Erissery

This is one among the side dishes served in Kerala Sadya. And often made as main curry for rice daily. Erissery is a curry with the main ingredient Red gram and a numerous variation of other vegetables. You can use bottle gourd/ash gourd/yam/pumpkin/raw banana. Here i am using ash gourd. And you can follow the same recipe for variety of vegetables.
Red grams are good sources of protein.


Ingredients:-serves 4


Red gram/tur dal/thuvara parippu- half a cup
Ash gourd cubed-200gm
Tomato-1
Chilly powder-1tblspn/or green chillies-3 big
Turmeric pwdr-1/2tspn
Coconut-1 cup
Cumin-1/4tspn
Shallots-3
Salt to taste
Oil-1tblspn
Mustard seeds-1/2 tspn
Curry leaves-a sprig
Red chilli-2


Directions:-

If you have a pressure cooker take dal/gram/parippu, chilly pwdr, turmeric, salt in it and wait for 1 whistle and switch off. Then follow from the step 3. If you do not have a cooker, soak the dal for one hour then,

• Cook the gram/parippu/dal with the tomato and water for 10 min with the lid on. Add in chilly pwdr, turmeric and salt.
• Meanwhile grind the coconut,cumin and shallots with some water.
• When the gram is half cooked add  the ash gourd cubes. Boil it for another 10 min so that gram and gourd gets appropriately cooked.
• Now pour in the coconut paste.
• Boil it for 2min.
• For garnishing heat oil in a pan at medium heat. Splutter mustard seeds and curry leaves. Switch off the stove. Add red chilly as a whole and you can see it slightly changes its color. 
• Pour this over your curry in the serving dish.
• Done. Serve hot with rice.

BON APPETITE:)