Lightly cooked and coarsely ground green, leafy vegetables combine with cooked split mung lentils in a lightly spiced coconut-based gravy with digestive, flavorful spices in this easy, healthy and tasty gravy recipe that goes well with rice and rotis.
Ingredients:
- Green leafy vegetables (spinach, chard, kale – combined or used individually) (2 cups after cooking)
- Split (no peel) mung (green gram) lentils (1/2 cup uncooked)
- Grated or cut coconut (2 tbsp)
- Cumin (jeera) seeds (1 tsp)
- Red chillies (1 or per taste)
- Black pepper powder (1/3 tsp or per taste)
- Curry leaves (a handful)
- Haldi (turmeric) powder (1/4 tsp)
- Split (no peel) Urad dhal (black gram lentils) (2 tsp)
- Mustard seeds (1/2 tsp)
- Oil (2 tsp)
- Salt (to taste)
Method:
- Cook the greens with a little salt and turmeric. Don’t add too much water at this stage, otherwise your gravy will be too runny! When the leaves cool down, coarsely grind and keep aside.
- Wash the mung lentils and cook well (I pressure cook lentils for 3 whistles and 7 minutes on simmer). Mash and mix with cooked and ground greens.
- In a tsp of oil, add 1 tsp of urad dhal and red chilly. When the dhal turns red, switch off flame. Add coconut, half the curry leaves and cumin seeds. Grind well till a paste-like consistency is formed. Mix with greens-lentils mixture.
- Bring the greens-lentils mixture to a boil. Adjust salt levels. Add pepper powder to taste.
- Heat remaining tsp of oil and add mustard seeds when the oil is hot. When the seeds splutter, add remaining tsp of urad dhal and curry leaves. Switch off flame when the urad dhal becomes reddish in color. Add this to the greens.
- Adjust consistency of gravy by adding water and boiling again if you think it is too thick.
Tip:
Keerai mollagootal goes well with any tangy pachadi. In this meal below, we have combined keerai mollagootal with pumpkin pachadi, carrot salad and garlic rasam.
Tastes (Rasa):
Sweet (urad, mung, coconut), sour (none), salty (salt), bitter (greens, curry leaves), pungent (mustard, cumin, chillies, pepper), astringent (greens).
Doshic Influence:
Greens are bitter, astringent and cooling – so pitta and kapha pacifying. Mung lentils are tridoshic. Coconut is nourishing, sweet and great for all doshas in moderation (especially kaphas should use in moderation), especially pittas. Cumin is a good digestive that is tridoshic, especially good for vatas. Pepper and chilly is good for kaphas with its pungent, sharp qualities – use in moderation for pittas. Haldi is good for all doshas in moderation and has anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties among its many benefits. Overall a good recipe that is tridoshic – vatas should ensure that they have added a healthy dose of cumin and black pepper for digestion.
Effects on the Mind (Gunas):
With a good agni (digestive ability), one will find this is a sattvic food, if made with fresh ingredients and not overdoing the chillies and pepper.