We Bangladeshis eat all kinds of leafy greens! Leafy greens or as we call it shak in Bangla, is full of vitamins and minerals, good for health and digestion. Although it often regarded as poor people’s food, but how does it matter if its nourishes you? So today I am making a most traditional Bangladeshi green leaves stir fry that have been cooked for ages in the household of Bangladesh.

It’s a very common recipe, especially in the country-sides of Bangladesh. I wanted to make this for a long time, but I never had so many varieties of leafy greens, until this summer! I was super lucky to grow the bottle gourd plant, which grew huge and gave me a plenty of leaves to eat several times in this summer. Then I had fenugreek leaves, radish leaves (Yes you can eat those!) and lastly few red amaranth leaves.

Although it technically needs12 kinds of leafy greens, but I had only four so I added frozen spinach to make the number a bit bigger. I could also add frozen kale leaves. If you don’t really have different kinds of green, just make this recipe with what you have in your pantry.

To begin with, we need to wash all the leaves several times, discard any brown parts and roots and soil from the leaves. Then its come to chopping. There’s a special technique to cut all the leaves efficiently and within short time. First take some bigger leaves on the bottom, put all the smaller leaves like fenugreek, amaranth in the middle and again put the bigger leaves on the top. Its like putting small leaves in the envelop of the bigger leaves. Then make a fold and cut in the middle, join two parts side by side (just like in the picture) and then chop all the leaves as thin as possible.

After preparing all the leaves, I took a pan and heated vegetable oil. Then I added dried red chili, onion and garlic. Please don’t make a mistake like mine- adding everything together at once. If you really want a great Bangladeshi flavor, add first the chilies, let them puff, and then add garlic and cook until release aroma and at last, add onion. Since I really don’t like brown onions in shak-bhaji( stir fried leaves), I fried onion in oil until they were translucent. Then I added all the chopped leaves. Since at the beginning the volume is too much, I kept the pan in low heat and let the leaves shrink.

After all leaves are half or almost shrunked in volume, I added salt. Always add salt in smaller amount first with shak-bhaji, because it is too hard to work on a over salted one.

The leaves are releasing waters, and at that point I am adding some green chilies and lime leaves(frozen). Lime leaves adds a great fragrance in the shak-bhaji.

I continued to stirring until all waters are cooked out and the leaves releases oil on the pan. I checked the salt for the last time and it was perfect. I served shak-bhaji in a bowl when done, otherwise the leaves get more dried and burned if kept the hot pan.

So this most traditional Mixed leaves stir fry or paach mishali shak-bhaji is ready to eat, and of course with rice. I am thankful to Jasmin mam for the inspiration. You can look for her recipe on this channel – Green Hills Kitchen.

Recipe: Mixed leaves Stir Fry- serves two.

Various kinds of mixed leaves – frozen/fresh spinach, bottle gourd leaves, fenugreek leaves, radish leaves, red amaranth leaves etc. Onion – 1 medium Garlic – few cloves (as per taste) Dry red chili – as per taste Green chili – as per taste Lime leaves – 2/3 pieces Salt – as required Oil – as required

1. Wash all leaves (except the frozen ones) thoroughly with cold water, discard old parts and roots. 2. Chop leaves, like described above. 3. In a pan, heat oil and add dried red chili, sliced onion and garlic. Fry them until onion garlic are golden brown. 4. Add chopped leaves and continue to stir them until shrunk. 5. When all leaves gets smaller volume, add salt. 6. Add lime leaves and green chilis when leaves releases water. Continue stirring until water get evaporated and oils get released in the pan. When done, put in a serving bowl. Serve with rice. Enjoy!