Cooking with Farm Fresh Veggies: Cabbage Kootu

This is a weekly series on cooking with vegetables fresh from my parents’ backyard.

It is raining cabbages here in Foodilicious land. With winter making way for spring/summer, it is the ideal weather for cabbages to adjust their green collars and put up a fine show attired in their best greens. A visit to the kitchen garden in backyard at home is a treat to those who love fresh produce. Greens of all shades jostle for space – the bottle green of white radish leaves, the dark green of spinach leaves and spring onion shoots, the how-else-to-describe-it green of fenugreek leaves, the lovely green of coriander leaves and the light green of tender cabbage heads.

The backyard yields a couple of cabbage heads every other day. We use it in our salads, to make the typical dry Indian stir-fries, watery mixed vegetable side-dishes typical to north-Indian cooking as well as in traditional lentil gravy preparations from the south of India known as kootu.

It is one variety of the last sort – the kootu – that we prepared this morning. It is a variation of the usual full toor dal (split pigeon peas/thuvaram paruppu) kootu that my ma prepares. She makes this particular version kootu when the vegetable being used is fresh and tender and the flavor of the same dominates the kootu instead of the spices. We’ve used a mix of masoor dal (red gram) and split green gram with skin intact (chilke wali tooti moong) for a change in taste.

Cabbage Kootu (Cabbage in mixed lentil Gravy – south-Indian style)

Ingredients:

Cabbage – 1 (medium)

Masoor dal (red gram) – ½ cup

Chilke wali tooti Moong (Split green gram with skin) – ½ cup

Sambhar/curry powder – 1 tsp

Turmeric powder – ½ tsp

Cumin seeds – 1 tsp

Grated coconut – 2 tbsp

Oil – 1 tsp

Mustard seeds – 1 tsp

Curry leaves – a few

Asafoetida – a big pinch

Salt

Method:

Wash both masoor and moong (red and green grams) and pressure cook together with turmeric in three cups of water till three whistles

Chop cabbage and steam/microwave for 4-5 mins mixing once in between till nearly done

Heat oil and splutter mustard seeds

Add curry leaves and immediately add the cabbage

Sauté for a min and add cumin seeds, grated coconut, salt and cooked dal/gram

Let boil for a couple of mins before taking off heat

You can add up to ½ cup water before taking off heat to adjust consistency to your liking. Serve as a side dish with rotis or a semi-dry curry with rice or make a watery gravy and eat it mixed with rice

The Cabbage Kootu giving company to other dishes on the lunch platter

Read other recent posts on COOKING WITH FARM FRESH VEGGIES

PALAK PANEER

BOK CHOY AND METHI DAL

CABBAGE STIR FRY WITH CAPSICUM AND GREEN PEAS

 

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