Green Leafy Vegetables in US

Nivedi,

I have tried cooking Collard greens, beet greens and turnip greens similar to making agathi keerai poriyal (mustard seeds & urad dhal tadka with 2-3 red chillies, saute the green sprinkling little water and then add cocount).

It tastes good.

Malathy

I want to follow recipes but!!! Oh dear I cannot understand these terms in tamil? or is it kannada? what is bachali? what is kootu? what is kerai kootu? bachali akulu and a bag of gongura akulu----guys please simplify for us eager US green leafy vegetable eaters!! thanks.
~ Naazneen.

Originally Posted by naazneen

I want to follow recipes but!!! Oh dear I cannot understand these terms in tamil? or is it kannada? what is bachali? what is kootu? what is kerai kootu? bachali akulu and a bag of gongura akulu----guys please simplify for us eager US green leafy vegetable eaters!! thanks.
~ Naazneen.

Dear naazneen,

bachali, is pasali, spinach, small leaves that come in creepers,and kootu is the method of making the spinach /dall and [the coconut, fried red chili and urad dhall and jeera,] the paste is mixed so bringing altogether is known as koottu. akulu is greens. and spinach and gonkura is from andhra leaves are long and very sour to taste, they make pickle kind of stuff with that to eat with rice..sunkan

Hi Nazneen,

Bachali is Malabar Spinach or Vietnamese Spinach. Here is a link to details of this greens:

Basella alba - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Atlanta it is available all through the year in the Oriental Vege section.

Originally Posted by naazneen

I want to follow recipes but!!! Oh dear I cannot understand these terms in tamil? or is it kannada? what is bachali? what is kootu? what is kerai kootu? bachali akulu and a bag of gongura akulu----guys please simplify for us eager US green leafy vegetable eaters!! thanks.
~ Naazneen.

Nazneen,

this is telugu.

akulu = leaves

bachali akulu = bachali leaves
gongura akulu = gongura (sour spinach) leaves.

any of these green leaves can also be used when cooking ground meats just like how methi leaves are used.

As sunkan said they taste specially yummy in pakoras.

woops! sorry about my ignorance. And thanks a ton for the explanations. will now follow on recipes as I am now enlightened!, hmm telugu- Andra Pradesh . You see I'm from Maharashtra- I had no clue what was going on. :)

Vaishnavi,

made kanda bachali as per your recipe. here are some pics taken while it was simmering. It tasted very good but not as good as when made by my friend. She uses frozen kanda gadda (what is it called in hindi) available in indian stores.

Oh,Blodie, you are too fast.. Looks yummy, does it taste sweeter? Because
I never cooked any dish with yum so far…just this week I cooked bachali daal so waiting for some days to cook kanda bachili…
Tulasi

Originally Posted by nivedi

Hi friends,

In the US, I come across different kinds of green leafy vegetables. I regularly use Spinach, Indian Amaranth, Indian Malabar Spinach, Swiss Chards and Bok Choy (for noodles). I am wondering if any of you use the other green leafy vegetables in Indian cooking like Brocolli Rabe, Mustard green, Kale, Watercress, Aragula, Radish greens, Beet greens etc. I find a lot of greens in the Vietnamese and Oriental section. I tried Collard greens, but did not like its somewhat bland taste.

Regards!

Hi, Nivedi

Yes, there are lots of green vegetables in the super market here and I find them cheap as well. I bought snake gourd for 50p a Kg the other day and bendi also at 1$ a Kg. In our cafetaria in the office they keep lots of green salads. But, my American colleague says come winter some of them will not be available. This winter is going to be my first full winter although I have visited U.S. during the winter few times before.

Regards,

TDU

It was a little sweet tulasi but tasted very good. You are missing out on yummy food if you haven't used yams in our indian cooking. Yam Pulusu tastes very good, you don't need to add a pinch of brown sugar to counter the sourness of the pulusu. You can use yams cubed in sambar also. (my kids love it)