Avial | Traditional Kerala Mixed Vegetable Recipe | Healthy Recipe | Diet/ Detox Recipe

The traditional Indian food is renowned in the world for being healthy, pure, clean and wholesome. A balanced Indian diet and vegetable preparations consists of food that gives life, strength and energy to the individual.

Today doctors and dieticians are promoting strict diets of healthy vegetables often simply boiled with little spices, we tend to get bored from these kind of tasteless diets. But our own cultural and traditional Indian food is and has always been healthy, simple and easy to digest.

The food from the southern Indian state of Kerala derives a lot of influences from Ayurveda and has amazing recipes recommended for both their purity and vitality. Keralite foods are light in nature, easy to digest, mildly cooling and made with simple ingredients.

One such flavourful and healthy vegetarian dish from the state of Kerala is Avial. A simple coconut paste based preparation of local and native vegetables tempered with few spices. It is a miracle recipe for detox and diet.

Ingredients:

Vegetables ( All cut in long pieces of equal length)

• Carrot – 1
• Raw banana – 1
• Drumstick – 2
• White Pumpkin – 200 gms
• Yam/Elephant’s foot/Suran – 200 gms

Coconut Paste (to be ground together)

• Freshly grated coconut – 1 cup
• Fresh yoghurt – 2 cups/150 gms
• Ginger – 1 small piece (optional)
• Green Chillies – 5
• Cumin seeds/Jeera – 1 ½ tsp

Other Ingredients:

• Water – 1 cup
• Cooking coconut oil – 6 tbsp
• Turmeric – ½ tsp or pinch
• Fresh curry leaves – 5 – 10 pcs
• Salt to taste

Method:

• Wash, Clean and cut all vegetables in equal lengths.
• Heat 6 tbsp coconut oil in an earthen vessel (Kerala Manchatti) or in a pan. Add chopped vegetables and stir fry on medium heat.
• Add 1 ½ tsp of salt and ½ tsp of turmeric and mix. Pour 1 cup of water and close the pan till the vegetables are tender. (Note – Every vegetable has a different boiling time and some vegetables may get overcooked if boiled too much so you can also steam them.)
• Meanwhile take all the ingredients for the paste i.e grated coconut, green chillies, piece of ginger and cumin seeds/Jeera along with yoghurt in a grinding jar and mix it to get a coarse paste.
• When the vegetables are tender, keep the flame low and add the coconut paste to the vegetables and mix well. (Keep stirring on a low flame orelse the paste may curdle.)
• Adjust the salt and let it simmer for 2 minutes and take it off the flame. 
• Season with 2 tbsp of coconut oil and curry leaves. Your light and healthy Avial is ready.

Tips & Suggestions

• We have used the traditional earthen vessel ‘Manchatti’ for cooking as cooking in earthen vessels is so very Indian and eco-friendly. Moreover using earthenware is the new fad and we can’t be more happy as culturally it has always been used and clay being alkaline in nature helps in neutralising the pH balance of the food by interacting with the acid present in the food.

• We have made the Avial with 5 selected Kerala vegetables but you tweak this recipe by adding any vegetable of your choice.

• Every family and village in Kerala have their own choices of vegetable and style of cooking Avial, this recipe of Avial is given to our home chef Leo by his maternal grandmother and is his family recipe.