Ingredients

Let’s Cook!

• 1
  Rinse the soaked beans and pressure cook them with 7-8 cloves of garlic, 1 tsp turmeric powder, all of the curry powder, salt and water enough to just cover the beans. The cooked beans should be intact but mush at the slightest pressure. Set aside.
• 2
  Roughly chop the vegetables and boil them till they are 3/4th cooked. Boiling the bottle gourd / calabash separately is advisable as it will disintegrate if cooked as much as the other vegetables. Set aside.
• 3
  Heat oil in a large curry pot. Add the clarified butter to it and let it melt.
• 4
  Next, add the mustard seeds and the fennel seeds and let them sputter. Add the fenugreek seeds. Take care not to burn them as it would spoil the basic sauce.
• 5
  Add the chopped onion to this and fry till they are semi translucent after which add the ginger garlic paste and fry till the raw smell is no more.
• 6
  Add the chopped curry leaves and slitted green chillies and fry. The aroma at this point would be a rich smell without any rawness to it.
• 7
  Add the chopped tomatoes and let the mixture blend. Add the salt and remaining turmeric powder, all of the red chilli powder to this. Let the tomatoes dissolve and the oil separate. Add a little stock from the boiled vegetables if the mixture is too dry.
• 8
  After the basic sauce is ready, add all the beans and vegetables along with the water it was cooked in. If you feel that the liquid part of the curry is less, add hot water and mix it in. Let it boil for 5-7 minutes.
• 9
  Add the tamarind sauce and asafoetida to the curry and boil for another 5 minutes. Finish with chopped cilantro leaves and serve hot.
• 10
  This curry can be eaten with rice, any kind of bread or even as a stand alone dish, sort of like an Indian version of the Mexican chili. You can customize the beans and vegetables according to their availability in your vicinity.