Ridge Gourd Gravy/Peerkangai Kuzhambu Recipe

• Ridge gourd – 1 no ( medium sized)
• Tamarind – Medium gooseberry size(slightly more than small gooseberry)
• Green chillies – 5 nos
• Curry leaves – few
• Hing/Asafetida – 1/2 tsp ( 1/4 + 1/4 tsp)
• Small onions – 15 nos ( peel n chop into chunks)
• Salt & water – as needed

To temper & saute

• Cooking oil – 1 tbsp
• Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Urad dal – 1 tsp
• Chana dal – 2 tsp

• Wash and scrape the skin of ridge gourd.Do not peel the entire skin.Just remove the ridges.Chop them into small cubes.Peel and chop the small onions roughly into small chunks.Slit the green chillies & chop into small pieces.
• In a pressure cooker base,take the chopped ridge gourd,salt,tamarind along with 1 cup of water.Pressure cook in low flame for one whistle or 3-4 whistles in high flame.Remove and let it cool. (I kept in a tiffin box and pressure cooked it along with dal)

• After it cools down,drain the excess water in a bowl and grind the cooked ridge gourd along with tamarind to a smooth paste. Add this paste to the reserved ridge gourd water.Add hing and few,torn curry leaves.Check for salt.

• Heat oil in a kadai and temper mustard seeds,urad dal,chana dal,hing,chopped small onions and slitted green chillies.

• Now add the ridge gourd paste water.Add 1/2 cup of more water and let it boil for 2-3 minutes.Lastly add the finely chopped coriander leaves and garnish it.Mix with plain rice adding few drops of gingely oil and serve hot.It tastes yummy !

• You can follow the same recipe and make gravy using pumpkin.Please check this link.
• Adding small onions gives the best taste.But you can also add big onions if u don’t have small onions in hand.
• Asafetida/Hing is the star ingredient for this recipe.We add it twice in this recipe.Once during tempering and the other when the gravy boils.So never skip this ingredient.