LIVE TO COOK

I came to know about Inji’s Green Blog Project for summer at the last moment. It was too late to grow something and post about it. But Mandira’s Winter GBP watered my enthusiasm . I wanted to try something new that was not in our summer GBP round up. This desire and the long winter of New England reduced my possibilities.

After searching the internet a lot, I chose “Pea shoots” as my Project.

Pea shoots are tender leaves and stems of the pea plant. It is a Chinese delicacy and they call them as dou miao. It is used in salads and stir fries.

This is how I grew it.

Soaked a handful of Dried Green Peas that we get in Indian/Asian Groceries. Sprouted it and sowed it in a pot of soil; Covered it with 1/4 inch of soil; Watered it every other day. The Pea shoots grew in to tiny plants with tiny leaves. When they got two set of leaves, I cut 3/4 of the plant, leaving a little stem. I did so to find out whether they will grow again and they did.

In the first batch, I got a handful of shoots. I chopped them and mixed with 1 cup of whole wheat flour, a tea spoon of salt and 1/4 cup of water and kneaded into pliable dough. Rolled into 5 inch discs and cooked in hot griddle till brown spots appeared on both sides.

Here is our Pea shoots Roti.

The Pea shoots grew again in 2 weeks and the second batch gave me another handful of shoots. I tossed them in Juwar adai. For Juwar Adai, I took a cup of Juwar flour, handful of pea shoots, a tea spoon of salt, a pinch of asafoetida, 3 table spoons of home made yogurt. Mixed all the ingredients into a pancake like batter and cooked in hot griddle like pancake, but little bigger.

Here is our Juwar Adai.

I left a little stem in the soil, this time too, to observe how long they can grow. I will update it in future posts.

Though the pea shoots have very little leaves, they have the peas flavor and are suitable for growing indoors.

Aha! the post is here and now……

Knock, Knock! Mandira!!