Few things match the simplicity of the humble combo of Avial and Malabar parottas. If you have eaten a Sadhya, you would know that among all the dishes, Avial just shines through. Unlike many other Keralite curries, this uses ground coconut and not coconut milk. And the dish comes together, so, so quickly that it’s unreal.
The best part is that you can play around with the ingredients, there aren’t any fixed vegetables that you must use. Anything from potatoes, pumpkin, peas, drumsticks, carrots, yam, raw banana – pretty much anything!
Try my favourite Kerala vegetable stew and Kerala chicken stew. Looking for something deeper? try Chettinad curry instead.
Ingredients for Avial – serves 4
- Chopped vegetables – 3 cups (I used pumpkin, carrots, french beans, potatoes and peas)
- Turmeric – 1 tsp
- Salt – to taste
- Freshly grated coconut – 1 cup
- Yoghurt – 1/2 cup
- Green chilli, de-seeded – 2
- Cumin seeds – 1 tsp
- Coconut oil – 2 tbsp
- Curry leaves – 10 to 12
- Mustard seeds – 1 tsp
- Dried red chilli – 1, small (optional)
- Water – 3 cups
Method
- Wash, peel and chop your veggies.
- In a large pan, add the vegetables, water, turmeric and salt and cook on medium-high heat until the vegetables are soft, about 12-15 minutes. Because I used all textural veggies, the cooking time was the same for all of them. So this would depend on the vegetables you are using. Basically we are slowly boiling them off, you can also microwave them and toss with turmeric and salt if you prefer.
- Meanwhile, blitz the coconut, green chillies and cumin seeds to a medium-coarse paste.
- Add the yoghurt to this mixture and mix well. Don’t blitz it again, we don’t want it to become buttery or emit oil.
- Add this mixture to your cooked vegetables and mix well on low flame.
- Heat coconut oil, crackle the curry leaves and mustard seeds and the red chilli if you want to add some more heat. And temper the vegetable mix.
- Enjoy with flaky Malabar paranthas!
You can also add 1/2 cup of water to make it slightly runny.