Pathrado is one of my all time favourite dishes. I remember writing ‘ pathrado ‘ in the ‘favourite food’ column of autograph books which were circulated during our college days (autograph books are little books having columns as name, address, phone number, favourite actor, favourite actress, favourite food etc etc. During my college days, everyone had a autograph book, those were circulated to all the friends during the final year. Those were funny).
Pathrado is usually prepared using colocasia leaves usually grown in the garden during Monsoon. Few of these leaves are very very itchy. So one should be very careful while using these leaves. I am yet to master the skill of picking up the right leaves from the garden, if you are buying them in the market, don’t worry about itchy leaves. The shop keepers/farmers would have selected the right ones :).
Pathrode , rice and ankre tambli is the tastiest and very healthy combination I have ever had. I took these pictures are my native when my aayi prepared these delicious pathrade using the fresh leaves from our garden.
Ingredinets: 5 colocasia/collard greens 3/4 cup fresh/frozen coconut 1/4 cup toor dal 1 tbl spn rice 1 tea spn urad dal 1/2 tea spn coriander seeds 1 tea spn jaggery 4-5 red chillies 1/2 tea spn tamarind A pinch asafoetida Oil Salt
Method: Soak toor dal in water for about half an hour. Heat oil and fry urad dal, asafoetida and coriander seeds. Grind them with coconut, rice, soaked dal , tamarind, jaggery, red chillies and salt without adding water (if required, add very little water).
Remove the thick veins of the leaves.
With the help of pestle, slightly crush all the veins(this makes rollong and cooking easier).
Apply a layer of masala on the leaf. Keep another leaf on te first leaf and repeat till all the leaves have a masala coating on them.
Roll them.
Cut with a sharp knife to thin rounds and arrange them in a vessel (preferably use the vessels that comes with cooker).
Steam them for around 15min. Leave cooker/steamer for another 10min before taking out the pathrado .
Serve with or without coconut oil.
Any left over pathrados are rolled in sooji/rava and fried on the tava (since they become a bit hard when refrigerated) before serving for the next meal, to make them soft and fresh.
Serves : 4 Preparation time : 50min
Bitter gourd or karathe(konkani) or Haagala kaayi(kannada) was never part of my cooking until recently. But I knew one or the other day I would start cooking it. Beleive me, this dish and the others which I am going to post soon, never had any bitter taste. We didn’t even know it was bitter gourd.
This recipe is from my sis-in-law Rashmi. Since I could not get the Indian bitter gourd, I used the Chinese bitter melon . If I started liking bitter gourd after eating this, I am sure anybody will love it (I am saying that because I hate this vegetable like anything and I was hesitant to try anything with bitter gourd).
Ingredients: Bitter gourd (cut into long thin pieces) 1 cup Mustad seeds 1/2 tea spn Red chilli powder 1 tea spn Turmeric a pinch Oil 1/2 tea spn Salt
Method: Add salt to bitter gourd and keep it aside for about half an hour. Squeeze out the water out of the bitter gourd pieces. Heat oil and add mustard seeds. When they start popping, add turmeric and red chillies. (Since salt was added before, no need to add it again at this step). Fry till the pieces are cooked and crispy.
Serves : 3 Preparation time : 45min (including the initial half an hour)
