If you understand Tamil and are interested in cooking then you must watch this show on Vijay TV – Samayal Samayal (Cooking Cooking). It is hosted by Venkatesh Bhat from Accord Metropolitan, Chennai. I initially started watching it because I found him cute. Yup, superficial me. But then I found his recipes to be easy and his style absolutely no nonsense. He wasn’t the kind to have all ingredients prepped by someone before the show. He would perform the entire recipe including mundane stuff like cutting veggies, etc from start to finish on camera. It makes the dish look simple and somehow gives me the confidence of being able to master the dish.

This recipe featured as part of his Budget Cooking episode. Since I just got my first harvest of lady’s fingers from my garden, I decided to try it immediately. So here goes –

WHAT WE NEED

Lady’s fingers     200 gms

Cornflour                30 gms

Rice flour                30 gms

Gram flour              30 gms

Cumin powder          5 gms

Turmeric powder      5 gms

Red chilly powder     5 gms

Garam Masala           5 gms

Lemon                       1 large or 2 medium

Salt

Oil for deep frying

WHAT TO DO

• Wash and dry the lady’s fingers
• Cut them into diagnol stripes. Thinner the better
• Add cornflour and coat the lady’s fingers well
• Add cumin powder, turmeric powder, red chilly powder, rice flour, gram flour and salt
• Mix them well
• Add the lemon juice and ensure the flours and seasoning stick to the lady’s fingers
• Only if needed, sprinkle some water to bring them all together
• Heat oil and deep fry them in batches

Yup. That’s it. Quick and yumm.

NOTES

1. I did not use all the ingredients strictly by measurement. It was more using my judgement and it turned out fine. So you don’t need to be too strict with flour and seasoning quantities
2. I did not have cornflour and so I used corn starch. There are 2 schools of thought – one saying that the two are replaceable and the other denying it. In this case, it did not make a difference.
3. He added some chat masala to the dish at the end after the frying and before serving. We don’t like it and so I omitted that part.

This is my entry for Cooking from Cookbook Challenge hosted by Srivalli.

This is my entry for MonsoonMojo hosted by Kalyani