The Delicious Loofah

Sponge Gourd with Nigella Seasoning

This is another quick recipe.
This is also very similar to my ridge gourd dish posted earlier.

Sponge Gourd

This is about 500 gm sponge gourd. If you want to have it as your main vegetable, you must buy more because the volume reduces considerably after cooking. This was only a side dish for two of us.

I rubbed the sharp side of the knife on its skin and the upper layer of the skin was off. 

Then I cut them into very thin slices.

Just like I did with the ridge gourds, now also I heated oil, added nigella seeds and sliced green chilies into it and then added the vegetable into it, added turmeric powder, stirred well to mix it, let it cook for a few minutes with occasional stirring and then added salt and let it cook till totally done by covering it. It there is a lot of juice even  after the vegetable is thoroughly cooked, let it cook unless the liquid dries without the cover. During this you have watch and stir occasionally to make sure it does not get burnt.

I had it with thin roti.

The Loofah 

Sponge Gourd, luffa aegyptiaca, eaten only when unripe, green and small, is not really a very popular vegetable and we won't cook it for our guests or for a feast. I belong to a community notoriously non-vegetarian in the otherwise lacto-vegetarian India and offering only green vegetable dishes to guests is quite uncommon. Our popular plant-based dishes are spicy green jackfruit curry or stuffed vegetables or pointed- or ridge gourd prepared with poppy seed paste along with at least one and usually more non-veg dishes. Sponge gourd is very commonly left in the plant to ripen and then get so dry that the hardened brown skin can easily be taken off and inside the pulpy part is dried out and vanished and only the very fibrous natural loofah inside is left.  But after becoming vegan, I try cooking more and more vegetables which we are very lucky to have easily available in our country.