#189 Gold Fish, Lemon rice and Bottle Gourd Kofta Curry

I am sharing our dinner from last night with you today. It wasn't planned .........I started out making a lauki kofta curry and the meal grew into a simple lemon rice with raita since I had some extra time. We washed it down with a tall glass of sweet, salty lassi(yogurt drink) and that ended our perfect weekday dinner.  The plain bottlegourd or lauki is a staple vegetable that you are sure to find in my fridge quite often. I've mentioned this vegetable in an earlier post Bottle Gourd Curry so read on for all its benefits.  Most often, children flee from it because of its bland taste and some adults too. A kofta/ball curry such as this one is usually deep fried and immersed in a tomato-onion-spice sauce which adds so much flavor to the vegetable.  The spicy sauce is then balanced out with a cool 'raita' - a boondi raita comes to mind!!

Boondi- the basic boondi is made with a thin batter of gram flour. The batter is passed though a seive with medium holes right into hot oil, fried and drained well. The evenly shaped globules of fried batter are called boondi. The crispy little droplets drown themselves in a mixture of yogurt, cilantro, chilli, sugar, salt and chaat masala to suit your taste, and it all pulls together as a boondi raita.  I didn't have the patience to make boondi today, and I didn't have any storebought ones handy so I came up with an alternative for the traditional boondi - Gold Fish crackers!! Who said boondi was unhealthy? Why are Koftas deep fried? Although I avoided deep frying of any kind today, the koftas and raita turned out as authentic as ever with no compromise on taste!



Lemon rice, Lauki koftas and Gold fish in a pre-prepared yogurt sauce spiced with onions, chopped cilantro, chillies and salt.

  How to make the Lauki kofta curry:
Ingredients
Bottle gourd (lauki)  1/2 lb
Gram flour (besan) or tempura flour  1/4 cup
Salt  to taste
Red chilli powder  1/2 tablespoon
A pinch of baking soda
ginger-garlic paste- 1/4 tspn
Oil  to fry using a paniyaram pan
 For gravy  
Tomatoes  2 medium
Onions  2 medium
Ginger,2 inch piece
Garlic  6-8 cloves
Red Chilli powder- 1 tspn
Turmeric powder  1/2 teaspoon
Coriander powder  2 tablespoons
Cumin powder  1 teaspoon
Garam masala powder  1/2 teaspoon
Salt  to taste
Fresh coriander leaves  a few sprigs
Oil  4 tablespoons

Directions:
1. Peel the lauki if you wish, I usually use the peel because most of the nutrition is in the peel.
2. Now, rinse in water and then grate it and steam lightly in microwave for about 2 mins.
3. Let this cool down before squeezing out all the water(save this for gravy). Add salt, ginger-garlic paste, red chilli,baking soda, gram flour and mix well together to combine.
4. Make even sized balls from this using water to wet the palms of your hand to prevent sticking of the gram flour.
5. Heat the Unniappam (or Aebleskiver) pan and grease each little depression.
6. add the balls and toast/cook evenly on all sides until the batter is cooked on the inside. Remove and cool.

7. For the gravy, place a pan on the fire and saute chopped onions in a little oil until well browned,
add chopped tomatoes, followed by the garlic ginger, turmeric, coriander and cumin powders and when the
tomatoes have softened remove and cool.
8. Grind the mixture from step #7 into a smooth gravy set aside.
9. Heat the same pan from step #7 and add the gravy along with salt, allow to cook with 1/2 cup water until
any remaining raw taste of onions and tomatoes is cooked down, add the juices from the grated gourd and cook until the gravy is fairly thick.
10. Finally, place the koftas in a serving bowl, pour the gravy over it, garnish with finely chopped cilantro
leaves and serve.