Ridged Gourd Stew

When there is limited time to cook or there is only one kind of vegetable sitting in your fridge or feel too lazy to cook and don’t want to loose the goodness of home cooking, stews come handy.

There are an array of stews in various cuisines. Tamil Cuisine has its own. We call stews as “Koottu”. Exact meaning for the word “Koottu” is “Add”. The recipe is nothing but addition of fewer ingredients. Though we can make “Koottu” with any vegetable, those cook fast are preferred much. Cabbage, snake gourd, Ash gourd, Beans are few. We can use the vegetable alone or combine with a dhal. Mung dhal and chana dhal are much prefered.

In this recipe I am using “Ridged Gourd” as the main vegetable. As I had a small piece of Ash gourd sitting in my fridge, I used it along with ridged gourd.

Ingredients I used:

Peeled and chopped Ridged gourd pieces – 1 cup
Peeled and chopped Ash gourd pieces – 1/2 cup
Chana dhal – 1/4 cup
Black pepper corns – 10
Cumin seeds – 1 teaspoon
Whole Red chilli – 2
Shredded coconut – 2 tablespoon
Mustard seeds – 1/2 teaspoon
Urad dhal – 1 teaspoon
oil – 1 teaspoon
Curry leaves – 3
Salt – 2 teaspoon
Asafetida – 1 pinch

Here’s what I did :

Boiled the chana dhal in 1 cup of water till soft. Boiled the vegetables in 1 cup of water till glossy. Ground the coconut, pepper corns, cumin seeds, red chilli into a smooth paste with the help of 1/4 cup of water. Heated the oil in a pan and added the mustard seeds, urad dhal, asafetida and curry leaves. When urad dhal turned golden brown, added the cooked chana dhal, vegetables, ground coconut paste and salt. Boiled till the gravy thickened. (If the gravy is watery, take 1 table spoon of any flour and make a paste with 1/2 – 3/4 tablespoon of water and mix to a thick paste. Add to the gravy and cook for few seconds).

Here’s the stew:

This is my entry for alphabet R in Nupur’s A-Z of vegetables series.