LIVE TO COOK

Yup! Mustard sprouts!

When you live in tiny apartment and have a window sill with few hours of sunshine, when you have a green thumb that will fade if you don’t grow anything green, sprouts are a good option.

Anything, from sprouted seed to the plant with few inches of growth is a sprout. These tiny plants are nothing but pack of nutrients. A Table spoon of seeds will give you greens enough to toss into a salad.

From start to finish everything will end in 2 weeks. No worries about mold or rot, summer or winter, sun or rain, pests or disease. With a shallow bowl or tray, soil, 1 or 2 table spoons of seeds and water, we will get greens to enjoy, year round.

Here’s what I did.

Took a table spoon of Brown mustard seeds in a cup . Soaked over night in water. Drained and covered the cup with a damp cloth. After 24 hours the seeds sprouted .

Took a shallow bowl. Drilled few holes for drainage. Filled the bowl with potting soil. Spread the sprouted seeds evenly over the soil and covered the seeds loosely with soil to 1/4 inch thickness.

Kept the soil moist but not damp. After two or three days the plants started to grow. Misted with water daily. When they reached 2 to 3 inches, cut the plants near the soil and used it in the missi roti recipe below.

We have to do this every 2 or 3 weeks to get constant supply. We can grow methi and pea shoots like this. After cutting the plants for cooking, I will pour hot boiling water over the soil in the bowl, wait till it drains and cools well and use it for next batch along with few handfuls of new soil. The leftover stems and roots from the previous batch will become manure to the next batch!

The Recipe for Missi Roti : (This is Tarla Dalal’s Recipe)

• 1 Cup Besan (Gram flour)
• 1 Cup atta (Whole wheat flour)
• 2 tbsp oil or ghee (Clarified Butter)
• 1 tbsp Kasoori Methi (Dried fenugreek leaves)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp red chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp jeera (Cumin Seeds)
• a pinch of hing (Asafetida)
• a pinch of haldi (Turmeric Powder)

Mix all the ingredients. Add enough water to make a dough of rolling consistency. Cover it and keep aside for half an hour. Make small balls and roll them slightly thicker than the usual chapati (flat bread of India). Cook on hot griddle with or without oil or in a hot tandoor (clay oven).

I replaced the kasoori methi with 1/2 cup of fresh mustard sprouts and followed the recipe. The outcome looked like this…

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!!