How to turn Bitter Gourd Haters to Bitter Gourd Lovers

As I wrote in my blog posts earlier, I learnt cooking from my Hubby and my Mommy. My hubby taught me the ABC’s of cooking and then I started ruling the kitchen with all my different experiments. Since the day I started my blog, I wanted my hubby to write a post for my blog. Finally my dream came true, when he went on a business trip to USA. He was cooking for himself and clicking pic’s and updating on FB. Many of his friend’s asked him for recipes and he ended up writing a guest post for my blog 🙂

Read on to know what Maruti did in the US Kitchen 🙂

Recently, I was in Roseville, California, USA on a business trip for about a month. For the first week, I tried to flatter my tummy by purchasing meals from office cafeteria during lunch on week-days, and relying on Mc Donald’s burgers, Mexican burritos, Thai sea food, Vietnamese noodle soup and Japanese wasabi with rice and sea food in week-ends. My tummy being an Indian by nature, didn’t adapt itself to this “alien” food very long. Just after a week, it started craving for “desi” food. I made up my mind and I geared up myself to be a (Master) chef of my own kitchen at Homewood Suites by Hilton at Creek Side Ridge Court, Roseville, CA where I was given accommodation by my employer. On that day, I realized the importance of kitchen suites provided in the hotel accommodation. I quickly drove to the nearest Desi Bazaar near Folsom area and picked up some desi vegetables which would suffice for the week. After returning to the hotel, I was sitting on a dining chair and was wondering what would be today’s menu for my “royal” stomach. Since my childhood, I used to like any dish that is bitter. Accordingly, I decided to go with white rice, tadka daal and fried bitter gourd.

I assume rice and tadka daal preparation should be known to each and every Indian to save stomach in ‘emergencies’J.  Let me ‘try’ to describe the preparation of fried bitter gourd as I have never written a blog post in my life earlier.

 Wash a medium sized green bitter gourd with hot/warm water. (It is always good to wash vegetables with warm/hot water).

Cut the bitter gourd laterally into circular pieces each of around ½ a cm in thickness.

Add ½ a tea spoon of salt, 1 tea spoon of red chili powder and 1 tea spoon of turmeric powder.

Add 1 tea spoon of water.
Mix them well and make sure the paste of salt, chili powder and the turmeric powder is evenly applied inside and outside of the cut pieces.
Cover it with a lid and leave it for around 30 mins..
After 30 minutes, take 5 table spoons of medium semolina (rava/sooji) in a plate.
Add a pinch of salt to semolina and mix them well.

On a frying pan, pour a table spoon of an edible oil.
After it is heated, deep each of the bitter gourd cut pieces into semolina (such a way that semolina is applied inside and outside of the piece evenly) and place them one by one in the frying pan.
Keep the stove burner on simmer.
Cover the frying pan with a lid (so that the bitter gourd is cooked faster with the steam vapors and will consume less oil).
After around 15 minutes, turn the pieces upside down (so that upper portion is fried).
Add a drop or two of oil in the frying pan and spread it evenly.

Again cover with the lid.

Leave it for 15 minutes and turn off the stove burner.

Enjoy the hot fried bitter gourd pieces with rice and tadka daal