Creamy BottleGourd Curry and my goodie bag from London

Hi All! Today my parents returned back from a vacation in UK. They and my SIL got me a bag of goodies, which I would love to show you and I definitely want to use them sooooon. The best goodie is obviously a book by Peter Reinhart. Thanks so much G and P. This is my Bhai-Dooj gift from my brother. The other two small books are sent by brother’s neighbour Mrs.Gwyn, who came to know from G that I am into food blogging. She gave it to her to pass them to me. Thanks so much Gwyn aunty and thanks so much G to actually pass them to me.

When they reached home it was lunch time and I had cooked Bottle Gourd. Ya, bottlegourd again……my father and bottlegourd have some strange connection…I am always left with this vegetable to cook whenever he visits, so this time again I had this challenge of feeding him the vegetable, without him making a fuss.

I am writing the conversation we had after they reached home.

Father- Make some tea for me and  give me something to eat.

Me- You want snacks to eat or shall I serve you food.

Father- What have you cooked?

Me- Bottle gourd

Father- Then I will have snacks only.

Me- Taste it once, it’s good.

Father- No!

Mother- I will have some bottle gourd curry with roti.

I served  the curry and roti to my Mom and some snacks and tea to my father. My mom agrees that the curry was very tasty and insists on my father to taste it. He tastes it unwillingly and has a smile on his face and takes my mother’s plate and starts eating. I serve my Mom again.

Father- Very tasty, you have managed to hide the bottle gourd. How have you cooked this?

In fact during the dinner also he could not stop praising the curry. In his words he could not believe that Bottle gourd can be cooked so tasty…

So this tasty curry which I have used to deceive Bottle gourd, is enriched with lots of coriander powder, some cream and cooked in a mix of oil and clarified butter….why will it taste bad? Right!!! And the best part is it’s very original.

So here I go with the recipe…

Ingredients

Bottle gourd about a kg  peeled and finely chopped

3 onions roughly chopped

3 tomatoes

200ml low fat cream

4 garlic pods

5-6 tbsp coriander powder

1 1/2 tsp red chili pwd

salt to taste

clarified butter+oil mix for cooking

1 strand of curry leaves chopped

1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds

1 tsp mustard seeds

a pinch of garam masala

Method

Heat oil and clarified butter add mustard, fenugreek seeds and then curry leaves.

Grind coarsely together the onions,tomatoes and garlic, put this in the oil mix. Cook it till the oil separates. Now add the salt, coriander pwd and red chili pwd.

Add the bottle gourd and cook till half done. Now add the cream and cook completely. Add a little water to bring it to a  thinner gravy consistency. Put the garam masala, mix and serve with hot rice/paratha/roti.

Sending this to Think Spice-Think Coriander seeds hosted by Priya at Priya’s easy n tasty recipe and is the brain child of Sunita Bhuyan