Maharashtrian Mooli Curry

Time is powerful. It heals pain, shows us who our real friends are, teaching us lessons we ignore otherwise. Time brings strangers close to us while pulling best friends away. Time is what regulates, controls and shapes our life. We tend to ignore time when we have plenty of it, but each count of seconds seems too precious to while away when we are in the midst of an exam, filling answer sheets. Sometimes I dearly wish to have the power to turn back the clock, so many things being there to rectify, so many people I would not allow to step into my life given a second chance. But as they say "time and tide wait for none" and so there we are pulled into the vortex of time.

 

 

Just as I was on the verge of getting bored with the usual Mooli Bhaji I cook at home, I had this typical mooli curry radiating the flavour of Maharashtrian cuisine in every sense at my friend's place. I really like the aroma of curry leaves, unlike my brother who refuses to eat anything cooked with a slight hint of curry leaves saying that reminds him of 4 arduous years of his engineering days in Bangalore back in early 90s when it was yet to metamorphose itself into a cosmopolitan hub, with very limited range of cuisines save South Indian on offer to the outsiders. My experience in Bangalore had been pretty nice as opposed to what my brother went through. Now, there are a cluster of restaurants catering to different taste buds of people ranging from South to North, East to West. The options are abundant, in case if someone doesn't enjoy eating South Indian cuisines, he/she can always switch to relish the flavour of other cuisines.
 

Ingredients:                                           Cooking time: 20 minutes ü  1 big size radish or mooli (grated) ü  4-5 green chillies (chopped) ü  1 inch ginger (chopped) ü  3-4 cloves of garlic (chopped) ü  1 tsp turmeric powder ü  Salt to taste ü  1 tsp sugar ü  1 tbsp gram flour or besan ü  2 cups of yogurt ü  White oil for cooking For sauté: ü  1/2 tsp cumin seeds ü  1/2 tsp black mustard seeds ü  1/2 tsp fenugreek or methi seeds ü  1 string of curry leaves ü  1/2 tsp hing powder ü  3-4 cloves Method: 1) Heat oil in a wok. Add the ingredients for sauté and allow them to crackle. 2) Add turmeric powder and grated radish. Stir around to mix. Add salt and sugar and little bit of water. Cook covered till radish is tender. 3) Stir gram flour into 2 tbsp water and add this to the yogurt. Beat them together into a mixture of smooth consistency. 4) Add the gram flour-yogurt mixture into the curry and mix in. Simmer away on low heat for couple of minutes, stirring continuously till besan incorporates into the gravy. 5) Serve hot with roti or rice.