Konkani Style Sprouted Cow Pea Curry (Vegan, Yo!)

A Wholesome Vegan Meal (But I had them with chips. Shh.)

Hello there Anteaters!

I've never been able to master south indian cooking, and by saying 'south indian cooking' I am already making a lot of people cringe. That is too generic a term to cover the vast complexity of region, flavour, and ingredients that the many south indian regions offer.

I was brought up on a more generic 'indian food' diet, sabji, daal, curry that were all a mish-mash between my mother's Mangalore roots, father's taste for heavily spiced curries, and other resulting amalgamations of spices, lentils and vegetables. This is not to say this food wasn't good, it was rather amazing, but it never allowed me to look at spices and combinations in context to region. Those of you living in Bangalore will be familiar with darshini food: quick-cheap south Indian food like idlies, vadas, pongal and various types of flavoured rices.Yes, that stuff I live for. But I also used to swap my 'katta alu' for simple south indian sambar/saarus and lightly spiced vegetables with coconut when I was in school. Then ask my mother to try to recreate them, but we could never get the flavours right.

You could say today's recipe is konkani/mangalore style, but some of the flavours also remind me of food from Kerala. What do I know? This city has shredded the original roots of food and rendered a cosmopolitan tongue, things that once you eat kind of remind you of 'this one time you were at someone's house'.

Anyway, the star ingredient in this ( a part from the sprouts themselves) is  dried red chilies and coconut. Yum-num, this is so good, I was licking the paste before it was cooked. Although i might have over done the ginger.

Did someone say coconut?

Ok without making a complete fool out of myself and writing about where this curry really comes from (it comes, truly, from my kitchen) I'll go a head and tell you that my friend Chaithali and I have been having  a FB messenger affair of late. We chat all day and it's mostly about food. She sent me this recipe and I took inspiration from it.

Chaithali makes some simple yummy shit and she's been sharing some south-inspired bean recipes with me too, so stay tuned,  I'll try and share those soon too. Anyway, the blog she shared with me is here.

I've used store-bought sprouted cow-peas. You can use any sprouts, and yes you can sprout them yourself by using the raw beans, but leaving this 12-24 hour sprouting trick in my hands would spell disaster. So just go and buy some sprouts from your local vender.

Here's What You Need

1 cup fresh coconut + the water of the coconut inside if there is any

1 inch fresh ginger ( I used 2 inches and it was a tad too heavy)

7 garlic pods

3-4 dried red chilies

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

2 small (or 1 large) potato chopped

1 cup sprouts of choice

3/4th of an onion

1 1/2 tomatoes chopped finally

3 heaped tablespoons vegetable masala ( I used Mangalore veg masala from the store)

1 1/2 teaspoons of jaggery

5-6 curry leaves roughly chopped

A pinch of asafoetida  (hing)

Salt to taste

2 pinches of pepper

2-3 tablespoons coconut oil

Some of that fresh flavour in the palm of my hands

How to Make

First grind your fresh coconut in a blender with a little water. Set aside. In a pan heat your coconut oil and add cumin seeds to splutter. Add your ginger, garlic, red chilies, onion, curry leaves, and hing and fry for 2 minutes.

frying before pasting this stuff up

Then put off the fire, and stick all of this in a blender. I popped the hot mixture into the freezer to cool so I could blend faster. If you had some reserved sweet coconut water from your coconut you can add it here, or else don't worry about it.

Blend the mixture to a paste, you'll have a slightly red paste.

spicy!

Now in a pressure cooker on medium flame, dump your red paste in and add your cup of grated fresh coconut. Fry for a minute then add your chopped tomatoes and mash into the paste nicely. You can add your vegetable masala now (feel free to add more or less depending on your taste), salt and pepper. Finally add your chopped potatoes and sprouts and mix.  Add jaggery and then throw in two cups of water and let the pressure cooker cook for about 3 whistles. Shut off flame and serve hot. I made some brown rice and salad to go with it. I'd say having a simple indian salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, chili, cilantro  and onion) is a bomb combination with this curry whether you have it with bread, roti, or rice.

Yum-num

Now go watch something on tv, eat, and get ready for Monday!

Keep it Kind.