Bottle Gourd or Water Gourd is a king vegetable in Bangladesh. I have already put many recipes of this king vegetable and yet, more to come. Previously I made bottle gourd leaves bhorta/spread (previous post) and today I am making the spread again but slightly different. As you might already know spread or bhorta is one of the staple diet in Bangladesh and we make bhorta with many different veggies, including green leafy vegetables, like spinach, moringa, sweet pumpkin and more. I hope to cook and add them in the my blog soon.

I am proud to grow the bottle gourd plant in my balcony this year. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to grow bottle gourd leaves, but if you want to grow the fruits or gourd itself, it needs some knowledge and tricks.

Anyway, the previous bhorta recipe was made by steaming in rice. Today’s recipe is bit more classic. We definitely need all the basic ingredients for making bhorta like lots of garlic, onion and dried chili. For today’s recipe, I have taken 20-30 pieces of Bottle Gourd leaves, few cloves of garlic, one medium sized onion, dried red chili, some salt and mustard oil.

We need to wash the leaves very carefully with cold water. Then discard the long stems and old parts of the leaves, if any. I saved the long stems to make another stew like curry later.

I put the leaves on top of each other. It will be easy to fold and cut the leaves.

Then I rolled the leaves and and cut the roll of leaves in half and put two parts on top of each other.

The leaves are nicely sliced and kept them aside.

Now in a pan, I heated up one tablespoon of oil and added dried red chili and diced garlic. When garlic starts to release aroma, I added sliced onion and fried them until golden. I added salt at this stage to fasten the cooking process.

I added the chopped leaves to the pan. You need to stir carefully in a low temperature. The volume of the leaves might look daunting, but within few minutes the leaves will shrunk in volume and will be easy to handle.

All leaves are shrunk now and extra moisture is evaporated. It means the leaves are all cooked. Then I set the cooked leaves aside to cool them down.

Now take the slightly cooled down leaves mixture into a blender jar. I am going to blend everything to nice and smooth texture. If you like, you can add more mustard oil too.

Everything looks nice and smooth. You can check the salt and add more if needed. When done, I put the spread or bhorta in a serving bowl.

This is how the beautiful bhorta looks like. Imagine how it will be taste like with warm rice! Just a simple Bangladeshi staple bhorta but surely it can make your day fulfilled with warmth and happiness.

Recipe: Lau Patar Bhorta, 4 persons

Ingredients: Lau Pata/ Bottle Gourd Leaves – 25-30 pieces Onion- 1 medium Garlic- 3-4 cloves Dry red chili- 3/4 pieces Mustard Oil Salt

1. Wash the gourd leaves and discard the old part. Slice them fine and set aside. 2. Heat mustard oil in a pan, add dry red chili and crushed garlic. When they start to release aroma, then add sliced onion. Fry them until golden in colour. 3. Now add the sliced leaves, cook them until the leaves shrunk. Set them aside and slightly cool it down. 4. Take the cooked leaves in a blender jar, blend to a smooth paste. Serve with rice.