Bottle gourd in seasoned yogurt, goes well as a side dish with plain rice or chapathi or phulka

Recipe Snapshot

  • Prep time: 10 minutes
  • Cook time: 5 minutes
  • Total time: 15 minutes
  • Yield: 3
  • Category: Main Course
  • Cuisine: Andhra

Ingredients

  • 2 cups bottle gourd (,chopped, (use tender bottle gourd))
  • 1 ¼ to 1 ½ cups yogurt (/ curd (use as needed))
  • Salt (as needed)
  • 1 tbsp oil
  • 2 to 3 green chilies (, sliced or chopped)
  • 1 red chili (,broken, (optional))
  • 1 sprig curry leaves
  • 1/8 tsp turmeric
  • ¼ tsp cumin
  • ¼ tsp mustard
  • 1 Pinch hing
  • ½ tsp chana dal ((optional))
  • ½ tsp urad dal ((optional))
  • 1 pinch fenugreek powder (/ menthi podi (optional))
  • Coriander leaves (as needed.)

Method

  1. Wash and peel bottle gourd, chop them to pieces.
  2. Cook them till tender in a pot with very little water, you can sprinkle more if needed. Try not to use lot of water since we don’t want to drain the nutrients. Set this aside.
  3. Heat a pan with oil, add cumin, mustard and chana dal and urad dal. Fry till the dals turn crunchy. Add sliced ginger, sliced or chopped green chilis, red chili and curry leaves. Fry till the curry leaves turn crisp for about 2 minutes.
  4. Add hing, turmeric and fenugreek powder to the oil, stir. Add cooked bottle gourd and salt. Transfer this to a plate and let it cool completely.
  5. Meanwhile, whisk yogurt with a fork to smooth
  6. When the seasoned bottle gourd cools down, mix it with the yogurt and add chopped coriander leaves

Kiyaan Singh’s Kitchen Note

Keep this recipe as a working base: cook once as written, then adjust spice, texture, and serving style for your own table.