From bejjala pulusu to pachadi: Cooking with gourds, peel and all

If I had to dredge up a memory about sorakai (bottle gourd), it would have to be the one about how I ate koottu made with it day in and day out for three years in my hostel mess — only to find out later that it wasn’t. The vegetable in question alternated between ash gourd and chow chow. I had never heard of chow chow in my growing up years in Andhra Pradesh, but sorakai made a regular appearance on the dining table at home.

How does one recreate a dish from memory when they weren’t curious about it as a child? I recently got the gift of a tender, round bottle gourd that reminded me of my grandmother, of kitchen gardens, and the door opening to the sight of an avuncular relative, motorcycle key dangling from his fingers, outstretched hands holding the rather sizeable, pot-like vegetable.

Grandmother would grin, saying, “If it’s you, I know it will be another sorakai. Give my regards to your mother.” And with this flashback, one is consuming, along with the sorakai, the past all over again. Ammamma and her gap-toothed smile, the soft fuzz on the gourd, the ’80s, when we ate only at home, and the many foods that went out with the people who cooked them.

In a sudden burst of nostalgia, I thought of bejjala pulusu, an unusual dish then when most of the gourd vegetables we ate were routinely peeled — sorakai, beerakai (ridge gourd), gummadikai (pumpkin), dosakai (melon cucumber), potlakai (snake gourd). I say ‘unusual then’ because these days there’s so much being written on cooking exclusively with vegetable and fruit peel.

Sticky, golden affair

For just a few dishes, the gourds would remain unpeeled. There was the sorakaya bejjala pulusu, where the gourd would be pricked with a fork all over and stewed in tamarind juice with onion and green chillies. There was a curry made with cubed green pumpkin and jaggery where the peel was left on, a sticky, golden affair that was hot and sweet; a dosakai chutney that was just raw melon cucumber pounded with salt, tempering and tamarind. The sorakaya pulusu was a slightly more involved process — big vegetable, stabbing, cutting, stewing — it was more fun.

But how was I to find the recipe now? Would an Internet search help? It did, but three videos in, I wasn’t sure any of them were what I wanted. One left out the tamarind altogether, advocating the use of coriander and cumin powder, another deep-fried the vegetable, and the final look of the third put me off.

In my Andhra family, we routinely ate a lot of gourds. A chunk of the sorakai would go into pappucharu, a cousin of sambar but not as thick or spicy. Most of the gourds would be turned into a light, pale-green stir-fry or a chutney. The dosakai went into the popular Andhra dal, dosakaya pappu. Many of the gourds would be cooked into a thin gravy with tamarind, or a paala koora, a mild curry finished off with a big splash of milk.

From being rotund or long and ending in a languid curve, bottle gourds in my Chennai neighbourhood have of late diminished to the size of my forearm. The dismay I feel at their short and stumpy avatar is momentary; I can now use them in one go, rather than save them for another meal.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to look very hard for the recipe. While writing this article I found my great-aunt Suseela’s cookbook Doctoramma Vantalu (Telugu). A gynaecologist and a fine cook, she spent many weekends feeding me delicious food over some 18 years, till she passed away. This is adapted from her recipe. I’m not sure how its name will translate into English — hole-y stew, pierced vegetable curry, pitted bottle gourd curry — but it’s as much fun to translate it as it is to prepare it.

RECIPE

Sorakaya bejjala pulusu

Ingredients

1 tender bottle gourd (about 500 gm)

2 onions chopped

2-4 thinly sliced green chillies

A loose fistful tamarind, soaked in a cup of water for an hour

2-3 garlic cloves

1-1.5 tsp red chilli powder/ sambar powder

1/4 tsp turmeric

Salt to taste

1-2 tbsp jaggery

2 tbsp oil

For tempering

½ tsp mustard seeds

½ tsp cumin seeds

2 dried red chilli

¼ tsp fenugreek seeds

A handful curry leaves

Method

1. Wash the bottle gourd and prick all over with a fork. Do not peel. Cut into medium-sized pieces.

2. Heat the oil. Add the tempering ingredients, ensuring they do not burn.

3. Then, fry the onion, garlic and green chilli well.

4. Add the bottle gourd and saute for 3-4 minutes on medium flame.

5. Add salt and turmeric, mix well, and saute some more.

6. Extract the tamarind juice and add it to the pan. Add the chilli powder or sambar powder. Mix well, cover and let it cook in its own juices till done. Keep checking and add water if necessary so that the vegetable does not stick to the pan. The peel will offer a wee bit of resistance even when the pieces boil down to a velvety consistency.

7. Add the jaggery, simmer and switch off the flame. Serve hot.

The independent writer and editor is based in Chennai.