Keerai and bhaajji - throw some light

Hello all

Krishnaamma's keerai recipe got me started on this thread.

Here we are familiar with a few types of "keerai". Monday's is usually "keerai" for tamil families while the hindi families call the same "bhaajji". In English we call it [COLOR=blue! important][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif][COLOR=blue! important][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif]herbs[/font][/font][/color][/color] - we have red herbs, green herbs, watercress, semsoor (strong smelling), methi herbs we also cook spinach in the same way (palak). The normal way to cook it is braising it with onion, garlic and dried red chillies. Sometimes we add a chopped tomato. For watercress we throw in some peas.There are some varieties of sour herbs that we add to dhall and then call it sour dhall.

"Sugar cane" herbs are the young green herbs that was usually planted next to the rows of sugar cane and are young and soft and "melt like butter".

Another interesting dish is "kanji keerai"- I don't know if many of the younger generation even tasted this dish but its large, succulent type of leaves that are first boiled and mashed and then braised with onion, tomato, red chilli, mustard seeds.
Now I've kind of figured out that "kanji" is a South Indian dish but is definitely different to our "kanji-Keerai" here.

An interesting thing is how and why do we call these green leaves/ herbs "bhaajii" since I seem to notice in North Indian recipes "bhaaji" is vegetables!!

I'd like South African ladies to add to the Keerai/ bhaaji saga and I'd really like input from our Indian ladies so that perhaps we can unravel the mystery of how we came to name some of our dishes.

Regards Neesha

A new information . Must try some of them- Kanji keerai, Sugarcane keerai what not?. I will take note of these valuable information. kanaka