Konkani Bhople Bharith / Pumpkin Raita

For rice dishes like Pulav, Bisible Bhaath, we love a yogurt side dish. Even with Dal Rice, I like a dollop of yogurt. When I have a few minutes to spare, rather than plain yogurt, I make this easy and quick pumpkin raita. One of my dearest Aai's (Mom) recipes which I love.
Since its not a spicy dish, this veggie raita is good for kids too.

Ingredients:
Pumpkin/Kadoo/Lal Bhopla - 2 - 3 cups
Yogurt/Curd/Dahi - about 1/2 cup
Shredded Coconut (fresh or frozen) - about 1/4 cup
Green Chilies - 1
Cilantro/Coriander leaves - few sprigs
Salt

How to make Konkani Pumpkin Raita:

Remove the pumpkin skin and discard the seeds. Dice the pumpkin into bite size pieces. Pressure cook or steam the pumpkin pieces with little salt until they turn soft. Let them cool.
Instead of pumpkin, you can use Butternut Squash as well.

Alternately, you can cook pumpkin with little water in a pot. Make sure to discard the cooking water/liquid, so that raita doesn't turn watery.
Chop the green chili into 2 or 3 pieces. Finely chop cilantro leaves. If not green chilies, you can add fresh ground black pepper as well.
In a mixing bowl, add cooked pumpkin, coconut, curd, salt, green chilies and cilantro. Mix well. While mixing, pumpkin will get slightly mashed, which is needed. Add more curd or more coconut to suit your taste.
Pumpkin is slightly sweet, so mild chili flavor tastes good. You can add 1 tsp of grated jaggery or good or gool if you like.

Serve Bhoplyacha Bharith as a side dish with Bisibele Bhaath, Sambar rice or dal rice and papad.

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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