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Father's Day recipes: Omelette, Bitter Gourd Fry

We invited readers to share their father's experimental preperations with us. Reader Samit Naha shares with us this ingenious egg omelette recipe he learnt from his dad:

Ingredients:

• 8 eggs
• medium sized cabbage
• 1 onion sliced
• 2 chopped spring onions
• 2-3 chopped green chillies
• 1 large tomato sliced
• 1tbsp ginger
• 1tbsp butter
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

• Break egg and beat it in a bowl
• In a frying pan heat butter
• Add ginger and saut till it turns brown
• Add onions and saut till they turn golden and translucent
• Add cabbage and stir-fry
• Add salt and pepper
• Let the cabbage get cooked and caramelised
• Now add spring onions and chillies and continue stirring for a while
• Spread the cabbage mixture evenly across the pan
• Simmer the gas and pour the eggs evenly across the pan
• Place tomatoes push them lightly so they slightly get covered with egg
• Top it up with butter and let it melt
• Cook on low heat 25 minutes covering the pan and leaving it open intermittently
• Once it is cooked let it rest for about ten minutes.

Share your father's experimental kitchen preparations with us! Tell us about the dishes he made and share your recipes. Simply write in to getahead@rediff.co.in (subject line: Dad's recipes) and we'll publish the most interesting ones right here! Also share a photograph of your father and you if possible, so we can publish it alongside.

Bitter Gourd Fry

Sashi Bhushan from Dubai wrote in with one of his father's preparations -- Bitter Gourd Fry. Sashi currently lives in Dubai and says he misses his dad whenever he cooks there. This is his recipe:

Ingredients

• 1kg bitter gourd
• Approx 375gms onions
• 1 tsp tamarind paste
• 50-100gms of coconut powder
• Salt, red chilli powder and turmeric according to taste
• 1 tsp Mustard seeds, cumin seeds and tuvar dal mixture
• Some green chillies and curry leaves

Method:

• Peel the bitter gourd cut it into thin round pieces
• Soak in salt water.
• Slice onions and keep aside
• Heat oil in a frying pan, fry the bitter gourd pieces and keep aside.
• Now reduce the quantity of oil, add mustard seeds, cumin seeds and tuvar dal mixture followed by green chillies and curry leaves.
• Fry onions till they turn brown.
• Add the salt, red chilly powder, turmeric and the tamarind paste and stir it for a minute.
• To this add the fried bitter gourd pieces into the pan and then mix it on low flame for five to ten minutes.
• Finally add the coconut powder and continue stirring for a minute.
• Take off the flame. Serve hot.

He made me sizzler from Dal Rice

Rizwan Khan tells us of the time his dad tossed up a sizzler from dal rice:

I was still in school then. There were days when my mother would not be at home. On such days my father would come back from work (since his office was nearby) so I would not find the door locked.

Once my mother had cooked just some rice and dal and had left for the day. When I returned home, I found that dad had made me a sizzler out of the dal and rice! He had mixed the dal and rice, fried some onions and chillies and mixed with it. To go with this innovative dish he had also prepared some potato fingers and cut some tomatoes and cucumber and presented it to me in a plate!

Dal and rice never tasted so good! I now work abroad and really miss the food and I miss him. I wonder if he would make me a sizzler once again!

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Nimish Goray writes about his father Vasant Goray:

We are a Maharashtrian family but my dad spent much of his time in Kerala. That is possibly the reason why his culinary skills are so good. He makes the best Pongal, the best Avial, the best Cucumber Koshimbir (Raita), the best Sambar, the best Rasam and the best Payasam. But his specialty is Pav Bhaji.

Dad never messes up the kitchen, has not done so in the last 28 years at least, since I was born. My uncles also cook well, but my dad is the best of them all.

Of course my mother is happiest when he takes over the kitchen. She knows she can rest without any tension of any sort as far as food is concerned. He cooks with the energy of an athlete and the enthusiasm of a teenager. Daddy, keep up the good work, even on the other side of 60!