Bottlegourd is one ingredient that is used in great regularity in a lot of Indian vegetable dishes. It is sometimes stuffed, to make dishes such as lauki musallam, added to make a sambar, added into curries - Or even made into pickles. Today's recipe is an example of the latter, and it goes by the name Sorakkaya Pachadi.
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Ingredients
· Bottlegourd –depending how much chutney you want
· Oil – 4 TS
· Mustard Seeds – 1 TBS
· Cumin Seeds – 1 TBS
· Red Chilli – 2-4 pieces
· Urad Daal – 3 TBS
· Curry Leaves – 5 pieces
· Garlic – half a head
· Tamarind – 1 TBS
· Green Chilli – 2 medium size
· Hing – 1 TSP
· Turmeric – 1 ½ TSP
· Salt – to taste
· Sugar - pinch
Instructions
1. For this recipe, we are going to temper the ingredients first, instead of last. Take some oil in a pan, once the oil becomes hot, add urad daal. Cook this daal for a few minutes, and then add mustard seeds, cumin seeds, red chilli and curry leaves. After a minute or so, remove these ingredients and keep aside, but keep some of the oil in the pan.
2. In the oil, add garlic and green chilli. There is no need to chop or dice these ingredients as we will blend them later. Once they have cooked, add hing, turmeric and tamarind.
3. After a few minutes of cooking, add the bottergourd into the pan. This chutney is actually something that historically used to be made with the leftovers of bottlegourd. So if you want, you can even add the bottlegourd skin into this. But cooking time will be slightly longer if you add the skin.
4. Add salt and sugar, and then cook this bottlegourd for 8-10 minutes.
5. Then put this bottlegourd mixture into a blender and blend until it is a coarse paste. Then combine this paste with the tempering that was done at Step 1 and mix together.
6. Done!
