Lauki (bottle gourd) soup

• Servings: 4-5
• Preparation time: 10- 12 minutes.
• Blending time: 2-3 minutes.
• Cooking time: 10 minutes.
• Seasoning time:  5 minutes.
• Total time: 30 minutes.

Lauki soup is a comforting bowl of healthy, nutritious and delicious soup; which is full of goodness; whenever you need light very light meal or when you are on dieting it is the right food to have.

It is easy to prepare; just takes 15 minutes; serve with ready made toast or toasted bread slices.

Ingredients:

• Lauki (bottle gourd): 350-400 gm.
• Onion: 1 no. (Medium size)
• Tomato: 2-3 no. (Medium size)
• Ginger: 2” piece
• Water: 5 cup
• Salt: ½ teaspoon
• White rock salt: ½ teaspoon
• Black rock salt (Kala namak): 2 pinch
• Black pepper powder: ½ teaspoon
• Ajwain (carom seed): ¼ teaspoon

Seasoning:

1. Butter: 1 tablespoon (as per taste)
2. Cumin: ¼ teaspoon
3. Lauki (bottle gourd): 50 gm.

Preparation:

1. Peel and roughly chop ¾ parts of lauki, onion and tomato. Keep aside.
2. Chop ¼ of lauki into small pieces. Keep aside.

Method:

1. Put roughly chopped lauki, tomatoes, ginger, onion, white rock salt, salt in pressure cooker; place cooker on maximum heat, bring it to full cooking pressure, reduce to lower flame and cook for 2-3 minutes. Allow cooker to cool.
2. After cooling roughly grind it in mixer grinder for few seconds, pass this through soup sieve. Discard the residue.
3. Reheat soup; add some water if required to get the desire consistency of the soup.

Seasoning:

1. Take a small fry pan; put butter and cumin, sputter for few seconds, add small chopped pieces of lauki, stir fry on medium flame  for 4-5 minutes or till it is done; add kala namak and fresh ground black pepper.
2. Spread this fried lauki over prepared soup. ‘Lauki (bottle gourd) soup’ is ready to serve. Serve hot.

Lauki (bottle gourd) soup by Nag Ratna Sahu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.