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).

Potato and eggplant slices (बटाटा आणि वांग्याचे काप)

This recipe is our sunday special lazy recipe. Slices, along with rice, dal and/or solkadi makes for a quick lunch. Whenever I crave for oily snacks, I make these slices. I prefer shallow fry snacks than deep fried ones.

Ingredients:
2 potatoes
3 small eggplants
2 tbsp semolina
3/4 cup jowar flour or rice flour
2 tsp chili powder
oil for shallow frying
salt as per taste

Servings:
3 people

Wash and dry potato and eggplants. Make round and thin slices of potato and eggplant. Sprinkle 1/4 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp chilli powder on these slices. Mix well and leave them for 10-15 minutes to marinate. After marination, it will release water, drain it. Now in a plate, add together semolina, jowar or rice flour, remaining chili powder and salt. Mix it well. 

Heat pan on gas stove. Dip each slice into the dry mixture, coating both sides well. Make a batch of slices and dry roast them on the pan. Coat the pan well with oil to cook the slices well. Cover the pan with a lid for 1-2 minutes. Then turn the slices over to cook the other side well. Coat them with little bit of oil. Sprinkle very little water and cover with lid. Slices will get cooked in 2 minutes. Keep the gas stove on simmer to avoid burning the slices. The slices should be cooked well and soft. Do not overcook them as they will turn hard.