Dadape Pohe

Dadape - weighed down
Pohe - flattened rice

One of my friend has really a very green thumb. She grows almost everything and anything!!!! Cabbage, carrots, onions, grapes, fennel, chives and usual suspects like zucchini and tomatoes. Her garden is really inspiring. She had an old wooden play structure in her backyard which had no use for her. They got it down and used it to make big vegetable beds and planted all the vegetables she wanted to her heart's content. She tries to plant whatever is in the season and eat accordingly. She is an amazing cook and uses everything from her backyard in various ways.

Vegetable Garden

My vegetable patch has too much gravel and whatever I planted did not yield much. Even though I have huge backyard and lot of empty space to use as my vegetable garden. But this is the patch that I have set my heart to grow the goodies. This year I decided to use my friend's idea to make wooden vegetable beds that can hold good soil. As we did not have any wooden structure to reuse, we decided to buy wooden planks and make the beds. We had to decide type of wood, thickness and width of the wood. She helped us along the way to make the decisions. Finally the beds got ready, we ordered truck full of dirt and hauled it to the backyard! It was extremely labor intensive work but extremely satisfying. We planted methi, cilantro, bell peppers, chard, tomatoes, beans and some more vegetables. Now we are literally reaping fruits of our labor.

Home grown Veggies

She is the one who inspired me to take pottery class, to learn painting. She is the one who inspired me to be adventurous with food and now the vegetable garden! D, thank you for everything!

Here is a simple Maharashtrian snack that I made using some of backyard finds!!!

Dadape pohe

2 cups Thin Pohe
1 small Onion
2 medium Tomatoes
2 tbsp Roasted Peanuts
2-3 tbsp Freshly Grated Coconut (I used frozen)
Lots of chopped cilantro
2 tbsp Oil
3-4 Green Chilies (adjust per taste)
1 tbsp Jaggery
Salt per taste
1/2 Lime
For tempering - Mustard seeds, Cumin Seeds, Few Curry leaves, Turmeric powder

Preparation -
Pick over thin pohe and keep it in a plate
Add 2-3 tbsp of water to jaggery to make simple syrup. Squeeze lime juice in the prepared syrup.
Drizzle this jaggery-lime mix on pohe, add coconut and mix well. Now take a smaller plate and cover this poha mixture. Keep something heavy (I like using 1lb bag of beans) on this assemby and set it aside for 15-20 minutes.
Meanwhile chop onion, tomatoes, green chilies and cilantro.
Heat oil in a tempering kadhai. Once hot, add musatard seeds, cumin seeds, curry leaves and turmeric. Let it sizzle for a minute and then add chilies. Add chopped onion in couple of minutes. Now saute the everything for few minutes. Onion should be partially cooked.
Add Roasted peanutes and saute for couple of minutes.
Remove cover from pohe and mix salt. chopped tomatoes and cilantro.
Add the tempering and mix thoroughly.
Adjust salt if needed and enjoy.

Tips -

• Every family has a favorite recipe to make this. My mom uses raw onion but I don't like raw onion taste so I saute it. I learned this trick from one of my aunt.
  
• Some use coconut water and lots of fresh coconut to make the pohe softer and just add salt and green chili paste.
• I know few people use raw onion and chopped cilantro to soften the pohe and just add salt, sugar and red chili powder to finish off the dish.