Bharwa Tinda - Stuffed Indian Baby Pumpkin

Enjoy the juicy taste of Bharwa Tinda, apple gourd stuffed with a mixture of different spices!

How to make Bharwa Tinda?

Wash your Indian baby pumpkins and instead of cutting them to pieces as you would normally do, just make a deep cut into each of them into which you will later fill the spices for a great taste. Those spices are the next to prepare. Take a bowl and add coriander, mango powder, turmeric and garam masala. Adding the water bit by bit, you turn the dry spice mix into a nice paste.

In the next step you need to heat up one spoon of olive oil in a pan. When it is hot, put the cumin seeds into the oil and fry them for a while without burning them. They will change their colour a bit and develop a great smell that makes your mouth water already. Add the paste of spices and stir it well so that it gets fried from all sides. At one point you may notice it getting a bit liquid as the spices expel some of the water you added. Keep on stirring until that water has evaporated and the paste turned golden. At this point you can take the spice paste out of the pan into a separate bowl.

Stuffing your apple gourd is your next task as soon as the paste has a little bit cooled down. Stuff the paste with your hand or a spoon into the cut that you previously created.

Finally you heat up a pan and add the second tablespoon of oil. Slowly place your vegetables into the pan and fry them from all sides while turning them carefully. The Tinda will take about fifteen minutes for getting fully soft. You can poke a vegetable knife into one of them to check how soft it is. Once the biggest of them is soft until the middle, you are fine to take them out and serve!