Kolmi Shak or Water Spinach (Ipomoea aquatica) is one of the most common leafy vegetable in Bangladesh. It is grown next to water areas hence the name and it is mostly grown during summer (in Bangladesh). However in many countries, especially in USA, it is considered as weed, even though the water spinach has lots of vitamin and minerals. Anyway, in Bangladesh, water spinach stir fry is a daily staple during summer. I was able to find this leafy greens in one of the Asian shop in Copenhagen, so I decided to share the recipe today with you, even though it was super expensive!!! (Well, I was missing this spinach too, so price didn’t matter to me in the end, ha ha).

As usual, we need a few simple ingredients for this water spinach stir fry recipe – Onion, garlic, chili (both green and dry), salt and oil. Some like to cook this with shrimp, but today I am sharing the most basic recipe without shrimp that my mother used to make.

To show how it looks, water spinach has elongated dark green leaves, with hollow round shaped stem. It is very delicate and breaks off easily.

First we need to discard the bottom part, as it doesn’t taste good. For that we take stems only until the top two nodes and rest of the leaves. We also discard all the yellow leaves as well.

This is how it should look like after discarding all stems and bad leaves.

I thoroughly washed all leaves in cold water for 4/5 times, I chopped the leaves roughly and kept them aside.

After preparing all 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.

The leaves are releasing waters, and at that point I am adding some green chilies. Green Chilies add 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. You can see the difference in colour and texture before and after. I checked the salt for the last time and it was perfect. Water spinach has lots of potassium in it, so it doesn’t need too much salt. I served shak-bhaji in a bowl when done, otherwise the leaves get more dried and burned if kept the hot pan.

So here comes the perfect kolmi shak bhaji aka water spinach stir fry. It perfectly goes with rice and some daal in a hot summer day! So try it once and let me know how it tasted!

Recipe: Water Spinach Stir Fry- serves four

Water Spinach- 400g Onion – 1 medium Garlic – few cloves (as per taste) Dry red chili – as per taste Green chili – as per taste Salt – as required Oil – as required

1. Discard the bottom part of the leaves, and keep the top until first two nodes. Wash all leaves, thoroughly with cold water, discard old parts. 2. Chop leaves roughly. 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 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!