Monday, September 26, 2005

Greens gone sour

I bought too many vegetables at the Indian grocers' last weekend. One of the lot was Gongura or sour greens. These greens with their hard, red stalks are a speciality from the South-eastern state of India- Andhra Pradesh. True to their name, they have a sourness that do not go away when cooked. My mom introduced gongura to me- she makes the traditional gongura chutney that is intensely hot and it goes well when mixed with rice and ghee. I wanted to make this chutney but due to my cramped vegetable drawer, the greens had lost their sheen and their leaves had gone brown. I salvaged about a cup of the leaves. What to do with so little? So I searched some of the Andhra blogs like Mahanandi, My cuisine and Passages for a new gongura recipe. But I found one for gongura dal elsewhere and here is how it goes:

Dal with sour greens

3/4 cup pigeon peas, cooked
2 handfuls Gongura leaves, coarsely chopped
4 Green chillies, chopped
1 medium onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, sliced
pinch of Turmeric
1 small tomato, chopped
1 tsp cayenne
Salt to taste

Tempering:-

1/2 tsp each Mustard seeds,cummin, urad dal, 2 red chillies(broken),Asafoetida,curryleaves

Make tempering with the given ingredients using 1 tsp oil/ghee,add green chillies, onion,garlic and fry till they get pinkish brown. Add gongura leaves(chopped) and cook, covered for 2 minutes. Now add tomatoes, cayenne, turmeric and salt. Saute for another minute. Add the cooked dal and enough water to make the dal as thin as you like. Simmer for 3 min or so. Serve with rice or roti. This dal is hot and spicy. But you can always reduce the cayenne.

6 comments:

  1. LOVE gongura pickle. Love it in dal too. Andhra food is just so yummy! Mika, do you know if gongura is called "sorrel" in English?

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  2. Hi Shammi- I do not know about the english name. But sorrel is available here. I will take a good look next time.

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  3. hi mika, i've never had the pleasure of tasting gongura before - thanks for another wonderful (not to mention educational!) post...

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  4. Tag, your it! Im tagging you for the meme thats going around- hope you can play along!

    http://fromthepantry.blogspot.com/2005/09/235-meme.html

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  5. Mika... I never made this way, but sounds great. I made gongura dal today. Slightly different from your recipe. But its hard to spoil gongura dal unless you burn the dal:)

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  6. Hi Indira- This is an Internet version. It may not be authentic. It would be great if you can post your version of it as well as that for gongura chutney.

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