R053Vanpayar Thoran
Brown cowpea with grated coconut
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
Plan ahead: plus 10–12 hours soaking and 25 minutes pressure-cooking — required.
The re-engineeringNo coconut milk at all. The body comes from 30 g of roasted coconut paste (M09), which delivers more depth than 150 ml of thick milk at roughly a third of the saturated fat and brings 4 g of fibre with it. Oil at 10 g.
The thoran in R056 is what a Kerala household does with muthira on a weekday. This is what it does on a Sunday: a dark, sour, varutharacha gravy — the roasted-coconut register that is the third grammar of Kerala cooking, neither ground raw coconut nor added milk. Tamarind, or kudampuli if you have it, cuts the earthiness. At 6 g of fat and 5 g of saturated fat a serving, it is also the leanest substantial dish in this chapter apart from the sambar.
Before you start: Take the M09 portion out of the freezer when you start the pressure cooker, or soak 10 g of tamarind in 80 ml of warm water at the same time. Both need twenty minutes and neither can be hurried.
Muthira Curry
Active 25 minutes Total 40 minutes
Scale
4 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓180 g (1 cup) muthira (horse gram), soaked 10–12 hours
- ✓2 g (⅓ tsp) ground turmeric, for the cooking water
- ✓10 g (2 tsp) coconut oil
- ✓3 g (½ tsp) mustard seed
- ✓120 g (about 12) shallots, sliced
- ✓12 g (about 4 cloves) garlic, sliced
- ✓25 fresh curry leaves
- ✓6 g (1 tbsp) ground coriander
- ✓5 g (1 tsp) Kashmiri chilli powder
- ✓3 g (½ tsp) fennel seed, crushed
- ✓100 g (1 medium) tomato, chopped
- ✓10 g tamarind pulp, soaked in 80 ml warm water and strained — or 2 pieces kudampuli, rinsed and soaked
- ✓30 g roasted coconut paste (M09), thawed
- ✓3.5 g (⅔ tsp) 70:30 salt (M07)
- ✓300 ml water, plus the pulse cooking liquid
Allergens: Mustard.
Equipment: Pressure cooker; heavy 24 cm pan or clay manchatti. Substitute: clay is better with this much acid and holds a gentler simmer; any non-reactive pan works. Avoid bare iron or aluminium with the tamarind.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 240 kcal |
| Protein | 12 g |
| Fibre | 7 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 34 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 41 g |
| Sugars | 6 g |
| Fat | 6 g |
| Saturated fat | 5 g |
| Sodium | 260 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 horse gram, discard the water, and pressure-cook in 550 ml fresh water with the turmeric, at full pressure. Release naturally. Keep the cooking liquid.
- Heat the oil in the pan over medium heat, add the mustard seed, and wait for it to pop, 30–45 seconds.
- Add the shallots, garlic and curry leaves. Cook until the shallots have collapsed and gone the colour of weak tea, . This is where the gravy's sweetness comes from and it cannot be rushed.
- Add the coriander, chilli powder and fennel and stir 45–60 seconds, until they darken a shade and smell toasted rather than dusty.
- Add the tomato and cook until it breaks down completely and a rim of oil shows at the edge, .
- Add the horse gram with its cooking liquid, the tamarind extract or kudampuli, the salt and enough water to bring it to a loose gravy — about 300 ml. Simmer .
- Stir in the M09 and simmer a further , until the gravy has thickened, darkened and no longer tastes of raw spice. It should coat the back of a spoon and taste distinctly sour behind the earthiness.
- Rest off the heat. Like the fish curries, this is better on day two.
Why this worksA roasted-coconut paste thickens a gravy as a suspension of insoluble particles rather than as an emulsion, which is why it does not split on reheating and why it brings its fibre along. Meanwhile the acid does two jobs: it balances the sweetness of twelve minutes of shallots, and there is reasonable pooled trial evidence that vinegar-type acidity with a meal attenuates the postprandial glucose response (Shishehbor et al., 2017) — which is a small point in favour of a habit Kerala already had.
Sourcing note
If you have no M09 in the freezer, make it fresh from 40 g of grated coconut, 10 g of sliced shallot, 5 g of coriander seed and 3 dried chillies, dry-roasted together to the colour of dark toast and ground with 40 ml of water — about twelve minutes of continuous stirring, which is exactly why M09 exists as a batch preparation. Kudampuli is the more interesting acid here and is sold by every Kerala grocer as Malabar tamarind or kodampuli; rinse it before use, because commercial smoke-curing leaves a bonfire note on the surface.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 34 g of net carbohydrate, almost all of it from the pulse, plus an acid in the pot. This is a dish you can build a rice meal around rather than one you need to compensate for.
Blood pressure: 260 mg from 3.5 g of salt. The acid is doing part of the seasoning work, which is the whole craft argument of Chapter 10.
Cholesterol: 5 g of saturated fat, against 9 g for the thoran version and 10 g for the erissery. If a lipid panel is why you bought this book, this is the pulse recipe to start from.
Swap it
Kudampuli for tamarind → smokier, rounder, and it deepens overnight rather than flattening. The better choice if you have it, and the reason is in Chapter 12's souring-agent map.
Vanpayar or kadala → 180 g dry, cooked to their own timings. Kadala makes the best version after muthira.
No M09 → 100 ml of second-extraction coconut milk added at step 7. Lighter, paler, less interesting, and about the same saturated fat.
Add 200 g of drumstick pods or ash gourd at step 6 → six servings, more volume, more fibre.
Make ahead · store · freeze
Better on day two, decidedly. Fridge 4 days in a covered non-metal container. Freeze 3 months — it freezes better than any coconut-milk curry, because there is no emulsion to break. Reheat at a simmer with a splash of water; this is one of the few curries in the book that can take a proper boil.
Leftovers
Mash it coarsely, reduce it, and it becomes a thick spread for pathiri or dosa. Or thin it with the pulse cooking water into a broth with more vegetables.
Troubleshooting
Gravy tastes raw and dusty: the M09 went in at the end without its 5 minutes. It needs to cook.
Thin and grey: the shallots were rushed at step 3, or there is too much water. Reduce uncovered 5 minutes.
Harshly sour: too much tamarind, or it went in unstrained with its fibre. Strain it, and remember 10 g of pulp is enough for four.
Serve with
R015 Matta Rice · R004 Puttu · R027 Ayala Varuthathu · R079 Cabbage-Carrot Upperi
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