Avial

This is a traditional South Indian delicacy, largely influenced by Kerala cuisine, but well entrenched in Tamil Nadu as well - A festive dish Avial is made with slight differences from region to region, but for this blog hop, I got the perfect blog for the dish - Kaveri's Palakkad Chamayal - This is my post for Blog Hop Wednesday, a wonderful event started by Radhika of Tickling Palates

I have my own recipe for this as well, but I wanted to try out her method while incorporating some of my fav ingredients as well- For those who don't know Kaveri (unlikely) she has an amazing collection of authentic Kerala and Palakkad recipes which really appeal to me esp since coconut is a staple and I love using it in my preparations - Here is Kaveri's recipe

I am late posting this, but it is still wednesday :)
Serves - 6-8 people -1or 2 cups each
Ingredients:

Vegetables -  (some of the veggies she used are not available here)
1/2 - 1 cup each of snake gourd, carrots, chow chow (chayote Squash) yellow bottle gourds,
1 quart plain low fat yogurt
1-2 cups of thick buttermilk (depending on how much gravy you'd like - I am not a thick avial person so I use buttermilk to thin it down)
4-5 green chilies
1/2 cup grated coconut
1/4 tsp Turmeric
1 tsp Cumin
1/4 cup crushed cilantro
1tbsp coconut oil

Before adding yogurt

After adding yogurt

Preparation
Steam or pressure cook the veggies with a 1 cup of water and the turmeric
Wet grind the coconut, green chilies,  cumin and cilantro
Pour ground paste into a saucepan and allow it to cook for few minutes - it will thicken
Now add the cooked veggies and the salt and let the mix come to boil
Switch stove off
In a separate bowl, lightly whip the yogurt and the buttermilk and keep
When the veggies in the sauce pan cool down, add the yogurt mix and bring both gravies and yogurt nicely together.
Add 1 tbsp coconut oil at the very end before serving.

Tadka or temper with curry leaves

Serve at room temp with dal rice and ghee with appalam on the side :)
NOTE: Avial almost always tastes even better the next day, so be sure to have some leftovers:)