Uttarakhand or Uttaranchal is known for two popular cuisines – The Garhwali and the Kumaoni cuisine. I found a lot of interesting recipes, and in fact, it was challenging to pick one. What I found was, horse gram or Gahat is widely used in the Garhwali cuisine. Be it in dal, or stuffed paratha or this phaanu horse gram plays a significant role. As I was searching for the recipe, once again I landed upon this video. It’s the village-style Gahat phanu recipe. I was fascinated with that traditional method. The use of mortar pestle took me back to the Periyakulam days. (Ammi as we say in Tamil) I decided to go with that recipe and instead of mustard greens I used Kale.
I need to agree that I used a large quantity of kale for this proportion. It was slightly on the bitter side, and vaandu was not relishing much. I would recommend using either baby kale or go with 1.5 cups of chopped kale. I was planning to take a video of this recipe, but it didn’t work out as planned. Amidst that chaos, I missed few stepwise pictures. This is one keeper recipe for sure. I will update the pictures soon.
Here comes the traditional Garhwali Gahat ki Phanu.
Recap:
Day 25 | 2015 – Dubai Trip Day 25| 2016 – Bombay Sandwich Today –Instant Pot Kulath Phaanu | Horsegram Curry | Garhwali Recipes
Instant Pot Gahat Phaanu | Horsegram Kale Stew
A popular Garhwali lentil recipe, Gahat ki Phanu prepared with horse gram and kale/mustard greens. Ingredients:
Kale – 3 cups tightly packed Green Onions – 4 (⅓) cup Tomatoes – 3 Horse gram – ½ cup Garlic -1 Oil – 1 tsp Cumin Seeds – 1 tsp Coriander powder – 1.5 tsp Red Chili powder – ¾ tsp Cilantro – ¼ cup Turmeric – ¼ tsp Water – 4 cups Salt – 1.5 tsp
Prep – Work:
Soak the horse gram dal for at least 8 hours. I soaked it for about 10 hours.
After 8 hours drain the water and grind it along with one garlic clove into a coarse paste by adding water. I used about ½ cup of water. Chop the kale, tomatoes, and green onions and set aside.
As this recipe doesn’t involve pressure cooking, I am going to combine the stovetop and instant pot method.
Stovetop & Instant Pot Method:
If using IP, set it to sauté mode and add oil. If using the stovetop method, heat a heavy bottom vessel and add oil.
When the oil is hot, add the cumin seeds. As it starts to splutter, add the tomatoes and cook for a minute. Then add the chopped kale, green onions, and all the dry masalas – turmeric powder, red chili powder, coriander powder, and salt too. Mix them all and cover and cook for 5 minutes. For my IP, I used the glass lid for the covering. You use the IP lid too and use steam mode. But I just went with the regular cover and cooking method.
Once the kale has shrunken, add the ground horse gram dal paste and 2 cups of water. Mix them and let it simmer on low flame for 5 minutes. Make sure you stir the dal for every one minute to avoid the dal browning up. After 3 to 4 minutes, add the remaining water and cilantro. Bring it to one boil and turn of the heat.
That’s it. Gahat ki phaanu is ready. Serve hot with rice.
Notes:
The original recipe calls mustard greens. If you can source them, please go for that. Also as I mentioned above, if you are using kale, use about 1 to 1.5 cups. The dal thickens fast so cook over a low flame and add water according to your consistency preference. I used four cups of water totally for this. The dal was semi-thick. If you like garlic flavor, you can add three to five for this recipe. Adjust the salt and spice as per your preference.
📖 Recipe
