on spice and you want a milder side dish.

ingredients..
 ( two servings as a side dish )

Potato 1 no. ( chopped in small cubes )
sem or broad beans chopped in small bits 150 gm
tomatoes chopped in small cubes 2 nos.
small garlic cloves 4-5 nos. chopped
ginger 1/2 inch piece chopped finely
green chillies 1-2 nos. chopped finely
fenugreek seeds 1/2 tsp (can be replaced with cumin seeds if you don't like bitter fenugreek seeds in the subzi)
asafoetida a pinch
turmeric powder 1 tsp
mustard oil 2 tsp


procedure...

Heat the oil in a kadai ( i use iron kadai ) , add the fenugreel seeds and wait till fragrant and pink ( take care not to burn them ) . Throw in the chopped ginger-garlic and green chillies and immediately add the chopped potatoes and beans .

Add salt and stir fry on low flame , add turmeric powder , mix well and cover to cook for 5 minutes.

Add the chopped tomatoes , stir to mix and cover again and cook for a couple of minutes. Open the lid and mash the vegetables lightly ( or completely mash them if you wish ) .

Serve hot with chapatis and any kind of daal or raita . Goes well with daal-chawal meals too . I like it mixed with plain boiled rice very much for a quick meal . The stir fry is wonderfully flavored with just the ginger garlic and a hint of fenugreek .

If you don't like bitter fenugreek seeds coming in your mouth while eating , you can remove the seeds after heating them in the oil. Just heat the oil with fenugreek seeds , put off the flame and remove all the seeds , the flavor is alredy infused into the oil and it will flavor the stir fry wonderfully , keeping the bitter tidbits away . Or if you don't like fenugreek use cumin or nigella seeds instead ....

Also , a small brinjal can be added to this bhurji along with the potatoes and beans , that makes the dish even more mushy and i like it that way if the beans are of the very soft variety .  Some beans are very soft and buttery when cooked but most of the dark green ones can be a bit tough . So with these dark green beans i prefer only tomatoes , the dish is a very traditional chhhaunka ( tempered ) subzi where no spices are used but it's still yummy and can be made hot with chillies if you wish.

Enjoy !!!

kaccha singhara ... two recipes for fasting food

 Trapa bispinosa is the botanical name and singhara is hindi name for this Indian water chestnut . It is an aquatic plant and bears a fruit which has a tough skin protecting a soft white flesh . The white flesh becomes harder when the fruit is mature. The tender and mature fruits both are tasty in their own right and if cooked differently. Tender fruits can be eaten raw and are very good for snacking , peeling the hard skins and eating the white fleshy nut is a yummy time pass.

 Apologies for a shady picture :) will try and upload a clear picture soon.  These are small singharas , some of them are tender and some mature.

The mature singharas are boiled along with their skins and then peeled and the hardened white flesh has a very nice nutty flavor . This can be used for dressed salads or just as a standalone snack . In some parts of India this boiled singhara is a common street food served with a dry green chutny .

What i did here is just microwave the peeled fruit with salt and pepper . 2 minutes covered for 250 gms of singhara . That's it . It's ready for a snack attack or a meal , whatever way you like them .

Alternatively , they can be stir fried in very little ghee with salt n pepper till lightly pink . They cook very fast if they are tender and may take about 5 minutes if mature. You would like them both ways if you like the flavor and aroma of singhara . They have a nice aroma when cooked .

That lovely aroma is more pronounced if they are cooked into a halwa. Usually the powdered flour of dried singhara nuts is used to make halwa ( recipe some other time ) but i like it made with fresh raw singhara . This was an experiment i did when i was a teenager and everybody in the family loved it . I never made a halwa from singhare ka atta ( singhara flour ) after that . 

I have a few pictures of the halwa cooked last year . Pictures were taken by my cell phone camera , so they are a bit blurry but the recipe is simple.

 Grind the raw peeled singhara in a mixie to make a smooth paste . Tender singhara is more suited for this halwa , though it is good with mature fruits as well.

Heat a tbsp of ghee for each cup of singhara paste , pour in the singhara paste and fry till the paste becomes translucent . 

It may take 2 minutes for a cup of singhara paste. Add 1 tbsp or a bit more sugar ( according to taste ) per cup of paste and stir for a minute . It's done and serve hot with chopped nuts as a garnish . We do not like any cardamom in this halwa as the aroma of raw singhara is so very tempting .

Be it the savory recipe of boiled or microwaved whole singhara .........

Or this aromatic halwa with an amazing nutty flavor ....

You would fall in love with this fruit with two horns ..... hence bispinosa is the second name in latin following the binomial nomenclature .

There is soft nutty flesh inside the hard spiny shell , and it tastes amazing .... all the good things are meant for navaratri it seems....