Gourd of Honour
Don’t turn up your nose when you hear of lauki, kaddu or tinda. A lot can be done with these seasonal vegetables
Summer is the time for lauki and
kaddu, for parval/patol that can be crispy fried or curried as a heartier gravy
and eaten with arhar dal and rice for comfort lunches in UP and Bihar. It is the time for those delicate green tinda or
torai, my favourite seasonal vegetables, whatever form they take — as the
fancier grilled zucchini of restaurants or in the bhunaoed form at home, where
it is cooked with onions till the water evaporates and it becomes almost like
chutney.
It is really strange how all these members of the extended gourd family are treated with such disdain by most people in India despite their clear culinary importance in our regional cuisines. Restaurants hardly ever dare sell them and even at home, thanks to year-round mushrooms, peas, peppers and cauliflower now, their importance in the modern Indian kitchen is decreasing. And yet there can be nothing more delicious — and nutritious — than these fresh green veggies.
Go Glocal
One of the reasons why people wrinkle up their noses at these gourds is because of the mundane home-style preparations. Of course, you could be like me and enjoy scooping off red pumpkin, cooked in mustard oil, tempered with bitter fenugreek seeds and sprinkled with dried mango powder for a sweet-sour flavour. But the globalisation of taste means more and more people are gravitating towards other international cuisines.
That is fine. Because squash, zucchini, cucumbers and so on are important ingredients in any summer cuisine and you can use these to toss up trendy pastas, interesting soups, stir-frys and grills. Our red pumpkin is so versatile that it can be stuffed into handmade ravioli (roll out the dough, cut into squares, fill kaddu-mixedwith Parmesan, seal, cook in boiling water), and served up in a light lemon-buttery sauce. In fact, a recipe I have makes this even simpler by using readymade wonton wrappers for the pasta and tossing the cooked ravioli in a sauce made from chicken broth and butter.
Soups, Curries…
Then there is the pumpkin soup — cook slices of red pumpkin (winter squash of America with yellow-orange flesh) with onions in a little olive oil in a pan and season. Blend. Serve warm or cool (stir in some cheese if you like) with bread. Abroad, it is butternut, the winter squash, that is used to make this and other dishes such as Thai red curry.
But pumpkin available this season
can be used as well.
For the Thai red curry, try an unusual version with squash and cherry
tomatoes (heat the paste in oil, add pumpkin, and if you like some chicken. Cook till these are tender, add coconut milk and cherry tomatoes, season with fish sauce or salt, add a little lime juice if you like and some kaffir lime leaves). Though, in India, restaurants go out of their way to dunk broccoli, baby corn and carrots into any Thai curry, squash really is an authentic ingredient in many versions of the red curry — just as brinjal is in green curries.
Zucchini or torai (snake gourd) can be julienned and tossed with extra-virgin olive oil and spaghetti to give you pasta with fibre. It is also a brilliant vegetable to just grill lightly (try pan-grilling with some olive oil). Combine with other veggies like peppers and tomatoes, sprinkle some pepper and salt, or even a light tomato sauce, like chef Rajiv Malhotra of Old World Hospitality suggests, and viola! C’est Chine, a Chinese restaurant, at the Jaypee Agra does a good version of “Hunan style” vegetables using zucchini and peppers, which are lightly blanched, tossed with ginger and garlic in sesame oil and then dressed with chilli bean sauce and soya sauce.
Cool Cucumber
The delicate parval/patol is one of the most ancient Indian vegetables around. Last week, as I was lunching on some brilliant Assamese food cooked by a friend, I discovered an unusual use for it. Papori had batter-fried (halve and scoop out the seeds) it, wrapped in besan, to make a crunchy, khar (bitter) first course which we went on to nibble with the second course of rice and black urad dal that was cooked with white pumpkin in it.
If black lentils can be cooked with gourd/pumpkin, cucumber can be cooked with yellow lentils. Dosakai pappu is an Andhra preparation, where you boil the arhar dal and keep aside. Then cut cucumber into medium pieces and prepare a tempering of red chillies, curry leaves, mustard seeds, and asafoetida. Add cucumber to this and some tamarind juice. Cook till soft. Add the dal, season with salt and sugar and serve with rice.
Finally, there’s the bitter gourd, karela. A popular and painstaking recipe in my family is for stuffed bitter gourd, where the karela is stuffed with fried onions and a dry spice mix of amchoor and fennel powder. It is then tied with strings and fried. You can try a Lahori version that stuffs small karela with mince that I tried at the ITC Maurya recently. Make a gravy with fried onions, garlic and yoghurt and then cook the stuffed bitter gourd in it till they change colour. Bon appétit!
ALL IN THE FAMILY
The gourd family, characterised by trailing plants, fleshy fruits with a hard covering and numerous seeds inside, is one of the most ancient vegetable (and fruit, after all, melons also belong to this) family around. Several gourds, including kheers, were known in ancient India and Africa, though the pumpkin or squash is attributed to South America. The winter squash of America is our own kaddu/ lal-kumra or red pumpkin. The summer squash of America is our safed-kaddu. Char magaz seeds, used to thicken Mughal-style gravies, and also as crunchy toppings for sweets, are actually the seeds of pumpkin, squash, melon and watermelon. DID YOU KNOW Morton, Illinois, is the self-proclaimed pumpkin capital of the world. In 2008 the state produced 496 mn pounds of pumpkins
It is really strange how all these members of the extended gourd family are treated with such disdain by most people in India despite their clear culinary importance in our regional cuisines. Restaurants hardly ever dare sell them and even at home, thanks to year-round mushrooms, peas, peppers and cauliflower now, their importance in the modern Indian kitchen is decreasing. And yet there can be nothing more delicious — and nutritious — than these fresh green veggies.
Go Glocal
One of the reasons why people wrinkle up their noses at these gourds is because of the mundane home-style preparations. Of course, you could be like me and enjoy scooping off red pumpkin, cooked in mustard oil, tempered with bitter fenugreek seeds and sprinkled with dried mango powder for a sweet-sour flavour. But the globalisation of taste means more and more people are gravitating towards other international cuisines.
That is fine. Because squash, zucchini, cucumbers and so on are important ingredients in any summer cuisine and you can use these to toss up trendy pastas, interesting soups, stir-frys and grills. Our red pumpkin is so versatile that it can be stuffed into handmade ravioli (roll out the dough, cut into squares, fill kaddu-mixedwith Parmesan, seal, cook in boiling water), and served up in a light lemon-buttery sauce. In fact, a recipe I have makes this even simpler by using readymade wonton wrappers for the pasta and tossing the cooked ravioli in a sauce made from chicken broth and butter.
Soups, Curries…
Then there is the pumpkin soup — cook slices of red pumpkin (winter squash of America with yellow-orange flesh) with onions in a little olive oil in a pan and season. Blend. Serve warm or cool (stir in some cheese if you like) with bread. Abroad, it is butternut, the winter squash, that is used to make this and other dishes such as Thai red curry.
But pumpkin available this season
can be used as well.
For the Thai red curry, try an unusual version with squash and cherry
tomatoes (heat the paste in oil, add pumpkin, and if you like some chicken. Cook till these are tender, add coconut milk and cherry tomatoes, season with fish sauce or salt, add a little lime juice if you like and some kaffir lime leaves). Though, in India, restaurants go out of their way to dunk broccoli, baby corn and carrots into any Thai curry, squash really is an authentic ingredient in many versions of the red curry — just as brinjal is in green curries.
Zucchini or torai (snake gourd) can be julienned and tossed with extra-virgin olive oil and spaghetti to give you pasta with fibre. It is also a brilliant vegetable to just grill lightly (try pan-grilling with some olive oil). Combine with other veggies like peppers and tomatoes, sprinkle some pepper and salt, or even a light tomato sauce, like chef Rajiv Malhotra of Old World Hospitality suggests, and viola! C’est Chine, a Chinese restaurant, at the Jaypee Agra does a good version of “Hunan style” vegetables using zucchini and peppers, which are lightly blanched, tossed with ginger and garlic in sesame oil and then dressed with chilli bean sauce and soya sauce.
Cool Cucumber
The delicate parval/patol is one of the most ancient Indian vegetables around. Last week, as I was lunching on some brilliant Assamese food cooked by a friend, I discovered an unusual use for it. Papori had batter-fried (halve and scoop out the seeds) it, wrapped in besan, to make a crunchy, khar (bitter) first course which we went on to nibble with the second course of rice and black urad dal that was cooked with white pumpkin in it.
If black lentils can be cooked with gourd/pumpkin, cucumber can be cooked with yellow lentils. Dosakai pappu is an Andhra preparation, where you boil the arhar dal and keep aside. Then cut cucumber into medium pieces and prepare a tempering of red chillies, curry leaves, mustard seeds, and asafoetida. Add cucumber to this and some tamarind juice. Cook till soft. Add the dal, season with salt and sugar and serve with rice.
Finally, there’s the bitter gourd, karela. A popular and painstaking recipe in my family is for stuffed bitter gourd, where the karela is stuffed with fried onions and a dry spice mix of amchoor and fennel powder. It is then tied with strings and fried. You can try a Lahori version that stuffs small karela with mince that I tried at the ITC Maurya recently. Make a gravy with fried onions, garlic and yoghurt and then cook the stuffed bitter gourd in it till they change colour. Bon appétit!
ALL IN THE FAMILY
The gourd family, characterised by trailing plants, fleshy fruits with a hard covering and numerous seeds inside, is one of the most ancient vegetable (and fruit, after all, melons also belong to this) family around. Several gourds, including kheers, were known in ancient India and Africa, though the pumpkin or squash is attributed to South America. The winter squash of America is our own kaddu/ lal-kumra or red pumpkin. The summer squash of America is our safed-kaddu. Char magaz seeds, used to thicken Mughal-style gravies, and also as crunchy toppings for sweets, are actually the seeds of pumpkin, squash, melon and watermelon. DID YOU KNOW Morton, Illinois, is the self-proclaimed pumpkin capital of the world. In 2008 the state produced 496 mn pounds of pumpkins
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