My mom's lived in Bombay all of her pre-marital life...She has a lot of Maharashtrian friends and speaks excellent Marathi. Our language and food habits have a lot of Marathi influence though we were brought up in Bangalore.
I realised this when I visited a grand aunt in Mangalore and didnt understand quite a few of the pure Konkani words she used. At home, though we did speak Konkani, Ma would add in a lot of Marathi words and we assumed it was Konkani !
Luckily for us, Ma is really an excellent cook and has tried her hands at all cuisines, so we were exposed to food from different regions since we were really young, Maharashtrian cookign being one of the favourites.
Ma made it with either cabbage or methi leaves.
I bought this really lovely looking bunch of tender baby methi...
I started off to make a methi zunka, but cleaning this up took half a day and I was left with realy little, so added in cabbage too. It tasted awesome with dal and rice.
What you need -
1 cup methi leaves
2 cup chopped cabbage
1 onion
1/2 tsp jeera / cumin seeds
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
3 tbsp besan / chickpea flour
a pinch of asafoetida
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp red chilli powder
half a lemon
What you do with it -
Chop the onion. Clean the methi leaves. Clean and chop the cabbage
Heat oil in a pan and mustard and cumin seeds
Add onions and fry till they turn a little pink
Add the turmeric powder, asafoetida and chilli powder
Fry a bit and add the chopped cabbage and methi
Add the sugar and tsp of salt
Cover the pan and allow it to cook
When its almost done, add the besan and stir well till done
(I love it when the besan turns brown and almost crisp-those are the brown bits you see in the pic)
Squeeze the juice of half a lemon over it
13 comments:
Arch, your pictures look very good these days- look at that methi! Wow!About mixing languages I can tell the same story- my ajji (paternal side) lived in Tamil Nadu for 60 odd years she used to mix tamil words in Kannada/tulu like crazy. Once she kept saying 'takali' thegobekku. the other relatives were like what the hell is 'takali' Then they say the vegetable vendor and found out that takali means tomato in tamil!
This is bookmarked!
Arch - great recipe and great story... How much we learn from each region amazes me...
I lived in Mumbai too for a long time & I love that plaxe & the cuisine .. Lovely zunka there
Wow! Love to read ur post ..Lovely zunka as well ..Awsome Methi Pic :D
methi and cabbage sounds awesome combination, bookmarked, will def be trying this soon!
hey wow!!! sucha cute write up..the idea is good and the pic speaks for itself
This looks easy enough for me to try. Will let you know
This is interesting combination. Looks really good. First time that I stopped by your space. And by the way what does zunka mean?
I grew up in Bombay too and enjoy cuisine from that region...this zunka looks perfect, loved the cabbage methi combo ! Thanks for your visit to my site and your sweet words, I am glad you liked the molaga podi and cumin crackers so much. Do let me know when you try the parappu podi too :-)
Lovely picture of Methi, I just love methi with anything and cabbage sounds even better and healthy.
Hi Arch....Loved your zunka and also the pics.I could completely relate to your story because I am a maharashtrian "mulgi",married to a north Indian guy and staying in karnataka! Now,That says a lot,dosen't it. Zunka is one of my all time favorite,it brings back a lot of memories of my native place. Thank you for sharing your recipe.
Arch, you are my namesake! I discovered your blog only today,and made this curry for lunch as methi was there! I loved it every bit. It goes well with rice and rotis!
Most of my childhood memory includes getting yelled at by my mother, punampaul.com and eat your veggies; but I used to pay no heed to it. However as time passes, most of us come around to eating vegetables as we are aware of the countless benefits they have for our health.
Cabbage is especially one of the world's most nutrient dense vegetables readily available for us to enjoy, rich in essential vitamins such as C, B6, K, saturated fat, thiammin, calcium, iron, magnesium phosphorus and a good source of dietary fibers.
But I never liked any cabbage recipe other than in noodles.
This cabbage recipe when I tried at home was not really appreciated by my family but it was really yummy too. Thanks for sharing this delicious preparation. Keep posting wonderful recipes like this.
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