Cabbage and Carrot Zhunka - from One Hot Stove

This recipe is an adaptation of Nupur's Zhunka recipe that she had blogged about earlier in the month in her wonderful A-Z of Marathi Food series. I am always looking for creative ways to cook cabbage - the one vegetable that doesn't rank in my "must-eat" veggies and hence doesn't usually make it to my shopping list either.

I did do some changes to the recipe, so I am not exactly sure how authentic it is but it was yummy! One major change I made was to reduce the flour content, dry roast the flour and also added some additional masalas and carrots.

Software
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• 3 cups shredded cabbage
• 1 cup matchstick carrots/shredded carrots
• 1 medium onion, chopped lenghwise
• 2 cups besan/chickpea flour
• 2 tsp coriander powder
• 2 tsp chili powder/to taste
• 2 tsp (cloves + caradamom + cinnamon stick + black pepper) powder (dry roasted and powdered)
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil or your favorite oil
• 2 tsp black mustard/rai/aavalu seeds
• 2 tsp jeera/cumin seeds
• 1 tsp turmeric powder/haldi/pasupu
• 1 sprig curry leaves, chopped fine
• 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and chopped fine
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
• 1/3 cup of water
• salt, to taste
• handful of chopped cilantro

Hardware
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one non-stick pan

Method
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• Put the pan on medium heat, and add the chickpea flour. Dry roast the flour until the raw smell goes away. Transfer it to a plate and keep aside.
  
• Add the oil to the same pan, add the mustard and the jeera seeds. After they splutter, add the onions, ginger and garlic.
• After the onions are traslucent, add the curry leaves, turmeric powder, chili powder, coriander powder, (cloves,caradamom,cinnamon,blackpepper) powder and stir.
• Add the cabbage and stir. Cover and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the matchstick/shredded carrots. Stir. Cover and cook for another 2 mins.
• Now add the roasted flour in batches stirring the cabbage, carrot mixture so the flour gets incorporated.
• Nupur's recipe said that there is no need to add water but I had to with mine. The jiuces from the veggies weren't enough for the flour to get incorporated. I added about 1/3 cup of water. I also added a lot less flour than her recipe asked for also.

The end result was just superb! Thanks, Nupur for the recipe. Serve it with roti, puri or rice. I ate it with some crackers the next day and it was good with them too.