Beet Greens (Beetroot Subzi)

Day 54 of Lockdown

Putting every speculation to rest most essential and non essential items are now open from today. Amazon is showing delivery dates for my pincode again. Big Basket is once again having more than 5 open slots in the day. Vegetables and household stuffs are trickling back on online stores. I can see quite a few auto on the road. And it says that taxis will also be allowed to ply. Most surprisingly Spas and barber shops have been declared open. No matter how essential grooming is, I believe some of us will still prefer to hold back for a bit more time as a precautionary measure.

Till day before yesterday when non essentials were not allowed to be sold, I was thinking that the moment lockdown is lifted on non essentials I am going to get a binocular. Dont get me wrong, I do not intend to snoop on anyone or anything. Its just that the vista before my balcony is very amazing. There is a whole Mango orchard below. Behind that is acres of farmland where I can see farmers planting and harvesting their crops. After that a few societies and beyond those lies a series of rolling hills which are turning green now due to the frequent rains. And would you believe if I say I can also see the twin towers on Sinhagad fort very clearly form my balcony? Puneites would know what I am talking about. For the other, it is the famous Kondhana fort which Tanhaji Malusare reclaimed from the Mughals (refer to Tanhaji movie). In usual times we could only see the twin towers form my home post rains when weather cleared up. But now with pollution gone I can see it throughout the day. And even at night I can make out the lights. So while in this lockdown I realized there was a lot many things in front of me which I wanted to observe closely, the farming activity being the main interest. Hence the binocular idea. I think I had a more exhaustive list as well - like getting some empty canvases for painting, some notebooks for taking office notes, coconut powder - yes because coconuts have really vanished from the market in lockdown and many such things. 

Today when I realized that non essentials are now available I didn't look for any of those mentioned above, instead I looked up for books, story books and finally ordered a collection of Kakababu stories. He is a famous fictional sleuth character created by Bengali author Sunil Gangopadhyay, that has attained legendary stature particularly in Bengali literature. He is only next to Feluda in terms of popularity, another iconic sleuth character by Satyajit Ray. I am a sucker for detective stories and lockdown made me realize I am so sort on good books to read. I affectionately looked at the screen of my phone once the order was successfully placed. Nothing makes you more happy than the anticipation of a book being delivered.

Two more nice things happened in the day - one my neighbor made some chocolate pastries and offered them to me. I went over to her place to get them and she invited me over to a cup of chai. I had anyway missed my evening tea due to getting stuck in a meeting. I chatted for long with she and her husband and it was ages after which I actually visited anyone's place. Precisely 60 days I believe. It was a good relaxed evening spent over chai and stories. The second good thing happened was when Sinchita posted about trying out my Lau Fish curry recipe. Everytime someone tells me they made something from my recipes I feel a whole lot humbled and very very happy. It means a lot to me. It means I could make a small difference with my food. I feel special happiness documenting my food journey, because its not just recipes but I try and capture a few moments of the day, some event, something that touched my heart, a memory from older days, people who let some impression, places which made me smile and the likes. And yes also to talk about some of the recipes I grew up eating from my Grandma or mom and still in love with them. Had it not been for the lockdown many of us now a days dont cook themselves. I can understand working full time and cooking can be tedious. But somehow once I discovered the joy of cooking I was very much hooked to this. I never had a cook in my life so far, and I feel I want to keep it that way forever. But with less of us cooking, the recipes of our grandma and mothers might one day get lost in the folds of time. The very thought of which makes me melancholic. This was the very driving factor behind the creation of this blog a decade earlier. I wanted to note down these recipes somewhere on the internet where they wont be lost and may occasionally end up helping a few folks on their gastronomic journey. Whether I get to know or not, I will still feel happy if anyone tries these out and finds them good.

Today I am going to talk about Beet greens. Now this was a very recent find actually. So some 3-4 months ago one day, I picked up a bunch of beets with their greens attached to them. I was in a hurry to get back home and I had asked the vegetable vendor to just stuff everything into my bag without discarding the greens. Once home i discovered that the saag or the greens which was there looked very nice and fresh. Mostly they were picked within a day. Mom was also here in Pune with me then. I told her keep the greens separately. She asked me what will we do with it. And I said we will make some stir fry like we do with normal red saags. I did say that but I had no clue how it might end up tasting. But nonetheless I did keep them and finally mom made them into a stir fry which tasted so amazing. Both of us were greatly surprised by how well it tasted. Mom even remarked that who ever thought that beet greens could also be eaten, mostly it is discarded everywhere. Thus we both discovered something nutritious and tasty.

During the second week of lockdown, I chanced upon some fresh beet greens again. I asked the vendor to give me the greens. She happy did so and even added some more greens discarded form some other bunch. I got back home and washed and washed those as per the sanitization norms and then made it into this beautiful medley which I hope you enjoy as well.

Preparation Time : 20 minutes

Cooking Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients :

• Beet Greens - A bunch (from 4-5  beets)
• Potato - 1 big
• Aubergines (Brinjal) - 3-4 small
• Garlic - 12-15 pods
• Green chilli - 2-3
• Kalonji - 1 tsp
• Turmeric - 1/2 tsp (Optional)
• Mustard oil
• Salt and sugar per taste

Procedure: 

1.  Clean the greens and chop them medium fine.

2. In a pressure cooker add a cup of water and throw in the chopped saag. Cook it for a whistle and immediately open the cooker, drain the water and run the boiled saag under cold water to stop the cooking process.

Tip: The beet greens are a bit hard usually so in order to cook them faster and retain their color, its good to cook it for a whistle and later just add it to the wok for frying.

After boiling the greens this is how it should look like

2. Roughly bruise the garlic pods with the help of a mortar pestle. 

3. Dice the potatoes into small cubes and the Aubergine as well. Pieces should be nearly same size.

Tip: Keep the cut potato and the aubergines in water till its time to cook, to prevent them form turning black in contact of air

4. Take a wok and heat some oil. When oil is hot fry the potatoes till they are 3/4 cooked. Keep aside. Fry the aubergines also for a couple of minutes and keep aside.

5. Now in the same oil, when its hot temper it with kalonji, bruised garlic and slitted green chillies.

6. Add the fried potatoes

7. Add the boiled chopped greens and adjust the salt, sugar and turmeric.

Tip: If you don't want to mess with the reddish hue then avoid the turmeric totally. I wanted to add a little of it to enhance the green color. But I would recommend don't add too much of turmeric because it strips any saag of its nature flavor.

8. Cook without cover, so that green color of the saag is maintained. The greens were already cooked so wont take much time to get into the final shape. Adding saag to any vegetable makes the other vegetable get cooked much faster. So the potato will also be nicely cooked in some minutes.

9. Check if both potato is done. At this stage add the fried aubergines. Give it a nice toss for a couple of minutes and switch off the flame. That way we wont break the aubergines while mixing.

Serve it with rice and daal or chapati. 

Do try this out and tag me (@curriesnstories07) on Instagram on your photos whenever you try the recipe and I will give a shout out to you.