My mum hails from multiple cities in the south of India, and my dad from the north. This led to a pretty varied set of offerings when it came to meals at home. I reckon this variety in ancestry as well as the fact that I was born and raised in a totally different environment - Abu Dhabi, U.A.E to be specific - is the cause of my highly flexible taste buds. Genes probably have a part to play in it as well - there's precious little my parents would fuss about when it comes to food. I wonder if it might also have something to do with mum force-feeding me foods I disliked as a child till I grew a taste for them and learnt to appreciate different tastes. I digress....
In spite of all the variety at home, we tend to lean towards some standard Indian fare for our daily meals - leading me to take them for granted very often and abandoning Indian cooking as 'Mum's department'. I'd much rather be exploring new cuisines, trying new recipes - things that my mother isn't already a master in (probably because I don't enjoy her looking over my shoulder tut-tutting at every little detail and offering suggestions at every step of the way). No offense mum - I love you to bits, and I know you have valuable pearls of wisdom to offer - but I enjoy some sense of adventure - to go where no-one (at least no-one in my family) has gone before...at least when it comes to cooking and food.
In spite of my aversion to Indian cooking in general, every once in a while my Indian genes kick up and I suffer cravings for some authentic food. This happened about a week ago, when I had some strong desires to cook something authentically Indian, yet something that isn't one of Mum's signature dishes.
My partner in crime and cooking/dining buddy came to the rescue, suggesting a signature dish of her mum, Avial - a very popular mixed-vegetable dish hailing from the very south of India - Kerala.
First lesson I learnt in our attempt to create this masterpiece in my kitchen is that the most important ingredient here is preparation.
Avial is a blend of so many vegetables that you need to set aside an evening just to shop around for the lot. Unless of course, you have an Indian vegetable store close to home, and a friendly Indian vegetable seller - something that's not too hard to find in Abu Dhabi!
Once we found all our carrots, beans, drumsticks, raw bananas, yam, white pumpkin, curry leaves, grated coconut and the like, we had to sit down to the task of cleaning and cutting every vegetable into roughly evenly-sized long, thin slices. I set upon this as a group project which in hindsight was a very wise thing to do - if I had to attempt it on my own, I would either have very small portions or a whole day of chopping!
The actual preparation was surprisingly simple, a little oil, add the vegetables with some spices, when they're cooked, mix in the yogurt and the coconut. Finally, at the very end add baby onions (also called sambar onions, sambar being another lentil and vegetable curry where these onions are used), crushed with ginger, green chillis and curry leaves to coconut oil and mix in with the veggies and voila! You're done :)
Garnish with fresh curry leaves.
It definitely passed the taste test that night as packages made their way to everyone's household where each mum tasted and passed the final judgement - great job!
It really is quite unique and I have to say I haven't tasted anything quite like it. Each individual veggie somehow holds it own although mixed into a near-mush with coconut and yoghurt - the former providing a welcome sweetness, the latter providing a tang - both a very welcome contrast to the the 3-something green chillies and teaspoon or so of chilli powder that went in (I was very reluctant at the sheer quantity of chilli, but it turned out fairly mild at the end, believe it or not!)
Accompaniments? Rice, definitely. We made a tangy yoghurt curry to go with it, but it really wasn't necessary - the avial easily carried the weight of a plate of rice quite well on its own!
All in all, a successful first trial and hopefully the first of many more to come!
Till next time folks!
I love this one ! :D
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