Cabbage Thuvayal

Amma calls me the "Thogayal queen". Whenever I cook a south Indian meal (Konkani, Tamil or Telugu) I try and make it a point to make a thuvayal. It serves many purposes:

• 
  
  There's one more vegetable dish
• 
  
  Mix it with rice and you've got one entire course
• 
  
  It removes the need for a pickle with curd rice
• 
  
  It makes for a good bread spread/side for idli and dosa, so the next morning's breakfast issue is solved
• 
  
  It gives S the feeling of a somewhat "complete" meal
• 
  
  I get another dish to blog about

I have a lot of processed vegetables in the fridge and freezer and these come in very handy when I'm putting meals together on weeknights. And I have been known to make thuvayal/thogayal with just about any. I am putting this up thanks to a lot of pressure from folks at work who can't seem to get enough of this. (K, this post is especially for you. I do hope you find it useful.)

There's another version of this at Talimpu and Nandita blogged about her adaptation of that recently. Mine is slightly different. In fact, all my thuvayal recipes are very very similar. Replace the vegetable in any recipe and it yields a completely new dish. Someday, I shall blog about my family favourite "Thengai Thogayal". Until then, we shall focus on 5-a-day!

1 cup Cabbage, chopped

2 tsp Oil

3-4 Red Chillies

2 tsp Urad Dal

1/2 tbsp Tamarind paste

Salt to taste

For the tempering:

1 tsp Oil

1/2 tsp Mustard Seeds

1/4 tsp Asafoetida

7-8 Curry Leaves

Heat one teaspoon of oil in a pan and add the chopped cabbage. Saute for a couple of minutes and cover and cook for 5-7 minutes. Keep aside.

In a small pan, heat the other teaspoon of oil and add the urad dal. When it turns slightly brown, add the red chillies and fry for a minute. Grind this along with the tamarind paste, salt, and sauteed cabbage.

In a frying ladle, heat the oil for the tempering. Add the mustard. When the mustard splutters, add the asafoetida and curry leaves. Add this to the ground paste.

Happy Rama Navami everyone. I will be making Panakam, Neer Mor, Rama Navami Pachadi and Kadalai Paruppu Sundal. What festive foods are you cooking?

The Singing Chef's turn on Tried & Tasted, this month at Divya's Dil Se. (Thanks for the logo Ksenia).

Cabbage with Panch Phoron

This is a very simple dish that my cousin’s wife used to make (and probably still does). I am not a big fan of cabbage. I am rather neutral to this vegetable. I usually prefer to make it the steamed way as a side with rice and sambar. For rotis, I end up making Cabbage Jhunka this way, substituting cabbage for the spring onions. But my cousin’s wife made this dish fairly often (I visited them almost every weekend for 12 months, so I guess I have to mention this to be fair to her). And I found I liked to eat it with rotis. Years later, I asked her how she made it and she told me. I couldn’t believe how simple it was. The panch phoron makes this dish come alive.

1 cup Cabbage, chopped
2 tsp Oil
2 tsp Panch Phoron (a mixture of mustard, cumin, fenugreek, fennel and nigella seeds)
2 Green Chillies, slit
Salt to taste

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the slit chillies and the panch phoron and fry for a minute. Add the chopped cabbage and salt. Cover and cook for 5-7 minutes.

That is it. It is as simple as that. Since I almost always have chopped veggies in my freezer, this dish is a life saver when time is of essence.

Rainbow on my Plate (Mixed Vegetable Upkari)

Traditions. Sometimes broken, sometimes followed. I don't know which better applies to my cooking. I think I fall somewhere in the middle. Neither here, nor there. There are times when I break every tradition I know and cook something that, quite frankly, doesn't even have a name. And there are times when I follow my mother's (or grandmothers') recipes to a T.

This recipe is one that follows the middle path. One foot in the known, one in the unknown. The desire to make my lunch as colourful as possible is always overwhelming. The desire to experiment cannot be ignored. The desire to use new vegetables in my cooking eggs me on.

I had decided to cook a traditional meal for my parents and S. Yet, I felt the need to show off. So, I made some brinjal menthi kuzhambu (Appa's favourite), paruppu thogayal/thuvayal and this mixed vegetable upkari. The colours of this simple dish were too beautiful to be ignored.

100g Beans, strung and cut into 1/2 inch pieces

100g Carrots, diced

100g Purple Cabbage, chopped
1 tsp Oil
1/4 tsp Urad Dal
1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds
2 Red Chillies
1/4 tsp Asafoetida (optional)
1 tbsp Coconut, scraped
7-8 Curry Leaves
Salt to taste

Heat oil in a pressure pan. Add the urad dal, mustard seeds and asafoetida(if using). When the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves and the red chillies. Fry for a minute. Add the chopped beans, carrots and cabbage. Add some salt along with a little water. Cover and cook for one whistle.

When done, open and cook without the lid to let the excess water evaporate. Add the coconut and mix well.

Apple-Cucumber Salad

I feel like a preschooler these days. I pack so many meals in different boxes every day. All in an attempt to eat healthy. While growing up, I went from lunch at 12.30 to dinner at 8, with just a glass of milk after school, at about 3.30. I was never hungry. I wasn't interested in food. College was a slightly different story. Our "lunch break" was from 10.30 to 11 and I'd go from 10.30 to 8 with just a glass of milk. I even went to work after college, and somehow never got hungry in between. These days, my story is very different. I am perennially hungry. And it doesn't help much that my colleagues seem to have food packets open all day long.

So, to help myself from indulging, I pack my breakfast and take it to work. That means that I have a fruit milk shake and coffee before I leave. I pack the "solid" part of my breakfast and eat it at work. That way I can say no to the chips or the cookies or the namkeen that are offered to me.

Regardless of what I eat for lunch, or how much I eat, I seem to be very hungry again by 5 in the evening. And again, it doesn't help much that my colleagues order Aloo Tikki or pav bhaji or papdi chaat from a famous chaat chain nearby. So, while we've switched to soup for dinner, I try and pack a "snack" for the 5 p.m. pangs.

This salad is one of those snacks. I'd been to a friend's place for dinner when S was traveling. I insisted that I'd have only soup and she made some chickpea tagine and this salad. She had already cut the cucumber, cabbage and apple. The dressing is really what made this salad divine. And what I loved about it was that we made it up as we went. As soon as S was back, I made this. I chopped the vegetables differently and so this doesn't look as pretty as the one my friend made, but the taste was identical.

1/2 cup Cabbage, shredded
1/2 cup Cucumber, diced
1/2 cup Apple, diced
For the Dressing:
1 tbsp Honey
2 tbsp Olive Oil
2 tsp Lime Juice
1 tsp Chilli Flakes
Salt to taste

Place the cabbage, apple and cucumber in a bowl. Mix all the ingredients for the dressing together. Pour over the vegetables.

Voila! The salad is ready. I know that I will make this very often. It is simple to make and the flavours, sweet, spicy and sour, come together very well. And it is the perfect excuse to say no to that bag of chips.

Cabbage Karumadhu

I have met many cabbage haters so far. They seem to hate each and every member of its family. I’ve heard stuff like, “Ooooh, cabbage stinks”. I don’t know if I am oblivious to the “smell”, but I am definitely not a cabbage hater. I like in this form, I like it in a jhunka, I like it when it is paired with green peas. The only dish I really hate with cabbage is khichdi. I made it a couple of times with cabbage and found that I couldn’t stand to eat it. This simple dish is what I crave with sambar and rice. It is relatively bland and compliments the "spicy" sambar very well.


1/4 kg Cabbage, chopped finely
1 tsp Oil
1/4 tsp Urad Dal
1/4 tsp Chana Dal
1/4 tsp Mustard Seeds
2 Red Chillies
1/4 tsp Asafoetida
1 tbsp Coconut, scraped
7-8 Curry Leaves
Salt to taste


Heat oil in a kadhai. Add the urad and chana dals, mustard seeds and asafoetida. When the mustard splutters, add the curry leaves and the red chillies. Fry for a minute. Add the cabbage and the salt. Sprinkle a little water. Cover and cook 7-8 minutes.When done, add the coconut and mix well. Serve as a side dish with rice and Sambar.