Saturday 26 October 2013

Avial without yogurt

An interesting myth about Avial copied from Wikipedia:


It is supposed to have been invented by Bhima (one of the Pandava brothers) during their exile. According to the legend, when Ballav (Bhima's name during this time) assumed his duties as the cook in the kitchen of Virata, he did not know how to cook. One of the first things he did was to chop up many different vegetables, boil them together and top the dish with grated coconut.[2][3] There are mythological variations. Bheema is said to have prepared Avial, when there were unexpected guests for King Virata and he needed to serve meals for them. There was no sufficient vegetables to cook any single recipe for side dish, so Bheema used what ever available vegetables to make a new dish, which came to know as Avial.
Another narrative version relates to the attempt made by Kauravas to kill Bhima. After poisoning Bhima, Kauravas tied Bhima and threw him to water. Kauravas also communicated that they saw Bhima drowning in water. With the completion of the days of mourning, a funeral feast was planned and preparation were underway. Unexpectedly, Bhima emerged from the water, rescued by the Nagas. With this, preparations for the feast was cancelled. However, Bhima was unhappy with this decision, and decided to mix all of the vegetables to prepare a new dish, that later became popular as Avial.

Interesting!!!!!

I have cooked avail without yogurt for my vegan friends. I have substituted yogurt with tomatoes. The taste was almost the same but it gave a reddish colour to dish rather than the usual green.
Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

Plantain- 1/2
Potato- 1 big
Carrot- 1 big
Drumstick/Muringakol- 1/2 of a big stick
Okra/vendakka- 4 nos
Egg plant/ Brinjal- 2 medium sized
Ash gourd- 1/2 cup (big slices lengthwise)
Cucumber- 1/2 cup(big slices lengthwise)
Tomato- 1 big

For Grinding:

Scrapped coconut- 1 cup
Green Chillies- 2
Garlic- 1 small clove
cumin/ jeera- 1 pich
shallots- 1
turmeric powder- 1/4 teaspoon

Need some curry leaves and coconut oil to garnish at the end.

Preparation:

Put all ingredients for grinding in a mixer grinder and make a course paste out of it and  keep it aside. Clean vegetables after peeling off the skin from carrots, potatoes, ashgourd, cucumber and drum stick. You can leave the skin of plantain since it is highly nutritious but make sure to wash it well to get rid of the pesticides. Cut the vegetables lengthwise as seen in the picture.

Cook the vegetables by adding 1/2 cup of water and enough salt. Make sure to close the pan with a tight lid just to get the vegetables cooked from the steam. when the vegetables are soft enough, add the ground paste on the top of the vegetables and close the lid. Open the lid after couple of minutes and give everything a good stir and add the curry leaves.  Leave it open for a few minutes until the water evaporates completely and switch off the flame. Finally drizzle the coconut oil and mix everything very well. Enjoy with boiled rice.









No comments:

Post a Comment