Pav bhaji (vegetables with bread)

One day last week in downtown Dunedin, I dropped into the Fair Trade store and found this, The World of Street Food, by Troth Wells, New Internationalist Publications LTD, 2005, www.newint.org.  Now that’s a book I can get into.  I said to the store clerk, “I wish I’d created that cookbook.”  And she just laughed.  The recipe is reprinted below (with permission from the author).

Vegetables with Bread
Friday nights, I like to eat greasy foods.  Fridays are time to say, “The week is over, we’ve eaten low-fat meals for five days, let’s kick back and enjoy some greasy fries or deep-fried everything.”   However, some of the recipes from Street Foods aren’t even that “bad” for you.  Yet they are as tasty and filling as any food I’ve ever eaten.  We had Vegetables with Bread on our second Friday night in our little rented house.  Dear Husband thought this was one of the best dishes ever. 

4 Tbsp butter
2 onions, chopped
1 green bell pepper, diced fine
4 garlic cloves, crushed
4 tomatoes, chopped
2 potatoes, boiled and crushed
2 carrots finely diced
1 ½ cups cauliflower chopped small
½ cup peas
½ tsp turmeric
1 Tbsp masala (I couldn’t find any so I used garam masala, which seemed to work out okay)
Salt
8 pieces of bread (naan if you can find it.  We used Pita and it worked fine. Or make your own.
1 jar of chutney or cilantro sauce

 Melt 2 Tbsp butter in large pan (iron skillet works best) and cook onion and bell pepper until the onion is brown.  Add garlic and cook one more minute.
Add tomatoes and let dish simmer, about 10 minutes. 
Parboil the potatoes, carrots, and then cauliflower, and lastly add the peas. Drain and keep the water.
Add the vegetables to the large pan and stir.  Add the seasonings and water to thicken to a broth-like consistency. 
Heat a griddle and coat with remaining butter. Place bread into griddle and heat.  Remove bread, coat with chutney or cilantro sauce, and add vegetable mixture. Roll up like a burrito or leave open like a taco.

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