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.