Chow Chow Kootu

Trust everybody had a wonderful valentine’s day!  I know, I know, it’s nothing but commercialization of love, blah blah blah!  But can you blame a girl for melting at the sight of flowers and chocolates? I will take any excuse for receiving chocolates (a girl’s second best friend – diamonds being the first!) from dear hubby.  And I am sure most married women would identify with the sentiment (newlyweds and those approaching or just past the first anniversary don’t count!)!!

Ok, so after drooling over and gobbling all the goodies (had a Valentine’s Day celebration party at kiddo’s school too!), decided to take it easy for dinner tonight. With the lousy cold rainy weather and the sniffles, rasam, rice and chow chow kootu seemed like a good idea. Will post the recipe for rasam (and rasam powder) some other time, but for today’s post; let us take a look at chow chow kootu.

Here in the US, this starchy vegetable is sold by the name of Chayote Squash. It is quite popular in South India as “Bengaluru Katthirikai” which literally translates to “Bangalore Brinjal/Eggplant”! In fact, I feel chow chow bhajji tastes a lot like brinjal bhajji!

Anyways, now for the recipe… Normally I make this kootu with moong dal, but today, I was in such a lazy mood, that I cooked it with toor dal (which I had to anyway cook for my rasam), thereby killing two birds with one stone!

Preparation & Cooking: 20 mins approx.                               Serves: 4

Ingredients:

Chow Chow (Chayote Squash) – 2 (diced)

Toor/Arhar Dal/Red Gram Dal/Tuvaram Paruppu – ¼ cup

Turmeric Powder/Haldi – a pinch

Salt – to taste

To be fried in 1 teaspoon oil and ground into a paste:

Coriander Seeds/Dhania – 2 tablespoons

Channa Dal/ Bengal Gram Dal/Kadala Paruppu – 2 teaspoons 

Dry Red Chillies – 4-5

Grated Coconut – 1 tablespoon

 






 












For Tempering:

Coconut Oil – 1 teaspoon

Mustard – 1 teaspoon

Urad Dal – 1 teaspoon

Asafoetida/Hing - a pinch

Red Chillies - 2

Curry Leaves – a few

Method:

1.  Pressure cook the toor dal with some salt and turmeric and set it aside.

2. In another vessel cook the chow chow in some water with a pinch of turmeric and salt to taste.

 3.Once the vegetable softens (about 15 minutes), add the cooked dal and the ground paste and bring it to a boil. Now take it off the heat

 4. Heat the coconut oil and add the ingredients for the tempering.

 

5. Once the mustard seed splutter, add the tempering to the kootu.

Handy Tip: You can directly cook the chow chow with the dal in the pressure cooker and then proceed from point 3. I cooked it separately because I needed part of the toor dal for my rasam. The recipe is pretty spicy; if you prefer mild food, reduce the quantity of red chilli used.

Sending to  SYF&HWS - Cook With SPICES" Series - CORIANDER SEEDS  started by Anu and hosted at Kalyani's Sizzling Taste Buds.