I made something out of pumpkin today. I planned on trying out a Bihari recipe from BBC Good Food India's June issue, but it turned out that I didn't have most of the ingredients. Yeah even something as basic as ginger. Grocery shopping is my pet peeve and I will be more than happy when my mother comes and takes that over for a couple of weeks. I don't mind cooking two meals for her in exchange. The problem is a) the poor to pathetic quality of most vegetables in this region ( I think people here just don't eat well, or are not bothered) b)if two things you need are available at any given place then the third isnt. Ginger of course is available everywhere , so I'm just making excuses, when basically I forgot :). Sitting down and making a list never works because I promptly forget stuff while making the list, or I leave the list at home. I used to use a note taking app on my phone, which was good, since the phone is kind of surgically attached to one's palm, one can just jot down items as and when they occur to one.
So I decided to modify the pumpkin recipe to a great extent. Pumpkin is hellish to cut so I usually ask the vegetable seller to slice it longitudinally for me. I put these long slices into the microwave for ten minutes, with a little bit of oil (optional). They come out all nice and soft and that is when I slice them into little pieces. I used a tadka of kalonji (nigella seeds) and red chillies. I also used a lot of boris, (those bengali lentil globules/spheres?) which make any dish taste nice. People usually deep fry them, but being lazy I just dry roast them in the Kadai before frying the tadka in the same kadai. Once the pumpkins came out nice and soft I just sliced them and put them into the kadai with the tadka and the bori and added salt, rock salt and amchur and stirred it together and let it be there for some time. Didn't taste too bad, texture was interesting. Would have been better if I'd had the energy to peel the pumpkin, but they eat them with skins on in S. India it seems so I guess it doesn't poison me and peel is supposed to be good for you, roughage and what not.
So I decided to modify the pumpkin recipe to a great extent. Pumpkin is hellish to cut so I usually ask the vegetable seller to slice it longitudinally for me. I put these long slices into the microwave for ten minutes, with a little bit of oil (optional). They come out all nice and soft and that is when I slice them into little pieces. I used a tadka of kalonji (nigella seeds) and red chillies. I also used a lot of boris, (those bengali lentil globules/spheres?) which make any dish taste nice. People usually deep fry them, but being lazy I just dry roast them in the Kadai before frying the tadka in the same kadai. Once the pumpkins came out nice and soft I just sliced them and put them into the kadai with the tadka and the bori and added salt, rock salt and amchur and stirred it together and let it be there for some time. Didn't taste too bad, texture was interesting. Would have been better if I'd had the energy to peel the pumpkin, but they eat them with skins on in S. India it seems so I guess it doesn't poison me and peel is supposed to be good for you, roughage and what not.
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