Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Batata Poha - An Easy Emergency Snack

This past saturday, Shivani, Dhrumil and little Viraj came over to my place. Initially I was thinking, that we would go out shopping for stuff for them and then just eat out. So, I hadn't planned on making anything at home. When I said this to my mom, she suggested that I make some Batata Poha just as a snack, so that there would be somethng for them to eat. At first, it seemed like too much work, so, in my mind, I tried to resist it. But, soon I realized that it would look quite bad on my part if I didn't feed them. I quickly went through my pantry and discovered to my relief that I had "Thick Poha", the kind required to make this dish. I however didn't have any potatoes or cilantro. That meant a quick trip to the neighborhood store, Evergood Grocery Store . After the shopping trip, I got home, called my mom and got the recipe for the dish. While my mom's recipe didn't include onions, I thought it would be a nice addition. And it actually turned out to be pretty nice. So, here is the recipe..


Ingredients:
1 medium red onion - chopped
1 medium potato - cubed
1 cup Thick Poha
Cilantro - chopped
2 tsp Salt
2 tbsp Oil
1/4 tsp Turmeric
Lemon juice
1 tsp Ginger Chilli paste
Sugar (optional)


1. Heat the Oil in a deep pan on high heat
2. Reduce the heat to medium Suteé the choppped onion in the oil till translucent
3. Add the cubed potatoes to the pan and mix well
4. Add turmeric, 1/2 of salt, 1/2 of ginger chilli paste to this and mix well.
5. Cook this potato mixture covered on medium heat till the potatoes are tender (about 20 minutes)
6. While the potatoes are cooking, rinse the Poha couple times under running water in a colander. While you are rinsing the Poha, it will absorb some water and plump up. Let it sit for couple minutes to let the excess water drain out.
7. Fluff the poha with a fork and add the remaining salt, ginger chilli paste and lemon juice and sugar to it.
8. Mix this well and let it hang out in the colander.
9. Once the potatoes are cooked, add the poha to it and mix
10. Cook it for couple more minutes to let all the flavors mix with each other
11. Garnish this with cilantro and serve hot.