Lau Shukto | Lau'er Shukto |
Lau shukto is a summer vegetarian delicacy made with bottle gourd and lentil dumplings cooked in milk and poppy seed paste.
Ingredients
- 1 medium sized bottle gourd peeled and finely chopped
- 1 tsp black mustard seeds
- 2-3 dried red chilies
- 4-5 methi seeds fenugreek seeds
- salt to taste
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp poppy seed paste
- 1 tsp mustard paste
- ½ cup milk
- 2 tsp ghee
- 5 tbsp vegetable oil
- ½ cup matar dal
Instructions
- Wash and soak dal in water overnight or in hot water for 2 hours. Make a paste of the dal with as little water as possible. Grind it into a smooth paste.
- Take it out in a bowl and add salt and sugar to taste. Then whisk this using your hands till you get a light and airy batter.
- Heat 4-5 tbsp vegetable oil in a kadai or a non-stick frying pan. In the case of the latter, use less oil. Add a tsp of hot oil to the batter and whisk again. Now using your fingers, add small dollops of batter in the oil, making dumplings. Keep the heat medium to low or else it will burn on the outside. Flip and cook both sides. Take them out of the oil and set them aside.
- Heat 1-2 tsp vegetable oil and temper it with dried red chilies, mustard seeds, and fenugreek seeds.
- Add the chopped bottle of gourd. Stir fry this for a couple of minutes and then cover and let it cook. Bottle gourd will release water and this will cook in its own steam. Keep the temp low.
- Meanwhile, take ginger paste and poppy seed paste in a bowl. Strain black mustard paste using milk instead of water into this. You can skip the mustard and just add milk also. Give this a mix.
- When the bottle gourd has cooked, add this milk into it and the lentil dumplings. Add salt to taste and sugar. Mix all this well. Keep stirring on medium heat and if you feel that the bottle gourd is all loose and not coming together, add a little more milk and keep stirring. Finally, drizzle ghee and serve hot with rice