Okra Thoran

Now that we have had a snack, it is time to move on to the meal itself. Our next goal is to set out some basic recipes for various dishes that can be combined together into a meal. This dish, Okra Thoran, is from Kerala, and is a recipe from Benny, a man of many talents whose kitchen repertoire includes a number of delicious dishes that can be put together in no time at all. Since, like us, you probably enjoy delicious food but have limited time, you will be pleased to know that we have many more of his recipes up our sleeves!

A thoran is a "dry" dish with quite a bit of coconut. In fact, the original recipe calls for equal parts vegetable to coconut, but I usually use less. A thoran can be made with vegetables other than okra, such as green beans, cabbage, and grated carrots, so if okra is hard to find or prohibitively expensive, feel free to substitue any one of these vegetables.

Okra Thoran

Preparation time:10 minutes
Difficulty: easy

1 ½ cups okra, chopped into ½ cm rings
1 small red onion (or half a medium one), chopped
2 garlic cloves, sliced
2-3 fresh green chilies (or less depending on your tolerance and the size of the chilies) cut in two

½ tsp turmeric
½ tsp cumin
1 ½ cups freshly grated coconut

10-15 curry leaves
½ tsp mustard seeds
salt to taste
1 tbsp oil

1. Combine coconut with turmeric, cumin and salt. Keep aside.
2. Heat oil (preferably coconut oil for that true taste of Kerala), when it is hot enough to pop a single mustard seed, add the rest of the mustard seeds and lower the heat. After about 5-10 seconds add the onion, garlic, and chilies. Cook for 2 minutes.
3. Add the okra to the pan. Stir, cover and cook for 2 minutes. Add the curry leaves and cook, stirring for an additional thirty seconds.
4. Add the coconut mixture. Stir and cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes.

Chewda

Welcome to "Lime Soda Cooks". We have set up this new blog especially for all of you out there who have asked us for Indian recipes after reading Lime Soda. We hope we will be able to share our love of Indian cooking with you, and demystify the preparation of many tasty food items. To welcome you, we thought we'd start off with something to snack on, one of our (and million of Indians') favourites, and a highly requested recipe: CHEWDA!

Chewda is highly addictive substance, good for any and every time. It has accompanied us on many road trips and ski trips, and has staved off hunger in many dire situations. We first got hooked on it in India, after trying Haldiram's snacks. Being India's no. 1 purveyor of snacks, we had to sample most of their wares on our first trip there. They are nice, but miss that homemade touch. Back at home we still needed our chewda fix and decided to make our own. It is a sweet-spicy mixture, made mostly of Pohe, or flattened rice (like rolled oats, only made of rice), nuts, coconut and spices. There are at least as many versions as there are Indian states, and we have yet to find one we don't like.


Chewda

Preparation time: 30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients
½ kg (6 cups) pohe
3-4 tsp oil

¾ cup unroasted peanuts
¾ cup unroasted cashews
¾ cup unroasted almonds
½ -1 cup coconut pieces or desiccated coconut

2 tsp cayenne pepper
2tsp ground cumin
4 tsp ground coriander
4 tsp sugar
2 tsp salt (or to taste)

1 cup golden raisins

Tempering
1tbsp oil
2 tsp mustard seeds
4 branches curry leaves
½ tsp asafetida
1 tsp turmeric

1. Heat 1 tsp of oil in a heavy frying pan over medium heat and add 2 cups of the pohe. Cook until crisp and lightly browned, set aside in a large mixing bowl. Repeat two more times with the remaining pohe.
2. While the pohe is cooking, chop the cashews and the almonds roughly. Remove the skin from the peanuts.
3. Make the tempering; Heat oil, put 2-3 mustard seeds in it. When the mustard seeds pop, lower the heat and add the rest of the tempering ingredients. Be careful not to burn them! It won’t take more than 10 seconds.
4. Add the peanuts, cashews and almonds, when they are lightly browned add the coconut. When it starts to turn golden, add the spices, sugar and salt. Stir once to mix and add the pohe to the frying pan. Remove from heat and cool, stirring to combine. Add raisins.

Keeps, in an airtight container, around 1-2 months (We actually don’t know, ours has never lasted that long).

NOTES: Mix the spices, sugar and salt together in a small bowl beforehand, because once the coconut starts to brown you will not have time to measure or grind anything!

It might be tempting to half the recipe, but if you do make the complete quantity you will not be sorry!

SPECIALTY INGREDIENTS

A few “specialty ingredients” here; the pohe, asafetida and curry leaves.

Curry leaves (use fresh or frozen, but never dried) will add a savoury, peppery note to any dish, but if you can’t find them, it is fine to just go without.

Asafetida is a resin like gum and can also be omitted.

Pohe is rice that has been flattened into thin flakes. It is also called poha or pauwa. Since this forms the basis of the whole snack, it is a little harder to do without. However, for those of you with no Indian store in the vicinity (and you have our sincere condolences) you can do one of two things:

Potatoes

1. Grate around 6 cups of potatoes (soak them in water if you will not fry them in the next 5 minutes and drain them very well before proceeding)

2. Deep fry them until crisp.

If you are not fond of deep-frying, since it makes what would normally be quite a healthy snack into a much more decadent one, the other option is to use 6 cups of a small grained, crispy cereal like Special K. It does not need to be fried and you can proceed directly to step 2.