Spicy Bottle Gourd

This is a simple South Indian vegetable dish using bottle gourd, or surai-kuduvai in Tamil. The Bottle gourd is one of the oldest cultivated gourds it has even been found in caves in Mexico dating back some 7000 years! It is also often used to make the hollow part of a sitar. They contain mostly water, some vitamin C and fiber.

I was contacted by My Spice Sage a wonderful online spice shop to try some of their spices, and of course I said yes, I use lots of herbs and spices from around the globe. I asked for some Indian curry powders, I must admit I was a little skeptical that they couldn't measure up to my mother in laws from India. But they were really good, I decided to use the Maharajah curry mix as the name makes you think of fabulous kingdoms from long ago and cuisines fit for kings.

Ingredients:

one bottle gourd, chopped
2 cloves of garlic
teaspoon of mustard seeds
pinch of salt
5 curry leaves
one spoon of the Maharajah spice mix
pinch of turmeric
1/2 red onion chopped
2 small green chili's
canola oil

Method:

heat the oil and pop the mustard seeds, add curry leaves, chili's and garlic and onions saute for 2 minutes
then add turmeric, bottle gourd and cook slowly with curry powder for 30 minutes until soft.

I ate this with egglant dal and rice. Overall it had a great flavor and I am looking forward to using the garam masala, and tandoori mix next.