Cauliflower is a popular vegetable in India as well as various other parts of the world. Cauliflower florets are used to make various delicious dishes and we always throw its leaves to the garbage bin. But cauliflower leaves paste is a popular dish in West Bengali & Bangladesh. Many Bengali people love this dish a lot. Fulkopi pata bata & plain rice nothing else is needed for lunch. Yes, it is that much delicious. ‘Fulkopi‘ means cauliflower, ‘pata’ means leaf & ‘bata‘ means paste in Bengali. That is why it is called as “Fulkopir pata bata”.
China & India are two major producers of cauliflower and these two countries produce almost three fourth of the total world’s production.
Cauliflower is a nutritious vegetable. It contains dietary fiber. Cauliflower head contains little amount of protein and a very negligible amount of fat. It also contains a significant amount of vitamin C. But I do not know whether its leaves are also equally nutritious or not because no information is available on any source for the nutritional value of leaves of the cauliflower. But I hope that like any other green leafy vegetables it also contains some significant amount of nutritional value.
This year, I have grown a few cauliflower plants in pot. Though cauliflower heads are not developing as per my expectation. But still my first harvested cauliflower head was sufficient for a meal of two or three people. I made gobi aloo with that.
The best part of homegrown vegetables is that I can consume those leaves without any worry about the chemical pesticide. Yes, I did not apply any chemical pesticide and growing those vegetables by using organic fertilizer. So I did not waste those cauliflower leaves and prepared wonderful traditional fulkopi pata bata.
It was a delicious and very very simple dish.
Fulkopi pata bata recipe
- 5-6 fresh cauliflower leaves
- 3-4 garlic cloves
- 2 green chillies
- 1.5 teaspoons kalonji/nigella seeds (kalo jeera in Bengali)
- ½ tablespoon any vegetable oil
- Salt as needed
- Wash cauliflower leaves properly and chopped into pieces
- Now take cauliflower leaves, garlic cloves & green chillies and grind to make a smooth puree
- Now heat oil in a kadai (Indian cooking pot) and add kalonji (kalo jeera in Bengali) and stir till nice aroma comes out
- Then pour the cauliflower leaves puree and stir
- Cook it over low flame till it is almost dried up
- Serve this with plain rice
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