2 unique GSB recipes

Food is a wonderful way of expressing your inner thoughts. It is the best way of self-expression. Food connects us to our culture and beliefs. Cooking with aromatic ingredients has been proven to reduce stress. The beautiful colors, processes such as cutting, kneading, chopping, seasoning, shapes of ingredients and spices soothe the nerves and a sense of tranquility.

Chopping, mashing, crushing, kneading, slicing, rolling, etc. are all common actions used during cooking that divert attention from stress and provide an outlet to vent out everyday frustrations in a most effective way! Cooking boosts creativity.

I want share here two recipes of GSB food:

Patrado

This is a favorite dish of GSB people, it is prepared with Colocasia/Taro leaves.

Ingredients:

25 Colocasia/Taro green leaves
1 cup fresh grated coconut
2 cups Toor dal
1/4 cup rice
1 small piece of jaggery
10-12 red chillies (preferably Bedagi chillies)
Small lemon size tamarind
1 teaspoon asafetida
Salt

Oil

Method:

1. Soak toor dal and rice in water for about half an hour.
   Heat oil and fry chillis; grind grated coconut, soaked rice, daal, asafetida, tamrind, jaggery and chillis. Grind a stiff good paste. Add salt for taste. When the paste is stickier it’s better for application.
2. Wash the Colocasia leaves thoroughly and flip them over on the non-shiny side and remove the veins with a knife. Soak the leaves in water for some time as it is believed to reduce the effect of Calcium Oxalate crystals which causes the itchiness in throat. Arrange the leaves in order of their size, this helps in preparing the final cylindrical roll. Take the leaves one shiny side and the other non-shiny side; apply the paste evenly on the entire leaf, place another leaf (non-shiny side) covering 3/4 of the previous leaf and smear the paste. When you apply paste to about 8-10 leaves, fold the sides and roll them over to a cylindrical shape, apply paste on all sides and fold the edges in. Once done, you could tie a string to hold them together. Make 2-3 rolls in similar fashion.
3. Add enough water in a steamer and transfer on stove to boil water with the lid on. Place the patrado rolls in the steamer side by side and steam cook them. Make sure that the steamer water should be boiling hot, cover the steamer with a lid and let it steam on medium-to-high flame for 30-35 minutes.

Once done and completely cooked, scoop each of the roll into evenly cut pieces and serve hot with coconut oil. Should they remain for next day, shallow fry them by applying little rava, salt for taste and pan-fry with little oil. It tastes yummy.

Jeera-mirya kadhi

This is another favorite Konkani dishes. It is good for digestion since cumin seeds (jeera) and pepper (miryakan) goes into it. A lot of garlic is added to this gravy to give that amazing aroma.

Ingredients:

1 cup fresh coconut

2 red tomatoes
1 tea spoon cumin seeds (jeera)
6-7 peppercorns
3-4 red chillies
a pinch of tamarind
Oil
Coriander leaves

Karipatta (curry leaves)

Salt

 Method:

Take two cooker-boiled and cooled tomatoes. Heat oil and fry cumin, pepper and red chillies. Put tomatoes with coconut, tamarind, asafetida, fired chillies, cumin seeds and pepper seeds and salt together in mixer and make paste. Add sufficient water to the ground masala and heat it for 8-10 minutes. Do seasoning: heat little oil add mustard seed and kari patta. Let the seeds splutter, add the seasoning to curry. Add chopped coriander leaves to the curry.