I enjoy cooking with leafy greens. You can add them to lentils or quiche or stir fry them and they taste amazing.
One of the easily available leafy vegetables where I live is the amaranth leaf. Today I make a simple stir fry with the fresh amaranth leaves.
Let’s start
Ingredients
Onion – 1 small
Garlic – 3 cloves
Green chili – 3
Amaranth leaves – 1 bunch
Salt – as per taste
Mustard seeds – ½ teaspoon
Asafetida – a little
Oil of choice – I am using Coconut oil today
Method
Slice 1 small onion
Crush 3 cloves of garlic
Slit 3 green chilies. (I am using 3 because I know this is a non-spicy variety. You can use green chilies as per your spice tolerance).
Wash and chop amaranth leaves. They cook down to almost nothing.
Heat some oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds. When the mustard begins to splutter, add the green chili, crushed garlic, asafetida and the sliced onions.
Cook until onions soften a little and the garlic turns slightly golden.
Add the chopped amaranth leaves. Though it looks like a large quantity now, it will wilt and cook down. Continue to cook the leaves in an open pan stirring occasionally, until it is cooked to your preference. Add salt and give it one good stir.
And its done.
I cook every day. Well, almost every day. And there are days where I cook multiple recipes. Having said that, I am not an authentic or professional chef. Many of my recipes are experiments as I try to adapt and use the ingredients I already have.
My mantra is you should cook food just the way you like it. I don’t mean any disrespect to traditional methods of cooking or any cultures where the cuisine originates from. But I merely try to cook it with what I have and what is available to me and sometimes, I add ingredients that I want to use up.
All photos are my own.
All photos are shot on a mobile phone.