Mystery Produce Episode 8 - Banana Flower

Yesterday we checked out the mega supermarket at a new mall nearby.  In the produce section (which includes Western fresh herbs like thyme, rosemary, basil, yay!) I saw a pile of big, purple, conical, husky things.  So obviously I bought one.  It's a banana flower.  Peel away the husks and little banana fetus tubes and eventually you get to the pale yellow, edible part.  It's apparently a pretty common vegetable in Asia.

I made a little salad, inspired by this recipe (and cute write-up on banana flowers).  I should have discarded another layer or two of the leaves.  Our salad was a tad bitter, but still pretty tasty.  Hard to go wrong with lime juice, fruit jam, soy sauce, chili powder, ginger/garlic paste and cilantro tossed with Chinese fake meat, topped with fried shallots and roasted peanuts.

Mystery Produce Episode 7 - Tinda

I've been wanting to do another Mystery Produce installment.  It's one of my favorite things.  And there are some good candidates in my cabinet as we speak, but I've thrown away the packaging!  Or I could do one on Indian "cheese", but I can't bring myself to buy any more of it.  Maybe I'll try to sneak a picture of the cheese section at the grocery store, even though it is explicitly prohibited.  So today I just bought something I'd never seen before and hoped would fit into my dinner plan.  I bought tinda.

Tinda, or Indian round gourd, is exactly that: a little green, round, white fleshed gourd, complete with pumpkin sized seeds.  I licked it raw (it's not usually eaten raw), but am struggling to describe it.  For our dinner tonight I am pickling it.  A quick, more Korean or Japanese style pickle with sugar, salt, garlic, green chili, and vinegar.  There are quick pickles in Indian cuisine too, but they are usually soured with lime juice or tamarind.

Boaz describes the result as having the texture of a raw cucumber, but a flavor closer to an unripe pear (or something like that).  It came out pretty well.  I left the skin on for appearance's sake, but next time I'd peel it.

(See the dinner this was for here.)

Mystery Produce Episode 6 - Spices

I am making some of my own masalas, so I went to a little street vendor and bought a sort  of ludicrous amount of spices.  They were so eager to garner my repeat business, they gave me a little handful of almost every spice they carry for free.  Most of them are familiar to me at this point, but I had never seen turmeric and hing in their whole forms.

 

 Trying to start with the big yellow lumps at the top and working clockwise:  turmeric rhizome or rootstock; just under that is mace; next is a chunk of hing, which I had only seen in a yellowish powder form; a mix of white poppy seeds, coriander seeds, sesame seeds, whole peppercorns, cloves, green and black cardamom, and god knows what else; star anise; dagad phool, literally stone flower, a lichen common in Maharashtrian cuisine; cassia, which is like cinnamon; tejpata, patta meaning leaf, this is an Indian bay leaf.

The dagad phool has a mild, familiar aroma.  Who knew we've probably been eating moss for months.  The turmeric rhizome and hing are like rock hard.  I'm at a loss as to what to do with them.  Maybe I should have brought my microplane.

Mystery Produce Episode 5 - Chickoo

Chickoo!  Chickoo, chickoo, chickoo.  I just love saying chickoo.  This was certainly a new fruit to me.  I chopped it up with some mango and put it in a custard.  I can't say it's my favorite, but I would eat it again.  I like some tang to my fruit, which chickoo is not.  Nor is it cloyingly sweet.  The texture is almost grainy, like a pear.  I think in smells oddly like the fenny Boaz's coworkers brought back from Goa.

Mystery Produce Episode 4 - Torai

Today we cooked with Torai or ridge gourd or, much to my surprise, luffa!

 

Upon seeing our creation, I had what is now a totally foreign experience for me - an inexplicable aversion to trying this new food.

 

It doesn't look all that different from other food I eat, it smells good, I generally relish trying new foods.  Nevertheless, I didn't really want to eat it.  And when I did, I didn't really like it.  It's not bad, but it has all the qualities I dislike about overcooked zuchini (that's overcooked by my definition and not necessarily anybody else's).  Fortunately Boaz likes it.

Mystery Produce Episode 3 - Bottle Gourd

Shama has been giving me some cooking lessons.  Today we made the dish she served when I visited her home, white pumpkin dal.  It's good that she is doing the shopping for these sessions, because I never would have guessed that this was 'white pumpkin'.

 

 The flesh is indeed bright white and makes about the tastiest dal I've had so far.  (I'm not exactly a fan of dal.)

Mystery Produce Episode 2 - Sharbat

Disclaimer:  This episode does not in fact contain any produce whatsoever.  Mystery Produce was not the most accurate choice of name, but it sounds better than Unfamiliar Foodstuffs I've Been Buying Randomly Since Arriving in India.  One of my first such purchases was Rooh Afza, an Indian Sharbat.  Boaz figured it for a rose syrup.  It also features several other ingredients. 

Serendipitously, in my quest to buy all the spices D-Mart carries I picked up some sabja, or basil seeds.  Shama was here as I was putting away my purchases and asked about them.  She showed me that when soaked in water, sabja turns into little gelatinous balls.  Plans for supplies to be acquired and delicious drinks to be created upon her return Wednesday ensued.  Then I remembered the Sharbat!  So we combined both of these with milk and made a delightful little drink on the spot.

Mystery Produce Episode 1 - Bitter Gourd

Occasionally I see produce I don't recognize or at least have never cooked with. Today I picked up some Karela, aka bitter gourd, bitter melon, etc.

Isn't it pretty all cut up? It smells like crushed dandelions.  It is often salted and rinsed before cooking to remove some of the bitter juices, like eggplant. Or stuffed, which sounds interesting.

For dinner I planned saute it with lots of garlic, onion, tamarind pulp, coriander seeds, turmeric and chili powders.  They are not kidding about the 'bitter' part.  I kept adding that tamarind, sugar, water, salt and cooking the heck out of it.

Served with chapati, packet dal (Yes, I am lazy. It is also surprisingly tasty.) and a green salad. Not to be confused with a leafy side salad back home: in India a 'green salad' is composed of various sliced fresh veggies, usually accompanied by cilantro and lime. Yum! We're pretty reckless and eat these at restaurants a lot too.