Palakura Ava Pulusu /Spinach stew

Normally, this stew is made with bachali Kura (in Telugu), but for a change I made it with palak. This stew tastes good with mudda pappu/ simple toor dal and a dollop of ghee in hot white rice. Just by thinking of it, hu… it’s so yummy and mouths watering … you too give a try. Here goes the recipe…

Ingredients:    

• Bottle gourd – 1 small size (cut into cubes)
• Okra /Ladies finger – 4 (cut into 2” length)
• Green chillies – 3
• Salt as per taste
• Cilantro leaves – few handfuls (fresh)
• Tamarind pulp – goose berry size / 1 tbsp (all measurements are as per US Standard measuring spoons)
• Spinach – 1 bunch (finely chopped and washed)
• Red chilli powder – 1 tbsp
• Rice flour – 1 tbsp
• Mustard seed powder / Rai powder – 1 tbsp

Seasoning:

• Menthulu /fenugreek seeds – 1tsp
• Avalu/Rai seeds – 1 tsp
• Jeera – 1 tsp
• Hing – 1 tsp
• Red chillies – 1 or 2

Method:

• Wash the spinach leaves and finely chopped them and keep it aside.
• Take all the chopped vegetables in a vessel along with spinach leaves and boil them by adding sufficient water, salt and turmeric.
• Soak the tamarind in hot water for 5 min, and extract the pulp of it.
• Take a bowl and add red chillies powder, rice flour and rai powder mix them thoroughly by adding very little water so as to form the mixture into a paste. .
• Once all the vegetables and spinach are well cooked and become tender soft, add the above rai mixture to the cooked vegetables, add the extracted tamarind pulp also and let them all boil together for 5 – 7 minutes.
• Heat a pan with some oil in it and add all the seasoning items and let them pop up and once they splutter, add to the above stew.
• Palak (spinach) Ava pulusu is ready to be served hot.