Everyone craves for home-made comfort food either on cold, rainy days or when you miss your mom a lot. One of our favorite vegetable is tindora/tendli. I love the way my mom makes and Shu loves the way his mom makes it and coincidentally both our moms make it in exactly the same way :) So one day when I was missing my my a lot, I decided to make our favorite veggie with dal and rice.
This is our ultimate comfort food!
The picture below is our dinner of Rice, Dal, Veggie, and Pickle served in traditional steel plate called Thali.
Tindora or Tendli is an oval shaped gourds about 3-4 inches in size. There are varies ways to cook this vegetable, by frying it with spices, boiling with sambar (lentils), or even stuffing it with variety of ingredients. (It tastes good always!) While selecting this veggie, chose the ones that are evenly shaped and thin. The ones that are fat and bulged would have thick red seeds and would be difficult to chop. Also while chopping discards the ones that are red from inside.
You could either cut it horizontally to get tiny circles or lengthwise into half and then in thirds to produce long strips of this veggie.
We also like to add potato so peel 1-2 potatoes and cut them french style :)
For tempering: Heat 3-4 tbsp. oil in a pan, add 1 tsp. mustard seeds, chopped green chillies, curry leaves, turmeric and asofoetida.
When mustard seeds start cracking rapidly, add washed and cut tindora and potatoes.
Add salt, mix well. Cover and cook for 10-15 minutes occasionally mixing it.
When done, add 2 tbsp. of coriander powder and red chilli powder (to taste)
Mix well. Cook it uncovered so that the veggies fry in the oil to get slightly crisp.
Sprinkle chopped cilantro, squeeze fresh lemon juice and serve with rice or chapati.
you cut the Tindora so well.. i can never cut them vertical.. i always make them tiny round..
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