Collard Greens Thoran

It's Jihva for Coconut!!!

In Kerala, coconuts are in abundance and they are extensively used in vegetarian as well as non-vegetarian preparations. The white flesh of mature coconut is grated and ground to a paste before adding to curries. In most kerala recipes, coconut is an essential ingredient that you cannot leave out. In fact, you cannot think about cooking a complete Kerala meal without coconut.


Thoran is a dry vegetable side dish which can be made of a variety of vegetables. I think the methods of making usili (a south Indian delicacy, I haven’t seen this in Kerala though) and thoran are almost the same. Spiced dal mix is used in usili while a similar kind of coconut mixture is used in thoran. Thoran is an integral part of onassadya too. Try it with green beans, moong beans, cluster beans, hyacinth beans, yard long beans, bitter gourds, zucchini, plantains, plantain peels, drumsticks, carrots, snakegourd, any type of greens, potatoes, or even fish!! A mix of different vegetables can be used as well. The result is always one delectable dish that goes very well with rice. (Check out the links; I have linked to fellow bloggers' thoran recipes.)

Of all the vegetables I mentioned above, I prefer greens to make thoran. I often make it with cabbage, spinach, kale, or collard greens. The recipe is same for all.

Collard greens - 1 small bunch.

Usually collard greens come in giant bunches in our local grocery store. I usually take half a bunch to prepare this dish. Remove the hard stems and coarsely chop the greens. Wash and drain. It comes in ready to use packets as well, washed and chopped! Look for it if you want to save some time. Collard greens are highly nutritious, and have a mildly bitter flavor.

In a bowl, take the following ingredients and mix them together.

Fresh grated coconut - 1/3 cup
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
Green chillies, crushed - 3
Minced onion - 2 tbsp
Minced ginger - 1 tsp
Minced garlic - 1 tsp(optional)
Salt - to taste

Heat up oil in a big sauté pan and add the following in order:

Mustard seeds
Crushed red pepper flakes
Cumin seeds (optional)

Wait until the mustard seeds slputter and add the leaves. You wouldn’t see any mustard seeds in my picture because I forgot to add them!!

Collard greens have a longer cooking time, about 15-20 minutes. Stir continuously and cook on high heat until all the leaves are wilted. Cover and cook for 5 minutes on a low flame. Add the coconut mixture and continue cooking for another 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Serve hot with rice.

Read more about Coconut here.
Read more about Collard Greens here.

This is my entry for JFI-Coconut at Ashwini's Food For Thought.

Lemon-Date Pickle

Pickles are indispensable in Indian cuisine and no Indian pantry or refrigerator is complete without a jar of pickle. There are many varieties of pickles, including instant pickles that have to be consumed within a few days, and pickles that store well for a very long time. Ceramic jars are best for storing pickles.

You can make this lemon-date pickle using your favorite lemon pickle recipe. Just sauté chopped dates in gingelly oil and mix it to your pickle. Or if you season your pickle with mustard and curry leaves, you can add the chopped dates in the same oil and sauté for a couple of minutes. That's what I did. I frequently make lemon pickle the same way sans dates. But dates add the sweetness and give a wonderful texture to the pickle. If you like sweet pickles, you are going to love this. The combination of sweetness, sourness, and spiciness... Emeril would say, "Oh yeah baby!”

This is how I made it:

Big lemons – 5 to 6

Salt - to taste

Gingelly Oil - 3 tbsp + 3 tbsp

Mustard Seeds - 2 tsp

Curry Leaves - a few sprigs

Chopped Garlic - 2 tbsp

Ginger cut into thin strips - 2 tbsp

Chopped Green Chillies - 2 tbsp (more or less depending on your tolerance)

Dates – 12 (remove the seeds and chop into small pieces)

Red Chilli Powder - 2 tbsp (more or less)

Fenugreek seeds - 1 tsp

Asafoetida powdered - 1/4 tsp

Wash and dry the lemons. Heat up 3 tbsp gingelly oil and add whole lemons to it. Turn them with a wooden spoon and cook until the skin becomes semi- soft, about 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from the oil and let it cool. When the lemons are cold enough to touch, cut them into bite size pieces. Transfer the pieces to a dry jar and add enough salt. Keep aside for at least 3 days. Shake the bottle a couple of times everyday.

Heat up 3 tbsp gingelly oil in a heavy bottomed pan and add mustard seeds. Let it splutter and add curry leaves, garlic, ginger, and green chillies. Cook for a couple of minutes without burning. Add dates and cook for another couple of minutes. Add chilli powder and turn off the stove. Add asafoetida. Add the lemons and stir to combine. Roast and powder the fenugreek seeds and add to the pickle. Mix well and taste for salt. When it is cold, transfer it to a clean glass jar. Start using it after a week or so.

I used Kashmiri chilli powder in this recipe.

Also check out my other pickles.

Gingerbread house created by the cutest person in the house! Yummy, isn't it?

Season's Greetings & Happy Holidays to all my readers!

Moong Dal Fry

This is so simple and so delicious. But I had to wait almost 6 years to learn how to make it!

We tasted this for the first time while we were flying in some Indian airlines 6 years ago. They served this in small packets as a tea time snack. We enjoyed every bite of it then, and thought it would be so easy to replicate it at home since it seemed too simple. I came home and tried shallow frying and pan roasting moong dal. That was not it. I tried roasting in the oven as I do for roasting nuts. That was not it either!

Hmmm...then I concluded that it should be some commercially made snack that is impossible to make at home. But I kept thinking about this snack and its taste at times. It was too delicious to forget. A couple of weeks ago, I explained this to one of my blogger friends, and the next moment she gave me the recipe. I tried it without more ado, and that was it!

Thank you Atulyechi, for this wonderful, crispy, delicious snack. It is addictive too(just like plantain chips). You would be amazed to see how often you go back to your pantry to get more and more.

So simple as I have already mentioned, and my pictures don't say anything about its taste. I don't know how to capture the taste in pictures especially for this recipe. I tried!

Recipe Source: atulya

Soak moong dal(as much as you want) in water for 4 hours. Drain the water and keep the dal in a colander. You may spread it on paper towels to get rid of any excess water.

Heat up oil in a wok, about a cup of oil or more depending on the size of your wok. Wait until the oil reaches the right temperature. You can check this by dipping the back end of a wooden spoon into the oil. If the oil bubbles around the spoon, it is ready. Now add moong dal without overcrowding the pan. A mesh screen that fits inside your wok makes the process effortless. It will help to remove the fried dal from the hot oil easily.

Stir gently with a slotted spoon to ensure it is fried evenly. Fry it until most of the bubbles subside. Add a tsp of salted water(as you would do for plantain chips) and wait until all the bubbles subside. Lift the mesh screen from the oil and transfer the dal fry to a plate lined with paper towels. Continue the process with all the reamaining dal. Let it cool before you taste it (I have burned my mouth!).

If there is leftovers, transfer into an airtight jar.

Atulyechi revives her mother’s and grandmother’s precious recipes at her newly started food blog. She, like a big sister, entertains and educates us with her unique style of giving recipes. Please be warned, that the blog is in Malayalam, so only those who can read Malayalam can enjoy it at this moment.

When do I stop this?

Hmmm...another cast iron pan! Do you think I am done? Well, I have one more thing in my mind. A big rectangular griddle that sits on top of two burners. After that, I will stop looking for more......:) Well, cast iron pans are supposed to last forever if properly used, probably for generations. So....my kids and their kids and their kids all can use these pans. So I don't have to feel guilty, do I?

Mortar and Pestle

I bought this last week from our local indian grocery store. Wonder how I managed all these times without this?

Kinnathappam & Jaggery Lemonade!

New mom Kay chose jaggery, the medicinal sugar, for this month's JFI ingredient. Kay is one wonderful friend who always encouraged me when I started blogging. I really missed her all these times and was desperately waiting for her return. With this jaggery celebration, I hope she would be back to active blogging again. Welcome back Kay!!

Ever since I started cooking, I have been substituting brown sugar for jaggery. I thought they were same, and that brown sugar is the foreign version of jaggery. Brown sugar comes in powdered form and can be directly added to the dishes- no grating, no hammer hitting to break into pieces, no boiling & filtering to remove the dirt. Brown sugar made my life easier until I discovered that brown sugar doesn't taste the same as jaggery. Now I use jaggery whenever an indian recipe calls for it and keep the brown sugar for non-indian recipes. It is difficult but I love it.

I recall kinnathappam as an afterschool snack. My mom uses the leftover vellayappam batter for kinnathappam and sweeten it with jaggery or white sugar. I have never seen her grinding rice and coconut just for the purpose of making kinnathappam. You can also make kinnathappam without any sweetner and serve it with a curry. Adding yeast to the batter and fermenting for a few hours would result in a fluffier appam. But I made it witout yeast.



Soak two cups of long grain rice for 4 to 6 hours. Grind it with 1 cup of fresh grated coconut until it is nice and smooth. Use just enough water to grind, not too much.

Mix half cup of grated jaggery(more or less depending on how sweet you want it) with a tablespoon of water in a saucepan. Bring it to a boil. Turn off the stove and let it cool. Filter to remove any dirt.

Sweeten the rice coconut mixture with this jaggery syrup. Add a pinch of salt and a couple of crushed cardamoms. Taste it for sweetness and add more jaggery syrup if necessary. (The batter would be still white color at this point. When it gets cooked it turns to a golden brown. I told you this because when I made it for the first time, I thought the batter needs to have the color of kinnathappam, so I kept adding jaggery until I see a color change in the batter! It was too sweet!)

Grease a plate and pour the batter into the plate. You can add some toasted cashews on top. Steam cook until done.

I used the round dish that came with my pressure cooker and steamed it in the pressure cooker(without the whistle) for about 20-30 minutes.

Let it cool completely and cut into desired shapes. Serve with tea or coffee.

Kay also wished that we, the participants, try out something new with jaggery for the event. I chanced upon a jaggery lemonade while browsing. It is nothing but the regular lemonade with jaggery and a couple of extra ingredients.



Take two cups of water in a tumbler and add grated jaggery to it. Stir it until all the jaggery dissolves in water completely. Squeeze a lemon and add the juice to the tumbler. Add a pinch of crushed ginger and a pinch of black pepper powder to it. Taste it and add more jaggery if needed. Filter it to a serving glass. Chill and serve. I didn't like the taste very much when I made it for the first time, but when I made it again I liked it. Well, if you are used to the taste of lemonade with white sugar, it will take time to adjust with this taste. This is a healthy version of lemonade. Enjoy!