Sautéed Okra and Potato

 Sautéed Okra and Potato or আলু ঢেঁড়স ভাজা is a common side dish with rice and lentil soup. It's super easy and very quick. You don't need much oil.

Add long and thin slices of potato to heated oil. In one or two minutes add nigella seeds and sliced green chillies. Stir and add medium cut okras into it. (Okra cooks faster than potato. Therefore, we add the potato first.) Add turmeric powder and salt. Stir and mix well. The flame should not be two high or too low. Stir and cook for some time. Stir to make sure it doesn't burn. You will see the colour will start changing. Cover and let it cook for a few minutes. The reason I can't specify exactly how many minutes because I have been doing it since I don't remember when based on guess and feeling. I keep an eye and check from time to time. Cook it until the vegetables are done. 

I prefer preparing it in mustard oil. But that's not a must. 

We prepare the simple okra and potato curry the same way with the same seasoning. But in the curry the okra is tenderer and practically wet, a little viscous because we use even less oil, put the vegetables right after adding the seasoning in the hot oil, add salt and turmeric and cover and let it cook on a low flame. It is practically steamed. Therefore, while frying, don't cover in the beginning, but only at the end for a few minutes. Many people don't like the viscosity and for them this recipe is an option. 

Eggplant and Potato Curry in Tomato and Onion Gravy

It had been raining in Mumbai for days. I didn't have vegetables left in my kitchen. But my umbrella was broken. And it was not possible to dry clothes, so I didn't want to get out on the road. (In India we don't often use a drying machine and our hostel doesn't have any.) So, for a long time, as long as a whole week, I was eating mainly rice, different types of lentils and onion fritters (because I had some onions left.) So, I was clearly not having a balanced diet for many days.

Onion Fritters and Red Lentil Soup to go with Steamed Rice

Rice-Lentils-Chowli Beans Khichuri and Fried Potato

Eating some green vegetables became urgent. I asked my flatmate if I could borrow her umbrella and my list of vegetables started with "umbrella"! While leaving home for the market, I discovered that my flatmate wasn't there. She had to go out. Started walking in the rain, I got totally drenched as I reached my destination. It goes without saying that the first thing I bought was an umbrella. Then I bought vegetables enough for a week because I was planning a surprise visit to home.

Eggplant and Potato Curry in Tomato and Onion Gravy

I made an easy but delicious eggplant and potato curry to have with steamed rice.
Heating up some mustard oil, I added the pieces of potato first. Make sure that the potato is cut into small pieces, much smaller than the eggplant because eggplant is a softer vegetable and cooks faster than potato. After the potatoes turned golden, I added shredded onion and a little green chilies. If you like it hot and spicy, you can use for seaoning dried red chilli, too; in addition, you can also use cumin seeds.
After the onion was glazed, I added finely chopped tomatoes and turmeric-, cumin-, coriander-, and a little red chilli powder. I also added a little 'goda masala' which is a Marathi traditional combination of spices. I added the eggplant now, after everything else. I usually cut them in bigger pieces, bigger than the potato. I stirred and mixed everything well. Finally I added water and covered it with a lid and let it cook for about twt minutes. At this point you should lower the flame. But in our kitchen the flame is always low, thanks to no regular servicing for the oven in spite of several requests from us.
In about ten minutes it was cooked and the quantity of water reduced. I had it with steamed rice.

My Quick Eggplant Curry

Eggplant with Tomato and Potato

Alu-Uchchhe Bhaja

Uchchhe - a Type of Bitter Gourd

             Bitter gourd is commonly translated as Karela (Hindi) / Karala (Bengali, pronounced: kaw-ro-laa) but "uchchhe" is a much smaller and a little round as you can see in the picture below. 

Uchchhe Fresh from Market

      It is quite common in Bengal but I'm not sure if it is much available in other parts of India. Most commonly we shallow fry thinly chopped Uchchhe or boil it whole along with rice when we cook steamed rice.

Potato and Bitter Gourd Sauteed Together Ready to Serve

          To make this dish, we chop the vegetables thinly but not too thin. We heat oil and add "panch forhon", a seasoning consisting of five types of seeds (panch [a nasalised and n not pronounced] = five, and phorhon = seasoning in this context). We add the vegetables and add turmeric powder and stir and mix. We cover the lid and lower the flame and let it cook. Since we cook it this way, covering it on a low flame, we do not need to add a lot of oil. We cook it till tender. We need to check and stir in between. But if you cook regularly you know when to check. When it is almost done we add salt and mix it well and cover it again till done. It is served with steamed rice.

        Traditionally our meals start with something bitter and end with sweets though nowadays we eat neither sweets nor something bitter everyday. But if you cook Uchchhe, you have to eat it first, before putting anything else into your mouth.

Nonta pithe

I was always interested in baking but unfortunately I don't have a oven. I am always on the move. I am planning to relocate again. So, I am surely not going to invest in rebuilding my current kitchen. So, I tried to fix my microwave oven. It has the option for baking. This led to a loss of money and time and effort with no positive result. Well, then let's fry these. Back to square one!

I made the dough tomato puree little by little. Besides, I added the usual ingredients of my dough i.e. salt, pepper, a little cumin powder.

I made theses shapes stuffing them with spicy potato mash. You can be creative with the the filling and add vegetables as per your taste.

I got the idea from youtube. There are many videos available where passionate cooks from all over the share their creativity.

You can also make sweet

.

Alu Tikia

Potato again! "Alu" means potato.
According to Oxford dictionarym tikia is "An Indian fried cake of spiced meat or mashed potato:an alu tikia"  http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/tikia
Meat is out of the question since I have become a vegan. We had Alu (potato)-tikia  this evening! I was watching the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" and felt shocked and sad, and my mother made these alu tikias for me. You are pampered like this when you come home after many years!
 Sorry, the photo doesn't do justice to the delicious dish!

 To make alu tikia, my mom used boiled chick peas and potato mashed together with shredded coriander leaves, onion, a little carrot and green chillis, cumin powder and salt added to it. She mixed everything well.

The Mixture

She mixed everything well, formed balls of this mixture and rolled it on all purpose flour. But she advised me to use corn flour which she didn't have at the moment: we rarely use it.

I am addicted to fritters and my mom is not at all happy about it. So, she wanted to show me how to make a tasty snack with very little oil. She actually made it with almost no oil. She just brushed the pan with a little oil, placed the potato balls on it and turned the sides. She cooked them on low flame till both the sides of the balls turned brown. We had them with tangy tamarind chutney!

Tikias Getting Cooked on an Almost Dry, Oil-less Pan

It was delicious but I will add a little more oil when I make them, Mother! Hahahah!

Ruti-Alubhaja

"Ruti" is the Bengali word for Hindi, "Roti" or more specifically' "phulka", the very popular Indian handmade flat bread of wheat flour (ata). I usually prefer it for Breakfast, if I, for a change wake up in the morning and have a breakfast. But in many Bengali families ruti is preferred to steamed rice as dinner and most parts of northern India it is the staple food in major meals, and not rice.
This, ruti with "alubhaja", literally, "fried potato", was my evening snack one day since I was just too hungry to be satisfied with a few fritters with my favourite Darjeeling tea.
In my previous post I mentioned that we love potato and we make fried potato in all shapes and sizes. This alubhaja you can make with relatively less oil because you do not need to deep fry. This time, I peeled potato and cut it into very thin and long slices. I mixed salt and turmeric powder well with the potato and kept it aside for a few minutes. In the meantime I chopped chilli and onion finely. I heated the oil in a korai, the traditional deep and circular, cast iron cooking pot, and added the potato draining the water that came out of it. I immediately covered it with a lid. This makes this alubhaja not crispy but soft, better for ruti. After a few minutes I stirred the potatoes. Stirring from time to time is necessary to make sure that the potato doesn't get burnt, and everytime you cover it after stirring..  When the potato is almost cooked, I added the onion and chilli, stirred and mixed well and again covered ad let it cook.This way the onion will be glazed only. After the potato is thoroughly cooked it is ready to serve.
To make ruti, we make the dough of ata, make small balls of it, dust the each ball in flour and roll it out thinly in round shapes and then bake it on high flame. We traditionally use a thick and almost flat cast iron plan that we call "chatu" in Bengali and "tawa" in Hindi, and a flat circular net like thing made of thick iron wire. The pan/chatu shuld be heated already before we put the rolled out dough on it and after placing it on it reduce the flame to medium and cook till small bubbles start to appear. Then remove the pan from flame and place the half done ruti on the net I talked about above, raise the flame to high and put the net direct on the flame. The ruti will puff up like a balloon. The Bengali word for "phulka" is "phulko" that actually means "puffed up".
I will dedicate a separate post on making "phulko ruti" in near future!

Bratkartoffeln, I miss you!

Potato! Who doesn’t love this adorable starchy darling? Potato is easy and quick to cook, filling and super satisfying to eat!

I have heard that potato is an immigrant in Indian sub-continent. The British brought it in this land and now India is one of the top potato producers in the world. Potato is one of the most popular vegetables in India especially in the northern part. Though in South India also, potato constitutes the main ingredient in many popular dishes like masala dhosa, I feel that it is consumed more in North India. For example, we add a little potato in most of our dishes though we do have some recipes without potato: we add whole round potatoes, if relatively small, or big potatoes halved almost always in our regular meat dishes, we fry potato in different shapes and sizes, we add potato cubes almost in all vegetable curries in our daily meal, alur dom/dom alu – slow cooked hot and spicy potato curry – is almost invariably on the menu in any festive occasion!

When we were small, finely mashed potato was our baby food. I still love it with a few drops of virgin mustard oil and shredded onion.

That evening I was home alone! I was enjoying my own company and watching a movie and suddenly craved for a comfort much to complete the pleasure!

So, I washed and peeled two large potatoes, and cut them into pieces that you can see in the picture here.  I soaked them in cold water for a few minutes, drained all the water carefully. Then I added salt and a little turmeric and a little sugar to the potatoes and mixed everything very well. I left this stand for about 15 minutes. Then I drained the water that came out of the potatoes. I heated mustard oil in a korai (traditional cast iron cooking pot, circular, deep and thick) till the smoking point to get rid of the typical strong smell of it, added the potatoes into the oil, reduced the flame and fried them. After that I sprinkled a little black pepper powder on them and served to myself!

It was total foodgasm for my taste buds!

Alur Dom -- A Spicy Potato Dish

"Alu" in Bengali means potato. This is a very popular dish in Bengal. I am so proud that we have so many traditional vegan recipes though the word "vegan" is not known to many. Actually these plant based recipes have been part of our traditional food culture for ages, long before the word "vegan" were coined. But I think only the word "vegan" can describe them perfectly and they reflect that our original food habit was much less to do with meat than it has nowadays.
We prefer to use baby potatoes to prepare this dish but it is fine to use any type of potato. I have posted the cooking procedure earlier also. As I tried to look for it. I found it in my previous blog that I don't work on at the moment. Below I have copied the post from August, 2009.

Drinks and Some Tiny Bites on Saturday!

My friends decided to have a party on last Saturday! Everyone was supposed to bring drinks. But I do not have a taste for drinks, since I am very loyal to pure German Leitungswasser (tap water), other than which I very rarely drink milk or black tea, or sweet wine and nothing else. So, I cannot pick up drinks ruling out the possibility of a disastrous choice. I decided to make something that could accompany the drinks.
I made two types of pakoras: 1) Crispy with rice powder, and 2) soft and delicate with potato, carrot and green peas (which could be called vegetable-chop in my hometown.)

For a change, I cooked something completely vegetarian for a party!!!
And I have never seen a better utilisation of a bath-tub before. (LoL!)

Potato Pan-Cake with Schmand: My Russian Weekend 2

This was my favourite of all! This was our Friday dinner that gave us enough calories to burn for the whole next day! On Saturday we walked for eight long hours!
I can cook this for my friends!Recipe will follow.

Kartoffeln mit Speck!

Finally I had it! And I loved it!

---- Kartoffeln mit Speck und Knoblauchsauce

Karttofel means 'potato'. Germans, like us, love potato and have many mouthwatering but simple recipes with it as the main ingredient. See, they have built a whole potato cottage and a cute little potato-darling is inviting you in.



Inside there were many other options but I went for Kartoffel mit Speck because I always wanted to taste it. Most of my friends love it. But doesn't it look exactly like our beloved 'alur dom'? (Alu= potato; 'alur dom' is a very popular Bengali dish. )