Name: Coconut Gourd with Curry Leaves (Kovakkai Kari)
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: India
Ingredients: 2 teaspoons Sambhar masala; 1½ teaspoons coarse kosher or sea salt; 1 pound ivy gourd (see box), sliced crosswise into ¼-inch-thick slices, or 1 pound English cucumbers, ends trimmed off, cut lengthwise into quarters, each quarter cut into ¼-inch-thick slices; 1 cup shredded fresh coconut; or ½ cup shredded dried unsweetened coconut, reconstituted (see Note); 1 teaspoon black or yellow mustard seeds; 2 tablespoons canola oil; 1 tablespoon skinned split black lentils (cream-colored in this form, urad dal), picked over for stones; 12 to 15 medium-size to large fresh curry leaves; 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems for garnishing

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

660 Curries

By Raghavan Iyer

Published 2008

About

When I was working on this book, I had an uneasy feeling that my steadfast friends would wander off as soon as I finished testing the recipes. After all, there was no way I could continue to churn out curry after curry, day in and day out, to keep them happy. I feared that once I stopped, they would disappear, never to come back … at least until the next book project came along. All right, I confess—it was a figment of my Bollywood imagination, as I imagined myself the fallen hero, abandone