There was mushuri daal and rice in the fridge. I had asked Banu to smoke some brinjal and keep it in the fridge. I was going to put together a begun pora or Bengali baigan bharta with it. I told K I would rustle up an omelette, in addition, for myself.
Discovered a small problem when we returned. There were no eggs in the fridge. Forgot to stock them after I cleared the fridge before the Delhi trip. Nonplussed at plans going awry, and no eggs in sight at close to midnight, I suddenly got an idea. Inspired partially by something that Pratap used to send in his dabba.
I took out some dhyarosh or okra from the fridge. 100 g or so. Split each into half and roughly chopped them.
I then heated 2 tablespoons of mustard oil in a pan. Once the oil was hot I added a teaspoon of paanch phoron or Bengali 5 spice to this and let it heat till the flavours got into the oil.
I then added the dhyarosh and stirred it on a high flame for about 5 minutes. At this stage I added 1/4 th teaspoon of table salt.
Simultaneously I took out 3 tablespoons of ground posto or poppy seeds and soaked this in an equal amount of water. I added this mix to the dhyarosh and gently stirred it. Added some more water…about 3,4 tablespoons…covered the pan with a lid and reduced the flame. Kept it on for about 10 minutes and stirred it occasionally.
That’s it. We had this with daal, rice and begun pora.
As K said ‘you are teaching me to enjoy vegetarian food’.
I hope the Parsi Panchayat doesn’t object.
(Here’s the link to my recent post on www.liveinstyle.com on the recipe for chingri malai curry )
Hi. Nice recipe. I love okra. But what are 5 spices that you mentioned?
Hi Manju, it's called peach phoron. You can check the following link for contents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panch_phoron In Mumbai you get a ready mix at Vijay Stores in Pali Market