Bottle gourd Chickpeas Curry / Sorakkai Kondakadalai Kootu(With Peanuts & Spices) - Announcing Vegan Thursday

We a group of food bloggers started a new event and named it as Vegan Thursdays, this event starts from today. The main motto of this event is to share vegan dishes from any cuisine. Most of our Indian foods are vegan, obviously most of our daily routine foods we make or eat are vegan without our knowlegde.
Veganism means abstaining from the use of animal porducts. Vegan peoples dont use dairy products,eggs,and any other animal derived substances like honey in their cooking.So we a bunch of food bloggers will be showcasing our vegan foods during thursdays, this event will held twice a month. We will be posting the first week's thursday and last week's thursday of every month. This Vegan Thursday dont have any theme and the choice of the recipes prepared by each blogger being part of this event depend upon their choice.
Anyone interested in joining us, please leave your email id in the comment section and we will contact you.

Now Coming to the recipe, this is simple curry/kottu with great taste and very healthy recipe too. Usually kootu is made using fresh vegetables but to make it even more nutritious i added 1/2 cup of cooked black chickpeas/kala channa. And also for a change this time tried with freshly ground spices and peanuts. My mom used to make this kind of kootu when she run out of coconut, the freshly roasted and ground spices makes this curry/kottu more flavorful and tasty. Low calorie and very filling meal for diet people. If u haven't tried this way please give it a try definitely you will love it. This curry goes well with both rice and rotis. The recipe as follows..

Ingredients

1. Moongdal(yellow or green)     1/3 cup (i used yellow one)
2. Bottle gourd       2 cups chopped 
3. Black Chickpeas     1/2 cup(cooked)
4. Onion     1 medium (finely chopped)
5. Tomato    1 no.(chopped)
6. Turmeric powder   a generous pinch
7. Salt          to taste

To Temper

1. Oil      2 tsp
2. Mustard seeds      1/4 tsp
3. Cumin seeds     1/4 tsp
4. Fennel seeds     less than 1/4 tsp
5. Methi seeds   less than 1/4 tsp
6. Asofoetida     a generous pinch
7. Curry leaves    1 sprig

To Roast & Grind

1. Oil      1/2 tsp
2. Peanuts     2 tbsp
3. Dry Red chilli     2-3 no.s
4. Corainder seeds     1 tbsp
5. Cumin Seeds    1/4 tsp
6. Pepper corns     1/8 tsp

Method

• Wash and peel bottle gourd, remove center part and chop into bite sized chunks, chop onion and tomato and keep aside.
• Heat 1/2 tsp oil in a pan, add the ingredients under the heading "to roast n grind" in medium for 1-2 minutes. Then allow to cool for a while and grind it to a fine coarse powder and keep aside.

• Cook moongdal with 2-3 cups of water and pinch of turmeric powder, once it gets 3/4th cooked add chopped onion, tomato, bottel gourd and enough salt and cook covered till the bottle gourd gets soft n tender.
• Now add cooked chickpeas and ground spice powder and stir well and simmer for 2-3 minutes.

• After that heat oil in a tempering pan, add the tempering ingredients fry well and add it to the curry/kootu.
• That's it..Healthy & delicious bottle gourd Chickpeas Vegan curry/kottu ready. Serve hot with plain rice or rotis.

Notes:
With the same recipe you can also use any desired vegetable like cabbage, ash gourd, .radish, etc instead of bottle gourd.
Like wise add any desired legume instead of black chickpeas.