Kosambir or kosambari or koshimbir are no-cooking, mix and match recipes with raw vegetables/lentils, are healthy and easy to make. I love to eat these occasionally when I become all health conscious and also when I don’t want to cook any complicated dishes.
When I was doing my bachelors in Belgaum, I used to go to my friend’s house to study. There I used to have one of the most amazing meals. My friend’s grandmom, Mrs Diwan , is a great cook. I absolutely loved her cooking. Though I liked all her dishes, her festival food was the best. I wish I had so much interest in cooking that time, I would have written down all her recipes. She used to prepare a moong daal kosambir which I absolutely loved. I don’t have her recipe with me, but I prepared this last week and it came out too good. This is my Aayi’s recipe.
See Vaishali’s version of this .
Ingredients: ½ cup yellow moong daal 1 tea spn grated coconut(optional) ½ cup grated carrot(optional) ½ cup grated cucumber(optional) 1 tbl spn lemon juice 3-4 green chilies 2-3 coriander leaves A pinch asafoetida(optional) ½ tea spn oil 1 red chili 4-5 curry leaves Salt
Method: Soak daal for around 1hr. Discard the water and add carrot, cucumber, coconut, slitted green chilies to it. Add salt, lemon juice, chopped coriander leaves and mix well. Heat oil and add mustard seeds. When they start popping, add curry leaves, asafoetida and red chili broken into pieces. Mix well.
Serves : 2-3 Preparation time : 10mins
One of my readers asked me for this recipe. I was a bit hesitant to try this because I am not a big fan of bitter gourd. But since it is good for health, I use it once in a while. Whenever I use it, I chop it finely and fry it well to remove bitterness. But for this, I had to use the whole bitter gourd.
I tried this last week and as I said it was bit difficult to remove bitterness. But I know many people who like the bitterness of bitter gourd. So this recipe is for these bitter gourd lovers. The stuffing is very tasty and I liked this dish.
I don’t have good pictures of this. Somehow when I started taking pictures, my hand was shaking. I prepared it again day before yesterday just to take pictures, but still I am not very happy with it.
Ingredients: 1 bitter gourd ¼ cup chopped onion ¼ cup chopped tomato ½ tea spn cumin seeds 3-4 curry leaves A pinch turmeric ½ tea spn chili powder 3-4 strands coriander leaves ½ tea spn grated ginger ½ tea spn finely chopped garlic Oil Salt
Method: Put a cut in bitter gourd and scoop out all seeds. Apply generous amount of salt to both inside outside and leave it for around 2-3hrs.
Heat oil and add cumin seeds. Add curry leaves, onion, ginger, garlic and tomato, fry for around 5mins. Don’t let tomato to become paste. Add chili powder, salt, coriander leaves and turmeric powder. Mix well and remove from heat. Squeeze bitter gourd as much as possible to remove the white colored water out of it. Wash it well. Stuff the onion-tomato mixture in it. Heat oil in a pan and fry this on a medium flame till the outer skin becomes almost black.
While serving, make 2-3 pieces of it and serve.
Serves : 2 Preparation time : 35mins
