Kerala Olan- Onam Special..

Happy Onam…..

Sadhya is an essential part of Onam. But having an Onam sadhya in a Bangalore restaurant is a very tedious procedure like reservations, queues, waiting and so on … Once for an Onam, we went to have sadhya in a Kerala restaurant, but after seeing the long queue, all our excitement was lost and on that day, finally we ended up having an italian lunch. Can you imagine italian food on a Onam day... :)

From that time on, we decided not to venture out on Onam days and I try to prepare atleast 8- 9 dishes at home. This time I was not sure how many dishes I will be able to manage and so I started off preparing from the day before Onam, cutting vegetables, cooking, cooling and storing them in refrigerator for the next day so that it will easy for me to prepare the dishes on Onam day. Finally I managed to prepare 7 main dishes … not bad huh ? ..:-)

One of the main dishes in sadhya is this Olan, which is quite easy to make and can be prepared within minutes and is extremely tasty. Olan is one of the main dishes in Kerala sadhya which tastes delicious with the nice fragrance of coconut oil.

Ingredients:

1. Ash Gourd- 1 Cup (cubed)
2. Yellow pumpkin- 1 Cup (cubed)
3. Coconut Milk- ¾ Cup (thin Milk) and ¼ Cup (thick Milk)
4. Cow pea Beans- ¼ Cup
5. Green Chillies-2 nos
6. Curry Leaves- few
7. Coconut oil- 2 tbsp
8. Salt- as per taste

Method:

1. Pressure cook the cowpea beans till they get cooked properly.
2. Boil the ash gourd, yellow pumpkin, slit green chillies in little water. Add required amount of salt.
3. When this gets cooked well add the pressure cooked beans,thin coconut milk and salt. Let it boil for few minutes.
4. Lower the flame and add the thick coconut milk. Switch off the flame and add the coconut oil and curry leaves.

Kootu Curry/ Mixed Vegetables and chana dal in coconut gravy

This is one of the delicacies served along with the Onam sadhya. Its basically a combination of mixed vegetables along with cooked chana dal, blended in coconut gravy. In this we can add as many vegetables as we like. For eg: yam, carrots and so on.. Instead of chana dal we can also add chana.

During my school vacation time, my grandmother used to make all such traditional kerala dishes for us. Among them, I always liked mampazha pulisserry (mango in yogurt) and this kootu curry the most. So few days back, I thought of making this myself.

If you haven’t tasted this before, I would recommend you to try this delicious preparation of veggies. This is prepared in different styles in different parts of Kerala. Just try this out and I am sure that you will fall in love with this.

Ingredients:

1. Chana Dal- ¼ Cup
2. Pumpkin (diced)- ¼ Cup
3. White Pumpkin (diced)- ¼ Cup
4. Snake Gourd (diced)- ¼ Cup
5. Ash Gourd (diced)- ¼ Cup
6. Raw Banana (diced)- ¼ Cup
7. String Beans- ¼ Cup
8. Coconut- ½ Cup
9. Green Chillies- 3 nos
10. Turmeric Powder- 1 tsp
11. Salt- as per taste
12. Oil- 1 tbsp
13. Mustard Seeds- 1 tsp
14. Red Chillies- 1 no
15. Curry Leaves- few

Method:

1. Cook the chana dal along with salt and turmeric powder in a pressure cooker. Keep this aside.
2. Cook all the diced vegetables with required amount of salt. Grind the coconut along with green chillies to a fine paste.
3. Add the cooked vegetables and ground coconut to the cooked chana dal and mix well.
4. For seasoning add oil in a small kadai, splutter the mustard seeds, red chillies and curry leaves.
5. Pour this over the above curry mixture, mix well and enjoy this delicious magic of vegetables with hot steaming rice.