Monday, October 18, 2010

Saibhaji/ Spinach cooked with Gram daal

A super healthy and  finger licking dish for sindhi's all around the world:)   This is a very traditional sindhi dish. A sindhi who has not eaten saibhaji is the most deprived Sindhi :(  Non Sindhi's I urge you to try this dish !

This dish is packed with nutrition and the goodness of garlic and tomato's. Very easy to make once you have the spinach washed and chopped. I normally buy the big 2 pound bag from Costco,clear my sink,fill it water and cut the bag open and drop all the contents into the sink. I will give it a thorough wash under running water.Then I steam it in the rice cooker in 2-3 batches and store it in separate containers for later use. So making saibhaji for me is super quick. But for those of you who do not buy this big pack I would recomend you wash it nice and chop the spinach which I do not ,as it has already been steamed by me.



Ingredients:
spinach- 1 small bunch or a small packet weighing 250 gms
Sua/Dill : 25 gms ( fresh not the dried one)
Chana dal/gram dal: 1/2 a cup soaked for 20 minutes
potato- 1 medium sized roughly diced into 2 inch pieces
I flowerlet of Broccoli and cauliflower each,carrots - 6 baby carrots , egg plant -2 inch piece , green mango -1 small peeled and washed. You can start to slice the raw mango till you get to the Stone/seed. Slice it close if you do not want to waste any. Get rid of the stone.
Tomato: 1 large
Green Chilli's : 2
Garlic- 6 flakes
Turmeric : 1/2 tsp
salt: 1tsp
Paprika: 1/2 tsp for seasoning along with 1tbsp olive oil.
asfoetida: Just a pinch ( It is an antiflatulent )

method:

Chop everything roughly, you can drop the cauliflower,broccoli and carrots without chopping into the pressure cooker along with everything else except for GARLIC, OIL and PAPRIKA. Add 1/2 a cup of water and pressure cook for 12-15 minutes. Chana dal takes slightly longer,it should easily mash when pressed between the finger and the thumb. Shut the flame and let it stay in the cooker till all the steam escapes on its own. Remove the lid and mash the entire contents with the back of the ladle or a potato masher till the appearance is smooth and no bits and pieces of vegetable are visible.

Now take a small frying pan,heat 2 tbsp oil and when the oil is hot add a pich of asfoetida and pound the garlic roughly and add to the oil.Shut the flame and  add 1/2 tsp of paprika and very quickly add this seasoning to the saibhaji before the paprika gets burnt in the hot oil and looses its red color. Enjoy it with bhugal Chanwarh/ rice

Note: I prefer a runny consistency,but it depends on personal taste ,there is no rule of thumb as such

I also cook saibhaji without the Sua/dil as my family is not very fond of Dil. Also you can cook saibhaji/spinach with out the carrots,cauliflower,broccoli,eggplant. All you need is spinach,chana dal,tomatos and preferably raw mango. Enjoy this wholesome dish : ) !!!

Serve it on the Bhugal Chanwarh and enjoy:)


7 comments:

  1. NICE! Looking forward to the pics and trying out the recipes! My husband makes this too - with Arhar dal sometimes. :-) -Dia!

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  2. Yes,you are right Dia,you can make it with arhar daal too,actually I know of some people who will also make it with moong daal just beacuse moong daal is light on the stmoach. But if preparing it with arahar daal and Chana daal,use Hing/Asfoetida. Thanks for your comments :)

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  3. Love finding other ways to cook spinach thanks so much.

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  4. I am glad you liked it. I will be putting up more recipes with spinach as the main ingredient.So please do pop in:) Thanks!

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  5. love ur blog. Love spinachdhaal and pic adds more flavor to the dish.

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  6. delicious combination thank you for linking

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