Laau-Mooga Dalma (Bottle gourd and Moong Daal) - An Odiya weekday favorite

Its almost end of summer and the farmers market are still in full swing in the Bay Area. The farmers market here are very restricted to certain fruits and vegetables only unless we are real lucky and we get something extra ordinarily unique in the markets. No matter what, we visit the market every week and get our week worth of green leafy vegetables & some local vegetables... "Laau" or Lauki or Bottle gourd being one of them.

The trick to buy a nice "Laau" was taught by my F-I-L. The stem should be intact and should have small shiny fibre hairs on them. Thats when we know they are young and fresh. Like I ever cared whether a "Laau" is young but  mind you.. my F-I-L is very particular about his vegetables so off we go and look for "Laau" with small shiny fibre hairs.

Ingredients for making my M-I-Ls famous "Laau-Mooga Dalma"

• 1 medium sized laau (Lauki or Bottle gourd) skinned & cut into cubes
• 1/2 cup of yellow moong dal - dry roasted (please do not burn or make it dark brown)
• 1/2 medium red onion (can be skipped if you want to make this for a Monday or Thursday)
• 1 inch ginger grated
• 2 tea spoons panch phoran
• 2 green chilies slit at length
• turmeric powder & salt to taste
• Oil/Ghee for tempering
• 1 tea spoon sugar
• Fresh green chopped coriander leaves

Process 

• Take a pressure cooker and dry roast the moong dal in it. (I am trying to reduce the number of vessels we use)
• Once the moong dal has turned dark yellow/light brown and gives away this amazing aroma, its time to add the laau and water to cover the dal + laau mixture. Some mothers wash the moong dal after dry roasting it. You can do that too. It will ensure nothing else goes into the dalma other than the real stuff.
• Add salt, sugar & turmeric + little bit of ghee
• Pressure cook for 3 whistles (I have the 3.5 litres Hawkins pressure cooker) and turn off heat and let the pressure go away.
• In a separate tempering pan, heat oil or ghee.
• When hot, add the panch phoran and let the seeds crackle up.
• Now goes the onions and ginger. {Only ginger if not using onions}
• Fry till the onions are browned. Do not let them to brown a lot. 
• When done, transfer the tempering into the pressure cooker and place the cooker on heat.
• Adjust water and salt. The gravy will be soupy so that you can add it to hot steaming white rice and gulp down without even getting the chance to chew !!
• To top it off, add ghee and fresh green chopped coriander leaves and give it a light mix.
• Service with rice. Roti is also fine, but to be honest does not do justice !!