I saw this recipe in a tamil magazine a couple of months back.  I was very hesitant to try it because I was wondering how ridge gourd would taste in a sweet dish.  Finally I got the courage and prepared it yesterday.  The experiment was a grand success.  I did not tell my husband what I was preparing.  After it was done I gave him little payasam and asked him how it was.  He told,  “It tastes like any other payasam.  Why do you want to post it in your blog?”  He has a very sensitive nose, so he can guess what’s cooking even with the mildest aroma.  He himself could not believe that it was made with ridge gourd.

Ingredients in the original recipe:
Ridge Gourd, Big – 1
Milk – 4 cups (I used 2% milk)
Water – 1 to 2 cups for cooking the ridge gourd
Sugar – ¼ to ½ cup as per your taste
Cardamom powder – little

Optional:
Condensed Milk – 2 tablespoons
Cashews, raisins for garnishing
Ghee for frying the nuts, 2 teaspoons
Green food color

My variation:
Milk – 2 cups for cooking the ridge gourd (I used skim milk instead of water)
Cashews, whole – 5 (to cook along with the vegetable)

Servings:
For 6 cups of milk used, I got 4 cups (exactly) of ridge gourd payasam.

Procedure:
1.  Wash the ridge gourd under running water and peel the coarse ridges.  Discard it and then peel the skin and save it for grinding chutney.

2.  Cut the gourd into small pieces.  I pressure cooked the gourd, 2 cups of skim milk and 5 cashews for 2 whistles.

3.  While the ridge gourd is cooking, boil the 4 cups of milk in a heavy bottomed vessel.

4.  Wait for the pressure to release and grind the cooked vegetable in a blender.  I used an immersion blender and got a very smooth ridge gourd puree.

5.  Add this puree to the boiling milk and let it cook for another 10 minutes or until you are not able to smell the vegetable.  Keep stirring once in a while so that the bottom of the vessel does not scorch.

6.  Add the condensed milk, sugar and cardamom powder and the food color if you wish.  Let this mixture simmer for a while.

7.  Meanwhile heat the ghee in a small frying pan and fry cashews, raisins and add it to the kheer.

8.  Serve it hot or cold.

My Notes:
1.  The paysam was very delicious.  At first I added ¼ cup of sugar but felt that it was not sweet enough.  So I added another ¼ cup, but this made the payasam very swweeeeeeeet.  I will reduce the quantity of sugar  the next time (more than ¼ cup but little less than ½ cup) .

2.  In case you choose to cook the vegetable with water, just remove the cooked vegetables alone and blend it.  Reserve the liquid for some soup or stew.  If you use milk, you can blend everything together.

3.  The author of the original recipe has also given recipes for potato, chayote squash (chow chow), cabbage, cauliflower, green peas, bottle gourd and red pumpkin kheer in the same method.  I have prepared the red pumpkin kheer a couple of times and it tastes very good too.  I have not yet tried the other vegetables.

4.  I also prepare chutney with the ridge gourd peel and chow chow peel always.  Yesterday morning I prepared chow chow kootu (daal), so I had reserved those peels too.  So I prepared a chutney with the peels of both the vegetables.  I know that many of you do it already.  Those who are not aware of the recipe, if you are interested I will post it here.  Let me know.

I love to create my own recipes. Since I’m a novice baker, I’m trying only other’s recipes for now. I just try to tweak it here and there. So for the time being my experiments are limited to Indian cooking only. That’s how I put together this recipe. May be some of you know this one already, but I’m very happy because, I tried it for the first time and it was very tasty.

I asked my husband to get 1 zucchini to try the oven baked zucchini fries, but he bought 4 instead. Anyway it worked out good because I was able to come up with 3 new recipes. They are zucchini pappu, chocolate chip zucchini bread and zucchini soup. I’ll be posting the other 2 very soon. I wanted to post the zucchini bread first, but when I mentioned about the zucchini recipes to my friend Laksh of Lakshmusings, she told that she would try zucchini pappu. So I thought I should post that one first.

Ingredients:
Zucchini 1 medium size, peeled and grated (don’t drain the water)
Tomato 1 medium size, cut into small pieces or 1/4 cup crushed tomatoes
Toor Dal 1/4 cup, pressure cooked
Sambar Powder 1 teaspoon
Green Chilli 1 medium, slit it
Salt 1/2-3/4ths of a teaspoon according to your taste
Water 1/4-1/2 cup as required

For Tempering:
Oil 2 teaspoons
Mustard seeds 1/2 teaspoon
Channa Dal and Urad Dal 1 teaspoon each
Curry leaves 3-5 leaves

Procedure:
1. In a sauce pan add the oil and after it heats add the rest of the tempering ingredients.
2. Once the dals turn golden brown add the grated zucchini, slit green chilly, tomato puree/tomato pieces and sambar powder,little water and close the lid. Zucchini itself has water content in it, so just add little water to make sure that the zucchini does not stick to the bottom of the vessel while cooking.
3. Once the zucchini is done add the cooked toor dal and let it boil for another 2-3 minutes.
4. Garnish it with cilantro.

Variation:
I have tried the exact same recipe with ridge gourd and bottle gourd too.  They also taste very good.  You may also add a teaspoon of tamarind extract with the zucchini, if you like it sour.

My Notes:
Nowadays I use crushed tomatoes a lot in my cooking. It’s very economical when you compare it with the price of fresh tomatoes and also saves you time in the kitchen. Once you open the can pour the contents into another jar/plastic box and store it in the refrigerator. One 32 ounce can lasts for 2 weeks for me and it’s only 79 cents, when a pound of fresh tomatoes is anywhere between $1.50 to $2.00 and they also rotten quickly. Moreover I came across one more fact that cooked and canned tomatoes have more lycopene than the fresh ones. Anyway I’m not telling “don’t buy fresh tomatoes”, it’s just my observation. I thought I can share it with everybody here.  Moreover my husband does not like too much of tomatoes in his diet, so this works for me.  His favorite dish with tomatoes is Tomato Rice, I use crushed tomatoes in that too.