Oil free ChavaLichi Amti

I am great fan of pressure cooking especially when it come to pulses and beans. This is the first time I have made this oil free amti. What made me do that is the fact that I was using coconut for the gravy. Coconut has enough oil already. So I skipped the tadka altogether. The amti turned out so good that none of us missed the oil or the tadka.

We found some fresh ChavaLi beans in the pod. The long pods looked great with the beans plump and tight. The colors of the pod a purple green and the beans a range of mature pale beige to the baby greens. These beans must have been a delicacy some centuries ago for an inspired a poet calls a young curvaceous girl, ChavaLichi Sheng!

This amti goes well with chapati, jowar/ bajari/ ragi roti as well a rice. Yesterday we had the yard long beans stir fried with just chilies they were so young and aromatic that we enjoyed every morsel of our dinner. Yard long beans too are ChavaLi Sheng but they yield the red beans that are small, the size of green lentils. Today the beans I used are the ones that yield the black eyed peas that are beige in color also known by the same name. Keeping the spicing light I made this curry that was completely different even though their names are the same.

Ingredients

1 cup mature ChavaLi removed fresh from the pods
1 potato quartered
2 tomatoes quartered
a small piece jaggery (optional)
2 cups water
salt to taste

For masala :

1 big onion
1/8 piece of a coconut or 2-3 tablespoon of grated coconut
1 green chili
2 teaspoon MTR sambhar masala
1 handful cilantro
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder

To begin grind all the item to a course paste. In a pressure cooker mix together all the ingredients along with the masala and close the lid. Allow 1 whistle on high heat and another 1 on sim. Put off the heat and cool till pressure subsides. Give it a stir with a light hand such that it is mixed well yet allows the potato to hold itself. Serve with a squeeze of lime.