Green Peas Curry (Vatana Rassa)

Behind the generic yet convenient word "curry" lurks an almost unimaginable diversity of dishes in the cuisines of India. Take just one region- Maharashtra, on the West coast of India- and just one vegetable- green peas. (I cook with green peas often because they are available to me year-round in their frozen avatar.)

We make many curried dishes with green peas (hirva vatana or mataar in Marathi). In my book, a dryish stir fry of green peas with an aromatic tempering would be an usal. A more stew-like preparation with a more liquid consistency would be an amti or a rassa. In Marathi, there's a very descriptive word for what I can only awkwardly, and rather unappetizingly, call in English a "liquid curry"- dabdabeet. And then green peas could pair with any number of vegetables in a fairly dry stir fry to become a bhaaji- mataar batata (green peas and potato) being a particular favorite of mine. By the way, these distinctions are quite personal- one man's usal is another man's rassa. And let's not even get started with other regions of India, where you might come across a vatana ambat in a Konkani household and a vatana shaak in a Gujarati one.

All this is a long-winded way of explaining that yesterday, I tried a long-pinned recipe involving green peas cooked in a Maharashtrian style. It is Anupama's recipe for mataar usal and a dish that I would describe as a rassa because of how much broth it has. Like I said, one person's usal is another person's rassa. I think we would all agree that call it what you will, this is a most delicious way to enjoy sweet green peas.

In this recipe, green peas are cooked in herbs, coconut milk and spices. The resulting curry just needs some soft buttered bread for dunking. I modified the recipe to add more onions, because I'm loving the sweet Vidalia onions available here, and to add mint, because I have an overflowing mint pot on the porch. Mint and peas are a classic combination, after all. I used frozen peas and they seem to cook in no time, so I did not boil them as the original recipe suggests.

My untidy mint pot- but hey, it's alive!
More than I can say about most plants I touch...

Vatana Rassa (Green Peas Curry)

(Recipe adapted from Anupama's Blog; makes 4-6 servings)

1. In a pan, heat 2 tsp. oil and temper with a tsp. mustard seeds and a pinch of asafetida.
2. Add 1 small minced onion and saute until lightly browned.
3. While the onion is sauteing, make a paste with 1 coarsely chopped onion, 1 hot pepper, 1 bunch cilantro and a large handful of mint.
4. Add 1 tsp. ginger garlic paste to the pan, along with the green paste, saute for a few minutes.
5. Add salt to taste, 2 tsp. cumin coriander powder and 1/2 tsp. turmeric powder.
6. Add 3 to 4 cups green peas and 1/2 cup water. Simmer for 5-10 minutes.
7. Add 1 can coconut milk and 1 tsp. jaggery. Add more water if required. Let it come to a gentle simmer and then turn off the heat.
8. Add a dash of your favorite garam masala (optional), juice of 1/2 lemon, taste for salt.

I served this dish with buttered bread, a lemon wedge and thin slices of raw beet. Raw onion slices would have been an excellent accompaniment. The bread soaking up the thick flavorful sauce, playing off against the sweet peas- oh, the whole thing was too irresistible. I enjoyed the leftover curry with rice today for lunch and the verdict is that this dish goes with everything.

Peas being legumes, I'm sending this post to My Legume Love Affair 60, hosted right here this month on One Hot Stove. MLLA was started several years ago by Susan, The Well-Seasoned Cook, and is now in its new home at Lisa's Vegetarian Kitchen.  I hope you'll participate by sending in your favorite legume recipe- check this post for details.

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A couple of hours every week, I try to make time to work on my sewing. Hobbies are supposed to be relaxing but it sometimes takes a painful learning curve before the hobby rewards you with relaxation. At this point, I would have to say that sewing is not relaxing for me. Right now, it involves a fair amount of swearing, hair pulling and other behaviors that are quite the opposite of relaxing.

But I have to say that when I do finish a small sewing/quilting project- or even, say, when I can rewind a bobbin without having to laboriously read steps 1 through 5 in the manual- I feel that mildly euphoric jolt that takes me right back to the blasted sewing machine. Want to see what I've been working on?

Apparently, there is something called a self-binding baby blanket, where you start with a larger square of fabric and a smaller one, and magically, the large square forms a wide, attractive border framing the smaller square. After looking at videos (like this one) and many, many tutorials (like this one), I sewed one myself. Some tutorials call it the 10 minute baby blanket, and to beginning sewists, I would say, hah. If you take 10 times 10 minutes to make it, you're not the only one. But yes, it is a clever pattern and after my first valiant attempt (below) , I want to make more of these.

While I take breaks to work on relatively instant-gratification projects, I've been putting together this quilt top. It is part-pieced (the zig zags are little pieces of fabric seamed together, based on this purl bee pattern) and part-appliqued (the flower rows I designed free hand and stitched on by hand using blanket stitch). Now comes the tedious part- putting together this top with batting and backing fabric, quilting to hold the layers together, then binding the edges to finish the quilt.

Our local quilt guild has a group that works tirelessly to make quilts for others. Their colorful quilts go to cancer wards and neonatal ICUs. They make unique, handmade quilts for children who are in foster care. It is such a worthy cause. This group put together kits with cut pieces of fabric and a simple pattern and asked for help in piecing the quilt tops. This is one I pieced for them. It was great fun (no, really!) and I hope to make more.

That's it for this rainy, muggy Monday night. I hope you have a good week, friends.