Dishin' about aviyal!

Aviyal:

[Wikipedia] a dish that has a unique place in typical Kerala cuisine. It is a thick mixture of a lot of vegetables, curd and coconut. It is seasoned with coconut oil and curry leaves.

A search for aviyal revealed a zillion similar, yet subtly different recipes. I didn't quite realize the ubiquity of this motley assortment of vegetables! Hell, there is even a aviyal.com site - just a placeholder, but exists nevertheless!

And here is the icing on the cake: a mallu rock band called Avial! I couldn't understand a word of this song except for 'Nada Nada' - walk, walk? Not right now, I'm comfortably ensconced on my couch! But the song does rock :) All you mallu folks out there: translation please?

So, last night's dinner involved Aviyal - the neatest thing about this dish is how adaptable it is. Yes, most traditional versions call for raw banana, drumsticks, potatoes, some yams ... but then again, variations almost seem welcome here - the slight twist in flavour induced by a different vegetable is always exciting! That was one of the fun things about eating aviyal when we were kids - it made for the perfect guessing game :)

This most recent aviyal version chose to skip the bananas. I can hear those traditionalists screaming"Sacrilege!" :) Well, it was a warm evening and I really wanted something lighter - the olio of vegetables included some golden beets, carrots, chayote squash, butternut squash, fava beans and green beans. This along with a dollop of some chewy brown rice made for a perfectly happy meal.

Aviyal Recipe for May 2008
Well, this recipe could hold for atleast a month, right? :)

Servings: 4

Vegetables:
1 chayote squash - peeled
1/2 butternut squash - peeled and deseeded
12-15 fresh green beans
1 cup fava beans (shelled or frozen)
2 carrots
1 golden beet

Gravy:

1/2 cup coconut flakes
4 thai green chillies
1" ginger
2-3 black peppercorns
1 t cumin seeds
1 t turmeric powder
Lightly sour curd/yogurt - 1 cup
salt for seasoning

Garnish:
2-3 bay leaves (I'm yet to drag myself to the indian store to get some curry leaves - are they even back in the stores?)
1 t coconut oil

Cut the squashes, green beans, carrots and beet into long thin fingers.
Toss these veggies into a stockpot, add about a cup of water and boil them till almost cooked - this should take under 10 minutes.

If using fresh or frozen fava beans, blanch them before tossing them into the stockpot. Cook for a couple of minutes once they're in.
If using dried beans, cook them in a pot of water till done before throwing them into this mixture.

Grind all the gravy ingredients, adding water as needed.
Throw this paste into the pot with the veggies and boil for a few minutes.
Heat the coconut oil (low) and saute the bay leaves till lightly browned.
Garnish the aviyal with these leaves.


Opinion?

*zing*! Those thai green chillies packed a wallop! The aviyal turned out really flavourful, the coconut and spices danced quite happily with the veggies. I might be hooked onto this Aviyal-Lite - didn't miss the bananas or potatoes at all!

Podalanga curry and Dahi Shorba

Yeesh! Seems like I'm cooking a lot more than I have time to blog about - hate it when that happens and I don't get to write about what I made before it slips my mind. That is actually one of the things I love about blogging - I can keep track of my recipes, the variations I incorporate and the new ones that I whip up and often seem incapable of remembering for more than a couple of days! It often seems like my memory retention of a recipe is inversely exponentially proportional to how well something turns out! Crazy, huh? :)

Anyway, sometime last week, I was craving desi flavours, but wanted to try out something I hadn't made before. With constraints like not wanting to hit the store and started to get hungry, I started poking around my collection of postcard cookbooks - these are what I call the 4"x6" desi cookbooks (by Nita Mehta) that focus on specific cuisines and have a plethora of regional recipes. The instructions are not always cogent, but they are quite workable and end up being a great learning experience of regional indian cuisines.

It is always fun to encounter desi recipes from different regions - with very different names and sometimes containing diverse ingredients that end up looking and tasting quite similar to each other. Think about Punjabi kadhi and the south indian mor kozhambu - very different, yet very similar. As I perused the Rajasthani postcard cookbook, I found another recipe that belongs with these two - Dahi Shorba. It is touted as a yogurt soup with mouthwatering spices and sounded like part of the perfect meal. To complement this, I went with a simple curry of snake gourd - I'm used to eating this in a koottu, but figured a curry heavy with some boiled channa dal might do the trick.

Dahi Shorba
Spicy yogurt soup

Servings: 1

1 cup homemade dahi (or any thick yogurt)
1 t besan flour
1/4 cup water
1/2 t red chilli powder
1/2 t turmeric (haldi powder)
1/4 t amchoor powder
1/2 t salt
1/2 t sesame oil
1/2 t mustard seeds (rai)
1/4 t asafoetida
4-5 curry leaves
1/2 t grated ginger
chopped cilantro for garnishing

Mix the curd, besan, water, red chilli powder, turmeric, amchoor and salt.
Beat this mixture well and run through cheesecloth or a fine sieve.
Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the mustard seeds.
Once it splutters, add the asafoetida, curry leaves and ginger.
Add the besan-curd mix into the saucepan, stir till it boils and continue to simmer for 2-3 minutes.
Garnish with the chopped cilantro.

Podalangai Curry
Got to love that snake gourd

Servings: 2

2 short snake gourds - deseeded and cut into small pieces
1 large green chilli - cut into small pieces
1 t mustard seeds
1 t urad dal
2 T channa dal - soaked for 10 minutes in boiling water
1 T dried coconut flakes
salt to taste
1/2 asafoetida (hing)
1 t sesame oil

Heat the oil in a wok, add the mustard seeds.
Once the seeds splutter, add the urad dal, asafoetida and green chilli pieces.
Drain the water from the channa dal and add it along with the coconut.
Cover and cook on low for 6-7 minutes.
Season with salt.


Opinion?

The dahi shorba was fabulous - had flavours similar to kadhi, but felt much lighter. Can't wait to make this again! The snake gourd was yummy - like always! I think I prefer the koottu version, but this turned out to be a healthy and tasty alternative. Plus it went well with the shorba! *yay*


I'm sending these off to Claudia from Fool for Food as my WHB entry for this week. WHB (Kalyn's brainchild ) is a fabulous weekly event focusing on vegetables, herbs, flowers and plants.

Thayir Saadam (Curd Rice) - quintessential comfort food

There is Thayir Saadam

* A mix of rice and yogurt, often with seasonings and garnishings - an essential aspect of the traditional south indian meal. And often considered a soporific - eat a meal of rice and yogurt with pickle and soon you'll be ready to take a nap!
* A Chennai Tamil term used to denote a boring, dorky, risk-averse person. "Seriyaana thayir saadam!" - a phrase heard when ridiculing someone who goes by the book.

And then there is a Milquetoast

* One who has a meek, timid, unassertive nature

That sounds like our thayir saadam alright! :)

***

Growing up in Chennai, on a primarily rice-based diet, we ended most meals with a dollop of curd rice - often we just mixed the curd into the rice on our plates, sometimes my mum would mix the rice in advance - maybe season it, add some more molagas or even some grapes - every variation led to satisfying flavours. And the longer the rice sat and the flavours seeped in, the better it tasted!

Thayir saadam now even seems to have a hipness factor to it - Krd Rys in to-go boxes - guess Chennai truly can't do without it!

***

Comfort food

* Food that comforts or affords solace, hence any food (frequently with a high sugar or carbohydrate content) that is associated with childhood or with home cooking
[Oxford English Dictionary]
* Food prepared in a traditional style having a usually nostalgic and sentimental appeal [Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary]

***

Guess thayir saadam scores on all counts here - carbohydrates? Hell, yes! Nostalgia - full of it! Lots of pleasant memories of growing up and of home cooking - apparently, I often have this stupid grin on my face when I'm digging into a bowl of curd rice - can't help it, can I? The flavours, the memories, the aromas, *so* good!

A key aspect of curd rice has always been the home-made yogurt - freshly set yogurt is the best - soft, smooth, room-temperature, melting in the mouth!

Thayir Saadam
Call me a milquetoast, but I love it!

Servings: 2

1 cup brown rice (any kind would work here)
1.5-2 cups of home-made curd
1 t mustard
1 t urad dal
5-6 curry leaves
2-3 green chillies - chopped
1" ginger - grated
1 t sesame oil

Garnish
2 T pomegranate arils

Wash the rice and cook it in 2+ cups of water till it is totally done and soft.
Heat the oil in a work, add the mustard and let it splutter.
Add the urad dal and curry leaves and saute for a minute.
Throw in the ginger and green chillies and saute a bit more.
Mash the rice before stirring it into this garnish mixture.
Let the rice cool down a bit before stirring in the yogurt.

Garnish with the pomegranate arils. Or maybe with sliced grapes. Or even cherry tomatoes. Or just cilantro. There is so much one can use here!

We often eat this with some pickle - avakkai, vadu mangai and gongura are favourites.




This goes to Meeta for her Monthly Mingle - the theme this time is Comfort Foods.


Am also sending this to the Skinny Gourmet for her Food for Thought event - in honour of how evocative this simple dish is - all the fabulous memories it brings back of growing up in Chennai, humid summer days, home food, family dinners ...

Khichdi from heaven

Good upma is a beautiful thing - it isn't always as easy as it seems, it is something that I'm always aspiring to perfect. And it makes me incredibly happy when my upma seems to be as good as my mum's - which qualifies as the perfect 10!

Speaking of upma and similar one-pot meals - I always wondered about the difference between upma and khichdi. Upma is often made with sooji, sometimes with rice rava, other times with vermicelli. And it seems like khichdi is typically a rice and lentils dish - kind of the desi equivalent of rice'n'beans? But then again, there is rava khichdi, right? Which is often this olio of sooji with a slew of vegetables. So, how is that any different from rava upma? Or are the names interchangeable? Food for thought :)

Anyway, with all the stuff happening with Vodka, I really needed quick comfort food - which can easily translate to upma (or khichdi?). I often take the easy way out and skip roasting the rava - but this time I really wanted the flavors and aromas to match the memories in my head - it is pretty amazing how nostalgic smells can be! :) So, hungry as I was, no shortcuts were taken - I worked with a mix of coarse and smooth sooji ravas and roasted them till golden before working them into the upma. That, along with liberal use of cherry tomatoes made for some really flavorful khichdi - I'm truly hoping I can replicate this!

Rava Khichdi

Or Upma. Or whatever you want to call it :)

Servings: 3-4

1 cup coarse sooji rava
1 cup fine sooji rava
1 red onion - chopped
1 green bell pepper - chopped
2 carrots - chopped
15-18 cherry tomatoes -sliced
4 green chillies - sliced lengthwise
1" ginger - grated
10-12 curry leaves
a handful of raw peanuts
1 t mustard seeds
1 t urad daal
1 T channa daal
1 t asafoetida
1 t turmeric
1 T sesame oil
kosher salt

Garnish
------------
a handful of pomegranate seeds
a few sprigs of cilantro

Mix the ravas and dry roast them till golden and the smell of the roasted rava wafts around you. Heat the oil in a wok, add the mustard. Once it sputters, throw in the urad and channa daals along with the peanuts, asafoetida and curry leaves.
Once these are browned, add the onions, ginger and green chillies and saute for 4-5 minutes.
The bell peppers and carrots go in next, saute for another 1-2 minutes.
Now toss in the tomatoes and stir for another minute.
Pour 4 cups of water into this veggie mix and add some salt and turmeric.
Cook covered till the water is at a roiling boil. Now, turn down the heat and fold in the rava gently - about 1/4 cup at a time, stirring constantly to avoid clumping.
Again cook covered on low for 4-5 minutes till the rava is totally translucent.
Add salt to taste.

Garnish with cilantro and ... pomegranate seeds! *so* good! :)

Serve with a dollop of home-made yogurt and maybe some pickles - lime or maybe avakkai?

The roughest Deepavali ever

Earlier this week, we had plans for a Deepavali dinner, maybe some lights, no fireworks (not a big fan of those anymore), a shot at cultural immersion of sorts ... I go back and forth on these festival days, the nostalgia aspect of celebration is pretty high since we celebrated every festival and puja growing up. However, I'm not too big on any conservative or overly (note the highly subjective usage :)) traditional notions behind festivals - a classic example being Karadiyar Nombu - when women pray for the well-being of the men in the family ... hmm, not be a bad idea, but it does bug me that there are no puja days when the men honor the women!

Back to Deepavali 2007 and what became of it ... wednesday evening involved a reasonably non-threatening visit to the vet - Vodka's had this weird-looking hotspot on his side that was bugging me enough to warrant a trip to Redwood. Well, after a long physical, several needle aspirations and a short wait, he was diagnosed with a mast cell tumor. And he was scheduled for surgery yesterday. I staggered out of the clinic, my head swimming with worst-case scenarios and illogical fears. Well, things seem a little better now - he's out of surgery (looking like he's been through a battle!) and recovering, the next week is going to be long and tedious - as we await the results of the biopsy. *bleh*

Anyway, all this made for a toned down Deepavali - but it did involve food, some of which Vodka sampled :) I was craving something comforting, yet festive - Bisi Bele Huli Anna - roughly translates to hot lentils with tamarind and rice, I believe. There are a zillion recipes for BBB out there, I mostly worked with what my mum told me - one of the big differences about her recipe is the 1.25:1 ratio of rice:lentils - I really like this proportion - makes the BBB a lot more chunky and earthy. The other thing I usually do is bake the BBB at 275 F for about 30-40 minutes -this gets the flavors to soak in quite a bit. Given my sleep-deprived state, I'm probably going to skip posting the details of the recipe since there are a zillion awesome versions out there, like here, here and here and more.


Often, a raita brings out the BBB flavors better than anything else - so that's what we went with. A simple carrot and pomegranate raita - very refreshing.


Well, Deepavali warrants a dessert - that was my excuse for trying out a variation of this walnut barfi recipe that my friend Yamini emailed me about the other day.

Nut Barfi

3/4 cup walnuts
1/2 cup cashews
2/3 cup brown sugar
3 T butter
a few strands of saffron
1/4 cup of milk

Soak the walnuts and cashews in hot water for about 20 minutes.
Drain them and grind into a coarse paste, adding milk as needed to make the paste.
Toss this into a saucepan along with the saffron and stir on low heat for 1-2 minutes before adding the butter. This recipe apparently calls for a whole stick of butter, but I couldn't quite get myself to use that, so I opted for less butter but more stirring to get the barfi to set.
After about 20 minutes of stirring, I ended up pouring this into a pan hoping it would cool and harden. Well, it didn't :( Tasted great, but was all gooey. I finally ended up sticking it in the oven at 300 F for about 30 minutes, I think that was a bit much - about 20 minutes should've been good enough.

Tasted pretty good, but I definitely need to fine-tune the stirring/baking/etc times.


Happy Deepavali!

Navarathri goodies!

Got to love dussehra - dolls, dolling up, socializing, trading stories and catching up (often after a whole year!), eating, more eating ... :)

This year, I chose to experiment a bit with our traditional sundal, snacks and dessert recipes and come up with some variations. I started this post several days ago, but the week has been expectedly packed, I'm glad I'm getting to post about these before Navarathri is actually over! :)


Obviously, we needed a sundal of sorts - can't really do without that! After poking around the stuff we had on hand, I finally decided to make a mixed sundal - green channa, kaala channa, garbanzo and corn! The corn was truly a killer addition - the sweetness totally offset the tartness of the lemon juice and added to the crunchiness of the coconut. Yay for a sundal variation!

Sundal Medley

A zillion servings!

2 cups green channa
2 cups kaala channa
1 can chickpeas
1 can corn
3 red chillies - finely chopped
2 green chillies - finely chopped
1 T mustard
1 T cumin
1 t asafoetida
1 T sesame oil
1 t turmeric powder
3 T grated ginger
10-12 curry leaves
1 cup fresh coconut gratings
juice from 2 lemons
salt

Soak the channa in warm water for a few hours and then cook them till tender. Heat the sesame oil and add the mustard. Once it sputters, add the jeera, red and green chillies, ginger, asafoetida and curry leaves. Add the channa, garbanzo and corn. Sprinkle with turmeric and salt and simmer for a few more minutes. Finally toss with the grated coconut and lemon juice.

Happy, very happy!

So, we needed another snack - hmm ... poha? We often make poha for navarathri - sometimes like upma, sometimes with lemon or tamarind. But lately, the poha at the indian stores have not been thick enough and get all clumpy - I really don't like that! So, I went back and forth between using poha and basmati rice and finally settled on poha. Well, that was a minor mistake. I wanted to make mango poha - with a ton of grated raw mango and it ended up all clumpy! Minor disaster! After a few minutes of panicking, I figured I could salvage it by making patties out of the poha and baking them. Hmm ... worth a try!

Used-to-be-poha patties

another zillion servings!

1 lb poha (thickest available)
2 red chillies - chopped
a handful of peanuts
1 t mustard
1 t urad dal
1 T channa dal
2 raw mangoes - grated
1 t turmeric
salt
10 curry leaves
1 t oil

Heat the oil in a wok and add the mustard. Once it sputters, throw in the curry leaves, peanuts, urad dal, channa dal and red chillies. Once browned, add the grated mango, turmeric and salt. Cook for a few minutes. In the meantime, add some water to the poha to soften it. This often ends up being tricky - I add a little water at a time, wait for it to soak up and then add more. The poha seemed pretty happy till I added the mango mix and then it seemed a little too clumpy.

*grrr*! Time to bake! Heat oven to 450 F. Grease a large baking tray and make patties out of handfuls of the poha mix and bake these in the oven for about 20 minutes. Flip the patties over, douse them with some oil spray and bake for another 10-15 minutes. Wow! These turned out pretty good. Really, really surprising, but we were pretty kicked about it :)

Ok, we obviously needed a dessert here. I had read about Ganne ka kheer and really wanted to try it out, but I could only land my hands on a can of sugarcane at my fave latino store La Espinola. I proceeded to extract the juice out of the sugarcane stalks (?!!) using a juicer. Well, 45 minutes and achy hands later, I had about a cup of juice - figured that would have to do! Since that wasn't much juice, I decided to maybe make a kheer with nuts as well as the rice cooked in sugarcane. Hmm ... what we ended up with was a lot different :)

Sugarcane-banana cake in cashew-pistachio milk
Many many servings

Sugarcane-banana cake
------------------------------------
3/4 cup of basmati rice
1 cup sugarcane juice
3 overripe bananas
5 green cardamoms
8 slices of white bread

I cooked about 3/4 cup of rice in the sugarcane juice + 1 cup of water for about 20 minutes till the rice was completely cooked and soft. I tossed in the cardamom and bananas and cooked for another 5 minutes, mashing the rice+bananas along the way. While the mixture cooled, I ground up the bread slices into fresh crumbs. The last step here was the mix the bread crumbs with the rice/banana mix, pour it into a cake pan and bake for 20 minutes at 350 F.

Cashew-Pistachio Milk
----------------------------------
5 cups nonfat milk
1 can condensed milk
a handful of unsalted cashews
another handful of unsalted pistachios
2 T saffron

I cooked the nuts in the milk for about ten minutes. Once cooled, I pureed this milk and set it back on the stove on simmer. Next, I added the condensed milk and saffron kept stirring the milk till it boiled and got thicker. It took another 15-20 minutes of constant stirring before the milk was thick enough for the dessert.

Ok, so the final assembly of our dessert involved submerging a piece of the sugarcane-banana cake in a cup of the milk till it completely soaked up the flavors and got all soft and sweet and yummy! Kind of contrived, a little complicated but totally worth it! :)

Ok, Lakshmi has convinced me, this has got to be my submission for Jihva's Festive Series :) Thanks, Lakshmi!

Cabbage koottu - supreme comfort food

Last night felt like a "home" food night - classic south indian, like my mum makes. Since we didn't get a chance to do our grocery trips this last weekend, I started poking around in the fridge to find something I could work with. A cabbage! Yay! I love cutting cabbage! *so* much of fun :)

Cabbage koottu was always a favorite growing up, about on par with onion sambar and mor kozhambu. I love the funny (almost stinky!) smell of cabbage cooking - very nostalgic. Ok, so cabbage koottu it was going to be. I also found some baby brinjals and dutch potatoes that I could work with. I poke around and found this posting on Indira's blog, figured I could rework it a little bit! Thanks, Indira :)

Cabbage Koottu

Servings: 4

3/4 medium green cabbage - chopped into 1"-2" long shreds

1 cup cooked tual daal

2 T channa dal - boiled till cooked (but not mushy)

1 small ball of tamarind

salt

Seasoning:

----------------

1 t sesame oil

1 t mustard

1 t urad daal

2 red chillies

1/2 t asafoetida

7-8 curry leaves

Masala:

-----------

1.5 T coriander seeds

2 red chillies

2 T grated coconut

Garnish:

------------

Chopped cilantro

a few fresh pomegranate seeds

Roast the masala ingredients and grind to a coarse powder.

Soak the tamarind in 1/2 cup of hot water till the juices can be completely extracted. Squeeze out the tamarind and save the water.

Heat the oil in a wok and add the seasoning.

Once the mustard sputters, add the tamarind water and turmeric.

Once the water boils, add the cabbage and cook covered for 7-8 minutes.

Add the cooked channa daal and stir for a couple of minutes.

Now, toss in the tuar daal along with the masala and salt and simmer for about 5 minutes just so the flavors can blend.

Garnish with cilantro and pomegranate seeds (I've never tried these before - the sweet crunchiness was a perfect complement to the tart and spice of the koottu).

Baby Brinjals and Potato curry

Servings: 4

7-8 baby brinjals

5 dutch potatoes

1 t sesame oil

1 t cumin seeds

1/2 t turmeric

1.5 T sambar powder

salt

Chop the potatoes into long pieces (4 per potato). Cut off the stems of the brinjals and make a plus cut at the tops (just like for stuffed brinjals).

In a wide skillet, heat the oil and toss in the cumin seeds.

Once browned, add the potatoes and sprinkle some water. Cook covered for about 6-7 minutes. I liked the idea of roasting the potatoes instead of boiling them just so they could be more crispy.

Once the potatoes are parboiled, add the brinjals along with the sambar powder, turmeric and salt. Cook covered for about 6-8 minutes till both the potatoes and brinjals are done and have absorbed the spices. You could optionally simmer for another minute (uncovered) in case any water needs to evaporate.

Simple, yet delicious - seems like eggplant behaves best when left to its own devices :)

Spicy eggplant!

Eggplant is one of those weird vegetables - it seems to take a lot of thinking to find the "right" recipe for it. And it either turns out fabulous or really crappy, no in between!

I was looking for a side to go with some dosas a few days ago, and realized I had some really fresh indian eggplant waiting to be cooked up. After much dithering, I decided to go with a simple, straightforward recipe - stuffed & baked. After slicing off the tops of the little eggplants, I made a cross cut lengthwise in each of those - for filling with the stuffing. I had some sambar powder that I'd made a few days ago - seemed like the perfect filling. I loaded up the eggplants with the powder+salt, spritzed them with some oil spray and baked them for about 15 minutes at 400 F. For the first time ever, I garnished these with some chopped fennel - the combination of flavors was awesome!


Hmm ... this is an odd picture, these look more like dates than eggplants!!! :)

Good old upma

One of my ultimate comfort foods - upma - rava, rice, vermicelli, whatever. And I had a serious yen for rava upma last night. Apna Bazar now carries the real upma rava, not the super fine cream of wheat which makes for a poor, often lumpy, substitute! After dithering between using bansi rava or upma rava, I finally settled on trying the upma rava.


Most folks reading this blog probably know an upma recipe by heart, but for those who don't, I'll put down my recipe anyway. This upma was replete with a ton of veggies - colorful goodness, especially tomatoes from my patch! :)

Rava Upma

2 cups of rava (roasted)
3-4 green chillies
1" ginger - minced
1 medium red onion - chopped
2 medium tomatoes - chopped
12-15 roasted peanuts
a pinch of turmeric
salt to taste
cilantro

Seasoning:
1 t black mustard seeds
1 t urad dal
1 t channa dal
1 t sesame oil
8-10 curry leaves


Heat the oil and cook the seasoning. Throw in the ginger, green chillies and onions and saute till the onions are translucent. Add the tomatoes, peanuts and turmeric, cook for about a minute and then add 4.5 cups of water and salt. Cook covered till the water starts boiling. Now throw in the rava, lower the heat to simmer covered till the rava absorbs the water and is cooked.

Garnish with lots of chopped cilantro :)

Upma goes great with sambar, chutney and most south indian sides. I ended up eating this with some left over mor kozhambu and my mum's mango pickle *yum*!

Plantain curry becomes vadais!

I felt like more kozhambu the other day. And I had some yellow squash for it - perfect! And some vazhakai (green plantains) curry, maybe?

I didn't feel like doing the usual cook/dice/saute with the plantains, so I opted for something different. Grated plantains - almost like a podimaas, but not that granular. So, I grated the plantains and threw them into a pan with a seasoning of a tsp of sesame oil, mustard seeds, urad dal, asafoetida, turmeric and some red chillies.

Just as I threw in a cup of water, I went "Ooops! Too much water!" Hmm, I let it cook for a bit, but soon realized I needed to salvage this differently. Bake it, maybe? Well, that worked fabulously! I made the grated plantain mixture into vadais, doused them with some oil spray and baked at 400 for about 15 minutes.


Yum!

========

Seems like this is going to be my submission for JFI: Banana, it is my only plantain recipe for all of september!

Ridge Gourd mojo!

I finally figured out the english name for one of my fave indian vegetables - peerkangai (tamil), turia (hindi) is ridge gourd in english - which makes perfect sense: it does have ridges, and it is a gourd :)

Whoa! Wikipedia says that this ridge gourd is of the same species as a loofah. Crazy!

I snapped up some really fresh looking ridge gourd from Apna Bazar in Bellevue (they've opened in the old home of the much hated Regal Foods). I often think of trying something different with it, but I always end up making the masiyal that we ate so often growing up - *so* good!

Peerkangai Masiyal

Couple of ridge gourds - peeled, cored and diced
1 cup of tuar dal
a pinch of turmeric salt
2 T lemon juice

Seasoning:
1 t sesame oil
1 t mustard
1 t urad dal
3 green chillies - chopped
1" ginger - minced 8-10 curry leaves
a pinch of asafoetida

While the tuar dal is cooking, roast these spices in the oil and then toss in the gourd pieces. Add the turmeric and about 1/2 cup of water and cook on medium till the veggies are done. Throw in the cooked tuar dal, salt and stir for about a minute before taking it off the stove. Add the lemon juice and garnish with cilantro.

Happy!

Random pic: First tomato I plucked from my veggie patch :)