Rajma Palak - Simple Recipe

Something that I do very regularly at my place is soaking pulses like rajma (red kidney beans), alsande (black eyed peas), kale vatane (Black peas), safed vatana (white peas), kabuli chana (chickpeas), kulith (horsegram) and the likes. I generally soak all these pulses at one time and then after 12 hours of soaking, they are transferred to different different containers and are kept in the freezer when I need to cook them. This way, I do not need to remember to soak them the previous night, and I can make some pulses when I feel like it.
This Rajma was in my freezer for over 4 weeks. Yesterday, I had no vegetables in the fridge and did not know what to cook before my lil one came back from school. Well, suddenly I remembered the rajma in the freezer and thought of making a curry.
Now Rajma - well................... its a ritual to cook it the way a punjabi aunty thought me. It takes quite a bit of effort and love. I did not have the time for efforts - but, there was loads of love. Hence made this jhatpat rajma the way my mom always made it for us. Just added spinach to get some veggies into it too.
Verdit - kiddo loved it - she had it for lunch as well as dinner.

Ingredients

1 cup rajma (red kidney beans) - soaked for atleast 12 hours
1 onion - roughly chopped
1 tomato - roughly chopped
2 cups water
1 teaspoon mustard oil (use can use any other oil)
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/4 teaspoon asafoetida
1 tablespoon butter/ghee/oil
7 cloves garlic - finely chopped
1 teaspoon kashmiri chilli powder (you can add more if you like)
2 teaspoons meat masala (I used everest meat masala) - the masala does not contain meat
2 cups baby spinach - roughly chopped
salt to taste

Method

In a pressure cooker add the soaked and drained kidney beans, water, onions, tomatoes, turmeric, asafoetida and mustard oil. Pressure cook it for about 5 whistles. Let it stand untill the pressure cooker releases its pressure.
One you open the pressure cooker, use the back of your ladle and just mash the bottom of the cooked kidney beans a couple of times to mash just a few of them.
In a saucepan, add the butter/ghee/oil. When it gets hot, add the chopped garlic and let it sizzle - be careful not to burn the garlic. To this add the rajma mixture - be very careful as it will splutter - add the rajma very very slowly. Add the chopped spinach, the meat masala, chilli powder and salt to taste. Let the mixture come to a boil, then cover and let it simmer for about 10 minutes.
Serve with Rotis or Rice.