Indian Green Salad with Mumbai Spice Recipe

Wussup?

How’ve you been cooking?

In this part of the hemisphere; in this sunny, tiny “fit-to-be-a-honeymoon-suite” apartment, the silent man with a perpetual boyish grin on his face lurves green salad.

In fact he loves it so, so much that one can replace appetizers with a bowl full of green salad and the man (who is usually very finicky about food {its not love but food makes his world go round}) would happily munch away.

Him : Green salad=Me : Apple pie

Got the relation?

Strangely enough, I never had this salad before I moved to Mumbai. I’ve had many salads in my life you see. Whether a dainty salad in a spotless white plate served with frozen cutlery in a posh beige-gold-cream setting-ed restorah or a russian salad with tonnes of pineapple in it. Roughly chopped green “slaad” with seed-laden tomatoes and limp cabbage shards- oh yes! I’ve had that fair share of salad, munchkins. And I guarantee you- this has to be great for me to blog about it.

So what’s so great about this green salad? It’s this dry dressing that I can bet my life on- a dressing that not many knows of and I’m sure none of you reading me would have had. It turns the simplest of onion rings into delicious munchies!

My sister in law gave us this “masala”. It’s supposed to be sprinkled on rose sherbet that we often have during the summer season. I know! So exotic right? This masala is also the main driving force behind the famous Mumbai “kalakhatta (sour and dark ) gola”- a dark and tangy Slurpee made with black berry juice, crushed ice, lemon juice and chaat masala.

This is how a typical Gola looks

Source: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3101/3122508634_d40b47cd12.jpg

Gola connoisseurs will tell you that without this chaat masala it is not possible to make gola. True.

And so is this salad.

Best part is, considering it doesn’t have a name, I decided to call it Mumbai Spice. If anyone knows any info on this, feel free to let me know!

Here we go

Ingredients {All in measures of 1/2 cup}

Coriander seeds

Carom seeds

Cumin seeds

Chili powder

Rock Salt

{All in measures of 2 tbsp}

Ground Mango Powder

Plain Salt

Chili powder {1 tbsp}

Procedure

Heat a skillet and rub some oil. When the oil is hot place coriander seeds and fry it until its fragrant. You’ll take about 4 minutes to do it.

Remove fried seeds and repeat procedure with cumin and carom seeds- all done individually.

Ideally you should not mix them until they are in powder form but hey, I ain’t got whole day. So fry them individually and keep pouring them in a mixer.

Next, put in chili powder, salt, rock salt and mango powder to the mixer and grind all of it together.

Cut up onions, tomato, lettuce, cucumber and carrots.

Toss them up with Mumbai Spice

Serve fresh with love!