Milli Jhooli Sabji - Mixed Vegetables

At the outset of my review, I have to tell you that while I was in the US, I had dined several times at the Clay Oven restaurant in Orlando, Florida but I never thought the food was outstanding. Infact, it was one of those restaurants where the only thing I enjoyed was the cabbage vegetable and the huge giant-sized samosas they served in the lunch buffet. Now moving on to this recipe. This was fabulous! We had someone come home for lunch this afternoon and I made this vegetable as the main dish for all of us. He enjoyed it so much that he took several helpings and when he had taken nearly how much a man could eat at one go, he said," Saheb, plate mein saari sabziyan mili jhuli hain" to my dad! This means that he had enough of this mixed vegetable dish in his plate, did not want any more and with a huge smile on his face, he was in FOOD HEAVEN, I could tell;-) Now for some more technical points about the ingredients that I used here: I used 3 cloves of garlic, 1 medium onion and 1/2 inch piece of fresh ginger to make the paste of onion, ginger and garlic using a little water{about a little over 1/4 cup}. As for the red bell pepper I couldn't find that in the supermarket, so I used 2 green bell peppers' instead of 1 red and 1 green one. I used 1/4 kg cauliflower, cut into florettes for the cauliflower. Since the recipe did not specify the size of tomatoes to be used, I used 2 large ones for the paste{which I prepared fresh in the mixer}. As for the cayenne pepper, we do not use that, so I substituted that with freshly ground black pepper powder{I love to freshly grind the whole black peppercorns to give the extra burst of flavour in the dish}. I used 3/4 tsp. of black pepper powder. I used 1 3/4 tsp. of turmeric powder instead of just 1/2 tsp. I omitted the cream and butter in this{since this gentleman is counting calories}. As for the water, I used 1/4 cup instead of 1/2 cup. As for salt, I used 2 tsps. of it{of the 2 spoons, I used 1 tsp. heaped and the other just barely flat level of the teaspoon}. Now coming to step 2 of the recipe, I cooked this in a different order than that stated here in the recipe. Here's what I did: After heating oil in the pot, I added the ginger-garlic-onion paste mixture and sauteed it for a couple of minutes. Then, I put in the potatoes and cauliflower and mixed it well. I covered the pot and cooked it on high flame for a few minutes. After this I added the black pepper powder and turmeric powder, mixed it well and covered the pot for a few minutes to let the potatoes and cauliflower florettes absorb the masalas. When the potatoes were 3/4th cooked, I added the bell pepper pieces alongwith 1/4 cup of water, mixed this well, covered the pot and allowed it to cook for several minutes until it had softened. I then added the tomato paste and salt to the pot and mixed it well. Once again, I covered the pot and allowed all the veggies to absorb the flavours of all the spices, salt and the tomato paste for nearly 10 minutes on a simmer. Thereafter, my kitchen was smelling like a food heaven corner! I served this with hot rotis, rice and plain white yoghurt on the side sprinkled with a dash of freshly ground black pepper powder. DELICIOUS MEAL! Thank you very much for an incredible recipe that will now on be a regular on our table.

I was concerned that this would be too spicy for my taste when I saw the amount of paste to be used and the amount of paprika. That wasn't a problem at all. In fact I will add some curry next time I make this. Only change I made was to substitute 1.5T of fat free sour cream for the butter and cream. Enjoyed the combination of vegetables very much.