Dosakaya Pachadi – Andhra Yellow Cucumber Chutney

Eat fresh and eat simple….is the motto of my day to day cooking. I love seasonal, fresh and organic produce. On my recent trip to local organic vegetable shop, I found these gorgeous yellow cucumbers and the mere site of these beauties oozed saliva and tickled my taste buds. As it’s been long I cooked with these yellow cucumbers, I picked up a kilo to pamper my cravings. These yellow cucumbers are easily available in Andhra, but I have seen them very rarely in Bangalore and now we started getting these in Chennai. This Yellow Cucumber is called Dosakaya in Telugu and Kakdi in Hindi. These cucumbers are mildly sour and juicy. Today I am going to share with you my very favourite and simple to make flavour rich Dosakaya Pachadi.

DosakayaPachadi

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 medium sized Yellow Cucumber
• ¾ cup Peanuts
• 6 Green chilies cut into half
• 1 tbsp. Cumin seeds/Jeera
• 3 cloves Garlic
• ½ tbsp. thick Tamarind paste
• 2+2 tbsp. Oil
• Salt
• 3 sprigs fresh Coriander leaves

FOR TEMPERING:

• 1 tbsp. Cumin seeds/Jeera
• 1 tbsp. Chana dal/Bengal gram
• ½ tbsp. Mustard seeds
• 6 fresh Curry leaves

PREPARATION:

• Peel the yellow cucumber and wash thoroughly. Cut it into half and remove the seeds. (Taste the cucumber before cutting it down into pieces, sometimes the cucumber may be bitter. If it is bitter then don’t use it). Cut it into 1’inch pieces and set aside.
• On a low flame dry roast peanuts until they turn crisp. Remove onto a place and leave to cool.
• In the same pan, add 2 tbsp. of oil and fry green chilies for 1-2 minutes. Drain and add these fried green chilies to mixer jar.
• Now remove the skin of the peanuts and add these too to the mixer jar along with cumin seeds, garlic and tamarind paste. Grind coarsely.
• To this add salt and coriander leaves and pulse for 10 seconds. Add this powder to cut cucumber pieces and using your hand gently mix all the ingredients until the cucumber pieces are nicely coated with the ground peanut mix.
• Heat 2 tbsp. of oil for tempering and add all the ingredients mentioned under ‘to temper’.
• When the curry leaves start to change color, pour this hot tempering over the above cucumber pieces.
• Stir gently using a spoon and serve with hot rice, ghee, dal and papad.
• I served this dosakaya pachadi with hot rice, dosakaya pappu (Yellow Cucumber Dal), Chicken Khorma and Papad.
• Add love to make this dosakaya pachadi taste ‘Yummy’.

NOTE:

• Don’t add cucumber pieces to tempering in hot kadai, doing this will impart bitter taste to the cucumber pieces; rather pour the tempering over the cucumber pieces in a bowl.
• The secret of the recipe is to retain the crunch of the cucumber pieces and to have that juicy taste and the crunch of cucumber when you bite.