About the Vegetable :Bottle Gourd is a vine grown for its fruit, which can either be harvested young and used as a vegetable, or harvested mature, dried, and used as a bottle, utensil, or pipe. The fresh fruit has a light green smooth skin and a white flesh. Rounder varieties are called calabash gourds. They come in a variety of shapes: they can be huge and rounded, small and bottle shaped, or slim and serpentine, more than a metre long.The gourd was one of the first cultivated plants in the world, grown not primarily for food, but for use as a water container. The bottle gourd may have been carried from Africa to Asia, Europe and the Americas in the course of human migration, or by seeds floating across the oceans inside the gourd.Nowadays bottle gourd is grown by direct sowing of seeds or transplanting 15 to 20 days old seedlings. Prefers a well-drained moist good rich soil. It requires plenty of moisture in the growing season and prefers a warm sunny position sheltered from the wind. If it is cultivated in a small place you can grow it in a pot, spread the vine on trellis or roof. In rural areas many houses with thatched roof are found covered with the gourd vines. Bottle gourds grow very rapidly.
Scientific / Binomial name : Lagenaria siceraria
Popularly Known as :Calabash,Opo squash, long melon
Calabash is used in many string instruments in India as a resonator. Instruments that look like guitars are made of wood but they can have a calabash resonator at the end of the strings table called toomba. The sitar, the surbahar, the tanpura (south of India, tambura north of India), may have a toomba. In some cases the toomba may not be functional but if the instrument is large it keeps its place because of its balance function.In Brazil, gourds also commonly used as the resonator for the berimbau, the signature instrument of capoeira, a martial art/dance developed in Brazilian plantations by African slaves. The calabash gourd is possibly mankind's oldest instrument resonator.Hollowed out and dried calabashes are a very typical utensil in households across West Africa.
About the Vegetable :Lima beans are perennial glamorous herb, generally grown as annual crop. There exist two types of seed variations; large and small from two distinct genetic make-up. Varieties can be grown either as bush or as vine (pole) which requires trellising. In general, bush beans those yield small seeds often recognized as sieve or baby lima or butter beans. Whereas, vine or pole varieties are large seeds and categorized as lima beans. While small beans measure 3 x 2 cm in dimension, large lima beans measure 4 x 2.5 cm. Either bean types, however, feature common buttery texture and sweet flavour.
Scientific / Binomial name : Phaseolus lunatus
Popularly Known as :Helda beans, Romano beans,Lima beans,Chikkudukaya
Usage : Flat beans are normally cooked and served in their pods, as green beans. Like many other types of bean (see broad bean for example) they can also be dehusked or shelled and the small white kernels dried and stored, but there is no incentive to grow them for this purpose as higher-yielding bean varieties are available.Modern flat bean varieties picked while young are string less. Older varieties or beans allowed to ripen on the vine may contain strings.
About the Vegetable :Colocasia,a taro root plant have very large leaves , 20–150 cm (7.9–59.1 in) long, with a sagittate shape. The elephant's-ear plant gets its name from the leaves, which are shaped like a large ear or shield. The plant reproduces mostly by means of rhizomes (tubers, corms) but it also produces "clusters of two to five fragrant inflorescences in the leaf axils.They are grown outside year-round in subtropical and tropical areas. In temperate regions, they are planted out for the summer and dug up and stored over winter, dry and with ventilation to prevent fungal infection. They can be grown in almost any temperature zone as long as the summer is warm.This vegetable is available in Varieties
Scientific / Binomial name : Leucocasia
Popularly Known as :Common names include Elephant-ear, Taro, Cocoyam, Dasheen, Chembu, and Eddoe.
Usage :In the Indian subcontinent both roots and leaves are used. In Manipur, the leaves are used to make one of the type of a manipuri ethnic cuisine, locally known as Utti .The edible types are grown in the South Pacific and eaten like potatoes and known as taro, eddoe, and dasheen. The leaves are often boiled with coconut milk to make a soup which is rich in iron.
The corm taro can be used in variety of preparations. In Hawaii, boiled corm is ground to sticky paste known as poi.
Kaulau, a traditional Polynesian dessert known as coconut pudding in which, boiled dasheen is mixed with coconut milk and brown sugar.
The corms are also used in the preparations of burger, bread, flakes, pancakes, muffin, chips, flour, cookie, ice cream, etc.
Taro leaves used in soups, pakore (known as pathrode in some parts of coastal south India).
About the Vegetable :Chilli plant is a perennial small shrub with woody stem growing up to a meter height and bears white coloured flowers. The pods are very variable in size, shape, colour, and pungency. Depending on the cultivar type, they range from the mild, fleshy, Mexican bell peppers to the tiny, fiery, finger-like Chilli peppers, commonly grown in Indian subcontinent. Chilli peppers, despite their fiery “hotness” are one of very popular spices known for medicinal and health benefiting properties. The Chilli is actually a fruit pod from the plant belonging to the nightshade family of Solanaceae.Interiorly, each fruit features numerous tiny, white, or cream coloured, circular and flat seeds. The seeds are actually clinging around the central white-placenta.
Scientific / Binomial name : Capsicum annum
Popularly Known as :Chilli pepper, Hatch chilli, Chile pepper, Pachhi mirapakaya, Hasi menasinakayi
Usage :
Green chillies are used in many forms for Cooking. It is used in the form of Paste,Dried Powder etc.
Chopped peppers are being used in the preparation of chilli sauce, pizzas, rolls, and in variety of dishes using fish, meat and chicken in many Central American and European regions.
Hot chillies used as a condiment in the preparation of soups, chilli sauce, spicy water, vinegar-spice mix, etc.
Culinary Used Areas :Fresh raw bell peppers and other sweet, mild variety peppers are being used as vegetables in cuisines in many parts of the world.The Chilli pepper features heavily in the cuisine of the Goan region of India, which was the site of a Portuguese colony (e.g., vindaloo, an Indian interpretation of a Portuguese dish). Chillii peppers journeyed from India,through Central Asia and Turkey, to Hungary, where they became the national spice in the form of paprika.
About the Vegetable :Lemon is one of the most widely used citrus fruits worldwide. Lime is a close relative, comparatively smaller in size and possesses thinner skin. The juice of the lemon is about 5% to 6% citric acid, which gives lemons a sour taste. The distinctive sour taste of lemon juice makes it a key ingredient in drinks and foods such as lemonade.
Scientific / Binomial name : Citrus limon
Popularly Known as :Lemon, Neemboo, Nimmakaya, Nimbannu
Usage :Lemon is used in many forms as below.
Lemon slices/wedges are used to garnish salads.
Besides from their common usage as flavouring base in beverages or lemonade, they can also be used in confectionaries like pies, cakes, pastry dough, and marinades.
Its juice can be stored frozen for later use.
The outermost part of the rind grated using zester to produce lemon zest, which also have many culinary values for its flavor rich oil glands.
Iced lemon tea is a refreshing drink.
The distinctive sour taste of lemon juice makes it a key ingredient in drinks and foods such as lemonade.
Dried preserved lemons are being employed as condiment in Persian cuisine.
Culinary Used Areas :A common vegetable for all places. Lime pickles are favorite side dishes in Middle East, India, Morocco, etc.
About the Vegetable :Tapioca is a starch extracted from cassava root .The cassava is a perennial plant that grows best under tropical, moist, fertile, well-drained soils. Completely grown plant reaches to a height of about 2-4 m. Under the cultivation fields; cut-stem sections are planted just as in sugarcanes. After about 8-10 months of plantation, long, globular roots or tubers radiate from the stem just underneath the soil surface up to a depth of 2-4 feet. Each tuber weighs one to several pounds depending up on the cultivar type and feature grey-brown, rough woody textured skin. Its flesh features white colour starch rich sweet-flavoured meat that should be eaten only after cooking. See Varieties
Scientific / Binomial name :Manihot esculenta (Crantz).
Popularly Known as :Cassava,Yuca,
Usage :
Cassava tubers are popular ingredients in fries, stew-fries, soups, and savoury dishes all over the tropic regions.
In general, cassava sections are fried in oil until brown and crisp and served with oil, salt, and pepper seasoning in many Caribbean islands.
Starch rich yuca pulp is sieved to prepare white pearls (topioca-starch), popular as sabudana in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The pearls used in sweet pudding, savory fritters, sabudana-kichri, papad etc.
Cassava flour is also used to make bread, cake, cookies, etc. in several Caribbean islands.
In Nigeria and Ghana, cassava flour is used along with yams to make fufu (polenta), which is then savoured with stews.
Cassava chips, and flakes are also widely eaten as a snack.
About the Vegetable :Snake Gourd is a tropical or subtropical vine, its variety T. cucumerina var. anguina raised for its strikingly long fruit, used as a vegetable, medicine, and in crafting traditional Australian musical instruments known as didgeridoos. Leaves are palmately lobed, up to 25 cm long. Flowers are unisexual, white, opening at night, with long branching hairs on the margins of the petals. These hairs are curled up in the daytime when the flower is closed, but unfurl at night to form a delicate lacy display
Scientific / Binomial name : Trichosanthes cucumerina
Popularly Known as :Snake gourd, Serpent gourd, Padwal, Potlakaya
Usage :
In making curries, Soups and snacks (Bajji in South India)
Snake Gourd is found in the wild across much of South and South east Asia, including India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), and southern China (Guangxi and Yunnan).It is also regarded as native in northern Australia and naturalized in Florida,parts of Africa and on various islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
About the Vegetable :In everyday non-technical usage, the luffa, also spelled loofah, usually means the fruit of the two species Luffa aegyptiaca and Luffa acutangula. The fruit of these species is cultivated and eaten as a vegetable. The fruit must be harvested at a young stage of development to be edible. The vegetable is popular in China and Vietnam. When the fruit is fully ripened it is very fibrous. The fully developed fruit is the source of the loofah scrubbing sponge which is used in bathrooms and kitchens. Luffa are not frost-hardy, and require 150 to 200 warm days to mature.
Scientific / Binomial name : Luffa aegyptiaca
Popularly Known as : Loofah, Luffa, Beerakaya, Beerakayi, Ghosavala, Dodka, Gambas , Oyong, Chinese Okra, Jhinga, Ghiura ,Nenua
Usage :
In Karnataka's Malenadu (Western Ghats) it is known as hirekayi,It grows naturally in this region and is consumed when it is still tender and green. It is mostly used as a vegetable in curries, but also as a snack, bhajji, dipped in chickpea batter and deep fried. Once the fruit dries out, it is used as a natural scrubber and washing sponge.
In Andhrapradesh, it is called beerakaya. It is used as a vegetable in a curry, chutney and stir fry.
In Kerala, it is called peechinga. It is used as a vegetable, cooked with dal or stir fried. Fully matured fruit is used as a natural scrub in rural Kerala. In some places like Wayanad, it grows as a creeper on fences.
In Maharashtra, India, dodka (ridge gourd luffa) and ghosavala (smooth luffa) are common vegetables prepared with either crushed dried peanuts or with beans. In Northern India as well as Pakistan, turai (thoo-raee) is the common name for luffa. In Eastern India, It is also known as "jhinga","ghiura" or "nenua". In Nepal it is called "ghiraunla". In Tamil Nadu it is called "peerkangai".
In China, Indonesia (where it is called gambas or oyong), the Philippines (where it is called patola) and Manipur, India, (where it is called sebot) the luffa is eaten as a green vegetable in various dishes. It is also known as "Chinese okra" in Canada. In Spanish, it is called an estropajo.
Luffa species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species, including Hypercompe albicornis. In Myanmar, (where it is called tha-boot-thee)probably derived from the word sebot in Manipur. When it is young used as food and when it is mature and dry, cleared of all seeds and used as sponge for cleaning purposes. It is also widely used in steaming glutinous rice instead of cloth.
About the Vegetable :A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source."Mushroom" describes a variety of gilled fungi, with or without stems, and the term is used even more generally, to describe both the fleshy fruiting bodies of some Ascomycota and the woody or leathery fruiting bodies of some Basidiomycota, depending upon the context of the word.Typical mushrooms are the fruit bodies of members of the order Agaricales, whose type genus is Agaricus and type species is the field mushroom, Agaricus campestris. However, in modern molecularly defined classifications, not all members of the order Agaricales produce mushroom fruit bodies, and many other gilled fungi, collectively called mushrooms, occur in other orders of the class Agaricomycetes. For example, chanterelles are in the Cantharellales, false chanterelles such as Gomphus are in the Gomphales, milk mushrooms (Lactarius) and russulas (Russula), as well as Lentinellus, are in the Russulales, while the tough, leathery genera Lentinus and Panus are among the Polyporales, but Neolentinus is in the Gloeophyllales, and the little pin-mushroom genus, Rickenella, along with similar genera, are in the Hymenochaetales.
Scientific / Binomial name : Agaricus bisporus
Popularly Known as :Toadstool, Putta godugulu
Usage :
Mushrooms are used extensively in cooking, in many cuisines. They are known as the "meat" of the vegetable world.
Mushrooms can be used for dyeing wool and other natural fibres. The chromophores of mushroom dyes are organic compounds and produce strong and vivid colours, and all colours of the spectrum can be achieved with mushroom dyes. Before the invention of synthetic dyes, mushrooms were the source of many textile dyes.
Some fungi, types of polypores loosely called mushrooms, have been used as fire starters (known as tinder fungi).
Mushrooms and other fungi play a role in the development of new biological remediation techniques (e.g., using mycorrhizae to spur plant growth) and filtration technologies (e.g. using fungi to lower bacterial levels in contaminated water).
Culinary Used Areas :Notably Chinese, Korean, European, and Japanese.People who collect mushrooms for consumption are known as mycophagists,and the act of collecting them for such is known as mushroom hunting, or simply "mushrooming".
About the Vegetable : Lady's finger is a flowering plant in the mallow family. It is valued for its edible green seed pods.They are usually gathered while the pods are green, tender, and at immature stage. The plant is cultivated throughout the tropical and warm temperate regions around the world for their fibrous fruits or "pods." It grows best in well-drained and manure rich soil.
Scientific / Binomial name : Abelmoschus esculentus
Popularly Known as :Bhendi, Bhindi, Okra, Lady'sfinger, Lady's Finger, Bedakaya, Bendekayi, Bamia, Bamya or Gumbo.
Usage :
Chopped, or sliced pods are stewed or fried (fritters) under low heat oil in order to soften their mucilaginous content. They then, can be mixed with other vegetables, rice, or meat.
In Caribbean islands, okra is cooked and eaten as soup, often with fish.
The pods can be pickled and preserved like in other vegetables.
Okra leaves may be cooked in a similar manner as the greens of beets or dandelions. The leaves are also eaten raw in salads.
Thick stew of lamb or beef and okra (bamya) is a popular dish in Egypt and other middle eastern regions.
About the Vegetable :Green peas or garden peas are one of the ancient cultivated vegetables grown for their succulent nutritious green-pods. Pea is a quick growing, annual herbaceous vine that requires trellis to support its growth. It flourishes well in well-drained, sandy soil supplemented with adequate moisture and cool weather conditions. Peas are probably originated in the sub-Himalayan plains of north-west India. Now, this versatile legume is one of the major commercial crops grown all over the temperate, and semi-tropical regions. It is a cool season crop grown in many parts of the world; planting can take place from winter to early summer depending on location. The average pea weighs between 0.1 and 0.36 grams.
Scientific / Binomial name : Pisum sativum
Popularly Known as :English peas, Sweet peas, Garden peas,Hasi bataani, Pacchi bataanilu,Peas
Usage :Peas mixed well with other complementing vegetables like potato, carrot, beets, onion, artichoke…etc in the preparation of a wide variety of dishes.
About the Vegetable : Moringa is a drought tolerant, medium-sized, evergreen tree that prefers warm, frost-free climates to flourish. DrumStick tree is a fast-growing, deciduous tree.The bark has a whitish-grey colour and is surrounded by thick cork. Young shoots have purplish or greenish-white, hairy bark. Taller plants bear cream-white, small size flowers in clusters throughout the season, which subsequently develop into long slender dark-green, three-sided, edible seedpods with tapering ends.The tree has an open crown of drooping, fragile branches and the leaves build up a feathery foliage of tripinnate leaves.
Scientific / Binomial name : Moringa oleifera
Popularly Known as :Munagakaya, Munakkaya, Hagilekayi, Moringa oleifera , horseradish, Moringa
Usage :
Famous for making sambars in southern Places of India.
Mostly in India, Andhra Pradesh,Karnataka,Tamil nadu People will use for sambar recipes and in Philippines, Thailand,Taiwan for making Drumstick soups.
About the Vegetable :Chayote ,the common variety available is the fruit with roughly pear-shaped, somewhat flattened and with coarse wrinkles, ranging from 10 to 20 cm in length. It looks like a green pear, and it has a thin, green skin fused with the green to white flesh, and a single, large, flattened pit. Some varieties have spiny fruits. The flesh has a fairly bland taste, and a texture is described as a cross between a potato and a cucumber.Chayote is originally native to Mexico where it grows abundantly and has little commercial value. It has been introduced as a crop all over Latin America, and worldwide.Whether raw or cooked, chayote is a good source of amino acids and vitamin C.
Scientific / Binomial name : Sechium edule
Popularly Known as :Pear squash,vegetable pear,Chayote,Tayota, Christophene, Christophine, Cho-cho, Chuchu, Guatila, Centinarja
Usage :The chayote fruit is used in mostly cooked forms. When cooked, chayote is usually handled like summer squash, it is generally lightly cooked to retain the crisp flavour. Raw chayote may be added to salads or salsas, most often marinated with lemon or lime juice. Although most people are familiar only with the fruit as being edible, the root, stem, seeds and leaves are edible as well. The tubers of the plant are eaten like potatoes and other root vegetables, while the shoots and leaves are often consumed in salads and stir fries, especially in Asia. Like other members of the gourd family, such as cucumbers, melons, and squash, chayote has a sprawling habit.
Culinary Used Areas :Everywhere. The main growing regions are Brazil, Costa Rica and Veracruz, Mexico.
