Saturday, August 22, 2020

Dil rice (शेपू भात)

Summer months are busy months in my household. We grow vegetable garden and love to spend time taking care of it. Some plants do well, while some just remain as unsuccessful experiments. 

One side effect of growing vegetables is you have surplus vegetables in the house. Week on week, sometimes you get same produce or harvest. The real challenge is coming up with creative dishes to use this bountiful harvest so you are not repeating the same dishes each time. 

Dil (शेपू) is not a popular vegetable in my house but it is growing well in my garden. This time I decided to use most of the leftover vegetables from my harvest and came up with this dish. It feels amazing to have a shorter farm to table turnaround time. Feel free to change vegetables in the recipe as per your choice or their availability.

Servings: 3 people


Ingredients:

10-12 stems of Dil (शेपू), washed and chopped

2-3 garlic cloves or tender garlic shoots

A bunch of green onion shoots, chopped

2 medium sized tomatoes, diced

1/4 cup green pigeon peas (tuvar) (optional)

1/4 cup peas

1/4 cup carrot, diced

1 cup rice, washed and soaked

8-10 cashew nuts

Salt as per taste


Seasoning:

2 tbsp oil

a pinch of asafoetida

1 tsp cumin seeds

crushed pepper


Wash rice and soak them for half an hour. Drain the water after half an hour and keep it aside. In a pot, boil 2 cups of water. I use brown rice hence the water quantity is doubled. If you are using any other type of rice, adjust the water accordingly. Usually rice to water proportion is 1:1 or 1:1.5 based on type of rice.

While the water is boiling, we will saute all the vegetables together. For this, in a heated kadhai, add oil and season with asafoetida, cumin seeds and crushed pepper. Adjust the pepper as per your taste. Add garlic and cashew nuts. Saute for a couple of minutes till the cashews turn slight brown and garlic is well fried. Add chopped green onions and stir fry for 5 minutes. Next add diced tomatoes and mix in. Let the tomatoes cook for 5-7 minutes. Add remaining vegetables like diced carrots, peas and chopped dil leaves. Mix all vegetables and stir for 5 minutes. Add drained rice and mix together. Stir for 7-10 minutes and add boiling water to this mixture. Add salt and cook until rice is well cooked.

Serve with a teaspoon of ghee (optional).


Spinach gravy with Yogurt (पालकाचे अळण)


Servings: 3 people


 Ingredients:

1/2 cup toor dal, cooked

2 cups spinach, blanched

1 cup yogurt or buttermilk

2 tbsp gram flour or besan

7-8 garlic cloves

chilli powder

Salt as per taste


Seasoning:

1 tbsp oil

1 tsp mustard

a pinch of asafeotida

1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds

1 tsp cumin seeds

5-6 curry leaves

4-5 red chillies


Procedure:

Combine together blanched spinach with cooked dal  and mix well. Keep this aside. In a bowl, add yogurt and one cup water. Whisk it together into buttermilk. Add gram flour to buttermilk and mix it together until all lumps are removed. 

Heat a kadhai and add oil. Once the oil is heated, add asafoetida and garlic cloves. Stir fry the garlic cloves until they turn brown. Now add dal and spinach mixture. Add salt and chilli powder. Cook for a minute. Next add buttermilk and gram flour mixture. Stir it together. If the mixture is too thick, add more water till you get batter consistency. This mixture will thicken up on cooking. Adjust water as per the gravy consistency. Keep stirring the mixture continuously on medium flame. After about 5-7 minutes gram flour will get cooked. Turn off the heat.

You can do a second seasoning on this gravy to enhance the flavors. For seasoning, use mustard, asafoetida, fenugreek seeds, cumin seeds, curry leaves and a few red chilies. If you do not plan to do second seasoning, add all these ingredients during the initial seasoning itself.

This gravy goes well with rice or chapati. Instead of spinach, you can also use fenugreek (मेथी) leaves.