Indian Vegetable Sides: Sauteed Cabbage with Coconut

The most simplest way of serving vegetables is to saute them with just a few seasonings; seasonings that truly bring out the flavor of the vegetable and showcase it boldly. 

Along those lines, the recipe I am sharing today is one of the simplest and most elegant forms of preparing Indian vegetable sides. This technique is popularly utilized in South-Indian cooking. There is minimal spice and flavorings, but the presence of coconut gratings and a small amount of green/red chillies and black gram are enough to make the dish tasty. 

This same approach can be used to prepare green beans, carrots, beets, cauliflower etc.

Indian Vegetable Sides: Swiss Chard Masiyal

Leafy greens are plenteous in any tropical place, and India is no exception. It teems with a mind-boggling array of herbs and greens, each of which has some medicinal and nutritious value. So, fresh greens are a common vegetable side that features in our meals. In this version, fresh leafy greens are pureed, cooked, and spiced with red chillies, coconut, cumin, and some black gram to make a delicious side that is extremely nutritious.

I have used chard to prepare this masiyal, but you can substitute it with any greens.

Indian Vegetable Sides: Spicy Roasted Potatoes

Every cuisine and culture has its version of crispy, roasted potatoes. Call it by whatever name, roasted potatoes exist everywhere on the planet! And it's amazing that every cuisine has its own little twist on how to roast and crisp potatoes.

Indian roasted potatoes have to be bundled in spices - it's a given! As it goes without saying, each family has its own unique twist on how to spice (and what spices to use) and roast potatoes. This is a version that I have settled on - it borrows my mom's version and combines a few lessons I have learned through my experiments over the years.

So, here's the simple method to spice and roast potatoes. Use the same procedure to roast any starchy vegetable!

Indian Vegetable Sides: Spicy Tindora Stir-Fry

Tindora, also known as Ivy Gourd is commonly had in Indian cuisine. Until I read the wikipedia page, I had no idea that this fruit had so many medicinal properties! There's always something to learn in this wide world. 

In Indian cuisine, tindora is frequently cooked and stir-fried with a spicy curry powder such as sambar powder to make a vegetable side that goes well with rice or rotis. 

This style of cooking and stir-frying vegetables with spices is one of the most basic, simplest, and common ways of preparing Indian vegetable sides. This is almost like a formula. If you know this, you can pretty much prepare any vegetable by currying it!

(Side note: I know tindora is not exactly a vegetable per se, but we are used to regarding it as one because of its prominence in savory dishes. So, please look past the glaring term!)

Eggplant Masiyal / Brinjal Masiyal

This side dish is called as dosai masiyal, because it is prepared as a side dish for dosais. We don't make this dish often, because dosai is heavenly as it is, and all it needs is a simple sambar, chuntey, or milagai podi to dip into. But, when one has excess eggplants or brinjals in the kitchen and is bored out of their mind to make the same kinds of dishes, this is a nice dish to resort to. 

It is tangy, spicy, and very simple to make - a concentrated mixture of eggplant and tamarind to spice up dosais, idlis, and even rotis!

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.

Indian Vegetable Sides: Brinjal or Eggplant With Freshly Ground Spices

South-Indian cooking heavily uses four ingredients to prepare a common spice blend to season vegetables and lentil-based stews. The four ingredients are: bengal gram, coriander seeds, red chillies, and coconut. These ingredients are dry roasted (or roasted in a little oil) and ground to make a distinctly flavorful blend that elevates the taste of any simple dish.

So, it's no wonder that this blend is used to season and spice vegetables. In this version, brinjals (the small eggplant variety common in South-Asia) are stir-fried with turmeric and seasoned with this aromatic spice blend for a truly delicious vegetable side! This can also be mixed with rice for a really delicious brinjal-flavored rice called vaangi-bath. A small difference is that vaangi-bath is commonly prepared with green-colored eggplants that are first cooked by stewing in tamarind juice. Since it's next to impossible (currently) to find green eggplants in many places outside of India, regular brinjals are good enough substitutes. 

Commonly, really small brinjals are stuffed with this spice blend and then pan-fried for a crunchy and spicy dish called yenna kathirikkai. Since we don't get such small and tender brinjals here, I prepare this version, which is the deconstructed form of the former (plus this version takes way less oil)! My mom often prepares this at home.

This recipe can be used to prepare vegetables such as plantain, elephant yams, and other starchy but hardy vegetables. I know many people are not fond of eggplants/brinjals. But this dish might make them reconsider :)

Indian Vegetable Sides: Beans with Moong Dal

I often get asked how Indians cook their vegetables for sides. Do we add them to the spicy tomato-onion gravy served at restaurants? Do we roast them? Blanch them? Steam them? Saute them? Stir-fry them? What spices and ingredients go into them? etc.

So, I am going to be posting some basic recipes on the different ways we prepare vegetable sides. Since, I am most familiar with South-Indian cuisine, most of my vegetable sides are derived/based on that cuisine. 

Here's a very common and simple vegetable side that we prepare with minimal spices/seasonings. In this version, green beans are cooked with some moong dal (mung beans) for a tasty and healthy vegetable side that truly showcases the inherent flavor of the vegetable without the distraction of strong spices and smells.

You can use the same procedure to cook other vegetables such as cabbage, carrot, beetroot, cauliflower etc. (basically any non-starchy vegetable that doesn't have too much water content in it so that it can withstand its texture while being cooked with the dal).