R053Vanpayar Thoran
Brown cowpea with grated coconut
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
Plan ahead: plus 6–8 hours soaking and 10 minutes pressure-cooking — required.
The re-engineeringTotal coconut down from about 220 g to 140 g, split as 100 g ground into the body and 40 g roasted for the topping, and coconut oil to 10 g. The topping stays at full strength, because that is where the dish's identity lives; the reduction comes out of the ground paste, where it is invisible.
Erissery is one of the four ceremonial curries of the Namboothiri feast, remembered as the "roasted" one — its partners being kalan for sour, olan for neutral and a sweet madhura curry. What makes it erissery rather than a pumpkin curry is the two registers of coconut in one dish: a raw ground paste in the body and a separately roasted, darkly fried coconut scattered over the top. Cowpea and pumpkin together are also, incidentally, a textbook pulse-and-vegetable plate that predates anybody's dietary guidelines by several centuries.
Before you start: Roast the topping coconut first, while the pan is clean and your attention is undivided. Once the curry is assembled the topping burns in ninety seconds of inattention.
Vanpayar Erissery
Active 30 minutes Total 45 minutes
Scale
6 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓150 g (about ¾ cup) vanpayar (brown cowpea), soaked 6–8 hours
- ✓500 g pumpkin (mathanga), peeled, deseeded, in 3 cm cubes
- ✓3 g (½ tsp) ground turmeric
- ✓15 g (about 3) green chillies, slit
- ✓2.5 g (½ tsp) 70:30 salt (M07)
- ✓150 ml water
- ✓For the ground paste: 100 g (1 cup) fresh grated coconut · 4 g (¾ tsp) cumin seed · 20 g (2) shallots
- ✓For the roasted topping: 40 g (⅓ cup) fresh grated coconut · 20 g (2) shallots, sliced · 10 g (2 tsp) coconut oil · 3 g (½ tsp) mustard seed · 2 dried red chillies · 20 fresh curry leaves
- ✓1.5 g (¼ tsp) 70:30 salt (M07), to finish
Allergens: Mustard.
Equipment: Pressure cooker; heavy 26 cm pan; small heavy pan for the roasted topping; mixie or ammikkallu. Substitute: roast the topping in the same pan before you start the curry, and wipe it out — one pan, two stages.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 225 kcal |
| Protein | 7 g |
| Fibre | 6 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 22 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 28 g |
| Sugars | 6 g |
| Fat | 12 g |
| Saturated fat | 10 g |
| Sodium | 200 mg |
From ICMR-NIN IFCT 2017 and USDA FoodData Central. Per-serving figures stay the same when you scale.
Method — tap a step to mark it done, tap a time to start a timer
- Drain the soaked cowpea, discard the water, and pressure-cook in 350 ml fresh water for at full pressure. Release naturally, and do not drain — keep about 100 ml of the cooking liquid, which carries flavour and body.
- Roast the topping now. Heat the 10 g of oil in the small pan over medium-low, add the mustard seed and wait for it to pop. Add the sliced shallots, dried chilli and the 40 g of coconut, and stir continuously through three stages: white to ivory smelling of hot milk, ; pale gold smelling of biscuit, ; then the colour of dark toast, visibly releasing oil and smelling nutty with an edge of smoke, a further . Add the curry leaves for the last 20 seconds. Tip the lot onto a cold plate at once — a hot pan takes it past the point in ninety seconds.
- Cook the pumpkin with the turmeric, green chilli, the first 2.5 g of salt and 150 ml of water in the heavy pan, covered, until a cube yields to a spoon but still holds its edges, . Do not stir much; you want cubes, not purée.
- Grind the paste coconut with the cumin and the 20 g of shallots and 3–4 tablespoons of water into a thick, slightly coarse paste. It should hold on a spoon and still show flecks.
- Add the cooked cowpea with its liquid to the pumpkin, then stir in the ground paste. Bring to a bare simmer and cook , until the raw coconut smell has lifted and the curry has thickened to the consistency of a loose porridge. Crush a few pumpkin cubes against the side of the pan with the back of a spoon — that is what gives erissery its body.
- Season with the remaining salt, take off the heat, and scatter the roasted coconut topping over the surface. Do not stir it in. The topping is meant to sit on top and be broken through with each spoonful.
Why this worksTwo coconut grammars in one dish, deliberately. The raw ground paste emulsifies into the gravy and thickens it, contributing sweetness and body. The roasted coconut has been through Maillard reactions between its own sugars and amino acids, generating aroma compounds available no other way, plus a little rendered fat that carries them. Stirring the topping in would dissolve the contrast the dish is built on.
Sourcing note
Mathanga is Kerala's field pumpkin — dense, dry-fleshed, deep orange, closer to a Western winter squash than to a Halloween pumpkin, which is watery and will collapse. Butternut squash, kabocha or crown prince are all good substitutes at the same weight. Note honestly that ICMR-NIN IFCT 2017 has no mathanga entry, so the panel below uses USDA "pumpkin, raw", which may understate the carbohydrate of a dense Kerala pumpkin. Frozen grated coconut works for both the paste and the topping; thaw and pat the topping portion dry or the first five minutes of roasting go on driving off water.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 22 g of net carbohydrate, split between cowpea and pumpkin. The pumpkin's glycaemic index is not a figure this book can source for mathanga, so the honest statement is that the cowpea half of this dish is low-GI and the pumpkin half is unquantified. Treat it as a moderate-load dish and portion the rice accordingly.
Blood pressure: 200 mg per serving, one of the lowest in the book, from 4 g of salt across six servings.
Cholesterol: 10 g of saturated fat, all of it coconut, and 23 g of coconut per serving is what makes this dish what it is. If that number is the problem, R059 sambar and R060 parippu with cheera give you the pulse at 2 g of saturated fat.
Swap it
Elephant foot yam (chena) or raw plantain for the pumpkin → both are traditional in erissery and both land near 17.5 g of available carbohydrate per 100 g against pumpkin's 6, so net carbohydrate per serving rises to about 30 g. Denser, more filling, higher load.
Ash gourd (kumbalanga) → 2.84 g of available carbohydrate per 100 g and a much lighter dish. Not traditional here, and it works.
Chana dal for the cowpea → 130 g dry, pressure-cooked 10–12 minutes. Different texture, slightly higher fibre.
Skip the topping → do not. Make R053 instead if you have not the time; an erissery without the roasted coconut is a pumpkin curry with beans in it.
Make ahead · store · freeze
Cook the cowpea and the topping up to three days ahead; keep the topping in a sealed jar at room temperature, where it stays crisp. Fridge 3 days assembled. Freeze 2 months without the topping, which goes soggy; add fresh topping on reheating. Reheat gently with a splash of water, 4–5 minutes.
Leftovers
Mash it, thin it with second-extraction coconut milk and it becomes a soup. Or spread it thickly and eat it with pathiri as the whole meal.
Troubleshooting
Topping bitter and ashy: the coconut went past dark toast. There is no correction; roast a fresh 40 g.
Curry watery: too much cooking liquid kept at step 1, or the pumpkin was a watery variety. Reduce uncovered for 4–5 minutes and crush more of the pumpkin.
Grainy, split-looking gravy: the ground paste boiled hard. A bare simmer only, once the paste is in.
Serve with
R015 Matta Rice · R069 Avial · R024 Meen Vevichathu · R086 Rasam
Tap a star to rate this recipe
