Locally Available Food Cooked With Indian Touch.

Neelaa · Feb 20, 2019

Hello Ladies,
I started this thread to share receipes made with locally available vegetables or food items in your region. In the area I am currently residing, indian vegetables and groceries are quiet costlier. So I am trying to cook locally grown vegetable with indian masala. some turned out very well, some still to try out. Do you have receipes cooked that suits indian taste? If you have any, please share it here. Thank you.

Neelaa · Feb 20, 2019

English Squash

Squash kootu
1) Peel the outer skin of the squah and cut it bigger cubes.
2)Soak channa dal two spoon and split moong dal one spoon in water for half an hour.
3)In a pressure cooker, add cubed squash wth soaked dal, one tomato and half onion cut, one split green chilli, half spoon turmeric, quarter spoon chili powder, and some hing
4) Pressure cook to three whistles on high flames and let the pressure settle before opening the lid.
5) Scrap half shell coconut, grind it to smooth paste along with half spoon jeera seed and few peppercorn as per your taste.
6)Add the paste to cooked squash and allow it to boil. add salt and finally temper with mustard seed, jeera seed, broken whole chilli and hing in ghee.
7) Garnish with coriander leaves, serve as side dish for curd rice, kara kulambu and mor kulambu.

Amulet · Feb 21, 2019

Green, sour (unripe) apples, or Crab apples (both green and yellow-red-orange variety) are useful for making Thokku.... the spicy, fenugreeky, indian jam usually made with grated mango. Substitute the grated mango with finely chopped unripe/crab apple.

1. Core and finely chop the green/crab apples.
2. Follow any of the youtube recipes for making Thokku. For example this:
3. Skip the jaggery addition step.

Apple thokku is a useful jam to accompany toasted breads, especially for old folks who have blood sugar control issues.

Apple orchards tend to have a lot of unripe apples on the ground after a heavy rainstorm. Free for the taking. Crab Apple trees are found pretty much everywhere in temperate climates. Birds eat the fruits, and carry the seeds, and drop them elsewhere.

shravs3 · Feb 21, 2019

Amulet said: ↑

Thokku.... the spicy, fenugreeky, indian jam usually made with grated mango. Substitute the grated mango with finely chopped unripe/crab apple.
Click to expand...

1.Adding Cranberry thokku
2. Swiss chard sambar
3. Rainbow chard and potato stir fry
4. Pinto beans curry can replace Indian legumes like Rajma , Black eyed peas etc with pinto beans
5. Kale baked Vada - Just replace coriander /dill leaves with kale. It tastes yummy !
6. Avocado chapati - add avocado , chilli powder , garam masala , salt to the wheat flour and mix well and prepare the dough

Sunshine04 · Feb 21, 2019

shravs3 said: ↑

1.Adding Cranberry thokku
2. Swiss chard sambar
3. Rainbow chard and potato stir fry
4. Pinto beans curry can replace Indian legumes like Rajma , Black eyed peas etc with pinto beans
5. Kale baked Vada - Just replace coriander /dill leaves with kale. It tastes yummy !
6. Avocado chapati - add avocado , chilli powder , garam masala , salt to the wheat flour and mix well and prepare the dough
Click to expand...

Wow . Nice.
Do use pinto beans instead of toor dal for sambar?

Amulet · Feb 21, 2019

shravs3 said: ↑

1.Adding Cranberry thokku
2. Swiss chard sambar
3. Rainbow chard and potato stir fry
4. Pinto beans curry can replace Indian legumes like Rajma , Black eyed peas etc with pinto beans
5. Kale baked Vada - Just replace coriander /dill leaves with kale. It tastes yummy !
6. Avocado chapati - add avocado , chilli powder , garam masala , salt to the wheat flour and mix well and prepare the dough
Click to expand...

Nice list.
Given any "foreign" vegetable or legume, an eastern cook should be able to adapt that into some old recipe.

Gives hope to locally born and raised desi children. Someone would come along from the old "home" country, and adapt to them; wouldn't they ?

shravs3 · Feb 21, 2019

Sunshine04 said: ↑

Wow . Nice.
Do use pinto beans instead of toor dal for sambar?
Click to expand...

Thanks.
I do not completely replace Indian products though. There was a packet of pinto beans lying from long time. So to finish it, I just prepared sambar out of the soaked beans. I used olive oil instead of regular oil. I also added tomatoes. Dint add any coconut also. Just added chilli powder and salt

shravs3 · Feb 21, 2019

Amulet said: ↑

ves hope to locally born and raised desi children. Someone would come along from the old "home" country, and adapt to them; wouldn't they ?
Click to expand...

Thanks @Amulet.
Haha yes this is something like Videsi - desi touch

Sunshine04 · Feb 21, 2019

Amulet said: ↑

Nice list.
Given any "foreign" vegetable or legume, an eastern cook should be able to adapt that into some old recipe.

Gives hope to locally born and raised desi children. Someone would come along from the old "home" country, and adapt to them; wouldn't they ?
Click to expand...

Nope .kids born and brought up here would like to date and get married to girls here .they're not to ready to marry girls from the home country. I've seen this with my local friend a doctor here
she has a tough time now convincing her son to marry someone from India.

Sunshine04 · Feb 21, 2019

Sunshine04 said: ↑

Nope .kids born and brought up here would like to date and get married to girls here .they're not to ready to marry girls from the home country. I've seen this with my local friend a doctor here
she has a tough time now convincing her son to marry someone from India.
Click to expand...

She's a Christian and she wantsa Christian bahu. so The Choice of getting Indian Christian girl is very limited and the boyis not ready to go in for an arranged marriage from India .so now she has some broadened her horizons and now her son is dating a Christian Chinese girl