Achari Bhindi

I love potlucks. Potlucks are occasions when people bond over food. Usually when me and my friends do a potluck, the theme remains heterogeneous so that we can enjoy variety in our meal, but last week we decided to keep a homogeneous theme by cooking something using the same main ingredient. Since most of my friends are vegetarians, we decided that we would cook varieties of dishes with the majority's favorite vegetable, bhindi or okra. I prepared Achari Bhindi, which was liked by all my friends who kept asking for the recipe. So here goes the recipe and if you cook it at home and like it, please don't forget to comment. Thank you for visiting my page ! 

Please don't forget to check out the recipe of another amazing bhindi preparation, Spicy Bhindi.  

Alur Dum with Baby Potatoes

"Me and my husband are not particularly people who plan a trip a few months in advance. We make impromptu plans one or two days or at the most a week in advance and go ahead with it. Most of our trips were chalked out at the last minute and we have always enjoyed such surprise tours. This trip that I am going to write about is not an exception either. My classes for MBA first semester came to an end on 4th May and classes for summer semester were supposed to start from 16th May. So in between, I had little more than 10 days of holidays to take advantage of. Though we desired to take a trip during my holidays, we didn’t start planning until 9th May when my husband came home for lunch in the afternoon and told me that he wanted to go to Yellowstone National Park for three days. I told him to give me the afternoon for doing my research before confirming on Yellowstone. I did a small research on Google and realized that going to Yellowstone during spring break would not be wise as many parts of the park remain closed. Besides, the weather runs amok during spring. The weather forecast for Yellowstone exactly on the days we were planning to visit showed signs of rain showers. I didn’t want to take the pain of visiting a place when the chances of rain putting a damper on our trip were high. So we dropped the plan for Yellowstone. I zeroed in on choosing a location ideal for a visit this time of the year. So after an hour of deliberation, we decided on visiting the national parks in and around Utah. Utah with its desert climate is ideal for a visit during spring when the temperature hovers below 90 F."

Above is the excerpt from my travel journal. If you have liked what you have read so far, please don't forget to read the whole story here.

Coming back to the recipe. This preparation is one of the easiest ways to prepare alur dum. I prepare it especially in the morning when I have to put together breakfast in a hurry. I just get the baby potatoes boiled and peeled the previous night and prepare the curry in the morning. It tastes awesome with roti, luchi, and paratha. Please leave your feedback if you prepare this dish at home and it turns out to your liking. Thank you for visiting my page !

Pui Shaak Chingri Diye - Pui Leaves cooked with Shrimps

Before leaving Kolkata, it never occurred to me that getting hands on some of my favorite vegetables such as potol, kumro (pumpkin), uchche (bitter gourd), shim (hyacinth beans), kochu shaak and pui leaves would be a difficult task. Since most of the Indian grocery stores are located far away from where we live except one Indian grocery that does not keep these veggies, we need to drive more than two hours to and fro to get to a grocery store that sells these veggies in Detroit or near Ann Arbor. Naturally, we cannot undertake such long distance drives every week for grocery purpose and hence, eating pui leaves or kochu shaak is a rare occasion. Anyway, last week when we did our grocery shopping, we happened to get some fresh pui leaves in the store and not wasting a single moment, I picked a few pounds of that. 

The beauty of this dish is that it can be prepared with all the leftover veggies. If you don't have pumpkin, you can use squash in its place and all the veggies that you have at your home at the moment. I had lots of carrots, snow peas and beans in the refrigerator and I made a good use of them by putting them together in this preparation. In fact, I believe that if you don't have pui leaves at home, you can try it with spinach. The taste may be different though. 

Kochu Shaak with Shrimps

Traditionally, kochu shaak is cooked with Ilish macher matha or Hilsa fish head, but another variant of Kochu shaak preparation that is popular among Bengalis is kochu shaak cooked with shrimps. In my maternal home, everyone is gaga for kochu shaak. Though ours was not a traditional joint family, but all the brothers of my father lived next to each other in the same plot. As a result, we grew up as a very close-knit family. Whenever there was something exotic cooked at anyone's home, my aunts or my mother would make sure to share it among each other. Kochu shaak was one such decadence everyone would like to celebrate. Of all the kochu shaak preparations, my mother's one I liked best. She made this dish so tasty that I could eat one plate full of rice only with this dish by my side. It tastes nice with roti too, but I think it tastes its best when accompanied with rice.

Kochu shaak is not available in all the Indian grocery stores here, especially, in the part of USA we are staying now. We searched in every nook and cranny before laying our hands on kochu shaak, some 60 miles away from our place, and so naturally the joy was beyond description. I tried to emulate my mother's version of kochu shaak dish, and it came out really nice. My husband was totally drooling over it.

However, before you go ahead with this preparation, remember to have plenty of time in your hand because this dish calls for an hour or more time of devotion to bring the richness.

Gatta Kofta Curry

Two of my newly married friends recently asked me and my husband about our overall experiences on our transformation into parenthood. Though the question did not surprise us a bit knowing that our friends have plans of their own to become parents themselves in the not too distant future, the answer was difficult to be summed up in one line. A lot has changed in our lives since the arrival of our son with us feeling more responsible each passing day, our old nocturnal routine replaced by the one suited to our son's sleep pattern, the once happy-go-lucky carefree souls now feeling tired and sleep deprived at all times but in a queer way, we both are enjoying every moment of our time with our son regardless of all the unusual changes our parental duties call for. When the entire US is basking in the warmth of summer going out on camping, visiting sites, me and my hubby are changing diapers, feeding the baby relentlessly at every 2-3 hours gap, giving him warm bath and massage and trying to take quick power naps in between while our sonny sleeps, but we don't complain as every time spent with him gives us thousand times more joy that any picnic or camping can ever give......so I carefully formed my response as concisely as possible in one line to my friends....'you gotta experience it yourself to feel it as the feeling is unmatched with any other feeling of life you have had so far'. I don't know how far my friends, who are apparently more uptight about the hassle taking care of a baby involves, appreciated my response but I just hope that they got the essence of my message.
 

Gatta ke Curry is basically a dish very popular in Rajasthan. I first had it here in USA when a Sindhi couple invited us to their home and regaled us with a variety of Indian cuisines. Apparently, the hostess had a passion for cooking, and she invariably experiments with her culinary fancies. Though I never made Gatta ke curry at home, I first thought of giving it a try when recently in a cooking forum on Facebook, someone shared a recipe on Gatta Kofta Curry. I changed some of the ingredients and their quantity according to my requirement but more or less they are kept as close to the original as possible. It turned out really well, so well that I managed to bag a compliment from a guest fastidious about taste.

Aloo Tamator - Alu Tomato Curry

House of Cards (Season 2) has come back with a bang with Kevin Spacey once again charming us as cunning hard-hearted Congressman Frank Underwood. I think after 'Breaking Bad' and 'Game of Thrones', House of Cards is one show that I had been waiting earnestly to reappear on air. The fun of watching the show increased manifold with an awesome platter of food accompanying on dinner. Though this delicacy was meant to be devoured at breakfast, but these days I am not used to taking heavy breakfast and so it made its way into our dinner table. I have posted the recipe of Achari puri in my earlier post and this one is the curry I had the puri with. Made in typical South Indian fashion, every morsel of this beauty was pure bliss. Hope you all will enjoy it.
 

Gujrati Aloo Curry

Happy Diwali to all my friends and readers who encourage me to keep going on with my blog. Thanks for all your love and support even though I have been infrequent in publishing posts for last couple of months.

 

 

What is your happiest memory of Diwali? Kali Pujo aka Diwali is not a mighty occasion as Durga Pujo in the City of Joy. But Kali Pujo brings back some beautiful childhood, girlhood and womanhood memories of my life spent in Kolkata. Kali Pujo reminds me of my late pet Bonnie who scared of all the resounding firecrackers bursting outside used to skip into my arms, shivering to the bones, for comfort and taking the opportunity of his dread, I would cuddle him incessantly. Kali Pujo reminds me of those long hours of chit-chat session with my childhood best friend on the rooftop of her house throughout the evening to late night with a dig into the lip-smacking bhoger khichuri from the local pujo. Kali Pujo reminds me of Nera Pora which takes place just a day before Diwali in which an effigy of a demon made of hay is burnt with plenty of potatoes placed inside the fire and after the fire is doused, those burnt potatoes are relished with pleasure.

 

Though sitting amid the pin-drop silence of my current neighborhood, it is impossible to fathom that such a mighty colorful festivity is going on in one corner of the world which has illuminated the whole country. What is most unfortunate is that I stay in an apartment where there is no balcony and the entire house being made of wood, I am quite scared of decorating the house with lighted candles lest it catches fire, so I have done my bit by lighting a string of tiny bulbs over the windows. It is looking bright like never before.

 

(The above piece I had written exactly a week before on Diwali but lazy me I took hell lot of time to edit the snaps of food. Anyway please bear with my laziness and enjoy the post that was meant to be posted on Diwali.)

 

The recipe below is not Diwali special anyway. Into my 4th weeks of pregnancy, I am trying to avoid anything that requires elaborate preparation. So this one below is quite an appropriate preparation for people looking for quick recipes. I have got the recipe from Facebook shared by one of my friends who happens to be an expert in vegetarian dishes. I seem to have a lot to learn from her. Thanks Neha.

 

Potato Eggplant Curry with Drumsticks - Sojne Data diye Begun Aloo Torkari

Today I am very happy. I found a long lost friend on FB. I have been searching her on the cyber world for over 4-5 years but her name is so commonly found among Bengalis that every time I keyed in her name in the search engine, hundred others of her namesakes appeared on the screen, making the act of searching a humongous task. When I was about to give up hope of ever finding her, today out of the blue I received a friend request from her, to my utter shock and surprise. It feels so nice to catch up with old buddies. All the memories of precious bygone days come flooding in your mind and you just drift in a wave of memories. The silly things you did together, the puerile dreams, the skirmishes all come streaming in front of your eyes and you realize how many good years have passed in between. College life would be always special in anyone's life and so many memories of mine are linked with her. I feel bad at time for having grown up so soon.

 

Anyway, allow me the opportunity to share the recipe now. It is a simple concoction of potato, eggplant and drumsticks. We call drumsticks in Bengali sojne data and we all grow up knowing how chewing on the drumsticks strengthens our teeth. Strengthening or not, I love chewing sojne data for the juicy flavor that bursts in the mouth as I crush them between teeth.

 

Sweet Potato Curry with green peas

Sweet potatoes are extremely rich in nutritional benefits. Anti-flammatory, anti-oxidant sweet potatoes have many nutritional values some of which can be obtained only through cooking sweet potatoes by steaming or boiling. Though in our part of the world sweet potatoes are extensively used in making only desserts, the variety of flavorsome sweet potato recipes found over the internet manifests its versatility.

 

 

The below recipe is not mine. I got it from madhurasrecipe.com. When the first time I tried it, it came along very well winning compliments from all. Next time I added few ingredients of my own to give the dish an extra zing. A must try out for all health freaks and sweet potato lovers.

Korola Bhaji - Bitter Gourd Fry

Not many people are fond of bitter gourds I know. I also don't like bitter gourds that much unless cooked in a stylish way with a spiked-up taste and flavor. In fact, I don't have any fascination for eating anything tasting bitter, but there are people I know including my mother, father, sister, mother in law and so much as my husband going gaga over these bitter tasting veggies, putting me to question what secret taste is there that they like these veggies so much. Ya, I know they are healthy, but c'mon eating every day something bitter at the beginning of every meal is too preposterous for me and surprisingly, I have never seen my father giving these bitter tasting veggies a miss any day of his meal.

 

 

There was a time I even wouldn't consider putting korola into my mouth but after marriage when my mom in law introduced the taste to me through her wonderful magic of a dal preparation Uchche Diye Moong Dal, I began acquiring a taste for it. I realized korola or uchche or bitter gourd is not so bad as I used to think it would be. The bitterness is tolerable and if you can cook your curry fashionably with mixing and matching few taste boosting ingredients, bitter gourd tastes really nice.

The below recipe of Korola Bhaji or Bitter Gourd Fry is one example of how can even bitter gourd tweak you taste bud. It usually goes very nice with rice and dal, but you can become little adventurous by enjoying it as snacks with a cup of tea or coffee. I bet the combination would be an innovation.

 

 

Cauliflower Paneer Potato Masala

Last few days have been quite busy for me, I couldn't manage any time out for my blog. Infact, there are dozens of recipes in the pipeline but due to time constraint, I am unable to upload them sooner. Anyway, about the following recipe, who doesn't like cauliflower!! I am yet to meet someone who doesn’t. During my childhood when I used to be a picky eater at that time too I simply drooled over cauliflower and my mother would make some nice cauliflower preparations including cauliflower pakoda, Aloo Phulkopir Dalna, Dry Cauliflower Curry and so on and so forth.

This one is, however, not my mother's recipe. I scouted the cyber world in search of good paneer recipes cooked with cauliflower as I had a huge cauliflower resting in the refrigerator for over a week, I came up with some nice paneer cauliflower concoction but none tickled my fancy. So I mixed and matched few ingredients here and there and came up with something suiting my family's taste bud. I know many people who are not fond of curry leaves, in that case drop handful of chopped coriander leaves into the curry for garnishing. The aroma would be simply invigorating!!

 

This curry, according to me, accompanies roti, naan or paratha best but yes, yes you can take it with good old rice too.

Til Kumro - Pumpkin with Sesame Seeds

Game of Thrones Season 3 is going to be aired on screen from 31st March onwards. I just cannot hold in my excitement. I have been a follower of the show ever since 2011 when it hit the screen for the first time. The story, characters and the plot are so beautifully designed and presented to the audience with full of gripping suspense and unexpected twists at every turn of the event that one is bound to get glued to the show. However, when the same was aired in India few months later its release here, I was stunned by how mercilessly Indian censor board chopped some of the crucial scenes or clips of dialogue on the ground of nudity, violence or vulgarity, thereby ruining the essence of the entire story. I wonder when the Indian Censor Board will stop treating the mass like a 13 year old child and allow us the enjoyment of seeing a full uncut version of a show like an adult.

 

 

'Til Kumro' is made with curry leaves, tamarind extract, sesame seeds and grated coconut as the base flavoring agents. But the taste will not be predominantly sour, balancing nicely between a mild tartness and a hint of sweetness. So just be careful that no particular taste overlaps the other.

 

For more recipes on Pumpkin, please click the links below:

Kumro Aloor Chakka

Pumpkin with Shrimps

Pumpkin Flower Fry

Pumpkin Carrot Cake with Lemon Glaze

 

 

Mixed Vegetable Curry with Hilsa Head

 

I love mixed vegetable curries. They are not only tasty, they are healthy. But one of the very essential

 ingredients in Bengali way of preparing mixed veggies is pumpkin. Pumpkin and Bhetki fish are

two things not very easily available in Perrysburg. Pumpkin though available once in a while,

Bhetki fish is totally unavailable, at least I haven't come across any. So in desperation recently I

placed an order in the Bangladeshi grocery store we frequent to for Bhetki with hope that we would

finally get to taste some Bhetki; though the proprietor of the store didn't sound assuring but

keeping our hopes high.

Okay now I have this hilsa head resting in the refrigerator for a while, and when I laid my hand on

fresh pumpkin yesterday, I knew I had to concoct a mixed curry using the fish head. I tossed

together all the vegetables I had in the fridge in equal quantity and made this awesome veg

concoction.

 

 

Doi Begun

 

 

I wonder at times how the recipe of Jhal Muri notching one of the most viewed recipes in my blog week after weeks. It makes me wonder because when I was posting the recipe, I was least expecting it to be so popular. There is an array of other innovative dishes to draw in people's attention than the ordinary Jhal Muri so casually concocted by mothers to satiate the evening hunger-pinch of their wards. Not that I mind for it being popular, but still I can't stop wondering. May be people prefer easy to do simple dishes over the garish ones.

So keeping in mind my readers' penchant for simplicity, I am posting a very traditional yet a simple breezy recipe of eggplant that can be conjured up within a jiffy. No wonder, why it's my favorite.

 

 

Doi Diye Alur Dum - Simple Yogurty Alu Dum

An arctic wave of cold air is entering USA via Canada from tomorrow onwards, because of which the temperature is forecasted to be dropping down below 6 F, equivalent to -15 C. Last 10 days of salubrious tolerable cold is now going to be replaced by another round of shitty cold. This is just too much for me. Even yesterday evening when we went out with a pair of old friends to a park nearby the Maumee bay, the wind though frosty was not exactly unbearable, although my friends were shivering like a leaf as soon as they were out of the car but still compared to what is looming, the climate was of feathery comfort. Today evening after I came back home after an hour having spent in the outdoor driving and walking across a yard to the grocery shop, my head started reeling being unable to cope up with the sudden drop in temperature. One good thing that is coming out of this freezing winter is no matter what I eat, nothing is clinging on to my body. I am losing weight. Now an hour spent walking outdoor amounts to 2 hours slogging in the gym. 

Talking about eating, today evening my hubby came up with the request of having alur dum that my mother in law prepares at home. It's been a year I have not seen her and tasted the range of her delicious vegetarian concoctions the very sight of which makes me salivate. Couple of times when I had been to my in law's place, she cooked this tasty yet simple alur dum caked in yogurt almost nil of spices and served with kochuri, and I literally licked the plate clean.

Peyazkoli Diye Aloor Torkari

Did you guys see Big Boss Season 6? I believe so far it's one of the most interesting Big Boss seasons ever. Though the show became a lot of more entertaining after Imam's entry and his 'nautanki' (drama) shot up the TRP rates all-time high, he was not a winning material and I am happy that he didn't win at the end. There were a lot of my friends totally gaga over Imam's madness, stubbornly having wanted him to win and if anyone reasoned against Imam why he should not win, they would start a severe argument from thereon in Imam's favour. Now they are all sulking with Imam's loss, unable to accept Urvashi as a winner. So lots of depressing status messages with unhappy comments are getting published throughout the day on FB walls and although I am enjoying reading them, but at times I feel they are just going overboard. A game is a game; it should be taken with a game spirit. Imam definitely was very nasty and rude to other inmates. His winning would have condoned nastiness sending out a wrong message to all. 

The smell of fresh peyazkoli is so refreshing na ? I have two back to back recipes involving peyazkoli. One is this delicious yet simple Peyazkoli Aloo preparation that sends a beautiful aroma wafting up through the house when it is in the making; another is a fish preparation which I would post sometime later after I am done with sorting out the snaps.

Mulo Chingri - Radish with Prawns

 

In the wake of the recent horrific incident in Delhi, some womenfolk have suddenly been stirred

 out of their impassivity into sudden sympathetic mode on the ordeal of their less fortunate sisters.
 
Please don't misunderstand me, I am not being sarcastic and I am not generalizing women with my

remark. But my observations and experiences in life have shown me that women themselves don't

empathize with other women. Most of the time I have seen women, in group, either criticizing

harshly the one woman who has taken a bold step in voicing protest against something wrong or

playing the role of mute spectators, in a manner of complete indifference to something not

concerning them,  to the suffering of other women. For instance, take the rape case of Park Street in

Kolkata. Who labeled the lady in distress as prostitute? A woman chief minister, who being a

woman herself, can be expected to exhibit a minimum amount of compassion was the first person

to put the victim's character under scrutiny. Just because the victim, a mother of two, didn't act by

the rules demarcated by the society doesn't make her a prostitute. When the power holders of our

country try to lessen the gravity of a crime by publicly calling the victim a prostitute, it sends the

message loud and clear that rape on a prostitute is admissible and not liable to punishment. What is

the definition of a prostitute? According to the dictionary meaning, a prostitute is a woman who

sleeps with men in exchange of money, but in practical life the word is slapped on any woman not

following the set of conventions drawn by the patriarchal society. 'Prostitute', a word of humiliation,

is used as a very strong abusive word to denigrate woman. (To read the article fully, please visit the

link  highlighted.)

My bonding with mulo is getting stronger by the day with the discovery of such a variety of mulo

recipes. This one I collected from a friend on Facebook. She happened to visit my blog and was all
 
praise, so taking a chance of the moment I asked her to share a favourite recipe of her especially

something related to mulo, as I had a huge mulo at home awaiting to be slaughtered. She relayed

the recipe of this one which she claimed is quite regular in her maiden home. Nice!!!!

Peyaz Posto - Poppy cooked with Onion

It's freezing cold out here now. Going out, so much as dropping by a friend's place at stone's throw

 away distance has become a job of herculean affairs when piling on a few layers of clothing is the

 order of the day. Burying myself under thick jackets and warm clothes induces a feeling of

claustrophobia in me, which is absolutely disgusting. This is why I don't enjoy winter here. But

aesthetically, winter here offers a sight of profound beauty. The view of meadows, roads and

buildings carpeted in thick snows is completely riveting. Last weekend, when we were forced to

confine ourselves in home due to constant snow falling, I busied myself capturing the snow-capped

beauty in our camera. Here are some of the snapshots:

 

 

Over to the recipe, Peyaz Posto is one of the favourite posto preparations of mine cooked by my

 mother. I love it so much that I can polish off an entire plate of rice with Peyaz Posto. Despite

 painstaking efforts, my Peyaz Posto, however, does not come anywhere near in taste to the one

 cooked by maa. I don't know what special ingredient she adds, may be 'love' has something to do

 with it. My husband, on the other hand, is more fond of Alu Posto, not that I don't like it, but I guess

 I am more in love with Posto cooked with julienne onion than that of cooked with alu or potato.

 

 

Dudhi Lau - Milky Bottlegourd

There was last week I was eagerly waiting for holidays to begin and now with holidays over, from tomorrow on, same old daily routine is to follow, which involves the ritual of cooking. Not that I hate cooking, but sometimes it feels good to just relax and have your food served on the platter. I so wish to get my maiden days back when everything used to be served right in front of me. Infact I never had to set an alarm clock, my parents being there to knock at the door for waking me up. I never had to worry about what I was going to eat upon reaching home from work. Life is so good when you stay with parents. Very small things that we usually take for granted while living with parents begin to surface in reality only when we are on our own. I learned certain things really hard way. For example, not many would believe now that I didn't know even the A, B, C, D of cooking when I tied the knot. I didn't know such simple thing like cooking rice.

 

I would spend hours on phone with mother taking down the recipes of regular meals like dal and sabji. The first time I tried making luchi (puri in Hindi), I blasted the attempt by using all-purpose flour only to knead the dough. Not only that, I had this misconception about the dough being kneaded using oil only, so I added lot of oil into just preparing the dough. Thus you may figure out the extent of my ignorance about cooking back then. The luchis turned out like papads. It was awesome by the way with me and hubby, both terrible at cooking, nibbling at whatever edible we managed to concoct together. We have walked a long mile since then and painstakingly, I have picked the art of cooking, grasping at least a functional skill at it. What say!!

 

Anyway, Dudhi Lau is one of my favourite bottle gourd preparations after Lau Bata and Lau with Moong Dal. It is a superb accompaniment to roti, chapati and paratha, and goes well with rice

too.

Eggplant with Sesame Seeds - Til Begun

The recipe of Til Begun was in my draft folder for some time now. I didn't publish the post because

 last time when I made it, although the gravy was awesome in taste, the brinjals I bought from a

Middle Eastern shop were very springy in texture, which completely ruined the flavour and hence

 the pics taken then were not up to my satisfaction. So mind it, in order to get a favourable result,

 you need to buy good breed of brinjals or eggplants that are soft in texture. Good quality eggplants

don't take much time for cooking. They easily soften. You know your brinjals are not good in

quality when they take longer time than usual for cooking and remain springy despite your best

efforts of cooking it for more than half an hour.

Anyway, this time while cooking it, I ensured to buy the best quality of brinjals from Wal-Mart. I

wonder why last time I bought the eggplants from the Middle Eastern shop, may be because they

 looked healthy and appetizing, a reason enough to allure a potential customer. You see we eat with

 our eyes first. Just as "anything that glitters is not gold" same way any brinjal that looks plump and

beautiful is not always the best in quality. In Kolkata, I never had reasons to complain about

vegetables; they were always fresh and green. I cannot report the same, however, about Bangalore :(