Sorakaya (Bottle Gourd) Kofta

Well I had too many bottle gourds in my garden this year. After trying to give away as many as I could I had to try out a new recipe apart from what I know. So I ventured into the www and found a recipe and changed it to make my own. The original can be found at http://www.ammas.com/a1/advisors/index.cfm?r=vr&recipeid=746&cid=93902

I had like 6 cups of grated bottle gourd but ended up deep frying only 2 cups probably. I did not add cream as instructed in the original recipe. Anyways here is my version
For the Kofta:

2 Cups Grated sorakaya
3 tbsp Besan
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp red chilly powder
1 tbsp Ginger-garlic paste
5-6 tbsp corriander leaves chopped
1 tbsp garam masala

Gravy
1/2 cup tomato puree
1 tbsp red chilli powder
1 tbsp ginger-garlic paste
Salt according to taste

Masala Paste
1 large onion
2 tbsp grated fresh coconut
2 green chillies
2 red chillies
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp dhania seeds
1tbsp khus khus (gasagasalu)
2 tbsp ginger-garlic paste
salt to taste

Making Koftas:
You will need to grate the sorakaya and if I havent advocated enough for my friends and family to buy a food processor here I go again "Life is easy with a food Processor". I took out my madeline and was trying to grate when I decided this is not happening and took my food processor and used hte grating option and woooohoooo in like 2 min the big entire sorakaya was grated. I LOVE MY FOOD PROCESSOR :)

So this is how much I had after grating and this is how it looks




Add a little salt to it and wait for a minute and then squeeze out the water from it. My trick for it rather than squeezing by hand was to use a strainer and press down the grated sorakaya so the water would just drain down.




Make sure you squeeze out as much water as possible. Add all the rest of ingredients needed to make the kofta (listed above) and this is how it looks later. One word of advice if you have large quantity mix the ingredients batch by batch else letting the grated mixture stay will ooze more water making it more harder for you to work with

Shape into balls and deep fry in oil

Deep fry until it turns into nice brown. Make sure your stove is not too high since you want the balls to cook inside. It will still be soft but then it should be cooked inside. Only the outer layer will become crispy.

Grind all the masala ingredients (listed above). If you need to add a little water to get a paste please do so. Heat some oil in a pan and then fry the masala paste you just ground. Fry this paste for sometime until you see oil floating. (Make sure you have a lid covered else your stove will be a mess for the splashing). add Chilli powder, tomato puree and little water and let it cook.

Once done just before eating add the balls into the curry and garnish with corriander.




Enjoy!!! Well this one turned out to be a good expirement. I did not mix the gravy and the balls thinking they would become soft when in gravy so I had them seperate until serving time.