Tag Archives: indian food

Black mustard seed

Seed processing season is upon us once again and all available space on window sills is full 🙂
Grow your own spice! These are seeds of black mustard /svartsennep (Brassica nigra / Rhamphospermum nigrum) grown in the Væres Venner Community Garden this year. I use them most in Indian food.

Perennial veggie saag and stuffed blue congo paratha

The favourite food of an average Englishman of my generation is Indian and I’m no exception.
Yesterday I was inspired to make perennial veggie aloo saag and stuffed blue congo whole grain paratha. It’s fun realising that it’s highly improbable that anyone has made this before!
First, here are the vegetables:

From top left: Ground elder / skvallerkål; two types of dandelion / løvetann; hedge garlic / løkurt; Ulleung giant celery (Dystaenia takesimana) (top right); (Bottom left) Allium hymenorrhizum; Welsh onion / pipeløk (Allium fistulosum); daylily / daglilje shoots; Siberian hogweed / sibirbjørnekjeks (Heracleum sibiricum); stinging nettle / brennesle; ramsons / ramsløk; common sorrel / engsyre (Rumex acetosa); Allium nutans; Catawissa onion / etasjeløk (Allium x proliferum); Victory onion / seiersløk (Allium victorialis); Mertensia ciliata; 2 Perennial kales / flerårige kål; Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde (Hablitzia tamnoides); Urtica kioviensis and Patience dock / Hagemelde (Rumex patientia) (Bottom right).

Next, potatoes were steamed on the wood stove and sliced into small pieces. The onions were fried with several cloves of garlic and then all the finely sliced greens were added and cooked gently adding the potatoes and assorted Indian spices (coriander, cumin, home grown golpar – ground seed of Heracleum – chili, salt and pepper with a piece of cinnamon stick and a few cloves). The greens release water so that no water is needed. This is the perennial veggie saag (there are many different saags made with different vegetables in India; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saag

I chose to make the parathas using a 100% coarse wholegrain spelt flour which are difficult to make perfectly as they tend to fall apart, but I don’t care as they are tastier in my opinion! For the filling I used cooked and mashed blue congo potato with various spices and chili mixed in. Put a blob of the filling on the rolled out paratha, fold the dough over the filling and roll out carefully trying not to let the filling show through (it did).

You then dry fry both sides on medium heat, then melt ghee on the top, turn over and fry in the ghee for a minute and one more minute on the other side again and dinner’s served (Hope there are no Indians watching as I’ve probably broken all the rules, but the important thing it tasted fantastic: