Mathanga Erissery, Kerala Style Pumpkin Curry

            Today's post is going to be Mathanga Erissery/Pumpkin Curry, another dish that's served in the Onam Sadya. This is a very flavorful dish with a double dosage of coconut, it's added as a paste to the cooked vegetable and then again some sauteed coconut is mixed at the end and of course, coconut oil is used for cooking. I followed the recipe from ' The Essential Kerala Cookbook', it's again an easy dish and since pumpkin cooks fast, it's done in no time. The curry tastes really delicious and goes very well with rice, try it out if you like coconut..

Need To Have

• Chopped Pumpkin/Mathanga/Parangikkai - 2 cups
• Red Chilly Powder - 1/2 teaspoon
• Turmeric Powder - 1/4 teaspoon
• Mustard Seeds - 1/2 teaspoon
• Dried Red Chilly - 1, broken into two
• Curry Leaves - 10
• Grated Coconut - 2 tablespoons
• Salt to taste

To Grind

• Grated Coconut - 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons
• Green Chilly - 1
• Cumin Seeds - 1/2 teaspoon

Method

          Cook the diced pumpkin with the chilly powder, turmeric powder and salt till done.

          In the meantime, using a little water grind together all the ingredients given under ' to grind ' and keep.

          Once the pumpkin is cooked, add the ground paste, mix and cook till the gravy thickens, then remove from the heat.

          Heat some coconut oil, add the mustard seeds, once it starts sputtering add the broken red chilly, curry leaves saute for a few seconds, then add the grated coconut and saute till the coconut turns golden brown. Remove and add this to the cooked pumpkin, mix and serve.

Note
Instead of pumpkin, we can use yam, raw plantain in the curry or a mixture of all the above vegetables.
Also we can add some cooked red chori to the cooked pumpkin, I love that combo, but I ran out of it so I left it out.