Ingredients
- Gajbaje, a robust stew prepared without onions and garlic for Ganesh Chaturti is a medley of roots, tubers, greens and fruit.
- You can use cooking potatoes, elephant yam (surnu/suran), dried green or white peas, breadfruit (jeev kadgi or neer phanas), ivy gourd (tendli), beans such as dried green or white peas, cannelini, fava, navy, mangalore cucumber, also called Chinese cucumber (magge), yard long beans (alsando or eeiril), kantola/teasel gourd (phagil), ridge gourd (gosale), zucchini, calabash, daikon, beetroot, ash gourd or petha, red pumpkin, raw plantain (randayi kyale), white radish, sweet potato (kanag or ratale), amaranthus, taro or radish leaves.
- Serves 8
- 3 cups of chopped vegetables and gourds of your choice- potatoes, sweet potato, rutabaga, ridge gourd, plantain, red pumpkin, squash, elephants yam, taro, white radish
- 1/2 cup dried beans of your choice black eyed peas, dried green peas, cowpeas, navy or fava beans
- 1 cup of fresh greens of your choice- taro, amaranthus, radish leaves
- FOR THE SPICE PASTE
- 1 cup of fresh grated coconut
- 1 tablespoon of tamarind paste
- 6-7 dried red Bedgi or kashmiri red chillies
- 1 tablespoon raw white rice
- 2 tablespoon coconut oil
- FOR THE TEMPERING
- 2 teaspoon mustard seeds
- 2 tablespoons of coconut oil
- 8 fresh green curry leaves
- pinch asafetida
- Salt and jaggery or sugar to taste
Instructions
- Toast the red chillies, rice and coconut in 2 tablespoons of coconut oil over a medium flame until golden and fragrant. Grind to a fine powder. Add tamarind and grind again. Reserve.
- Cook beans with 2 teaspoons of salt in a liter of water about 20 minutes on a medium flame. Add potatoes and cook another 15 minutes.
- Add all the remaining vegetables, the coconut paste and more water if required. Cook until vegetables, gourds and beans are tender.
- Heat oil or ghee in a skillet on medium flame. Add the mustard seeds, asafetida and cook 60 seconds. Add the curry leaves and cook 30 seconds. Stir oil and spices into the vegetables.
- Add salt, jaggery and more tamarind as per your paste.
- Serve hot with boiled rice.
© 2023 All content copyright: Tara Deshpande
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