Kurkure Bhindi

What do you call a woman who buys half a kilo of bhindi the day before the family is leaving on a short vacation? Before you start calling me names, I'll tell you. You call her by my given name!
But the good thing about knowing there was 500 gms of bhindi in the fridge is that I we ate home cooked food on the last day, and not pizzas!
This recipe is taken from here, and worked out just the way I wanted it to.

200 gms Okra/Bhindi
½ tsp red chili powder
½ tsp turmeric powder
¼ tsp amchur powder
¼ tsp chaat masala
¼ tsp garam masala powder
3 tbsp besan/gram flour
salt or black salt
oil for frying the bhindis

Instructions

Rinse the okra or bhindi in water for 3-4 times. Wipe them dry with a kitchen napkin. Slice the bhindi vertically into 4 pieces. If you have small sized bhindi, then slice into 2 pieces. Take all your sliced bhindi in a big thali or a big bowl.
Now sprinkle all the spice powders one by one on the sliced bhindi.
With a spoon or spatula, gently mix the spice powders with the bhindi.
Sprinkle the besan on the bhindi.
Again, gently mix the besan with the bhindi. The besan must evenly coat the bhindi.
Marinate the bhindi in this mixture for 25-30 minutes. You could also keep it for an hour.
In your kadai, heat up the oil. Add a batch of marinated bhindi and fry. Since I had 200 gms of bhindi, I fried 100 gms first and the next 100 gms later. So the frying was in two batches. Fry the bhindis till golden brown and crisp on a medium flame. Take care and keep on turning the okra so that they get fried evenly. If the oil becomes too hot, you could lower the flame and fry.
keep the fried bhindis on a crumpled kitchen tissue so that the extra oil gets drained.
Serve them directly as they are (the way I did) or if you want you could garnish bhindi with coriander leaves, julienned ginger or sliced green chilis. 

 

Few points for the fried bhindi recipe:

The oil should be hot, otherwise the bhindi/okra will absorb oil and become soggy and not even look good on the plate. In case, the oil  gets over before frying the second batch, add some more oil.
You can alter the spice powders as per your taste.
I have shallow fried the bhindis. I won’t suggest deep frying as later your kadai or pan will have all the besan, spices and the bhindi seeds leftovers. It looks a mess.
Take as much oil as is needed for the bhindi (okra) so that all the oil gets used up. Thus, you don’t have a messy oil to strain or throw later.