A delicious Kerala curry flavoured with both fresh shredded coconut and browned coconut.
Ingredients:
- ½ cup black-eyed peas
- 4 cups water
- 2 cups diced pumpkin (about ½ a small orange pumpkin)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon turmeric
- ¼ teaspoon red chili, ground
- ½ cup fresh grated coconut
- 1 small green chili
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 3 tablespoons water
- 2 tablespoons coconut oil
- 1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
- 10 curry leaves
- 2 whole red chilies, broken into 3 pieces each
- 3 tablespoons fresh grated coconut
Instructions:
- Wash beans, remove any shriveled beans.
- Bring beans to boil in 4 cups water. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Add diced pumpkin, salt, ground chili, turmeric and salt to pot. Continue to simmer on low heat for 15 minutes or until pumpkin is soft.
- While pumpkin is cooking, grind, in a grinder or food processor, together ½ cup coconut with cumin and half a green chili and water to make a paste.
- Add coconut paste to pumpkin curry and allow to simmer for another 10 minutes. Stir occasionally and slight mash pumpkin and beans to thicken curry. Turn off heat when done.
- Heat oil in a work or frying pan on medium heat. When hot, add mustard seeds and allow to sizzle for 1 minute. Add dry red chilies, curry leaves and remaining coconut. Stir-fry for about 2 minutes until coconut starts browning. Pour on pumpkin bean curry.
- Pour oil and browned coconut mixture on curry.
- Serve hot with rice.
Critical Ingredients:
This dish is usually made with red cowpeas, but I prefer blacked eyed peas as they are more easily available. If green chilies are unavailable, you can just use ground chili as in the recipe, and omit the green chilies. If fresh coconut is not available, use the same quantity of desiccated (not sweetened coconut) but soak it in a quarter cup of milk, then drain and use. Mustard seeds can omitted, but the coconut oil tempering and curry leaves are critical to the flavor. Dry red chilies can also be omitted if unavailable, as the curry is already quite hot.
