HEALTHY GREENS IN A BOWL

Still baffled, aren't you? Well this specific dish is my creation. Before I reveal what it is, let me give you a small back story. At the start of the pandemic when everyone was panic-buying durable foods, I stocked up on canned vegetables. Since I can not survive without vegetables, I decided to go for various kinds of canned vegetables; starting with carrots, beans, asparagus, olive, peas, tomatoes and so on. Yes! I did go a little overboard. Come on, it was just six months after our move here in the US. I didn't know if there would be drastic food shortage here. I use the word "drastic" because honestly the first three months of quarantine was scary. I hated grocery shopping, and that's coming from someone who actually loves shopping grocery over clothes. Everything went out of stock in minutes and I had to plan my orders at least half a month before I placed them. The fear of not getting food hit me hard back then. So, since I stocked up on a lot of vegetables, I had a lot of leftovers and I was running out of recipes to try. And here goes the BIG REVEAL! This is mashed asparagus and green beans! Could you guess that?

The inspiration was basically from back when I tried mashed plantain (কাঁচকলা), which is pretty common in Bangladesh. So first off, I drained the liquid off my canned asparagus and green beans and gave them a light wash. Next, I handed them over to my hubby to mash them up real well and since we always forgot to grab a masher while grocery shopping. He used the bottom of a glass to mash the vegetables. Meanwhile, I chopped up some onions and roasted some garlic and dried red chili. Once the vegetables were ready (or should I say destroyed, nah I am kidding), I heated up a pan on medium heat with mustard oil in it. I then added in the mashed vegetables and the onions and stir fried them for about 10 minutes. I did this to give the dish a smoky flavor. After taking them off the heat, I added in my roasted garlic and dried red chili, salt and some more mustard oil for the extra kick. It tasted so good! I was definitely expecting it, cooking something like this can never go wrong. I think I have a thing for mashed vegetables. It went so well with steamed rice, definitely will be trying this again.

Ingredients:

1 pcs canned asparagus (15 oz.)

1 pcs canned beans (14.5 oz.)

0.5 cup chopped onions

3 pcs dried red chili

4/5 cloves garlic

1 tsp salt