Phool Makhana curry

I remember eating Phool Makhana when I was very young. I heard that it is a Maharastrian dish(Ofcourse not sure whether it is true or not). But after coming to US only that I started doing phool makhana curry. I struggled a lot for getting the recpie itself. I searched a lot on the net for the recpie but no where I could find. Most of my friends also does not know what Phool Makhana is. Atlast I found one in “Eenadu.net” under Sunday Editions. This was the place I was least hoping for this recipe. Most of you might be wondering what this “Phool Makhana” is – which infact I was also wondering until I came to know what it is. “Popped Lotus seeds” - It almost looks like popcorn (ofcourse does not taste like popcorn ;-) . Here goes the recepie.............

Ingredients

• Phool Makhana
• 2 Onions
• 3 – 4 juicy tomatoes
• ginger garlic paste ½ tbsp
• coconut milk (preferably home made coconut milk)
• 3 – 4 green chillied slit length wise
• ½ tbsp kuskus
• 2 – 3 clove
• small piece of cinnamon
• 1 tbsp coriander seeds
• ½ tbsp jeera
• star anise – 1
• bay leaves 2
• 5 – 5 cahews
• turmeric pwd ½ tsp
• salt and chille pwd to taste

Procedure

Deep fry phool makhana(popped Lotus seeds) on medium heat until they turn golden color. Keep them aside. (You will be getting the phool makhana in any of the Indian Stores.)

For the masala gravy, fry the following in the same order -Roast cloves, cinnamon, star anise, corriandr seeds, jeera for 2 min until the arromatic smell comes.

Now add kuskus, bay leaves and cashew nuts and fry for 1 more min. Keep the roasted masala ingredients as side.

Cut two medium size onions into big chunks of pieces. Fry the cut onions until they turn light golden color. (It might table 10 min approximately.) This way the raw smell of onion will disappear.

Once all the ingredients are cool enough, grind the roasted masala ingredients, fried onions, tomatoes, with 1 cup of water and ½ tsp of salt to a smooth paste. (In case coconut milk is not there, then you can add grated coconut while grinding).

Now put 1 tbsp of oil in a kadai. Once the oil is hot, put popu(mustard seeds, jeera, urad dal). Add one finely chopped onion pieces (this is different from what we had fried earlier for grinding), ginger garlic paste, turmeric pwd and fry for few minutes until onion is fried nicely.

Now to this, add the grounded masala paste and cook for 10 more min on low flame. On doing so it becomes like a thick gravy. You can add coconut milk to make it little more gravy. We need to adjust the amount of water to be added while grinding with the coconut milk that you are planning to add. Add salt and chilli powder to taste now.

Once this is done the gravy is almost ready. Just 5 min before the removing from the flame, add the deep fried Phool Makhana, stir fry for few more min. Phool Makhana when added in the gravy becomes soft with in 5 min. Finally end the cooking by adding finally chopped cilatro.

Hope you will enjoy the dish.......