R063Cabbage Thoran
The master thoran: shredded cabbage, crushed coconut, turmeric
Recipes › Vegetables: The Half of the Plate
R075
Padavalanga Curry
Snake gourd and moong dal in coconut-cumin paste
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
The re-engineeringOil at 8 g, which is not much of a reduction because this dish never needed much; the real re-engineering is the moong dal, at 60 g, cooked in with the gourd. That is a deliberate addition of a pulse to a vegetable curry, and it is the pattern this book applies wherever a dish will take it.
Snake gourd is the lowest-energy vegetable in the whole Kerala repertoire: 12 kcal and 1.3 g of available carbohydrate per 100 g. That is close to the theoretical floor for a food, and it means a large serving of this curry costs almost nothing. It is also a bland vegetable, which is why the traditional treatment gives it a coconut-cumin paste and a pulse rather than leaving it to fend for itself. The version below is the everyday thenga aracha one, not a sadya dish.
Before you start: Nothing here moves fast. This is a dish you can cook while doing something else, which is worth knowing on a Wednesday.
Padavalanga Curry
Active 20 minutes Total 45 minutes
Scale
4 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓60 g (⅓ cup) split moong dal (cherupayar parippu), rinsed
- ✓500 g (about 1 medium) snake gourd, halved lengthwise, seeded and sliced 1 cm
- ✓2 g (⅓ tsp) ground turmeric
- ✓2.5 g (scant ½ tsp) salt, or M07
- ✓60 g (¾ cup) freshly grated coconut
- ✓10 g (2) green chillies
- ✓2 g (½ tsp) cumin seed
- ✓30 g (about 3) shallots
- ✓8 g (1½ tsp) coconut oil
- ✓2 g (½ tsp) mustard seed
- ✓2 g (1 sprig) curry leaves
Allergens: Mustard.
Equipment: Heavy pan, 24 cm, with a lid; mixie. Substitute: any saucepan. The paste can be crushed in a mortar for a coarser, better texture.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 154 kcal |
| Protein | 5.9 g |
| Fibre | 6.3 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 12.1 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 18.4 g |
| Sugars | 3.3 g |
| Fat | 9.1 g |
| Saturated fat | 7.3 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
- Simmer the moong dal in 300 ml water with the turmeric, uncovered, skimming once, until the grains are soft but still distinguishable, . Do not cook it to a purée; the dal should keep some identity.
- Add the snake gourd and salt, cover, and simmer until the gourd is translucent at the edges and yields to a spoon without collapsing, . Snake gourd releases water, so the pan will get looser rather than drier.
- Grind the coconut, green chilli, cumin and shallots to a coarse paste with 3 tablespoons water, in pulses. Grainy, not smooth.
- Stir in the paste and simmer uncovered until the raw coconut smell has lifted and the gravy has thickened to a loose, opaque coating, . It should mound slightly on a spoon and not pour like soup.
- Temper separately: 8 g oil, mustard popped 20–30 seconds, curry leaves 5–10 seconds, and pour it over. Let it sit on the surface for a minute before stirring in.
Why this worksSnake gourd is 95% water and almost flavourless, so this dish is a study in borrowed body: the dal contributes starch and protein, the coconut paste contributes insoluble particles, and between them they give a gravy that clings to a vegetable that would otherwise sit in a puddle. Adding a pulse also does the metabolic work — 50 g a day of legumes eaten with brown rice took glycaemic response 22.9% below white rice in Mohan's trial, against 19.8% for the grain change alone.
Sourcing note
Snake gourd — padavalanga, pudalangai, chichinda — is in Indian and South East Asian groceries, usually a metre long and pale green, sold whole or in halves. It keeps four days in the fridge. Where there is none, the ladder is: chayote (nearest in texture, 2 minutes longer), courgette (easiest, watery, cut thicker and cook 4 minutes only), or a peeled and seeded cucumber, which sounds wrong and is what several Kerala households use out of season. Bottle gourd (lauki) is also close. Split moong dal is in every Indian grocery and most supermarkets as yellow moong or petite yellow lentils; red lentils will work and will disappear completely into the gravy.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 12.1 g net carbohydrate per serving, of which about 8 g is the dal — which is the good kind of carbohydrate to be carrying, since it arrives with 5.9 g of protein and 6.3 g of fibre. This is one of the few dishes in the chapter that is a vegetable and a pulse, so it satisfies two lines of the plate at once.
Blood pressure: 260 mg sodium, or about 195 mg with M07.
Cholesterol: 7.3 g saturated fat per serving, essentially all coconut. Dropping the coconut to 40 g and adding 20 g more dal takes it to about 5 g with no loss of body, and is the swap to make if saturated fat is your main concern.
Swap it
Snake gourd → chayote, courgette, bottle gourd or cucumber. See the sourcing note for timings.
Moong dal → toor dal, cooked 20–25 minutes instead of 12–15. Earthier, heavier, and it makes the dish closer to a koottukari.
Moong dal → 150 g cooked vanpayar, added at step 2. Chewier and more substantial; protein rises about 1 g.
Coconut paste → 200 ml second coconut milk. Now a thenga chertha dish: thinner, silkier, and it must not be boiled hard once the milk is in.
Make ahead · store · freeze
Cook the dal up to 3 days ahead. Fridge 3 days. Freeze 1 month — the gourd softens noticeably but the dish survives, unlike the coconut-milk version. Reheat on a low flame with a splash of water.
Leftovers
Blend it smooth, thin with 150 ml water, and it is a good soup. Or reduce it hard in a dry pan and it becomes a thick side dish for chapatti.
Troubleshooting
Watery: the gourd's water was not cooked off before the paste went in. Simmer uncovered 4–5 minutes longer.
Dal disappeared entirely: overcooked at step 1, or red lentils were used. Not a fault, exactly, but the texture is poorer.
Flat: snake gourd needs more salt and more green chilli than you expect, and a squeeze of lime off the heat lifts it without adding sodium.
Serve with
R015 Matta Rice · R024 Meen Vevichathu · R063 Cabbage Thoran · R074 Vendakka Mezhukkupuratti
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