Name: Mrs. Joshi’s Potatoes with a Fresh Coconut-Lime Sauce (Batata Bhajee)
Yield: Serves 8
Cuisine: India
Ingredients: ½ cup shredded fresh coconut; or ¼ cup shredded dried unsweetened coconut, reconstituted (see Note); Juice of 1 large lime; 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems; 1½ teaspoons coarse kosher or sea salt; 2 teaspoons cumin seeds; ½ teaspoon ground asafetida; 2 tablespoons peanut or canola oil; 4 to 6 fresh green Thai, cayenne, or serrano chiles, to taste, stems removed, cut crosswise into ¼-inch-thick slices (do not remove the seeds); ½ teaspoon ground turmeric; 12 to 15 medium-size to large fresh curry leaves; 1½ pounds russet or Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled, cut into ½-inch cubes, and submerged in a bowl of cold water to prevent browning; 1 teaspoon white granulated sugar

Preparation info

Serves
8

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

660 Curries

By Raghavan Iyer

Published 2008

About

For a number of years during my childhood, Mrs. Joshi worked as a registered nurse with my physician sister Lali and pricked me with many an injection. She always knew how to make me happy after a needle poke: a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate or a small bag of wafer-thin cayenne-coated potato chips. On a recent visit to Mumbai, I stopped by Mrs. Joshi’s house for breakfast—which turned out to be small chunks of potatoes bathed in a coconut-lime