Sameen Rushdie's Indian Cookery by Sameen Rushdie

Author:Sameen Rushdie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Picador

Pyazwaley Karelay

(Bitter Gourds with Onions)

Connoisseurs of this vegetable claim that the more bitter the taste of this dish the greater is their pleasure. By this yardstick, my own appreciation is clearly very unsophisticated. I have found that I do not enjoy an overpoweringly bitter flavour. The greatest concentration of bitterness in the karela is contained in its knobbly scale-like outer skin and seeds. Unlike ‘stuffed karela’, in which the vegetable is kept intact, in this recipe the skin is scraped off, the seeds thrown away and the bitter gourd liberally rubbed with salt. This reduces the bitterness leaving only a mild pleasant trace of its original flavour.

Buy fresh, young, medium-sized karelay in which the seeds are not fully ripe and are still soft. Most specialist Indian grocers stock these bitter gourds and although they are not generally available at your ordinary greengrocers, they are not hard to find.

1 lb/450 g bitter gourds (karelay)

salt to taste (namak)

1 lb/450 g onions, peeled (pyaz)

cooking oil (tail)

½ tsp turmeric (haldi)

1 tsp red chilli powder (lal mirch)

8 oz/225 g tomatoes, finely chopped (timatar)

For the garnish

2 tbsp fresh coriander leaves, finely chopped (hara dhania)

Scrape off the outer skin from the karelay, slit them open lengthwise and remove their seeds. Cut into thin slices across the width to create open rings. Rub with salt and leave to one side for about an hour. At the end of the hour wash well and squeeze out the water. Shallow-fry these karela rings in some oil until they are a crisp golden brown, and lift them out with a slotted spoon.

Coarsely chop half the onions and fry them to a deep golden brown in the same oil. Add turmeric, red chilli powder and some salt, and stir-fry for another few seconds. Then put the crisply fried bitter gourds into the spice and onion mixture, together with the finely chopped tomatoes and the remaining raw onions sliced into thin rings. Cover with a loosely fitting lid that allows some moisture to escape. After a few minutes, when the onion rings look soft and cooked and most of the water given off by them has evaporated, your dish is ready. Garnish with fresh coriander when serving.

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