Happy Lohri to all!

HAPPY LOHRI to all of you! 🙂
Being a Punjabi….we celebrate Lohri with great fanfare, and our celebration of the harvest festival is incomplete without Sarson ka Saag!
Making this Saag the traditional way, was a true labor of love!
I have tried to make it from memory, as my Dadima had described that it used to be made in the good old days of slow cooking on choolahs and angeethis.

When there were no fancy appliances or cookware. When the saag was cut using a special hook knife. My great grandmother, Mataji as we called her…directed the proceedings. She would trust no one else, to peel the danthals and cut the sarson as fine as only she could!
This saag was then lovingly simmered over an angeethi for hours. And in the evening when the family gathered, it was served along with Makki ki roti, ghar ka makhkhan and Gajrella! And the special meal was never complete without a variety of accompaniments….Iike Gur, Dadima ki kuti hui chutney, and Mukka Mara pyaz! 🙂

As I was making it, waves of nostalgia brought sweet half-forgotten memories of my college days in Chandigarh, which I spent living with my Dadima! She would describe how she missed the big joint family living in the ‘beda’ in Patiala, before their move to Chandigarh! How the ladies of that era spent whole days cooking and doing household chores together and made rotis in the ‘sanjha choolah’. Were work was never work, it was a community affair, as everybody pitched in! Life as she described was…as it should be….quite PERFECT! 🙂
Recipe link for Dadima’s Saag:
Sarson-ka-saag-dadima-ishtyle!