Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Pav Bhaji Reloaded

So this is pretty much old wine in a new bottle. A recycled post on Pav Bhaji, since I already waxed eloquent about this dish in an older post about couple of months ago. I had all the vegetables to make Pav Bhaji yesterday, thanks to my mother and I picked up some minuscule pav buns when I was out shopping for other stuff. I had one of my closest friends over yesterday for dinner on a very very hurried visit. So it is a funny story why her visit was as short as it was. She was heading down from her hotel on Richmond Road and had booked a cab with Ola. About 10 minutes past the time of arrival, she was frantically calling the cab driver to find out why he wasn't still there. Imagine her surprise when she discovered that he had already left with another passenger who had also booked an Ola. To put it in her words, the girl who took the cab also shamelessly spoke to her and said she had taken the cab and was half way to her destination. The only saving grace was that she hadn't recharged her Ola account and didn't end up paying for a trip they did not take.

So anyway, getting back to Pav Bhaji, I had a recipe which I tried the last time I blogged about it. But I wanted to do more research to oomph up the recipe. A few articles were read and a few videos were watched. The recipe I tried yesterday had a smack of authenticity because it was a video of a beach-side stall in Juhu, Mumbai. So here goes another yummy version of Pav Bhaji.

On my kitchen counter:
5 Tomatoes
3 medium sized potatoes 
Quarter of a cabbage- Finely chopped
Beans- 3/4 chopped
Carrot-1 chopped ( Too much will make it sweet)
Peas- A handful and a half
Pav Bhaji Masala
Hing
Salt
Chilli Powder
Turmeric Powder
Green Chillies-3
Ginger Garlic Paste
Oil
Butter
1 chopped onion

What you need to do:
1. Puree the tomatoes and keep aside.
2. Boil all vegetables except potatoes with some water and run through a blender to get a coarse paste.
3. Boil potatoes and mash well.
4. Chop up 3/4 green chillies. Add a mix of oil and butter in a tava and add the chillies and fry well. If you have capsicum you can add at this point and roast it until light brown.
5. Add 1 tsp of ginger garlic paste and saute well. Add the tomato puree and some more butter if needed. Allow the tomato puree to cook until it starts releasing oil. Add salt and turmeric powder at this point. Add chilli powder according to taste as well.
6. Now combine the vegetable paste and add about 2 Tbsp of Pav Bhaji Powder. Mix well and add some water. Allow to boil and cook well. Taste and add more chilli powder or salt at this point.
7. Once the vegetables are well combined and the mixture is bubbling, add the mashed potatoes and some more Pav Bhaji powder if needed and mash further to combine.
8. On another tava, heat up a Tbsp of butter. Add a tsp of ginger garlic paste, some chilli powder, salt and the chopped onions. Saute until light brown and combine with the mixture in step 7.
9. Your bowl emptyingly yummy Bhaji is ready to be enjoyed with buttered pavs.