I remember the mock fights with my sisters using this lengthy, stout vegetable, when we were children. This vegetable was our makeshift club in our funny fights. There are other stories that I still could remember to this day related to this vegetable. My mother used to plant this vegetable every year in our backyard and the crop was surplus to our family… in those days I dreamt of making a lot of money by selling surplus produce, which never materialized. After some time we were tired of eating this vegetable and I tried to convince my mother not to plant this vegetable in vain. One year we had a crop of more than 200 of these and needless to say, if you were our neighbor during that time, you would have received some of these from us for free, you might have begged us not to sent any more too.:)
Sorakaya in Telugu and bottle gourd, lauki, dudhi or lau in different Indian languages, here is one of my mother’s recipe with bottle gourd. Not a lot of ingredients, very simple and basic – tastes good only with chapatis and jowar roti.
Recipe:
Bottle gourd – medium sized – outer skin peeled, then cut into cubes.
1 cup of dalia(pappulu, pottu kadalai) – finely powdered
Dalia or Pappulu is a type of dal made by roasting the chana dal or bengal gram
1 teaspoon of red chilli powder
1/2 teaspoon each of salt and turmeric
Jaggery, one tablespoon or to your liking
Heat one teaspoon of peanut oil in a big saucepan, toast mustard seeds, cumin and curry leaves. Add the bottle gourd cubes. Cover and cook them in their own moisture. When they are little bit softened, add the finely powdered dalia (pappulu), red chilli powder, salt, turmeric and jaggery. Add half glass of water and mix them all thoroughly, without any lumps. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes until the sauce thickens and bottle gourd pieces turn soft.
Serve hot with chapatis or with jowar(Sorghum) roti.
Bottle gourd curry and chapatis
After two days of silence in our kitchen (because of newyear celebrations at friends house), Vijay and I prepared this simple meal today.
Recipe source: Amma
Note to the reader: The sauce to this curry is mainly made of dalia powder. If you think, there is not enough sauce, powder some more dalia and add it to the curry and adjust the seasoning like salt and jaggery to your taste.
