In my previous post I’ve been writing words of adoration about the new place we’re living in. As someone has rightly pointed, “A village is an ideal place to practice photography”.
Now that I have two free hands for the next few days, I’m constantly clicking various things, creatures and objects around me, but I haven’t successfully clicked photographs of people around me. The people in my neighborhood have got a different charm on their faces. They look thin and frail to the eyes, though they’re physically tough and strong.
Everyday is a learning here for us. We get to see the world through a poor man’s eyes. On the other hand, this city is a rich resource for fresh vegetable shopping. I was floored by the sight of the vegetable market which I used to miss when I was in Udupi / Nitte.
Baby bitter gourds were being sold fresh and my better half picked up a lot of them. These look scary to the eyes and taste exorbitantly bitter, but let me tell you, this vegetable has wider benefits.
It is a natural relief for diabetics and people who eat a lot of rice or consume too much of carbohydrates in any form. Bitter gourd stimulates the pancreas and allows only required amount of glucose to get into the blood. I have even heard people eating raw bitter gourd. Eating too much of bitter gourd is not ideal as well.
My MIL makes a gojju out of this bitter goodness and its always in stock in our refrigerator. I remember mother used to make this gojju with or without bitter gourd. Either ways its fun to eat this gojju during lunch with curd rice. Bitter, sweet, sour and spice blends together in this preparation.
Hagalkai Gojju
- Hagalkai Gojju is a preparation from bitter gourd, jaggery, tamarind with the main ingredients. This is mainly eaten for adding extra flavor to curd rice, dosas, chapatis, spicy pongal or idlis.
Note: In case of diabetics, you may skip the jaggery in this recipe.
Ingredients
- 1.5 cups – Bitter Gourd (Chopped coarsely)
- Sphere of 1 inch diameter soaked in one cup of water – Tamarind
- 4 tbsp – Jaggery – Powdered – You can add more if you want to)
- 1 tsp – Rock Salt – (Or Table salt – 1 tsp)
- 1 cup (250 ml) – Water
- 1/2 cup – Coconut (Grated)
- 5 – Dry red chillies (You can add more for extra spiciness)
- 1 tbsp – Urad Dal / Black gram split lentil
- 2 tsp – Black sesame seeds (Till / Yellu)
- 1/4 cup – Water
To be ground to a paste
Seasoning
3 tsp – Vegetable Oil 1/2 tsp – Mustard Seeds 1/2 tsp – Urad Dal / Black gram split lentil 1-2 twigs – Curry Leaves
Directions
- In a wok, dry roast dry red chillies and urad dal on a medium flame for 1 minute or until an aroma is released. Set this aside to cool.
- To the same wok in a low flame add sesame seeds and dry roast just for 5 seconds. Set this aside.
- Grind these roasted ingredients, i.e. dry red chillies, sesame seeds, urad dal along with coconut to a fine paste by adding 1/4 cup of water.
- In the same wok, add the vegetable oil, once the oil heats up add in mustard seeds. Wait for the seeds to stop popping. Then add urad dal, curry leaves.
- Add in the chopped bittergourd, and stir fry the pieces for 10 minutes on a medium flame.
- Extract the pulp from the soaked tamarind and add this to the stir fried bitter gourd. Let the bitter gourd cook in this water on a medium flame for 15-20 minutes.
- After the bitter gourd pieces get cooked, add in the ground masala paste, jaggery and salt. Mix well. Serve hot.
Hi Pratiba,
Nice blog. Appreciations to good work.
Can I use something else instead of coconut here – jut in case of avoiding coconut
Nithya: Thank you Nithya. There is no good substitute for coconut in this case because it gives a good texture and a unique taste to this dish. And since we are using red chillies here, the dish begs for coconut flavor.
Im newly married and i know nothing of cooking. Still i made this for my hubby. He just loved it. Thanks for thw wonderful recipe.the flavours were too good. And yes you are an awesome photographer.
That is great. :) Thanks for trying.
Hi Pratiba,
Im from Blore.. I was lukin for an authentic Brahmin style kinda bittergourd gojju and I stumbled on ur blog.
Must say the curry came out well.. However few things:
Coconut smelt raw from the curry. Maybe roasting them before grinding would help!
Lastly, the bittergourd pieces weren’t bitter.. but the curry became bitter! Maybe after frying the pieces, changing the oil would help..
Nice pics by the way! :-)
Hi Rupa. Thanks for trying out the recipe and updating it here :) I hope you added just 2 tbsp of coconut. If you feel the curry gives out coconut smell you could dry roast coconut too. Bitter gourds could be really nasty at times, specially the unripe ones. If you want to avoid the bitterness you can soak the bitter gourd pieces in salt and turmeric water for one hour (by removing the seeds and the inner pulp). Alternately, you can fry the bitter gourd for a longer time, say 15 minutes on a high heat, this method will remove the bitter taste too. Hope you try this again. All the best. :)
Very pretty. Love birds are super cute. I just tried your masala corn. it was great and tasted like the ones we get in the chats corner. Photos are getting better each time you post something new. just cant wait to see what you will post next.
Thanks a lot Divya! :)