Indian Vegetable Sides: Plantain Podimas

Podimas is a classic and unique vegetable side prepared by South-Indians. I am sure it is called by different names, but Brahmins call it Podimas, perhaps because the cooked starchy vegetable is shredded and spiced with a simple combination of ginger, green chillies, turmeric, coconut, and lemon juice. 

Podimas can be prepared with potatoes as well (in the case of potatoes, instead of shredding, just gently crumble the cooked potatoes and follow the same procedure), and other starchy vegetables.

Podimas finds its way on plates and festive banana leaves during special occasions, but it's so easy to prepare that it can easily be a regular vegetable side to feature with simple home cooked food.

Benagali Style Cabbage Stiry Fry

I came across a recipe for Bengali style cabbage and peas stir fry that came with a skillet I purchased. The booklet containing the operating instructions of the skillet had a few recipes, and one of those was this. It looked very interesting, so I decided to adapt it a little to suit my preferences and the stock in my pantry.

So here's my slightly adapted version! Thanks to the author of that slim booklet for including this recipe.

Ingredients:

1. 1/2 head of a medium sized cabbage, finely chopped
2. 2 teaspoons cumin seeds / jeera
3. 2 inch block of ginger
4. 4 green cardamoms, de-husked
5. 4 cloves
6. 1 cinnamon stick (2 inches long)
7. 1 bay leaf
8. 2 teaspoons coriander powder / dhania powder
9. 1 teaspoon turmeric powder
10. 1.5 - 2 teaspoons salt
11. 2 tomatoes, chopped
12. 1.5 teaspoons sugar
13. 2 tablespoons milk
14. 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour / maida
15. 1 tablespoon ghee / clarified butter
16. 4 tablespoons vegetable oil / olive oil / canola oil

Preparation:

1.  Grind the ginger and 1 teaspoon cumin seeds into a coarse paste by sprinkling a little water. Keep aside.
2. Using a mortar and pestle, grind the cardamoms, cloves, and cinnamon into a powder. Set aside.
3. Heat the oil in a deep pan on medium flame. Add bay leaf, the cumin-ginger paste, and 1 teaspoon cumin seeds and wait for everything to sizzle. Stir around the paste for a few seconds. Then, add the cabbage and stir on medium heat for 5 minutes. 
4. Add turmeric powder, coriander powder, and salt and stir well. Reduce the heat to low, close the pan and cook for 15 minutes. Every 5 minutes, stir the cabbage making sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. After 15 minutes, add sugar and stir well.
5. In a bowl, whisk together the milk and flour to make a fine paste. Add this to the cabbage, stir well and continue to cook on medium heat for another 5 minutes or until the cabbage is cooked.
6. Finally, add the ground spice powder (cardamom-cloves-cinnamom), and a dollop of ghee, stir well. 

Serve hot with rice or roti. This is a uniquely spiced cabbage stir fry that smells divine!

 

Beans Paruppu Usili

Paruppu usili is a quintessential, archetypal, authentic Tam-Brahm dish. In my mind, if you get the fundamentals of this dish down, you can impress any intimidating, highbrow TamBrahm crowd. This dish is also one of my favorites - I’m another stereotype myself ;). It might seem like a simple dish of roasted, cooked dhal and beans, but they come together in a delicious, crunchy harmony.

 

The recipe for this dish comes from my mom who always get hers paruppu usili just perfect. So, here goes.

Ingredients

1. 3/4 - 1 cup of Toor dhal (yellow lentils)
2. 3 cups of finely diced green beans
3. 3-4 dried red chillies (or as per your taste)
4. ½ - ¾ teaspoon of hing (as per your taste)
5. 2 teaspoons of salt
6. 3 tablespoons of olive oil
7. 1 teaspoon of black mustard seeds
8. ½ teaspoon of turmeric powder
9. a few curry leaves

Preparation

consistency of the ground dhal

steaming the dhal

crumbled dhal

1. Soak the Toor dhal in enough water that covers it, for 1 hour.
2. In the meanwhile, cook the beans in salted water (with about 1-1.5 teaspoons of salt). This is my mom’s tip to make sure the beans are properly seasoned. It takes about 10 minutes to cook. Drain the cooked beans and allow to cool. (You can alternatively steam the beans too).
3. When the dhal is soaked enough, drain it and set aside (remember to drain all the water). Grind 3-4 red chillies with 1 teaspoon of salt. Then add the drained, soaked dhal and coarsely pulse/grind it with a few sprinklings of water (maybe up to ¼ cup). Do not add too much water at this stage. This is crucial to how the dish turns out. Grind until there are a few whole pulses.The coarser the better.
4. Steam/cook the ground dhal. Traditionally, the dhal is steamed in idli plates for 10-15 minutes. But, you can adopt your own method of steaming/cooking. Thanks to my friend’s suggestion, I have been cooking the dhal in the microwave. Spread the ground dhal on a plate (greased with some oil, so that the dhal doesn’t stick), and microwave it for 8 minutes. You could remove it at 4 minutes, fluff it with a fork and continue heating so that the dhal doesn’t dry out on the top and remain uncooked at the bottom. But no matter what, the microwave technique leads to hardened edges, giving rising to a few hard, dried lumps of dhal. Steaming on the stove is ideal.
5. When the cooked dhal is cool to touch, crumble it into little pieces. You can also pulse the cooked dhal to crumble it evenly.
6. In a pan, heat 2 tablespoons of oil. When the oil is hot, splutter mustard seeds, add hing, turmeric powder, and a few curry leaves.
7. Add the crumbled (cooked) dhal to the oil and fry till the dhal turns golden and begins to crisp. This stage requires a couple of extra drizzles of oil to crisp up the dhal (but I added only 1 additional tablespoon of oil, and the usili came out just as crispy as my mom’s). Fry on medium heat and continuously stir/saute the dhal so that it doesn’t burn.
8. When the dhal is fried, add the cooked beans and mix it with the dhal. Check for seasoning, and add more salt if needed. Saute the beans for 5 minutes till it is heated through and incorporated with the dhal. Turn off the heat and serve.

The key to getting crispy dhal and tender beans is to first fry the dhal and then add the beans. The other way around results in wilted beans and soft dhal - a mistake I’ve committed in my earlier attempts. The other aspect of this dish is determining the optimal ratio of dhals : beans. I usually aim for a 1:1 ratio, but somehow my measurements have never led me to that state.  My impression is that you can err on the side of extra dhal than beans. The novelty and essence of this dish is the crispy, roasted dhal. 

Variation: Substitute cabbage for green beans to make a delicious cabbage usili