R063Cabbage Thoran
The master thoran: shredded cabbage, crushed coconut, turmeric
Recipes › Vegetables: The Half of the Plate
R068
Kumbalanga Olan
Ash gourd and cowpea in thin coconut milk, finished with raw oil
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
Plan ahead: plus overnight soaking for the cowpea — required.
The re-engineeringNothing is taken out. The coconut milk is graded rather than tinned, so that most of the liquid is second milk and only 100 ml is first milk, added off the heat; and the finishing coconut oil is 5 g, measured, poured raw at the table end of the cooking rather than stirred in hot.
This is the quiet star of the whole book. Olan has no spice beyond green chilli, no acid, no onion, no garlic, no tempering and no browning of anything: ash gourd at 17 kcal per 100 g, cowpea, thin coconut milk and a few curry leaves. The Namboothiri scheme calls it the neutral curry of the four, and one source calls it the sadya's soul. It is also, at 163 kcal for a 190 g serving with a pulse in it, close to the ideal shape of a dish for the reader of this book. Restraint is the technique.
Before you start: The cowpea must be soaked overnight and cooked before the ash gourd goes anywhere near the pan, because ash gourd takes eight minutes and cowpea takes forty. Cook it the day before if that suits you better; it keeps three days.
Kumbalanga Olan
Active 20 minutes Total 45 minutes
Scale
4 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓40 g (3 tbsp) brown cowpea (vanpayar), soaked overnight, then simmered until tender — about 100 g cooked
- ✓500 g (about ½ small gourd) ash gourd, peeled, seeded and cut into 4 cm × 1 cm slices
- ✓12 g (2–3) green chillies, slit lengthwise
- ✓2 g (1 sprig) curry leaves
- ✓2.5 g (scant ½ tsp) salt, or M07
- ✓200 ml second coconut milk (randaam paal, M08)
- ✓100 ml first coconut milk (onnaam paal, M08)
- ✓5 g (1 tsp) coconut oil, raw, to finish
Allergens: None of the major allergens.
Equipment: Wide shallow pan or uruli, 24 cm, with a lid. Substitute: any wide pan. A deep saucepan works less well because olan should be a single layer of vegetable in a little liquid, not a stew.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 163 kcal |
| Protein | 4.1 g |
| Fibre | 6.4 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 10.7 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 17.1 g |
| Sugars | 4.2 g |
| Fat | 11.5 g |
| Saturated fat | 9.9 g |
| Sodium | 270 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
- Cook the soaked cowpea in unsalted water until it is tender but the skins are unbroken, , and drain it, keeping 100 ml of the cooking water. Salt at this stage toughens the skins.
- Put the ash gourd, green chilli, salt and the reserved 100 ml of cowpea water in the pan with the 200 ml of second milk. The liquid should come about halfway up the vegetable, no more.
- Simmer covered on a medium flame until the ash gourd has turned from opaque white to faintly translucent and a piece yields to the edge of a spoon without falling apart, . Test at and keep testing. Overcooked ash gourd goes to threads and there is no way back.
- Add the cooked cowpea and warm through, .
- Take the pan off the heat. Pour in the first milk, add the curry leaves, and swirl the pan — do not stir. Let it stand , until warmed through. The first milk must not boil. If a single bubble breaks the surface you have gone too far.
- Finish with the 5 g of raw coconut oil, poured over, and swirl once more. Serve within twenty minutes; olan is not a dish that improves on waiting.
Why this worksCoconut milk is an oil-in-water emulsion held together by coconut proteins at the surface of each fat droplet. Boiling denatures those proteins and the fat separates irreversibly into oil and grainy curds. Adding the first milk off the heat keeps the emulsion whole, and an intact emulsion coats the tongue: 100 ml added properly reads richer than 200 ml boiled.
Sourcing note
Ash gourd — winter melon, white gourd, petha, dong gua — is stocked by every Chinese and most Indian groceries, usually sold as a wedge cut from a very large gourd, and it keeps a week wrapped in the fridge. It is the single most useful vegetable in this chapter for a diaspora reader to learn to buy. Where there is none: a wedge of chayote is the closest in texture and needs 2 minutes longer; courgette is the easiest substitute and the weakest, since it collapses and gives up too much water, so cut it thicker and cook it 3 minutes only; and a peeled, seeded wedge of honeydew-firm cucumber is a genuine emergency version used in some Kerala households in the dry months. Cowpea is sold as vanpayar, red cowpea or black-eyed-pea's brown cousin; a tin of drained black-eyed peas, 150 g, is an honest substitute and costs you the cooking liquid's flavour.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 10.7 g net carbohydrate, most of it from the cowpea rather than the gourd, and the cowpea is the reason to eat it. This is the dish that puts a pulse on the plate without anyone noticing it is there.
Blood pressure: 270 mg sodium, or about 200 mg with M07. Olan takes very little salt well, because there is nothing competing with it.
Cholesterol: 9.9 g saturated fat per serving is the highest-but-one in this chapter, and it is all coconut. Two honest options: drop the first milk to 60 ml and add 40 ml more second milk, which takes saturated fat to about 7 g and thins the finish slightly; or keep it as written and treat olan as the coconut dish of that meal rather than one of two.
Swap it
Ash gourd → pumpkin (mathanga), 500 g. Traditional, sweeter, and a different dish; sugars rise about 2 g per serving and it cooks 2 minutes longer.
Cowpea → 150 g cooked butter beans or 150 g drained tinned black-eyed peas. Softer, milder, and the skins do not hold their shape as well.
Fresh coconut milk → tinned, 100 ml undiluted as first milk and 200 ml at 1:1.5 with water as second. The flavour is flatter and faintly cooked, and you lose the thengaappu.
No coconut at all → 40 g cashews blended with 250 ml water. Less saturated fat, more monounsaturated, and a sweeter, nuttier dish that is no longer an olan. (Allergen: this swap introduces tree nuts (cashew).)
Scale it
Note that the first milk does not scale linearly. A larger pan holds heat longer, so eight servings need proportionally less and want the pan off the heat a full minute before the milk goes in.
Make ahead · store · freeze
Cook the cowpea up to 3 days ahead; that is the only useful make-ahead. Fridge 2 days, and it will look slightly separated cold, which stirs back. Do not freeze — the emulsion breaks on thawing and cannot be brought back. Reheat on the lowest flame to just steaming, never at a simmer.
Leftovers
Blend cold olan smooth with 100 ml of water and warm it gently: it becomes a soup that would not embarrass a restaurant. Or spoon it over kanji.
Troubleshooting
Oily film on top with grainy white curds beneath: the first milk boiled. There is no repair. Next time, off the heat, swirl not stir.
Ash gourd in threads: overcooked by three or four minutes. Cut thicker next time and start testing at 8 minutes.
Tastes of nothing: olan is meant to be quiet, but not silent. It needs the green chilli slit rather than whole, the salt correct, and the raw oil at the end. Skipping that final teaspoon is what makes people think they dislike olan.
Serve with
R015 Matta Rice · R063 Cabbage Thoran · R069 Avial · R024 Meen Vevichathu
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