Tonight was a full Maharashtrian dinner made at home - a first for us.
I wanted to make tomato sheer: tomatoes in coconut milk + besan slurry. I first had it in my aunt’s house, it was sooo delectable. This dish comes in a shrimp and non-shrimp version, hers is the n-s version. She made my cousin type out the recipe and email me. Very simple and ultra yummy.
Matki usal: sprouts in coconutty masala - delicious but hella work: started sprouting the beans on Tuesday to be ready on Friday. Made goda masala the next day - lots of measuring, toasting, grinding. Funny story: the goda masala recipe I followed includes niger seed. I didn’t have any that I knew of, so started without that. DH said: here you go, and brought in a 5 lb bag of nyjer seed from the shed; sold locally as birdseed!! I hadn’t even noticed. Google confirmed it was the same thing so in it went. Then today was another coconut masala paste, then chopped onion, tomato, etc. then finally the washed sprouts are added.
This had many flavours similar to South Indian kurma: coconut, coriander seed, fennel seed, etc.
Khamang kakdi: chopped cucumber salad.
Batata bhaji: dry ish potatoes.
Ghadichi Polis: folded chapatis. Ok folks, I am a challenged chapati maker. I can make regular chapatis though I rarely make them even though I prefer them to rice. These chapatis are oiled, folded into triangles, then rolled out round. Mine just stayed as triangles or made odd shapes. But they puffed out fine, so there’s that.
Interesting to me was how the flavours and ingredients of Maharashtra are very South adjacent: similar dishes, slightly different spices.
With all of this I hope I expended a good fraction of the calories ingested, in making everything. Phew. TGIF.
