Kehra Na Reveya/Green Banana Satay Recipe with Kaushy Patel's Prashad Cookbook Review and A Giveaway

Learn how to make Kehra Na Reveya ~ Raw Green Banana Satay (with spicy peanut paste stuffing)

Apart from family and friends, what one misses the most when they move from their home country? Someone asked me in this question in the first month when I moved from India to UK and I didn’t even blink before saying it’s the Food which I miss the most! Yes, it was the delicious and aromatic food from my vibrant country that I missed a lot; from my mother’s comfort meals to tantalising Indian street foods, from quick breakfasts at Darshini hotels to elaborate north and south Indian Thali meals, from very casual Punjabi Dhaba foods to sophisticated high end restaurants and many more like that!

Britain being a curry loving nation, you will find even the small towns and cities boasting at least one Indian restaurant and/or takeaways promising to serve you the authentic Indian fair! If you prefer bright coloured, mass produced red/orange gravies with ladle full of oil floating on the surface and few sorry looking pieces of vegetables as an excuse for a vegetarian option, then these takeaways are your best friends! Growing up in a house where the fine art of cooking and feeding was considered sacred, my palate refused to entertain such delicacies! With not many restaurants offering the food that I loved, I was left with no option but improve my cooking skills with long distance helpline calls to my mother and grandmother and other sources of information like websites, blogs, cookbooks, and cookery shows. One such day while browsing for the recipes, I chanced upon the list of Indian restaurants in our county Yorkshire and that’s when I came across a small Indian vegetarian restaurant called ‘Prashad’ in Bradford. What surprised me the most was Prashad’s menu not only offered Gujarati food which I believed is a rare thing to find in any Indian restaurants in this country, but also it being ‘all vegetarian’ came as a big surprise! I got really curious and it didn’t take much persuasion from me to book a table for the weekend as DH was equally eager to try some food from the simple but interesting menu.

Kehra Na Reveya/Green Banana Satay served with Kichidi

That weekend when we arrived at Prashad we were surprised to find ourselves in a quiet corner of the main road which looked most like a residential area with few Desi shops around. If it was not for the Sat Nav and the bright orange board of the restaurant, we may have missed spotting it. As soon as we entered the well lit restaurant, we were greeted by a friendly face of Bobby who guided us to our table right next to the mirrored wall. The restaurant ambience was cheerful with bright orange coloured walls sporting Indian art, wooden tables with black leathered chairs, tea light candles flickering on the table with a single red rose bud in a small vase and the Indian music playing softly in the background. We were surprised that it was a small restaurant with just six or seven tables but all the tables were occupied. As we had little experience when it came to Gujarati food, Bobby recommended some of their restaurant’s bestsellers and we were just happy to order them. One look at the food laid out beautifully on other tables and the wonderful aroma of spices teasing our senses, we knew that the food served in Prashad will be far better than what we experienced in other Indian restaurants.

But we were wrong! The food was not just better than any other restaurants, but way superior when it came to taste! One spoonful of food from ‘Prashad’ and we were blown away by the complex flavour combination where every ingredient harmoniously blended with one other. None of the curries we ordered tasted the same or had just one ingredient overpowering the other. The food was hot, fresh, vibrant, and delicately spiced with different textures and flavours making it clear that none of the food served here was mass produced or doused in ready to use spice mixes or sauces. The service was excellent, the choice of food from carefully selected menu was wonderful, but overall it was the way the food tasted that won our heart! The time and the distance we travelled seemed a small trouble to taste something that is much close to home cooked meals by loved ones, someone who really loved cooking for others! From that day Prashad became our first choice to take our friends, guests and colleagues. Every single friends and colleagues who call themselves hard core carnivorous said they didn’t miss the meat while devouring every spoonful of ‘Prashad - a blessed food’!

Rustic and comforting ~ Kehra Na Reveya/Green Banana Satay

We have visited Prashad many times during my pre-pregnancy times, sometimes twice a month just to sample the food cooked by Kaushy aunty. It was Kaushy’s food that helped me overcome my pregnancy cravings for delicious home styled food whenever I craved for my Amma’s food! Over the years we have sampled many dishes from Prashad’s menu and not even once we were disappointed by the way it tasted! Both DH and I are not fond of eating out but we will happily hang our aprons if we were given a choice to eat at Prashad every single day! Here in Prashad every dish is quite unique when it comes to taste, flavour combination and texture, and although the menu doesn’t have huge choice, it is always difficult to choose as everything they have tastes really good! While Kaushy Patel with her daughter-in-law Minal work on creating magic in their restaurant kitchen, Kaushy’s son Bobby and other members of the Patel family help in running the restaurant smoothly. This family restaurant has been serving most delicious and divine vegetarian food for over 22 years. I had the opportunity to meet Kaushy on few occasions where she took time to come out from her bustling busy kitchen to greet and meet the customers. Just by talking to her you can learn about this wonderful woman’s love, passion and dedication for cooking tasty food for all. It is from Kaushy that I learnt to make one of the most loved and tried recipes of Monsoon Spice, Rhengan Reveya. As Kaushy rightly said, it is ‘cooking with Love’ which makes Prashad stand above all other Indian restaurants we visited and makes Prashad one of the finest Indian restaurants in Britain. Gordon Ramsay called them “Smallest restaurant with the biggest heart” and encouraged Kaushy to write a cookbook to “bring the vegetarian cooking to life”! Thanks to Ramsay because of him we have Kaushy’s cookbook amidst us to tease and please our taste buds!

As I had mentioned before, I never buy cookbooks on whim or have habit of collecting them only to put them away after flipping through few pages. Most of the cookbooks I have in my collection are gifts from my loved ones who know my love for cooking and some are sent by the publishers for reviewing. But it was different case when I came to know about Kaushy Patel’s cookbook ‘Prashad’ titled after their restaurant and published by Saltyard Books. I was eager to read the reviews and place an order as soon as possible. Bubbling with excitement, I messaged the Patel family to congratulate them for their brand new restaurant in Darlington (which I am really hoping to visit soon) and the release of Kaushy’s cookbook. I received a quick response from Bobby who mentioned that the cookbook had recipes for two of my most favourite dishes from Prashad, Bombay Bataka and Pethi, and it was enough of temptation to order my copy immediately. Looking at my excitement Bobby requested his publishers to send me the copy of Prashad to review and shortly I got my copy mailed to my office. When I received this parcel I was working on rather complicated piece of code which kind of kept me away from tearing open the package at that instant and flip through the recipes.

Kaushy Patel's Prashad

Once home and after Lil dumpling went to bed, I opened the package and first thing I noticed was the beautiful retro style cover photo. It was simple and elegant which opened up to the good collection of over one hundred mouth watering vegetarian recipes. The recipe section is categorised into starters, street foods, main course, rice and rotli, soups, pickles and condiments and ends with a sweet note of desserts. All recipes are vegetarian but flipping through the pages showed me that almost half of them are vegan or can easily be modified to suit vegan diet. Kaushy has detailed the basic Indian spices and ingredients used in recipes with her 'pracical points', 'top tips' and 'how to' rather beautifully in the beginning which I think will be very helpful in guiding the novice cooks as how these spices are used in Indian cooking. One more thing I want to mention is that like their restaurant menu, Kaushy has clearly marked every recipe detailing its suitability for various dietary needs (Vegan, onion and garlic free, healthy option, zero chilli etc) which I think many will find quite useful without the need to going through the full recipe. Little details like these give an edge over other cookbooks.

Like any Indian regional cuisines, Gujarati cuisine varies widely in flavour from one region to another as well as the preference of family. Gujarati cuisine can be classified into North Gujarat, Kachchh/Kutch, Kathiawar and Surthi Gujarat as the four major distinctive styles of cooking as well the taste and flavour. Kaushy’s Prashad cookbook has Surthi Gujarat style of cooking and has distinct sweet, spicy and salty taste. The main ingredients are lentils, aubergine, potato, peanuts, yams, different beans and pulses with Kaushy detailing the use of fresh ginger, garlic and green chillies that goes into making spice paste. And it is this fresh spice paste, not ready to use bottled or frozen, that gives the final dish really a fantastic flavour.

Almost all of my favourite food blogs not just offer recipes or cooking techniques but has little stories or narratives that lead one to recipes. It’s these little stories and narrative that give us the glimpse into the person’s life and their love, passion and joy that went into creating the food. Not many cookbooks offer this and that probably is the main reason why I don’t have large collection of cookbooks. Kaushy’s cookbook Prashad starts with a chapter of her life from her childhood where she spent her time learning the art of cooking from her maternal grandmother(to whom this book is dedicated to) in a small village. Kaushy’s soulful reminiscences of her childhood where she watched her grandmother’s love for cooking meals for family and friends from sun up to sun down and how by watching her grandma cook so lovingly sparked the passion of cooking in little Kaushy who started to cook for her family when she was just 7 years old. It was the story that I could relate to as I too grew up watching my Ajji cook in our ancestral home churning dish after mouth watering dish of flavourful food! Having come to England from her grandmother’s loving home in Gujarat in 1966 without speaking a single word of English, Kaushy Patel has come a long way. Kaushy chronicles little important details of her life introducing her partner Mohan, her family, their humble beginning as small deli and then a full fledged restaurant and their shot to fame through Gordon Ramsey’s Best Restaurants in 2010 where they bagged first runner-up place. It was a wonderful read which I thoroughly enjoyed. Enticing tales like this along with traditional and authentic Gujarati recipes from home with Kaushy’s little twists, helpful tips, and uncluttered, clean and sharp food photographs (by Cristian Barnett) that is screams delicious and divine is a welcome addition to my humble cookbook collection.

Kaushy Patel’s Prashad is for both novice and experienced cooks who love cooking Indian food, especially the food from Gujarat with few recipes from Punjab and South India like Chole, Paneer Masala, Aloo Gobi, Tarka Dal, Masala Dosa, Samabr and the like. There is a mouth watering collection of appetizers and street foods; especially Prashad’s best selling chaats and award winning Pethis. The recipes are simple for an experienced cook and some recipes may be bit complex for someone who is new to Indian cooking. My suggestion for those who are new to cooking Indian food is to start cooking from range of many simple and straight forward recipes and then slowly move on to the complex recipes like layered Biriyani as you get familiar with the use of spices and cooking techniques. There are no shortcuts when it comes to cooking an authentic Indian food that will seduce your taste buds with such complex flavour combinations. All you need is little planning and preparation which will help you in cooking one of the best tasting foods! Almost all the ingredients listed in the cookbooks can be easily sourced from any good Asian grocers, especially here in Britain.

Kehra Na Reveya/Green Banana Satay served with Kichidi

There are only positives when it comes to Kaushy’s Prashad and if I had to really push myself hard find some negatives, it is like searching for a needle in haystack! Only thing I found bit too much for my taste is the amount of oil used in the recipes. But that again is a personal choice and can be easily rectified by reducing the amount of oil used as I found that the food tasted just as good as the ones served in their restaurant. In last two weeks since I got hold of this gem of a cookbook, I have cooked 5 different recipes and every one of them have come out tasting finger licking delicious. So far I have cooked Bombay Bataka (my most favourite dish from their restaurant), Cauliflower with Peas, Banana and Fenugreek Fritters, Bhakri, and Kehra Na Reveya. After following Kaushy’s recipe from the cookbook I am very happy to say that they all taste exactly like the one they serve in their restaurant! We loved it so much that I have already cooked 2 of the above dishes twice with in a week!

I have lined up some very exciting recipes from Kaushy’s cookbook to be cooked for my family and friends over the couple of weeks and I plan to cook my way through all the recipes this year! With Kaushy guiding me with her little tips and tricks, I am sure enjoying cooking the recipes from Prashad and the end results seem well worth that little extra effort and time into creating something extraordinary! If there is just one cookbook that you want to buy for yourself to master the art of cooking Indian vegetarian food which is a lot different from something you see in every Indian restaurant or takeaways menu, then I highly recommend Kaushy Patel’s Prashad. It is no wonder that Kaushy’s Prashad has received 4.9 stars out of 5 in Amazon and it is one among the Top 5 best selling Indian cookbooks! This unique cookbook is all about family cooking and is written with love for beautiful, homely and delightful food packed with flavours and is a must for any hardcore Indian food lovers. As Kaushy rightly said cooking is not complicated when you follow 4 golden rules: always buy the fresh and best quality ingredients, plan and prepare in advance, relax when cooking and of course, cook with love! This cookbook is for people who love Indian food with burst of flavours, different textures, unique recipes and something that you will not find in the menus of your next door Indian restaurants. This book is for everyone who loves to cook for themselves and their loved ones. Everything you cook from Kaushy’s Prashad will leave you completely satisfied and yet wanting for more!

Kaushy’s ‘Prashad’ is all about good food… Nah, make it a great food!!!

Keeping Kaushy's useful tips in my mind, I made this mildly spiced Kehra Na Reveya or Green Banana Satay for my family. This rustic and traditional food from Surthi Gujarat is uses raw banana or plantains with skin which is stuffed with freshly ground spice mix and peanuts paste. Kaushy’s little introduction before the recipe for Kehra Na Reveya says "My husband's grandfather, Lallu Dada, was famous in his village for two things - his amazing tasting reveyas and his big wobbly belly. Some of his genes have been generously shared with his grandson Mohan and out son Bobby. The green unripe bananas in this dish give it a strarchy sweetness that contrasts really nicely with the spicy peanut sauce. Please note that you don't peel the bananas before cooking, as the skins serve to hold them together around the satay filling. Mohan eats the cooked skins, but I prefer not to." This Kehra Na Reveya turned out one of the best tasting raw banana dish ever. I can see myself using this spicy peanut paste as a stuffing for many other vegetables like baby eggplants, bell peppers, new/baby potatoes and okra.

With this delicious and lip smacking recipe of Kehra Na Reveya or Green Banana Satay, let me leave you with few beautiful lines from Kaushy's cookbook. As Kaushy quotes "We Gujaratis use our hands, combining spices, kneading doughs, working in masalas, to put all our energy and love into our food. We eat with our hands, too, so we can pick up all that cooked-in love. And we always cook a little more than we need, so that we can invite any unexpected guests to share our meal. If no unexpected guests arrive, the extra food simply gives us an opportunity to share with our neighbours, we call this vakti vevar and it helps create great community bonds. Modern life can be hectic, and one of the first things to suffer is often the sense of community and family. But you can restore the balance with something as simple as a shared meal or a chat over a cup of sweet ginger tea. Food can be so much more than just something to fill you up, and cooking can be so much more than getting food on the table." 

Raw peanuts ~ roughly chopped/pulsed

Freshly pound green chilli+ginger+garlic paste

The ingredients for spicy peanut paste stuffing

Spicy peanut paste ready for stuffing

Stuffed green bananas ready for cooking

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Kehra Na Reveya/Green Banana Satay (Raw banana or plantains stuffed with spicy peanut paste, a speciality from Gujarat)
Prep Time: 15 mins
Resting Time: 15 mins
Cooking Time: 25-30 mins
Recipe Level: Beginner to Intermediate
Spice Level: Medium
Serves: 4-6 People
Recipe Source: Kaushy Patel’s Prashad
Shelf Life: Best served fresh but can be refrigerated for up to 3-4 days
Serving Suggestion: With any Indian flat breads (Whole Wheat Naan or Butter Naan or with any stuffed parathas) or plain/flavoured Basmati rice

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Ingredients:
4 medium Raw Banana/Plantains in their skins, rinsed and dried
2 cups Boiling Water

For the Stuffing:
¼ cups Raw Peanuts, finely chopped or coarsely blended in a food processor
2 tsp Gram Flour/Chickpea Flour, sifted
1 tsp Sugar
A generous pinch Hing/Asafoetida (Optional)
1 tsp Jeera/Cumin Seeds
2-4 tsp Dhania/Coriander Powder
½ tsp Haldi/Turmeric Powder
¾ packed cup fresh Coriander Leaves, finely chopped
2 tbsp Oil
1¼ tsp Salt (As per taste)

For the Masala:
4 cm Ginger, peeled and chopped
3-5 Green Chillies, chopped (Adjust as per taste)
3-6 cloves of Garlic, chopped
A pinch of Salt

Kehra Na Reveya ~ Green Banana Satay

Method:
Prepare the Stuffing:

1. Take the chopped ginger, green chillies and garlic in a pestle and mortar and crush them to a rough paste. Alternately you can grind them in a mixer grinder or food processor.
2. Similarly you can either chop the raw peanuts by using a sharp knife or pulse them for few seconds in a food processor. I simply pulsed the peanuts for few seconds in a food processor to get chunky powder but you can go ahead and grind to a fine powder if you prefer it that way.
3. In a medium bowl take this peanut powder, freshly ground chilli-ginger-garlic paste, gram flour, sugar, cumin seeds, hing, coriander powder, turmeric powder and salt to taste. Mix them well using your fingers or a spoon. Next add finely chopped coriander leaves and oil and mix them well to form a paste. Cover and keep it aside for 15 minutes for the flavours to infuse.

Stuff the Plantains/Green Bananas:

1. Since we are cooking the raw banana/plantains along with the skin, make sure that you wash them well before using. The skin helps in keeping the plantains from disintegrating while cooking. Once washed, pat them dry with a help of a kitchen towel.
2. Trim the end with a help of a sharp knife and cut each plantains into 3 equal pieces of about 2 ½ -3 inch in size.
3. Next cut each pieces into quarters by making ‘+’ marked incisions 2/3 rd way. Be careful not to cut the plantains all the way through as you will be stuffing the masala paste into these incisions.
4. Carefully stuff about ½-¾ tbsp of peanut masala taking care not to break them plantains. If by any chance you end up breaking the plantains, use small tooth picks to secure them once you have stuffed them with the masala paste.
5. Proceed to stuff all the plantains and arrange them in a clean bowl or plate. Save any leftover spice masala for cooking.
6. I left them to marinate for 5-10 minutes for the flavours to infuse. This is an optional step and you proceed to cook the plantains as soon as you are done with stuffing all the plantain pieces.

Proceed to Cook:

1. Heat a large kadai or wok in a pan which can hold all the stuffed plantain pieces in a single layer. This helps in uniform cooking of the plantains. Cover the pan with a lid and increase the heat to high. Let it cook undisturbed for a minute.
2. Remove the lid and add the remaining peanut spice mix in between the plantain pieces and pour in 2 cups of hot boiling water. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cover the lid. Let it cook for 10-15 minutes, turning the plantains at every 4 minutes interval for the even cooking on all sides. Add about ½ cups of water if you find the gravy sticking to the pan and gently mix them well.
3. After 15 minutes of cooking the plantains covered, remove the lid and increase the heat to medium. Let it cook uncovered for another 7-10 minutes. The extra water in the pan will start to evaporate leaving behind dry curry. Make sure that you flip the plantains now and then for even cooking and keep a close eye to see that the masala is not sticking to the pan and burning.
4. You can test if the plantains are cooked or not by inserting a sharp knife. The knife should easily cut through if they are cooked well.
5. Serve this delicious Kehra Na Reveya with any Indian flat breads (Whole Wheat Naan or Butter Naan or with any stuffed parathas) or plain/flavoured Basmati rice.

Kehra Na Reveya served with Kichidi

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Sia’s Notes:

• Since we are cooking the raw banana/plantains along with the skin, make sure that you wash them well before using. The skin helps in keeping the plantains from disintegrating while cooking.
• If by any chance you end up breaking the plantains, use small tooth picks to secure them once you have stuffed them with the masala paste.
• You can test if the plantains are cooked or not by inserting a sharp knife. The knife should easily cut through if they are cooked well.

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Prashad cookbook author Mrs. Kaushy Patel (Img source: Prashad)

Before pressing the publish button, I have this exciting giveaway to announce!

The word ‘Prashad’ means blessed food and the recipes from Kaushy’s cookbook is such a blessing for every Indian food lovers. The Patel family have decided to giveaway Kaushy’s ‘Prashad’ for the readers of Monsoon Spice. We will be giving away not just one but TWO copies of ‘Prashad' cookbook and this giveaway is open for EVERYONE all over the world! Yes, anyone who is interested in learning or improving your cooking skill, especially the Gujarati vegetarian cuisine, is welcome to participate in this giveaway. This is your chance to get hold of the “Top 5 Best Selling Indian Cookbooks” in Amazon!!! Please mention in your comment if you would like to participate in a giveaway or not so it becomes easier for me to choose the winner.

This Giveaway is closed and the winners are announced here.

Warm Regards

Sia