Avial - Vegetables cooked and mixed with grated coconut garnished with coconut oil

Of all the dishes in God's Own Country - Kerala's cuisine, if there is one dish that can serve as a side dish as well as a main course, its the royal Avial! 
Royal, because it has its own place in the Kerala cuisine. Its one of the most favourite and revered dishes of Kerala and no Sadya (feast) is complete without this royal dish!
Its a vegeterian's delight since its a perfect blend of vegetables in coconut, garnished/seasoned with coconut oil. Due to the presense of a large no. of vegetables in this dish, it is immensely beneficial for health. 
Its my hubby's fav. dish too :)

Now lets understand how to make this grand but simple recipe.

Ingredients:

Ash gourd (Kumalangha/Poosinikkai/Petha Kaddhu) -1/4 kg

Carrot - 3 nos

Raw banana (nendran banana/ethakkya if available)- 1, small

Beans OR cowpeas pods - 5 nos 

Snake gourd (padavalangha) -1 small

Yam -1/4 kg

Drum Stick - 1no.

Coconut - 1/2, grated

Green chilies - 2 nos.

Turmeric -1/2 teaspoon

Chilly powder-1/2 teaspoon

Cummin seeds-1/2 spoon

Curry leaves- 8 to 10  leaves

Small onion- 6 to 8 nos

Tamarind- lemon size

Salt to taste

Process:

Clean and soak the tamarind into 50ml of warm water. Normal water can be used to soak  tamarind  but  the advantage with warm water is that helps in complete extraction of the tamarind pulp in less time. Keep the soaked tamarind aside.

Cut all the vegetables at a length of around 1.5 inches.  One of the unique features of Avial is that all the  vegetables used are cut longitudinally at the same length.

For cooking the cut vegetables, put Carrot, Raw banana and beans first into a pan and start cooking these first since these take longer time to cook. For cooking, pour around 50 ml of water, add turmeric, green chilies,  red chilly powder and salt to taste. Once these vegetables are half cooked, put the other vegetables also into the pan. All the vegetables must only be half cooked.

Extract tamarind pulp from the soaked tamarind by squeezing it with your hands.  Pour the extracted tamarind pulp into the cooked vegetable.  Instead of Tamarind, sour curd or sour raw mango also can be used. 

If you are using sour raw mango, then the mango also has to be cut like other vegetables and cooked along with the last set of vegetables. Add  salt to taste.  Mix the contents carefully and slowly so that the shapes and size of the half-cooked vegetables are intact and donot get cut/crushed due to the force of the mixing process.

Next, put the grated coconut into  the  mixie .  Run the mixie in such as manner so that the grated coconut just gets crushed a little and does not get  grinded . Crush the small onions and cumin seeds and put it into the grated coconut and mix thoroughly. Put  these  mixture into the vegetables. Mix it  thoroughly with in a  low flame. 

If sour curd is being used instead of tamarind, pour the sour curd now. Mix thoroughly. Donot boil

At  last  put curry leaves. Garnish with one tablespoon of coconut oil into it..

AVIAL IS READY…

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