Saag/Greens, Recipes, tips please(merged with Greens) Options

[hibiscus]

hamein kal ka khabar nahin aur aap chaar maheenein pahle ki poochh rahi hain?

Kal ki khabar, babu. At least learn from Hindi song lyrics no?

[arnab]

right, right--takes from khabar not kal.

[Mrinalini]

It looks like Basella alba (called "batsala/batsaley" in Telugu). The kind with a reddish tinge is Basella rubra. The plant has an interesting history -- rubra buds ooze a red juice that was used to make early lipstick and to color wax seals (the kind that were used to seal letters etc).

Wildflower, thanks for the info. i looked it up and it does indeed look like the same greens my mother uses to make her tasty basalé dal.

[hibiscus]

Arnab but you can get round all that by speaking Bambaiya Hindi. Apun ko kal ka khabar nahi tum chaar mahina paiile ka poochrelaai kya?

[Trips]

Made aaloo_methi yesterday. Any good recipes here or elsewhere?

Tried gingerly's method of standing the bunch up and spraying the grime off - worked wonders. Any short cut method for plucking the leaves off? I think gingerly had once mentioned using scissors. I just left the stalks in this time and it didn't taste half as bitter as I thought it would, perhaps because of the baby potatoes.

[Veena]

Made aaloo_methi yesterday. Any good recipes here or elsewhere?

I have made this version of aloo-methi several times - it is my favourite. It is simple and the separate frying + last minute addition of the methi preserves the flavour and colour of the greens. I use less than the specified amount of chilli powder as I don't like too much powdered masala in greens.

Veena

[Trips]

Thanks, Veena. That recipe calls for boiling the potatoes first, a step I am loathe to subjecting baby potatoes to. These babies cooked well by just frying and were crispier for it. But I will try the recipe out when I only have larger potatoes in hand.

[loislane]

Made aaloo_methi yesterday. Any good recipes here or elsewhere?

Trips, that looks good - here is the methi thread.

One of my faves is to cook the aloo in a simple tadka of mustard seeds, turmeric, lots of minced garlic and broken dried red chilies, and add methi towards the end.

[seajay]

I love collard greens but I want to try Hak with dandelion greens. For that I will have to go to Wild Oats or Whole Foods. I am not sure they will be available just yet - at least not locally grown organic ones. I know cos I am watching my yard with a keen eye!

Will be interested to hear how that turns out.

My experience with dandelion greens has been that they are quite bitter -- or at least a lot more so than collards, mustards, kale, kohlrabi, or even turnip/radish greens. But they do respond best to a treatment in oil rather than steaming or boiling, and perhaps all the masalas will balance them out.

[polarmate]

Strangely, seajay, the bitter flavor is what I like best about dandelion greens! So far, I have just had them lightly sautéd in olive oil with some garlic and salt.

[seajay]

Strangely, seajay, the bitter flavor is what I like best about dandelion greens! So far, I have just had them lightly sautéd in olive oil with some garlic and salt.

So, I tried dandelion greens haak & loved it! Great idea, great combo.

Alas, mine was a lone reaction -- though why he likes karela & not bitter greens is a puzzlement. So it's back to collards around here.

[loislane]

So, I tried dandelion greens haak & loved it! Great idea, great combo.

Can you give a rough recipe, seajay? I want to try it out with beet greens. Or if anyone else another recipe for beet greens.

[polarmate]

So, I tried dandelion greens haak & loved it! Great idea, great combo.

Alas, mine was a lone reaction -- though why he likes karela & not bitter greens is a puzzlement. So it's back to collards around here.

That's great to hear! I haven't found any dandelion greens yet but then I haven't been to Wild Oats as much and I hate the crowds at Whole Foods in Boulder. Today when we were out for a walk, my husband wanted to pick a whole bunch of dandelions to treat the warts on my daughter's foot. Apparently the 'milk' from the stem is supposed to help kill the virus. All I could think of was: gimme the greens! But no, we didn't pluck any dandelion anything on the trails.

So, I tried dandelion greens haak & loved it! Great idea, great combo.

Can you give a rough recipe, seajay? I want to try it out with beet greens. Or if anyone else another recipe for beet greens.

LL, here's Haak and use Anita's Kashmiri garam masala (scroll down on that page till you hit Notes where she tells you what to use). It's simpler and quicker than the version that the recipe uses.

[vikdoc]

An article at least partly inspired by this thread. Its rather long and I regret posting it in full rather than giving a link. But while content on the Economic Times e-Paper is techincally free to view, it involves subscribing for a (free) Indiatimes account. Its worth doing, since you get the full Times and ET stuff online, but for now here's the text:

The value of gavti Greens
Vikram Doctor

You won’t find Meenakshi Ishwarlal Chudasama’s vegetable stall inside Dadar’s City Lights market. She’s just outside, next to one of the gate, unfortunately near a toilet. She’s got used to it - she’s been doing this for over 35 years, she tells you, ever since she started as a girl of five. There are better places in the market but those are where you’ll find the sellers of tomatoes, brinjals, cauliflower, cabbage, all the usual vegetables.

What she sells are the gavti or desi vegetables, the lesser regarded local vegetables, mostly native to this region and grown on a small scale in villages or, in some cases, foraged from the wild. They change with the season: sometimes she has bright orange pumpkin flowers, sometimes the creeper with thick fleshy leaves that is called Malabar spinach, or mayalu in the market here; sometimes the sour green leaves of ambad-bhaji which Andhraites loves as gongura. Today on this monsoon day she doesn’t have much, but offers the bright red cones of banana flowers and heart shaped colocasia leaves, alu if she’s talking to a Maharashtrian, arvi to a Hindi speaker, patra to a Gujarati.

Most vegetable markets have someone like her. You never find them in the main market, but always on the side, with a big pile of leaves in front of them. The sellers are usually women, sometimes an older man, but never the younger men who go after the more lucrative stuff. Because no one pays much for the gavti greens. They are nearly always among the cheapest vegetables in the market, perhaps Rs5 for a large bunch of leaves even in Mumbai. Younger shoppers pass over them, perhaps not knowing or wanting to tackle the unfamiliar looking leaves, perhaps put off from being made to eat them as a child “because it’s good for you.” The only buyers tend to be the poor, or older people.

Identifying these vegetables can be a chore because they don’t have common names. Unlike the tomato-cauliflower-cabbages of this world, which everyone essentially knows even if the names change, the gavti greens are only known by their local dialect names. Can you differentiate between math, methi, chavli, mayalu, chandan batwa, shepu, takla and shevga, just to take some of those from the Western region? Or molakkeerai, murungaikeerai, pasalai keerai, pulicha kezhai, manathakkaali and vallarai keerai if you’re from Tamil Nadu? Or puishaak, kolmishaal, lal shaak, hingchey shaak, notey shaak, kumro shaak, lau shaak, dhenki shaak if you’re Bengali. Sometimes these may be the same thing like with alu/arvi/patrel/colocasia (or Bengali kochu sag or Tamil seppam ilaigal), but quite often they could be vegetables quite unique to a particular region.

Because one thing is certain: there’s a huge diversity of vegetables of this kind traditionally consumed in India. The Deccan Development Society, an Andhra Pradesh based rural development organisation has studied the range of vegetables consumed by the rural poor in just one district, Medak, and have listed over 80 types of plants - shrubs, creepers, tree leaves, shoots - that are not formally cultivated, but are gathered and eaten. Dr.Sudhir Kumar, a botanist from Lucknow who has studied the bio-diversity hot spot that is North-East India notes that over 300 species are said to be edible; his book Leafy and Edible Plants of North-East India details 278 from Abelmoschus Esculentus (local name: dhokrakanda) to Zyziphus Funiculosa (local name: barai or kui)!

Dr.M.L.Chadha says quite frankly that the process of detailing all Indian plants that are edible and of ethnobotanical interest is still going on. Dr.Chadha is the director of the regional centre of AVRDC-The World Vegetable Center, the leading international organisation dealing with vegetables (it was set up by the Asian Development Bank and leading Southeast Asian nations as the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center, but has now expanded its ambit across the world) and is based on the ICRISAT campus in Hyderabad. One of AVRDC’s priorities is to encourage the growth of indigenous vegetables, to encourage biodiversity and preserve the crops that are suited to particular regions and conditions - like the gavti greens that Meenakshi Chudasama sells at City Lights market.

Dr.Chadha gives further examples of the amazing diversity that can be found at local levels in India. “In West Bengal 42 species of plants belonging to 28 families are either grown or being gathered from the wild and commonly marketed and used as leaf, tender shoot or flower vegetable in Jalpaiguri District,” he says. “It has reported that about 124 weeds occur in rice fields of West Bengal show potential as vegetables, fodder and medicine.” In Kerala, just to focus on the main leafy vegetables consumed, he lists 14 varieties including varieties like chekkurmanis, ponnanganni greens and agathi. In Himachal Pradesh, he lists another long list of plants consumed for kitchen and medicinal purposes. Even in arid Rajasthan he says tribal people gather plants like kachari, snap melon, spine gourd and rat tail radish to supplement their diet and sell in local markets. Many of these vegetables have a place in religious rituals. In Maharashtra, for example, they are mixed and eaten on Rishi Panchami, a tribute of sorts to the sages who are them as wild foods in the forest.

Yet what is undeniable, Dr.Chadha admits, is that usage of these plants is falling. “People's interest in
consuming indigenous vegetables has been declining, particularly amongst the younger generations in urban areas,” he says. Decreased interest among buyers means that fewer sellers like Ms.Chudasama are seeking out the plants to sell, and the plants are falling out of the cultivation and gathering cycle. And as that happens people forget that these plants are worth growing and eating at all. “It is resulting in even faster disappearance of indigenous crops and loss of biodiversity,” says Dr.Chadha mournfully.

This is particularly bad when one consider the very high nutritional value of many of these plants. “Since the Vedic period indigenous vegetables have been utilized for Ayurvedic medicines,” says Dr.Chadha. “In the Ayurvedas and recent Ayurvedic medical documents their medicinal properties are well explained.” He reels off their benefits: the leaves of moringa or drumstick are famously high in vitamins A and C and in iron; those leaf sheath of Colcocasia are used as a blood purifier; cephalandra leaves are used for curing diabetes; spine gourd fruits have good medicinal properties for ulcers, piles, sores, obstruction of liver and spleen, and also for cough and other digestible problems; chekkurmanis leaves juice pounded with roots of pomegranate and leaves of jasmine are used against eye diseases; horse purslane is given internally as blood purifier and to relieve muscular pain; agathi helps avoid night blindness... and so on.

Some of this might seem like grandmothers’ tales, but the basic nutritive value of indigenous vegetables is hard to deny - not least because their cheapness encourages their use by people who might not be able to afford other foods. The DDS report for Medak district, which was based on research done among poorer women, notes that such foraged crops are consumed on at least 50-80 days in a year (a figure it notes has come) and that this rises sharply during food scarcities. The report notes that during a famine 18 years ago, people survived for four months eating nearly only these indigenous vegetables. Given that the basic food of people in such poorer districts will be basic grains, its not hard to see the indigenous vegetables providing the bulk of their vitamins and other nutrients.

The health aspects of such crops is what makes their gradual disappearance from urban markets even harder to understand. India is in the middle of a health boom, with sales of health supplements booming, magazines and newspapers publishing endless articles on ‘wellness’ and nutritionists and diet specialists never having it so good. Yet these traditional natural sources of health don’t fit into the current health paradigms. Their very cheapness, for example, works against them. The margins on them are too small to attract most sellers in vegetable markets, and the new supermarkets are even less likely to stock something seen as ‘peasant food’ and on which they can hardly charge much.

Gavti greens also pose problems for modern supply chains. To start with they aren’t cultivated and cropped in regular ways. When cultivated they are usually grown on a small scale, often by farmers’ wives who might maintain a few creepers or plants close to the house, and take the leaves and fruits to market themselves in season. Foraged crops are even harder to deal with, since they are usually collected by children or older women who sell their bundles in local markets. Its hard figuring out how to get a regular supply from such means - and modern retail is all about regular supply. It doesn’t help that greens are both bulky to transport, yet fragile, with none of the long life of more robust vegetables.

Even at home these vegetables are seen to pose problems. Sometimes they need special preparation: some varieties of arvi have to be carefully washed and blanched to remove potential irritants from them. Just the washing and picking of the leaves can be tedious, but can’t be skipped either because its common to find caterpillars and other insects in them. This factor alone puts many people off from cooking these at home - yet paradoxically it can also be seen as a positive. The fact that insects exist in these leaves means that they haven’t been drenched in the pesticides now commonly used on regular vegetables (studies of plants like spinach can show scarily high concentrations of toxins in them). We make so much or organic foods these days - and that is what these are. “These vegetables are naturally and organically grown,” says Dr.Chadha. “In general these vegetables are more tolerant of insect pests and other stresses than commercial crops.”

Indigenous vegetables have had a mixed fate in professional kitchens. For many restaurants their reputation as ‘peasant’ or medicinal food works against them. People are not going to pay to eat vegetables their grandmothers had to force them to eat or which they think are only fit for their servants. Yet some chefs have had some success repackaging them. Dr.Chadha points out how heritage hotels in Rajasthan looking to serve local specialities to their guests have revived demand for vegetables like kachri and ker. Health is another selling point: there are also now a few ayurvedic restaurants like the Sanjeevanam chain in Chennai which include such vegetables in their menus.

Chef Ananda Solomon, executive chef of the Taj’s range of business hotels, is particularly keen on indigenous vegetables. He says that setting up restaurants like his landmark Thai Pavilion, for which he worked in Thailand, made him aware how such vegetables are valued in Southeast Asia. And when it came to setting up Konkan Cafe, his tribute to the food of the Western coast of India, he just had to go back to his roots in Mangalore. “We have always valued vegetables like besale (mayalu/Malabar spinach) there both for their health properties and their taste, and we have really wonderful ways to cook it,” he says. Many foreign guests are really interested in unusual foodstuffs - sometimes more than Indian guests are - and he also tries to include them in mixed vegetable dishes.

These two labels of heritage and health might suggest ways in which indigenous vegetables could make their way back to our tables. The further people drift from their food traditions, the more likely are they to realise this and set up a counter-reaction discovering foods they once dismissed. The growth of restaurants focused on traditional community foods, like Halli-Mane in Bangalore, or Bhojohori Manna in Kolkata, or Swati Snacks in Mumbai is one indication of this. People will preserve these vegetables as part of their community heritage, as Andhraites do quite literally when making their beloved pickle of gongura leaves.

Supermarkets too are usually willing to work around supply problems - doing which is, after all, their expertise - and stock products if there is enough demand. In Chennai now you can probably find at least two or three local keezhais in supermarkets, while Food Bazaar in Mumbai, presumably in response to demand from Sindhi customers, now stocks their favourite bhee or lotus root, authentic down to even having still being encased in mud (this is probably too authentic, since most vegetable vendors would clean that off!)

The real key to the survival of indigenous vegetables is not with cultivators or retailers, but consumers. As long as we keep eating them, they are likely to stay around. Despite the problems he can see facing indigenous vegetables Dr.Chadha is cautiously optimistic. “The knowledge about their importance has not been transferred properly to the young generation,” he says. But with enough effort made to convey their health properties, and also just simply their often excellent taste - try them in a stir fry, or adding them to a dhal - there’s a good chance they may survive. “With awareness they can be popularized for a young generation,” says Dr.Chadha. The future of gavti greens - and of all their heritage, health properties, biodiversity value and taste - rests with you.

vikram.doctor@timesgroup.com

Box: Bengal stays green

Indigenous may be dropping out of favour in most parts of the country, but there is one place where their position is secure. Bengal still relishes its local greens, as can be seen from any market where puishaak, kolmishaal, lal shaak, hingchey shaak, notey shaak, kumro shaak, lau shaak and many more varieties are still sold in proud profusion. Perhaps its a sign of how, unlike in other states, Bengali culture isn’t entirely cut off from its rural roots. Shaaks are certainly still an essential part of any proper Bengali meal and an ability to clean and cook them an essential skill for any Bengali cook.

Part of the reason for this could also be natural. Dr.Chadha notes that Bengal benefits from its location: “The North-Eastern part of India is a hotspot of biodiversity.” There’s an exceptional variety available, whether grown on small plots, gathered as weeds from the rice feels, or foraged from the wild. Dr.Chadha notes how this diversity has made its way into local traditions. In some districts, he says, there is a tradition on the eve of Kali Puja to eat at least 14 different leafy vegetables. “Local markets are flooded with diverse leafy vegetables during the occasion to meet the demand,” he says, adding that the tradition is believed to prevent abdominal aches during the following winter.

Restaurants in Kolkata don’t shy away from shaaks either. Rakhi Purnima Dasgupta, proprietress, Kewpie's, arguably Kolkata's most popular Bengali speciality restaurant says that shaak is a staple on her menu. "I need to cook it every day, otherwise my patrons keep on asking where the shaak bhaja or the chochchori is," she says. Depending on the season, among the shaak dishes Kewpie's serves are palong shaker ghonto, pui shaaker chochchori, lal shaak bhaja, methi shaak bhaja, palong chanar kofta,
palong shaaker chochchori and shaak ditey dal. "Shaak usually finds plenty of takers, whether its the locals or even people coming in from outside Bengal, even abroad," she says.

with inputs from Sreeradha Basu and Basistha Basu

ends

[Sue Darlow]

Interesting article Vikram. It is ironic, isn't it, how these veg are often ignored in favour of the newer and more fashionable imports from the West.

Years ago I spent a week on a farm in Kerala, where they were converting from regular farming methods to organic, to get the certifcation. Every meal was an eye opener - leaves, seeds, stalks and roots of a wide variety of plants turned up at the table as vegetable dishes, and these were cultivated around the house, in odd corners of the fields etc.

[hibiscus]

V. nice article, Vikram. Lots of information there and excellent points. Thanks for posting the piece - I'm going to send it to everyone I know who cooks (and who doesn't...). People who generally buy the tomato-cauliflower-greenpeas variety of veg just think "palak" when it comes to greens, and most of them also don't conceive of cooking it in ways beyond pureeing it.

[Veena]

We found these greens on the hillsides of Cudca, a village outside Panjim. They looked familiar to me as my mother used to cook them occasionally, but I could not recollect its name. Our driver, a local Goan, immediately identified them as TaikhiLo. I chopped them finely and cooked them with fresh grated coconut, smashed jackfruit seeds, a fistful of toor daal (separately cooked and added), green chillies, a little bit of sugar, and salt. They are robust greens (texture is somewhat like kale), which belie their delicate appearance. Somewhat bitter. The other ingredients above mostly serve to balance the bitterness. This is how it is prepared in Goa.



Veena

[hibiscus]

Nice and tav-tavi, Veena! Taikilo is what I think of when it rains - it sprouts all round like a miniature forest! My mom used to make tambli out of it, and ambode. (Hey, we have a thread on taikilo, I think!)

[alps]

They look like fenugreek greens to me.

So i learned a new way of preparing them. And a new name for them.

This post has been edited by ginger: Jul 9 2007, 12:38 AM

[seajay]

They also look like the kind of watercress I see in the market in Oregon -- which is larger of leaf than the type I used to get in the SF Bay Area.

[hibiscus]

(Hey, we have a thread on taikilo, I think!)

Found it. Had to trawl! Searched with the key words but because they're in the sub-title they didn't show up. <grumble>

[Wildflower]

Nice and tav-tavi, Veena! Taikilo is what I think of when it rains - it sprouts all round like a miniature forest!

(Hey, we have a thread on taikilo, I think!)

Found it. Had to trawl! Searched with the key words but because they're in the sub-title they didn't show up. <grumble>

Ooh, new green for me. Looks like it might be Cassia tora. The leaves in Veena's bunch look so glowingly I- just-unfurled-yesterday!

Veena, Hibi et al, do the plants look like this (scroll down a bit and see esp left photo in second set of photos) and this?

Poss names in other Indian languages. The marathi names seem close to Taikilo.

PS: Veena if you see it again, would you take photo of the whole plant? Please?

This post has been edited by Wildflower: Jul 9 2007, 09:53 AM

[hibiscus]

Tora, tora, tora! That's it, WF. (The Rasachandrika describes it as "Negro coffee" too, and I recall now that it's also mentioned in the "kaffir lime" thread as a result.)

Where's the Photobucket pic in the second link from?

[Wildflower]

Tora, tora, tora! That's it, WF. (The Rasachandrika describes it as "Negro coffee" too, and I recall now that it's also mentioned in the "kaffir lime" thread as a result.)

Now to get me some. It is quite a vaidyashala btw, and even used as a natural pesticide!

Where's the Photobucket pic in the second link from?

I was googling for photos of an entire plant and found a page in Chinese with html tags that didn't work, but had a path to a jpg marked cassia tora -- so I had to look. Dunno what this person is saying about the plant.

[frangipani]

Nice picture, Veena - I was distracted by the pretty saree in the background!

Very informative article, Vikram. I have been buying vegetables here in Delhi after a long time and been meaning to take pictures of some that I cannot identify, let alone cook.

Indigenous vegetables have had a mixed fate in professional kitchens. For many restaurants their reputation as ‘peasant’ or medicinal food works against them. People are not going to pay to eat vegetables their grandmothers had to force them to eat or which they think are only fit for their servants. Yet some chefs have had some success repackaging them....
These two labels of heritage and health might suggest ways in which indigenous vegetables could make their way back to our tables....

The real key to the survival of indigenous vegetables is not with cultivators or retailers, but consumers.... “With awareness they can be popularized for a young generation,”

How about renaming indigenous vegetables "ethnic vegetables"? Anything marked "ethnic", from food to dress to resorts to music seems to have great attraction, if ads and hoardings are to be believed, and this will likely make them more popular in hip retail chains and restaurants.

This post has been edited by frangipani: Jul 9 2007, 11:49 AM

[Wildflower]

I have been buying vegetables here in Delhi after a long time and been meaning to take pictures of some that I cannot identify, let alone cook.

Chop, chop, phaTaphaT fotus please!

How about renaming indigenous vegetables "ethnic vegetables"? Anything marked "ethnic", from food to dress to resorts to music seems to have great attraction, if ads and hoardings are to be believed, and this will likely make them more popular in hip retail chains and restaurants.

Brilliant. FabIndia and Anokhi can start hip ethnic subzi shops next to their ethnic clothes stores.

[hibiscus]

Brilliant. FabIndia and Anokhi can start hip ethnic subzi shops next to their ethnic clothes stores.

Or inside the stores! FabIndia already sells ethnic pickles and jams anyway.

(I like the "chop chop", btw. )

PS: Veena, there's another kAT bhAji which my mom used to cook - I only know it as kUDUk bhAjji, which is what she called it. The plants grow about the height of the average taikilo, are upright and the leaves are long and narrow, and dark green. It has purple flowers but cannot be eaten after it flowers (don't know why). I seem to recall that the leaves are darker on the back, and I think the stem is also darker. See if you can find it - but I'm afraid I have no more clues.

Ed: Went hunting for kUDUk bhAjji on the net and my head is reeling from Hobbit-lore (the Hobbit referred to themselves as kuduk - short form of kudukan or cave-dwellers - didn't know that till just now) but I may well find the vegetable in my own backyard, as it might be Melastoma malabathricum which is found in these parts as well.

This post has been edited by hibiscus: Jul 9 2007, 12:01 PM

[gingerly]

Karela (bittergourd) leaves are often to be found at the farmers markets. Has anyone used them? And how?

i got some frozen leaves- same questions. anyone?

[shanta]

g, pic please, been ages since i saw some fresh ones, i may have missed these at the local fm
my mom used to make tambli with karela or tendli leaves, spinach can also be used. recipe in rasachandrika

[gingerly]

shanta, these are frozen, so i'm not sure what will emerge when the block thaws- hopefully there will be entire leaves! will look up rasachandrika.