R063Cabbage Thoran
The master thoran: shredded cabbage, crushed coconut, turmeric
Recipes › Vegetables: The Half of the Plate
R064
Beans Thoran
French beans cut fine, with coconut and cumin
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
The re-engineeringOil at 10 g rather than the usual 25–30 g, coconut at 50 g rather than 100 g, and the beans steamed in their own water instead of being fried soft in oil.
The one thing that decides this dish is the knife. Beans cut into 1 cm lengths take twice as long to cook and never take up the coconut; cut into 3–4 mm rounds, almost a mince, they cook in six minutes and every fragment carries coconut. This is tedious for ten minutes and then it is done, and it is why a good beans thoran tastes different from a bad one made with identical ingredients. Cumin belongs in the crush here, where it does not in a cabbage thoran.
Before you start: Cut the beans before anything else; everything after that step takes under ten minutes and the pan will not wait for you.
Beans Thoran
Active 20 minutes Total 30 minutes
Scale
4 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓450 g (about 3½ cups, cut) French beans, topped, tailed and cut into 3–4 mm rounds
- ✓50 g (⅔ cup) freshly grated coconut
- ✓40 g (about 4) shallots, roughly chopped
- ✓8 g (1–2) green chillies, roughly chopped
- ✓2 g (½ tsp) cumin seed
- ✓2 g (⅓ tsp) ground turmeric
- ✓2.5 g (scant ½ tsp) salt, or M07
- ✓10 g (2 tsp) coconut oil
- ✓2 g (½ tsp) mustard seed
- ✓2 g (1 sprig) curry leaves
Allergens: Mustard.
Equipment: Wide heavy pan, 26 cm, with a lid; chattuvam or wooden turner; a sharp knife you trust. Substitute for the knife work: the pulse button on a food processor, in two batches, which gives an uneven cut and a slightly bruised bean. Acceptable on a weeknight.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 117 kcal |
| Protein | 3.1 g |
| Fibre | 4.9 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 7.6 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 12.5 g |
| Sugars | 5.4 g |
| Fat | 8.3 g |
| Saturated fat | 6.7 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
- Crush the coconut, shallots, green chilli, cumin and turmeric to a coarse streaky crumble, not a paste. Four or five pulses.
- Heat the dry pan , add the oil, swirl to a film, and pop the mustard seed, 20–30 seconds, until the sound subsides. Add the curry leaves for 5–10 seconds.
- Add the beans and salt and toss for , until every piece is coated and glossy.
- Cover and cook on a medium flame, stirring every , until the beans have turned a deeper, brighter green and are tender with a distinct snap left in them, . Add 2 tablespoons of water only if the pan sounds dry and the beans are still hard. Beans hold less water than cabbage and this is the one thoran that occasionally needs a splash.
- Uncover and cook off any liquid, .
- Fold in the crush, lifting rather than stirring, and cook on a low flame , until the raw shallot smell has lifted and the coconut looks dry and separate. Take it off while the beans are still bright.
Why this worksBeans lose their green to two different faults: acid and time. There is no acid in a thoran, so time is the whole game, and a fine cut buys it. Chlorophyll degrades to dull olive pheophytin with prolonged heating, which is why a six-minute bean is emerald and a fifteen-minute bean is khaki. Cumin's earthiness suits the bean's grassiness in a way it does not suit cabbage.
Sourcing note
Ordinary supermarket French beans, green beans or haricots verts are all correct for this and need no adjustment. Kerala cooks would often use achinga payar (yard-long beans), which are stringier and cook a minute or two longer; if you find them in an Asian grocer, use them, cut the same way. Frozen sliced green beans work but arrive already soft, so skip step 4's covered cooking entirely and go straight to the coconut. Avoid tinned beans.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 7.6 g net carbohydrate per serving, and beans bring more protein than most vegetables in this chapter. A generous serving alongside a measured 150 g of cooked rice is the shape of plate this book is built on.
Blood pressure: 260 mg sodium, or about 195 mg made with M07.
Cholesterol: 6.7 g saturated fat per serving, again mostly from the coconut. The swap that costs least here is to keep the coconut and drop the oil to 5 g, since beans need less help sticking than cabbage does.
Swap it
French beans → cluster beans (kothavara). Firmer, faintly bitter, better; add 3–4 minutes to step 4 and a pinch more salt.
French beans → 450 g finely diced carrot and beans together, half and half. Sweeter, brighter, sugars rise about 2 g per serving.
Cumin → fennel seed, 2 g. Sweeter and more aromatic, and it stops tasting like a beans thoran and starts tasting like a Malabar one.
Add 100 g cooked muthira at step 6 → protein up about 3 g per serving, and the dish becomes a one-bowl half-and-quarter of the plate.
Make ahead · store · freeze
The cut beans keep raw in a bag for 2 days, which is the useful make-ahead here. Fridge 3 days cooked. Freeze 1 month, with the same watery-thaw caveat as R063. Reheat dry, 3–4 minutes.
Leftovers
Beans thoran is the best of all these for a lunchbox, because it does not weep. Stir it through cooked matta rice with a spoon of M06 and a squeeze of lime, or spread it over an idiyappam and roll it.
Troubleshooting
Beans khaki and limp: cooked too long, or too low a flame for too long under a lid. Cut finer and cook faster.
Beans still squeaky after 10 minutes: they were cut too coarse, or they were old. Add 3 tablespoons of water, cover, and give them 4 more minutes.
Coconut browning in the pan: the flame was too high at step 6. The crush wants warming, not toasting.
Serve with
R015 Matta Rice · R059 Sambar · R070 Kalan · R080 Mixed Vegetable Stew
Tap a star to rate this recipe
