Roasted Bell Pepper Gravy / Shimla Mirch ka salan:

Bell Peppers in spicy peanut sesame gravy.

Salan means gravy here and shimla mirch is bell pepper/capsicum. It taste great with simple jeera rice, peas pulao or even plain rice. It is perfect with Indian breads like roti,chana dal paratha, parotta and so on. I made this with parotta and it was scrumptious. Usually salan is something that goes well with biryani. I usually make the mirchi ka salan for biryani but this time I wanted to try something else and did this. I adapted the idea from Vahchef and then made my twist and turns. You can replace the bell pepper with any vegetable you fancy. This goes great with Biryani recipes. Its light spiced, creamy and tangy! I used different coloured ones to make it more attractive 🙂 You can use the same color. Looks Colorful 😀 right?!

Vegan Note: replace yogurt with coconut milk! 🙂

Roasted Bell Pepper Gravy / Shimla Mirch ka salan:

Author: Suganya Hariharan

Recipe type: Main

Cuisine: Indian

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 40 mins

Total time: 45 mins

Serves: 45 mins

Ingredients

• To roast & grind:
• Peanuts –2 tbsp
• Sesame seeds – 1 tbsp
• Coconut – 1 tbsp

For gravy:
• Oil – 1 tbsp
• Red chillies – 2 broken roughly
• Cumin seeds – 1 tsp
• Mustard seeds – 1 tsp
• Fenugreek – 1 tsp
• Curry leaves – 6-8 leaves
• Hing - a pinch
• Onions – 1 large, sliced, 1 cup
• Salt – as needed
• Turmeric – 1 tsp
• Ginger garlic paste – ½ tbsp
• Red chilli powder – 1 tsp
• Coriander powder – 1 tbsp
• Cumin powder – 1 tsp
• Mint – 1 tbsp, chopped finely
• Coriander – 1 tbsp, chopped finely
• Yogurt – ½ cup beaten
• Bell pepper – 3 medium,Diced ( I used different coloured ones)

Instructions

Heat a tbsp of oil in a pan, when the Bell pepper/ Capsicum are dry, then add them to oil and fry till they look little lighter shade in low to medium flame.
Dry roasts the peanuts in a medium flame. When the peanuts are roasted, add the sesame seeds. When the sesame seeds are golden brown, Add coconut. Keep an eye on this. It gets brunt easily. Add this mixture to the blender and blend it with some water to a fine paste.
, Now add the oil in the pan and when the oil is hot, add the whole red chillies, and then add mustard seeds. And when the mustard seeds crackle, add fenugreek seeds and cumin seeds.
Now add the curry leaves, onions, hing and little salt. Cook the onions till they are golden brown, Add turmeric and ginger garlic paste and cook to remove the raw smell.
Add the blended mixture, cumin powder, red chilli powder and coriander powder to the mixture. Fry for two minute and add some water to it. Cook for fifteen minutes. Stir in between till the oil oozes out nicely. Add the chopped mint and coriander leaves. Boil for two minutes.
add the beaten yogurt and simmer for another ten minutes. When it oozes out oil again add the roasted capsicum and jaggery to the gravy and let it cook for 5 mins so that the juices of the gravy het absorbed by the chilies.