Potato Curry

Potato Bhaji is a breakfast dish that is eaten most often with puri. Puris are deep fried rounds of dough that puff up golden and beautiful and then collapse. My mum would fry up these goodies and my siblings and I would eat then almost as fast as she could roll them out and fry them. Today my nieces do the same when my sister makes puri and bhaji. My parents are visiting and mum made this for breakfast this morning. Puri and potato curry is a personal favourite. Puris can also be eaten with kala channa which is dark chickpeas but that is a recipe for another day.

This recipe is for the potato curry, puri recipe to follow.

This recipe has a couple of ingredients that may be new to some readers.

THE FOUR PICTURES BELOW ARE COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA. 

Urad Dal, also called black gram is a lentil. When it's black husk is removed and the lentil is split it looks like this. It is used to make many dishes but along with mustard and cumin seeds it is also used to temper vegetables.

Dried red chillies and curry leaves shown below are ingredients used when tempering vegetables, usually added to hot oil when onions or mustard seeds are added. Dried red chillies are 

not used to increase pungency, merely to flavour the finished dish.

                                                                                                                             

Skill Level: Easy

Serves: 4 - 6

INGREDIENTS:

• 4 medium sized white potatoes washed peeled and cubed
• 1 medium sized onion sliced 
• 1/4 tsp turmeric
• 1/4 tsp mustard seeds
• 2 small green chilies cut into small pieces
• 1 Tbsp chopped ginger  
• 2 cups of water
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 T cooking oil
• 1 tsp black mustard seeds
• 1 tsp urad dal
• 10 curry leaves
• 3 dried red chilies

METHOD:

1. Wash potatoes and cut into cubes
2. Add to a pot water, potatoes, turmeric, salt, ginger and green chilies
3. Boil until soft but not mushy. Set aside
4. Heat a saucepan and add cooking oil, when it is hot add dried red chilies and mustard seeds. Mustard seeds will pop, then add curry leaves and finally the urad dal.   This should be done on medium high heat and avoid burning the tempering ingredients to prevent a bitter flavour to the curry
5. Pour the boiled potato mixture into the tempered ingredients, garnish and serve hot