Peel of Pleasure!!!

Dietary fibre or  roughage is the indigestible portion of plant foods having two main components:
# soluble  fibre that is readily fermented in the colon into gases and physiologically active byproducts, and
# insoluble fibre that is metabolically inert, absorbs water throughout the digestive system and facilitates bowel movement.
Plant foods contain both types of fibre in varying degrees, according to the plant's characteristics.

Regular intake of roughage or food fibre not only reduces absorption of fats in body but relieves constipation.
One can simply consume food fibre by keeping all the vegetable peels and simply making pakoras or one can serve stirfried peels with dals.

Today I will discuss two such recipes that are both delicious and good for health. One is made from Potato Peel and the other is stir-fried BottleGourd (Lau / Lauki ) Peel.
Potato Peel is something that we generally we throw away but it is full of fibre and minerals, perhaps more than Potato itself. 

So from next time instead of throwing the Potato Peel away, do something interesting with them ! Wash them thoroughly in water for several times, pat dry and add salt, red mirchi powder, poppy seeds, besan and stirfry them in oil in a low flame. Serve hot with rice and dal. 

Another interesting recipe you can try out uses the peel of bottle gourd.
In this case, you first you have to boil the peel with salt and water for half an hour. Heat 2 tsp refined oil in a pan. Add dry red mirch and kalonjee. Add the gourd peels. Stir fry till it becomes tender. Sprinkle 1 tsp besan, 1 tsp atta, 1 tsp sugar and 1 tsp poppy seeds. Again cook them till the quantity reduces to half its original. Serve with hot rice.

Both in case of Potato as well as bottle gourd make sure that you peels are thick -- that is they have some underlying vegetable along with it. This makes the peel more tasty and also preserves some of the vitamins and mineral.