Pumpkin Erissery (Kerala style curry)

I made it for the first time many months ago and did not think much about posting the recipe. A month earlier I was routinely asking my daughter what she wants me to make for lunch. Its a question which comes up every now and then in my house when I am out of ideas on what to make. Imagine my surprise when she says "Amma, make that pumpkin thingy you made long back"! First of all I did not think she would remember a specific dish made once many months ago and second  I did not have pumpkin in the refridgerator. So I took a rain check on it and made her favourite pulav instead.
In keeping with this week's Thanksgiving run-up I decided to bring the vegetable home and make her favorite curry today.

Pumpkin Errisery is really simple to make and turns out into a delicious dish. I think it would be a perfect side dish and looks awesome in the middle of a spread. So make it for a pot luck or party  and get some kudos while taking it easy!

Pumpkin Errisery (Kerala Style Curry)

Servings: 3 cups
Prep Time: 10 mins Cook Time: 20 mins

Ingredients 

To Boil

4 cups Pumpkin (cut into 1-inch cubes)
Salt to taste
A pinch of turmeric

To Grind

1 tsp Cumin seeds
3 Green Chillies
1/4 cup Coconut

To Temper

1/2 Medium onion or 4-5 Shallots
1 tsp Mustard seeds
1 tsp Urad dal
2 Red Chillies
8-10 Curry leaves
3 tsp Oil

Garnish

2 tbsp Coconut

Instructions

1. Grind coconut, green chillies and cumin seeds to a coarse mix and keep aside.
2. Boil pumpkins in water till nearly soft along with turmeric and salt. 
3. Add the ground paste to the pumpkins and continue to cook on simmer till pumpkins are well done.
4. Heat oil in a heavy bottomed vessel and add mustard seeds.
5. When the mustard seeds splutter, add red chillies and urad dal and saute for a couple of minutes.
6. Add in onion and saute till transluscent and then put in the curry leaves.
7. Mix well and pour the tempering on top of the cooked pumpkin
8. In the same heavy bottomed vessel fry 2 tbsp of coconut till they are crisp and mix it into the pumpkin curry.
9. Mix well and serve with hot rice or chapathi

Gori Manchurian

Yes, you read it right. There is no spelling mistake in the title of the post. I accidentally made an important discovery which will come in very handy to serve a vegetable which is inherently so dry that it usually gets relegated to second cousin status as compared to beans. Cluster Beans or Gori kayi as it is called in Kannada is a thin and dry variety of beans.
I used to be an extremely fussy eater as a kid and gori kayi was one of the many vegetables that I did not like to eat. Adding to my misery was the abundance of this vegetable in the local market in Hyderabad, thus finding its way to my plate more enough than I would have liked. My mom tried to encourage me in various ways to eat more... well lets just say eat. With gori kayi she found an ally in numbers.She always told me that eating gori kayi would make me really good at math! That was a good reason for me to eat it all up although I might say that 101/100 times I might have got my numbers mixed up! I did hallucinate about pieces of gori kayi making its way up my blood vessels to the math controlling part of my brain.
Coming back to the recipe, it was a fridge clean out session where i discovered a bag of gori kayi and pizza sauce left over from last weekend. The rest as they say is Manchuristory.

Gori Manchurian

Servings: 2 cups
Prep Time: 25 mins   Cook Time: 15 mins

Ingredients

2 cups of Cluster Beans (Gori Kayi in Kannada)
1/2 Medium sized Onion
1/2 cup Toor Dal
1/2 cup Pizza sauce
1/2 tsp Mustard seeds
1/2 tsp Cumin seeds
A pinch of turmeric
3 Green Chillies cut lengthwise
3 tsp Oil
Salt to taste

Instructions 

1. Cut cluster beans and onion into small pieces.
2. Wash the toor dal under running water, atleast three times
3. Pressure cook toor dal and cluster beans and keep aside
4. Heat oil in a heavy bottomed vessel and add in mustard seeds. 
5. When the mustard seeds splutter, add in green chillies and cumin seeds and saute for a minute
6.  Add in onion and saute till transluscent.
7. To this, add the pizza sauce and fry for a few minutes till the raw smell of tomato has gone
8. Mix in the pressure cooked cluster beans and toor dal. Add salt and continue to cook for a few minutes till the first boil.
9. This curry tastes good with roti or chapathi or plain rice. I enjoyed eating it as is!

Instant Pizza sauce

Ingredients

2 Tomatoes / 5 heaped tsps of unfavoured natural tomato paste

2 garlic pods

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

2 tsp Olive oil or Vegetable oil or Canola oil

Instructions

1. Grind all the ingredients together adding 1 tbsp of water if required

Get the Indian curry basics right

Having been through many recipe books as a cooking newbie I realised that there is enough in there to confuse the novice. That has been the motivation to post powder recipes in my cookery blog. Today I tackle the curry, in a generic way. Essentially most curries have the same base to which a multitude of vegetables and after-thought ingredients are added to pamper different palettes.
There are two forms of curry that is made in India - dry and gravy.

Dry Curry

What you need to make Dry curry

Seasoning

• Mustard seeds (rai) - 1 tsp
• Cumin seeds (jeera) - 1 tsp
• Turmeric for its antiseptic properties as much as the colour - 1/4 tsp
• Kadlebele (Split Yellow Chick peas/Channa dal) - 2 tsp
• Uddinbele(Urad dal) - 2 tsp
• Red chilly powder - 1 tsp / 2 red chillies broken into pieces / 2 green chillies cut into small rings

Optional Ingredients for Seasoning

• Coriander leaves - 2 strands, finely chopped
• Curry leaves - 10, finely chopped or as is

Preparation to make Dry Curry

• Wash curry leaves and dry thoroughly in the sun. It should not have any moisture in it
• Wash coriander leaves thoroughly.

Method to make Dry Curry

• Heat oil in a pan or kadai (heavy bottomed vessel).
• To the oil add all the seasoning ingredients.
• Wait for the mustard seeds and cumin seeds to splutter, kadlebele and
  uddinbele to turn golden brown and chillies to be fried well.
• Add any vegetable of your choice. The vegetable could either have been steamed earlier or be raw(which means it will have to cook in the pan).
• Add salt to taste.
• Optional for Dry Curry - Yennegai Powder could be added at this juncture to get a different taste.

Gravy Curry
What you need to make Gravy Curry
Same as Dry Curry plus

• Onions - 1, blended or cut into small pieces according to convenience
• Tomatoes -2, blended into a puree

Optional ingredients

• Garlic - 4 pods, mashed or cut into tiny pieces
• Ginger - 1/2 inch piece, mashed or grated

Preparation to make Gravy Curry

• Same as for Dry curry

Method to make Gravy Curry

• Same as for Dry Curry