Kadai Matar - Spicy Green Peas Curry

Happy New Year!

Hope you all had a great New Year! Sorry for being so slack with the posting. Time passes by me super fast these days, and other things have taken more priority too. We were out of town for the holidays and I took my own sweet time to get back to routine. It’s been a cold and snowy winter so far around our area, and I just prefer to cuddle on my couch during the weekends. This weekend for a change, I had the urge to be active in the kitchen and ended up with some new dishes.

This is one of those recipes I tried just in the spur of the moment. I was just flipping through some green-peas recipes a few hours ago, since a friend of mine had just then called up and had asked for a recipe primarily with green peas. She wanted to make use of a few packets of frozen peas stuck in her freezer. Green peas is one such vegetable that usually gets tossed in along with a bunch of other vegetables, and honestly I hardly make such a dish just with green peas. Of all the recipes I stumbled on, I liked this delicious looking recipe in a Punjabi cookbook I had purchased quite a while back. I decided to pass this on to my friend right away. It looked super-simple with hardly any chopping, with an elegantly styled photo along with the recipe. I was totally motivated and wanted to try my hand at this recipe, before passing it on to my friend, as it was dinner time anyway.

I think it makes a great dish - certainly better than pairing it up with another heavy feeling ingredient like paneer or potatoes. I should thank my friend in giving me a chance to try this new and yummy dish! Certain recipes are all about assembling the right ingredients together with right proportions, and this is one of them. Hope you all enjoy it as well!

Ingredients:

• Frozen Peas - 2 cups
• Ginger/Garlic Paste - 1 tbsp
• Tomatoes - 2 medium (ripen)
• Fenugreek seeds - 1/2 tsp
• Red Chillies - 2
• Lemon Juice - 1 tsp (optional)
• Sugar - 1/4 tsp
• Milk - 3 tbsp
• Garam Masala - 3/4 tsp
• Chilli Powder - 3/4 tsp
• Corriander Powder - 1.5 tsp
• Cardamom 2 - crushed
• Kasoori Methi - 1 tbsp (crushed)
• Corriander leaves - a hand full

Procedure:

• Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a pan and season with fenugreek seeds and red chillies.
• Add ginger/garlic paste and saute for about 2 mins.
• Add garam masala, chilli powder and corriander powder one by one and saute in medium heat. (Have enough oil to fry these powders. If using less oil, be cautious in frying the powders as they may get burnt without oil.)
• Add Lemon juice and tomatoes and saute for about 5 - 7 mins until tomatoes get well blended and soft.
• Add the washed peas and mix well. Add milk, sugar and salt and cover and cook for 5 mins or until the peas is completely cooked.
• Finally add crushed cardamom, Kasoori methi and corriander leaves and mix well. Let it boil for a min and remove from heat.

Enjoy it with chapathis and [whispering] I actually enjoyed it with curd rice much better :)