Jain Pav-Bhaji

Since Jains do not eat any underground tubers, onions, potatoes, ginger, turmeric, garlic are not allowed. Though I have seen "Jain Pav-bhaji" on most of the menu-cards of Mumbai restaurants, I had never ordered it. Today, I made it at home out of curiosity. Replacing potatoes with raw bananas/plantains and not using ginger-garlic and onions for Pav-bhaji sounded really challenging. But we loved the result.

Though I knew what to avoid, and to replace potatoes with raw plaintains (banana), I wanted to make sure, I am not missing anything. I followed my own recipe, but googled "Jain Pav Bhaji" and got following links. I wanted to make sure, my ingredients were ok.
http://www.indialife.com/Indiancuisine/jain3.htm

http://jainfood.blogspot.com/2007/11/jain-pav-bhaji.html

Jain Pav-Bhaji

Ingredients
2 raw plantains, cut into 2-3 pieces, If plaintain is very big, use only 1

few florets of cauliflower

handful of peas

1 green bell pepper/capsicum, chopped

2 tomatoes, chopped

1 tbsp butter

1/2 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp pav-bhaji masala & more as required

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp amchoor powder

salt to taste

Garnish

Butter

cilantro/coriander leaves, chopped

lemon

Method

1. Pressure cook plantain with peel, cauliflower, peas.

2. Take the peels of plaintains off. Grate them and keep aside. Mash the rest of the cooked vegetables.

3. Heat butter. Add cumin seeds, pav-bhaji masala, bell pepper.

4. Stir fry for a few minutes. Now add tomatoes. Stir fry again for 5 minutes.

5. Add mashed, grated vegetables. Add 1 cup water.

6. Stir in Amchoor powder, chili powder, salt to taste

7. Simmer for 30 minutes. Add more pav-bhaji masala if needed

8. Serve hot with butter, cilantro, and lemon wedges.

Note -

1. Though the plaintain was pressure-cooked, I really had hard time mashing it with the potato masher. I grated the cooked plantains.

2. Some Jain families do not use fresh cilantro but prefer dried one.

This post is my contribution to RCI: Gujarat at Mythili's.
RCI is brainchild of Lakshmi of Veggiecuisine.