Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Plk Mngdi

Technology, specifically, the cell phone, has brought my friend V and I, who go a long way back, closer. Almost every night, we SMS (text message) each other quite a lot. The Spouse begins to feel the day is incomplete if he doesn't hear my mobile phone ping and wonders why she or I haven't begun yet. Sometimes I've to tell him it's because she knows I'm staying back late at work, or that maybe our fingers are too knotted up from all the texting. And sometimes I text her just to quell his restlessness, that V's in my cell and all's right with the world. (Sorry, Mr Browning!)

Neither of us use the 'predictive text' feature - I find it too troublesome to bother with, I don't know why she doesn't, but we have our own SMS lingo which we seem to follow rather well, skilled at it over a few years of practice and the rather common tactic of doing away with the vowels. But a couple of days ago, I was rather foxed with this: "Don't rmbr td dint hve ful rec then ggld." Er ... Okay, she "didn't remember", "then Googled", i got dat, but who or what was 'td' and what wasn't there, in between? She was telling me about the Ker Sangri we got during our recent trip to Rajasthan and which she'd finally attempted, and I was asking her which recipe she followed. So I texted her back - "ur sms lngo 2 hrd 4 me 2 get" (Your SMS lingo too hard for me to get). Then she texted back properly to say she tried Tarla Dalal's site but it didn't have the full recipe so she Googled it and found it somewhere else and she doesn't remember the source. Whew!

Then it struck me I had to use up my stash too. But I remembered that the grocer who sold it to us in Jaisalmer told us it would turn out well if soaked overnight and well, overnight was over the previous night. But the golden yellow mangodis glinted from the dark corner of the shelf, and I had a bunch of Rs 15-spinach (ordinarily Rs 6, have you been reading about the horribly expensive time we're having, vegetably speaking) so I made the Palak Mangodi instead. Palak is spinach and Mangodi are bits of sundried moong dal (green gram) or urad dal (black gram) paste, usually used as an accompaniment to various curries in Rajasthan, from what I gather.


This is from TD's book on Rajasthani cooking but I halved the recipe as I had only one bunch of spinach - and added a tomato. I was also careless and added the original amount of onion prescribed.

1 bunch spinach/palak
1/2 cup mangodi, crushed (some info here)
1 tsp cumin seed/jeera
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 tsp ginger-green chilli paste
1/2 tsp garam masala
a pinch turmeric
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1-1/2 tsp oil
salt to taste

Cook the spinach briefly in hot water, dunk in cold water and drain completely.

Then puree the spinach and tomato. Keep aside.

Add a cup of water to the mangodi and pressure cook for 3 whistles. Drain, keep aside.

Heat the oil and add the cumin seeds. Once they splutter, add the onions and saute till pink.

Add the ginger-green chilli paste and saute for a few seconds.

Add the rest of the spices and the puree. Let it cook for a while.

Now add the cooked mangodis and salt and simmer for five minutes. We ate it with rice, roti and by itself, nice all three ways.

I'm sending this off to Priya who's hosting Susan's MLLA this month.

13 comments:

  1. Wow, love your texting lingo, it cracks me up how some people shorten words sometimes. The recipe looks superb.

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  2. I had to give away my stash of mangodis and urad vadis :(

    But high time I made palak paneer :) Good reminder.

    I can't use SMS lingo to save my life... I still type full sentences with punctuation etc :)

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  3. Spinach mangodi has come out well, Sra. Makki ki roti with a dollop of white butter would have been a perfect match.
    Ker Sangari is my fave. and saves me on days I don't make any veggies for my hubby's lunchbox :) Reminds me to visit my grocer in Udaipur to replenish the stock.
    Happy 2011 to you!

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  4. Your hubby gets worried 'coz you are not texting ? Mine gets all worried because I spend too much time on the phone with 2 of my friends !!!

    I do not understand SMS lingo and don't text at all.

    BTW, where is the title of the post ?

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  5. Oh, and Have a fantastic 2011

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  6. I am a pedant( like Raaga ) - I text superfast but with full spellings and punctuation! Sms lingo drives me batty especially when I see it in emails - GASP ;)

    The Paalak mangodi looks superb - bought some from Chandni Chowk last year and it just got made once...

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  7. Haha thank god for text messaging! I've given up on a lot of the lingo. Now it's basically all typos haha.

    This dish looks delicious! So full of flavor!

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  8. I am a generation behind. Never text and the time I spend on blogs is enough to make DH crazy so I try to keep away from acquiring new habits :)

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  9. wow i gonna try this,..
    wish ya happy new year 2011

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  10. Palak and mangaudi sounds like an interesting combi. How lucky you got ker sangri!
    Have a wonderful new year dear Sra! :-)

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  11. Sra,
    last time I tried to text I broke my nails and fingers and they were all tangled :-D..So,I gave up ..(hands full up in the air)..It's being ages I have tasted Wadis/ or mangodis anyways..plk mngdi --ok Palak mangodis ..well I do get some of it :-)..
    Wish you and yours a very Happy and prosperous new year..hugs and smiles

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  12. xclnt... HNY.. gr8pst... v. funny :D

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