Zucchini Thayir Pachadi

1 Wash the zucchini and grate it with the skin and place it in a bowl. Add the required amount of salt.

2 In a small frying pan heat the oil, add the mustard seeds. Once it splutters add the sliced green chillies, hing and fry it.

3 Add this to the zucchini and mix it well.

4 Mix the yogurt to the zucchini when ready to serve.

My Notes 1 If you don’t have the time to prepare the bisi bele bath masala powder you can buy it. I’ve tried MTR brand and it’s good too.

2 You could also buy the frozen Avial vegetables available in Indian grocery stores and save time chopping vegetables.

3 I have pressure cookers in all size so I used one for cooking the vegetables and one for cooking rice/daal. You can also cook both in any vessel on stove top, but as far as I’ve read brown rice takes more time to cook like that.

4 We don’t eat spicy food, so I used only 2 red chillies for the masala powder. The heat was very mild. If you prefer it more spicy use about 4-5 chillies.

Procedure
1. Simply tear the leaves and rinse it thoroughly. We did not use the stems this time, because we did not know that it was edible.

2.  The daal and greens can be either pressure cooked together adding enough water for 1 whistle or it can be cooked in a vessel directly on stove top itself, if you are using moong daal.  In case you choose to go with the latter method, first add the daal, turmeric powder, hing and enough water in a vessel and don’t close it with a lid.  If you close the vessel with the lid, the water will start overflowing while boiling and you will have to spend the next 5 minutes cleaning the range.  Once the daal is half cooked add the cleaned greens and cook it tender adding water as required.  Once both the daal and greens are cooked add enough salt.

3.  While the daal and greens are cooking add all the ingredients mentioned for grinding in a blender and grind it to a fine paste using milk/water. 

4.  Add this paste to the cooked greens and let it boil for another couple of minutes, while you prepare the tadka.

5.  In a small frying pan add oil and after it heats add the remaining ingredients and fry until the daals turn golden brown and add it to the greens and remove it from heat.

My Notes
1.  I have mentioned to grind the ingredients with milk because, while cooking any greens adding a very small quantity of milk will enhance the flavor of the greens.  This is my mother’s tip.  So you can either grind using milk or first grind it with water and after adding the paste to the cooked greens add some milk and let it boil for another 3-4 minutes.

2.  Another tip, while grinding for any kootu/daal using a combination of red chillies and green chillies gives a better taste than using either one of them alone.

3.  Find some more beet greens recipes here.

New Updates
1.  While grinding the ingredients for the daal, you can also use coconut milk powder instead of coconut.  It gives an excellent taste to the daal. 

Similarly if you don’t have coconut at home, you can also use carrots instead.  This works in any kootu/daal recipe and also in mor-kuzhambu (but you will have an orange color kuzhambu).  The end product tastes as good as using coconut itself.  This was my mother’s discovery.  Back in South India, there is a practice that they don’t want you to eat coconut for atleast 2-3 months after delivering a baby, especially if you are breast feeding.  The elders say that it will create digestive problems in the newborn.  So my mother experimented using carrots instead of coconuts in daals and other stuff and it came out very well also.  Even yesterday I didn’t have enough coconut for grinding chutney, so I used half a carrot. But you will have to increase the quantity of chillies to offset the sweetness of the carrots.  The chutney had a light orange color, but no difference it taste whatsoever.  

2.  Spring onions/scallions daal can also be prepared in the same way as above.  This is one of my favorite side dish for chapathis.  This is my grandmother’s recipe, which I had mentioned in my tribute to her.