Papad ki sabji and misc.

When the breaking dawn sees you in the kitchen, having already finished baking a pound cake, mixing the batter for chocolate cupcakes and the cooker whistling away in preparation for a batch of sweet pongal, then it's party time for my kids :) It has been raining cats and dogs here since yesterday and so I magnanimously decided to keep the kids home from school (had to extract a promise from them that they would play amicably together and allow me to work for a few hours, otherwise I was driving them to school myself, rain or no rain!). 

Sweet or chakkarai pongal is one of my favourite sweets, and no one makes it better than my mom. After years of practice, I guess she can make this dish in her sleep and it tastes absolutely delicious even though she does not add dollops of ghee to it. Warm and mushy or cold and firm (which is the way I like it), it is the perfect comfort food as far as I am concerned. It's been frustrating for me that I can never get my sweet pongal to taste as good as my mom's (it doesn't even come close). I always console myself by blaming the quality of the jaggery, rice and dal...everything, in short, except my culinary talent :) This year, 2013, I am going to crack this recipe!!!

Today, the kids had requested burgers for lunch so I was wondering what to whip up for myself. Something really quick and non-fuss. Aha! Papad ki sabzi! The first I heard of this strange dish was from my Marwari friends who claimed it was a lifesaver when you were short of time and/or there were no vegetables in the fridge. Having tasted it once, I was hooked. The recipe I used today was different from what my friends told me (they skipped the curd but added tomatoes) but the popular internet versions all seem to incorporate dahi. I finally used Sanjeev Kapoor's recipe here.

As expected it was absolutely yum and I definitely plan to make more of this dish. It may be a mundane dish for a lot of people but it's definitely a novel delicacy for me! Here's a pic of all the ingredients simmering away :)

PS: The only thing to remember is to go easy on the salt. I forgot that the papads themselves have salt so the dish was a tad saltier than I like...but my salt tolerance is very low so it might be quite ok for most people.
PPS: This is to be eaten hot with rotis. The besan can make it pretty smudgy after a bit, but I guess that can be rectified by adding water and boiling again. I saw several recipes that did not use besan so that's another option.