What is Gobi Matar

Gobi means cauliflower while matar means green peas in Hindi. Gobi matar is the quintessential entree cooked in Indian homes when cauliflower and tender fresh green peas are in season. The cauliflower is steamed or boiled and it gets a seasoning of cumin and turmeric. Some people add ginger and turmeric when boiling the cauliflower and make a pan sauce out of onions and sometimes powdered chilies are also added. For the sweet and sour component a few times tomato is added at the very end of the cooking to let simmer just for a few minutes along with the tender shelled green peas. This is served with soft chapatis or steamed rice. A good traditional recipe can be found here.

Our Gobi Matar inspiration

We take some inspiration from the original recipe we have grown up eating and borrow some flavors from it. We combine it with some lovely produce we picked up at this weekends farmers market in Madison. We picked up some cauliflower as well as some tender pea vine as well as some blossoming bok choy. The pea vines are a delicacy in Asian cooking where they are sauteed with some oil and garlic. Having this ingredient on hand we decided to use the vines as well as the whole tender snow peas as the matar component. These snow peas have shells which is very sweet and flavorful this time of the year and can be eaten just raw.

Our Gobi Matar Recipe

We decided to use the cauliflower four ways. We sauteed the bigger florets on some ghee, with turmeric and ginger and then covered them and cooked till tender. We used smaller florets and set them in a covered pan with some butter a tea spoon of water and a sprinkling of sugar. This resulted in butter glazed little florets of cauliflower which melt in your mouth. We also shaved some florets thin and these we shallow fried slowly in some ghee till they caramelized and turned crisp.

All the stems and scraps went into a pan with some water and milk and were cooked till soft and the liquid had reduced. We then sauteed some chopped onions in ghee along with some ginger and cumin and then added the cooked cauliflower scraps and pureed these and strained the puree to get a silky sauce.

Raisins are paired widely with cauliflower in vegetarian biryani pilafs, kormas and in middle eastern inspired dishes. Instead of tomatoes and lime we decided to use the sweet and slightly sour taste from the grapes to our advantage and make a raising chutney. We caramelized some onions and then added some soaked raisins and ginger along with a dash of pepper and some salt. We cooked this then pureed it coarse and then again reduced it after mixing in some sugar till the chutney reduced and started being sticky and obtain a glaze.

For the peas we de-vined them and split the halves open, leaving the peas on a pod half while we ate the other half or collected them for a lunch salad. We just warmed these over butter.

For plating our Gobi Matar we smeared some puree and topped it with our turmeric cauliflower, buttered cauliflower and crispy cauliflower. We then added the peas and the pea vine and dotted a few spoonfuls of the raisin chutney. We garnished with some bok choy blossoms.

If anyone would like a detailed recipe leave us a comment and we would love to add it.