Meera Sodha's Keralan Vegetable Istoo
Take a journey to Kerala using all the vegetables from an English allotment. If you like your curries to be gentle and flavourful but light and packed full of vitality, then this is the one is for you. Just remember to add your vegetables in the order in which they will cook starting with the hardest first (potatoes) and the softest last (peas) so nothing ends up over or undercooked.
Serves 4
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Ingredients
800g mixed vegetables (e.g. baby potatoes 200g, carrots 150g, green beans 200g, broccoli 200g, peas 50g)
4 tablespoons rapeseed oil
4 cloves
4cm cinnamon stick
12 peppercorns
10 curry leaves (optional)
1 large onion, finely diced
3cm ginger, grated
3 garlic cloves, crushed
11⁄2 green chillies, very finely chopped
500ml fresh coconut milk
1/3 teaspoon turmeric
2/3 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
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Method
First chop your vegetables. Cut the baby potatoes into quarters, the broccoli florets to the same size as the potatoes, the carrots into batons and the green beans into thirds.
Heat three tablespoons of oil in a large lidded frying pan and when hot add the cloves, cinnamon, curry leaves and pepper. When the pepper swells add the onion and sweat for around 8 minutes so that it softens completely but doesn’t colour, then add the ginger, garlic and chilli and cook for a couple of minutes.
Now add the coconut milk, salt, turmeric and the potatoes. Bring the milk to the boil, cover with the lid and leave to simmer for five minutes then add the carrots and simmer for five minutes. When they’re both very nearly tender, add the beans and broccoli and cook for a further three minutes or so. Then, pop in the peas and heat through for a final minute.
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About Meera Sodha
Meera Sodha is a cook and a food writer, renowned for her Asian-inspired, meat-free recipes. She writes the Guardian’s weekly ‘The New Vegan’ column, and is the author of three best-selling cookbooks: Made in India, Fresh India and East. She cooks, writes and lives in London with her husband and daughters.
Meera's three books – Fresh India, Made in India and East – are published by Fig Tree.