Avial

A wedding feast or a festive feast in our family is incomplete without aviyal. Aviyal is a medley of native vegetables & tubers cooked in coconut gravy. Traditional Indian recipes like kummiyanam, adai, avial, panchamirtham, etc. use assorted grains, pulses, vegetables, or fruits. But nowadays we could find the nutritionists recommending us to include a medley of  vegetables, pulses, grains, or fruits in our diet regularly as it prevents vitamin & mineral deficiency. Hence it is a good practice to prepare such foods often and serve them particularly to growing children and old people.

Generally avial goes well with any sambar, rasam or kuzhambu except morkuzhambu, and it is also a perfect accompaniment for ulundham paruppu sadam & kara paruppu adai.

Avial Recipe:

We like our avial to be creamy and slightly tangy. So we add a good volume of coconut paste & coconut oil to make it creamy and we use raw mango and/or curd to make it tangy. I have prepared avial with the most commonly used vegetables but you can use any other vegetable shown in the image at the end of this post. Traditional avial recipe calls for a few pods of garlic, but I do not enjoy the garlic flavor in it, so I have not used them in here. Now lets prepare creamy tangy avial as below:

Cooking Time: 30 min

Serves : 4

Ingredients:

1. Drumsticks (murungai kai)- 2 Nos
2. Carrots – 2 Nos
3. Beans – 10 Nos
4. Potatoes (urulai) – 2 Nos
5. Eggplants (brinjal) – 4 Nos
6. Coconut oil – 1 tbsp (optional)
7. Salt – 3/4 tsp

For coconut gravy:

1. Coconut pieces – 12 (each 1 inch)
2. Green chillies – 2 Nos.
3. Shallots (chinna vengayam) – 10 Nos.
4. Garlic cloves – 3 (optional)
5. Cumins (jeeragam)- 1/4 tsp
6. Curd (thayir)- 1/2 cup

For tempering:

1. Coconut oil – 1 tbsp
2. Mustards (kadugu) – 1/2 tsp
3. Curry Leaves (karivepilai) – 2 sprigs

Cooking Avial:

• Wash all vegetables and cut them into batons.
• First we need to grind coconut, chillies, shallots & cumins without adding water and then add curd to grind into a fine paste.
• Add water into a heavy bottom vessel and bring it to a boil.
• First add the vegetables that take longer time to get cooked.
• When they are half cooked add remaining vegetables.
• Cook all vegetables until soft, then add salt and mix well.
• Add coconut paste and cook for a minute.
• Remove from heat and garnish with tempering.
• Serve as a side for rice and kuzhambu.

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Tips & Tweaks:

1. We usually add the pieces of vegetables in different times to prevent them becoming mushy.
2. Some like to pour a tablespoon of virgin coconut oil before adding coconut paste for extra richness & flavour.
3. Some like to add turmeric powder while cooking vegetables, it will make the avial look yellow.
4. You can add red chillies if you want to make it spicier.
5. Adding curd to the coconut paste makes the avial look so bright, whiter & creamier.
6. I have prepared Avial with the most commonly used vegetables. You can also use native vegetables like pumpkin, ash gourd (white pumpkin), chayote (chow chow), snake gourd (pudalai), broad beans (avarai), cluster beans (kothavarai), raw mango, raw banana, fresh peas (pattani), mochai, jackfruit seeds (palakottai).
7. You can also use tubers like Chinese potato (siru kizhangu), colocasia, yam, sweet potato, etc.