Matar Malai (Creamy Green Peas)

Green Peas in a creamy sauce. Malai refers to milk cream, but I have used whole milk for lesser calories.

This recipe is for my dear friend Priya who loves green peas and had asked for a recipe. Hope you like it Priya.

Ingredients:

Green Peas/Matar - 2 1/2 cups

Bay Leaf/Tejpata/Tamal patra - 1

Cloves/Long/Lavang - 4

Cinnamon/Dalchini - an inch piece

Cashews or Almonds - about 15

Milk - 1/2 cup

Salt

Oil

Onion - 1 medium

Tomato - 1 medium

Green Chilies - 6

Garlic/Lahsun - 4 big cloves

Ginger/Adrak - 1/2 inch piece

Coriander Seeds/Dhane/Dhania - 1 tsp

Cumin Seeds/Jeera - 1/2 tsp

Fennel Seeds/Saunf/Badishep - 1 tsp

How to cook Indian Malai Matar Curry:

Soak cashews in milk for 15 - 20 minutes. Roughly dice onions and tomatoes.
Grind onions, tomatoes, green chilies, ginger, garlic, coriander, cumin, fennel seeds to a fine paste with little water. Keep this onion tomato paste aside.
Grind soaked cashews with milk to a fine paste and save cashew paste for later.
Heat about 1 tbsp oil in a pan and add bay leaf, cloves and cinnamon. After few seconds, add green peas. Sauté at low flame for about 2 minutes so that the raw smell goes off.
Add the ground onion tomato paste, salt and cook for about 5 minutes.
Lastly, add cashew paste. Cook it covered till the gravy thickens, about 5 minutes at low flame.

Serve Creamy Green Peas Curry with roti or naan or rice.

Indian Dal / Lentils

Lentils, known as Dal are a staple in an Indian diet, especially vegetarian. For me, dal is comfort food. 5 different dal varieties - Toor, Moong, Chana, Masoor and Urad are commonly used in Indian sweet and savory delicacies. You can cook dal with just one kind or a mix of two or more. I generally cook dal with 1:1 Toor and Moong dals. But then, we like Panchmel or Panchratna Dal too, which is made of all five. Most dal recipes have Toor dal as the primary ingredient. It is also known as Toovar or Arhar dal or Split Pigeon Peas . Some of our family favorite dal recipes are Dalitoy (Konkani Dal) Tadka Dal Among all lentils, moong dal and masoor dal take lesser time to cook. Moong dal is also known as Split Green Gram or Split Mung Bean . Moong dal is also used in making sweet dishes like Mung Dal Kheer Mung Dal Puranpoli Chana dal is also known as Split Bengal Gram or Split Chickpeas . Chana Dal takes a little more time to cook as compared to toor dal....

Naval Kol Bhaji / Kohlrabi Stir-fry

Green Kohlrabi called as Navalkol in Marathi and Navilkosu in Kannada, belongs to the cabbage family. My Mom used to make this stir fry very often. Just like cabbage, this vegetable in available in two colors - green and purple. I was quite hesitant about the purple one, as I haven't seen that back in India. Anyway, I picked the green bulbs and Navalkohl Bhaji with Chana Dal was part of our healthy vegetarian meal today.

Surti Val Papdi Bhaji

My Mom used to make Val Papdi Bhaji in a simple way with few ingredients. This is the first time I gave it a try here in my US kitchen. This stir fry does require little more oil, as no water is added for cooking. Dal Rice tastes great with this sauteed Papdi. I tried this Bhaji once with frozen Surti Papdi and I was not happy with the result. I prefer fresh Papdi for this recipe, which I can only find in the local Indian store. I am not sure if Val Papdi is called as Navy Bean or Fava Bean in English.

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