Batatyachi Bhaji (Potato Dry Curry)

One of our most liked recipes! It is quite hot (tikhat) but extremely enjoyable. People who like to have hot food once in a while would certainly love this. This is very different than the usual Marathi batata bhaji we make. I especially like it because it neither needs onions nor any spices.

Ingredients:

Potatoes: 5
Garlic : 2-3 pods
Peas: 1cup

Hing
Turmeric powder
Red chili powder
Cumin-coriander(Dhana-jeera) powder

Karuri-methi – 1 tbsp

Salt To taste

Direction:
1.Wash and dice the potatoes. It is important to dice the potatoes in a particular way. Have a look at the photo below. You can either peel them or keep them as they are. We quite like the unpeeled potato taste. But it is up to you.

2. Heat oil in a kadhai, add the crushed garlic and saute over medium heat until it turns brown. Please note that this recipe needs a little more oil than one normally uses for cooking potato bhaji.

3. Add kasuri-methi, hing, turmeric powder, red chili powder in the oil and fry for a couple of minutes. Make sure to add lot of chili powder. The potatoes in this recipe cook over head and chili powder. No or very little water is added in order to cook the potatoes.

4. Add the cumin-coriander powder and fry for a few seconds.

5. Now add the diced potato pieces. Stir well. All the potato pieces should be covered in oil (not immersed, but rather should have a thin layer of oil on the surfaces).

6. Add peas and salt to this and stir well. Add very little (about 2tbsp) water and again stir. Cover the kadhai with a lid. Cook until the potatoes are tender and soft. Stir intermittently for uniform cooking.

7. Serve with hot naan / paratha / roti etc.

Baked /Jacket Potatoes

Jacket potato can be called as a national food of UK (of course Fish & Chips come before that).
In a nutshell, jacket potato is a baked potato stuffed with cheese/salads/chicken etc etc.
From the above description you can well understand that Jacket potato is not a healthy food....but one can always make exception at the end of a long day. It is easy to make , though takes quite some time to bake. I am not entirely sure whether this dish is as favourite in US or Canada or other European countries.


Ingredients are varied depending on what stuffing you fancy.
This is how I usually make it :

Take 1 baking potato , wrap it in an aluminium foil and keep in the preheated oven (200C). It usually takes about 30-40 minutes for a potato to cook thoroughly in an oven. If you are short on time, you can use microwave to cook it. It takes about 7min for one potato to cook in a microwave, but then you will have to sacrifice the crispy crunchy feel of the jacket (peel) .

Grate a block of cheese (prefer the one with factor 3/4 i.e. medium strong).

Chop some tomatoes, onions, cucumber , lettuce for salad.

You can make any side dish e.g. baked vegetables/roasted vegetables/couscous to go with this.

I usually make a new find, i.e. a yogurt sauce . This was invented by one of my close friends , Binnie. For this sauce, take yogurt/curd, add salt, sugar, cumin-coriander powder(dhana-jeera) as per taste. Chop/grind garlic, ginger and chillies together and add to the yogurt. Mix it all together. It is very similar to the Dahi we make for Dahi-Wada.

When the potato is completely cooked, make a cross in it by knife and stuff the cheese so that it melts. Fill your plate with salad, sauce and other side dishes and you are ready to dig into your meal!:)
Bon Appetite!!!

-Rahee