Hara Bhara Mushrooms – Dairy free and Vegan side dish

As I had already mentioned in one of my older posts, I started cooking mushrooms only after marriage. Now it has become a part of our diet. I cook mushrooms at least once a week either as a starter or as a curry for Rotis. Recently I came across a recipe in Harini’s Tongue Ticklers. It was a combination of mushrooms with greens (mint and coriander leaves) which was totally new to me. I immediately wanted to try the recipe and luckily I had mint and coriander leaves in stock. I also had a pack of Baby Spinach which I had bought to make Spinach soup. I thought of adding the spinach also to the recipe and made it as a curry. It was super tasty…the perfect combination of mint, coriander and spinach leaves with garlic was the highlight of the dish. My daughter loved it and was telling me that I should make it often. Please do try this and let me know your feedback..

Ingredients:

Method:

1. In a mixer, add the green chillies, ginger, garlic, mint leaves, coriander leaves and blanched spinach. Grind them together adding a little water if necessary.

2. In a pan, add oil. Add cumin seeds when the oil is hot and allow them to crackle.

3. Add the green puree and cook until it loses the raw smell.

4. Add the sliced mushrooms (you can also add as whole mushrooms, but I prefer sliced) and cook for about 10 minutes on medium flame. The mushrooms leave out a lot of water and since I added spinach, I did not cover the pan while cooking. This retains the green colour of the spinach and keeps the curry green. Add the required amount of salt.

5. After about 10 minutes, do the taste test and see if you need to add more salt. Simmer for another 5 – 7 minutes and switch off the flame.

6. Serve hot with Rotis or steamed rice.

Note: You can either make it as a gravy like I did or wait till the green puree gets completely absorbed by the mushrooms. For the latter, use whole mushrooms so that you can serve it as a starter. The gravy would be good enough for 2 – 3 people.