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Dinner with Rukmini

Browse all of the recipes in Rukmini Iyer’s cookbooks by ingredient.

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Avial

Introduction

I’m not sure you can get a more traditional South Indian dish than avial – a light coconut-based curry finished with yogurt. You can use a variety of different vegetables, including plantain. My favourite is made with chayote (we call it mereka at home), the vegetable that looks like a cute toothless apple. As these aren’t very easy to find, Mum often makes this with a mixture of carrots, green beans and aubergine; this is her recipe below. The most important thing is that you cut all the veg the same size – this was my grandfather ’s job in the kitchen, and I’d be hard pressed to find more perfectly uniform cut vegetables, even in a professional kitchen.

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Ingredients

large carrots, cut into 3cm batons
tamarind paste
fresh curry leaves, roughly torn
green beans, topped and tailed and cut into 3cm pieces
aubergine, cut into 3cm batons
Greek yogurt, at room temperature
Storecupboard:
ground turmeric
sea salt flakes
desiccated coconut
coriander seeds
dried red bird’s eye chilli
coconut oil

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This recipe is a preview

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From the book: India Express: Simple and Delicious Recipes for Every Day

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