Regional trek
 Savour this sweet potato
Great as a starter, accompaniment or finger-food, Goan delight snake gourd with batata piquant is equally tempting as a healthy snack

Goa is a small Indian state with a large culinary repertoire. For four centuries, it remained a Portuguese colony and the Portuguese imprint is discernible from its architecture, music to food.

The state shares a penchant for seafood with coastal regions of neighbouring states of Karnataka and Maharashtra but takes pride in its heritage of cakes and bakes.

The oven is used here not only for grilling and roasts but also to give the vegetables a delightful finish. It is well known that the potato was brought to India by the Portuguese from their Latin American colonies and its familiar name batata, too, is traced to their language but interestingly the recipe uses the native sweet potato that adds its own gentle sweet taste to the filling. Great as a starter, accompaniment or finger-food replacing a vegetarian tikka, the dish is equally tempting as a healthy small snack.

Snake gourd with batata piquant

Ingredients

Snake gourd (chichnda/torai or zuchinni) 250 g

Sweet potato/ sakarkand 200 g

Tomato, Onion (medium-sized) one each

Mustard seeds 1-1/2 tsp

Garlic cloves 2-3

Ginger ½ inch piece

Green chillies two

curry leaves (optional) 10-12

Oil 1 tbsp

Salt, Butter to taste

Method
Peal the chichnda and slice into one-and-half inch round pieces. Remove the seeds with a sharp knife ensuring that the outer skin is not pierced. Keep aside. Boil the sakarkand, peal and mash. Blanch, peal and chop the tomato. Peal and chop the onion. Remove the skin and crush the cloves of garlic.

Scrape and dice the ginger. Deseed and chop the chillies finely. Lightly grease a baking tray. Pre-heat the oven to 190`BA C.

Heat oil in a pan and put in the mustard seeds. When these begin to crackle, add the curry leaves and then the onion, garlic, ginger, chillies, tomatoes and in the end, sakarkand. Add a little (less than a tbsp of water), along with the salt, and blend well, cook on medium heat for about two minutes. Remove from flame.

Pack the hollowed chichnda barrels with this filling, place on the baking tray and bake in the oven at 190`BA in the oven for 12-15 minutes.

(Alternatively, you may pan-grill the vegetable basting with a little melted butter. You may also like to sprinkle grated processed cheese and breadcrumbs on top but we, on our part, prefer it unadorned. The refreshing crunch of the casing provides perfect foil for the piquant stuffing and lets the natural flavours shine.





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