Broccoli Bharta

Yet another broccoli recipe 🙂 I think many of us pass over some veggies having had a bad experience once! Believe me, one bad broccoli dish does not mean you need to give up on it! I am a rather picky eater, I am not picky in terms of the vegetables I eat, but I don’t like something plain and bland. Until I started to cook, I never truly appreciated the effort that goes into coming up with something new for the day :). I think that is when I truly started trying out different veggies, mixing up and trying to make something different with them.

For a long time, I was fascinated with trying to cook restaurant style – I used to love to watch cooking videos for that! I even tried it a couple of times :). It is quite amazing what a big chunk of butter can do to transform a simple tasty curry into something exotic! Let us say we add an even bigger chunk and you reach the restaurant quality :). At least for most of the popular Indian dishes at restaurants!! And the heavy cream and oil! Anyway I love cooking and it was fascinating to try that but definitely not something I want to do very often. So if you are one of the people who love to try restaurant style food at home because you are bored of the same homestyle dishes – try to innovate, use different veggies, mix the spices and make it more interesting! Tasty food does not necessarily have to be rich!

This recipe is a spin off the popular Indian dish – baingan bharta. If you were to search for the term bharta on google, you would hit this dish, which is a traditional south-Asian dish prepared with eggplant that has been toasted over charcoal, then mashed and cooked with mild spices. Here I use the term bharta to mean that the veggies are completely mashed! Cooking broccoli over charcoal is a nice idea to turn it crispy, it won’t make it soft I guess.

Ingredients

1. 500 grams chopped broccoli (Chopped broccoli helps to make it cook faster)
2. 1 medium sized tomato
3. 1 medium sized onion
4. 2 cloves garlic
5. 1 green chili
6. 3/4 tsp salt
7. 1/2 tsp red chilli powder
8. 1/2 tsp cumin powder
9. 1/4 tsp coriander powder
10. lemon juice from 1/2 lemon
11. lots of chopped cilantro (coriander)
12. 1 tsp oil

Preparation Time:  10 min                   

Cooking Time: 15 min

Servings: 2-3

Method

1. Chop the broccoli into medium sized pieces. I steamed the broccoli. If you don’t have a steamer, you can cook it on stove top. Take a pan, add the broccoli, little water and sprinkle some salt and let it cook well.
2. Meanwhile, chop the tomato and onion finely. Chop green chili, garlic and cilantro too.
3. Don’t forget to check on the broccoli! Add some water if required and let it cook till it is soft.  You don’t want to add too much water and make the dish watery. You could drain the water from the broccoli if you want, but i prefer to cook in as much water as required instead of draining. You just have to be watchful when you add less water! Once the broccoli is cooked let it cool a little.
4. Take another pan. Add 1 tsp oil and let it heat. Once it is hot, add the chopped garlic and saute well. Add in the chopped onions, sprinkle some salt and saute well. After the onions brown a little add in the tomatoes and sprinkle some water and let it cook really well. Once the tomatoes are almost done, add the spices – chill powder, cumin and coriander powder. Let it cook well with the tomatoes.
5. Once the broccoli is cool, use a spoon or a potato masher if you have one and mash the veggies well. Add this to the tomato mixture in the pan and mix well. Let it cook for a minute or two. Adjust salt and spice to taste. Turn off the heat. Add in the lime juice and chopped cilantro and serve hot!