White bean and Malabaar Spinach in coconut sauce (tingaLavare bendi )

Konkanis love tingaLavare. TingaLavare or white beans is the most commonly used bean in the konkani cuisine. In this recipe tingaLavare is paired up with the malabaar spinach and the sauce is ofcourse the konkanas favorite-coconut. I have already said more about malabaar spinach here. If you do not find malabaar spinach, substitute with spinach.

TingaLavare bendi served with rice

1/2 cup shredded coconut, fresh or frozen
8 red dry chillies
1/2 inch cube tamarind
6-8 cloves garlic
1 bunch malabaar spinach or spinach
1/4 cup white beans or tingaLavare

Soak tingaLavare overnight or for 8-10 hrs. Discard the soaked water, rinse and drain a couple of times. Pressure cook the beans and set aside.

Wash and rinse spinach, drain the water. Chop and cook with the cooked beans for 5 minutes.

In a tsp of oil roast the red chillies. Grind coconut, tamarind and roasted red chillies to a smooth paste. Add the paste to the cooked beans and spinach, add salt and boil for 5minutes.

Roast garlic in a tsp of oil and season the curry.

Serve with rice.

Tempered Buttermilk (paNNa taak )

In those times when coke and sodas did not exist buttermilk ruled the rural Indian beverage market. Tempered Buttermilk is still a popular beverage in the villages and suburbs of India. Buttermilk is not yogurt/curds. It is the residual liquid after churning all the butter from the yogurt. The buttermilk made this way has a sour and tangy taste and the healthy bacterias developed in the fermentation process aids in digestion.

The cultured buttermilk available in the supermarkets in the USA is not the original buttermilk. They are not made by churning the butter from the yogurt, but by adding cultures to the milk in a industrial process.

Authentic konkani meal always ends with a glass full of tempered spicy buttermilk, paNNa taak. I tried making buttermilk the traditional way at home but could not achieve good results. Hence I use home made yogurt from the low fat milk to make paNNa taak.

Making tempered buttermilk is quite an easy task.
1-2 cup low fat/fat free yogurt/buttermilk, preferably home made
1 green chilli
small piece of ginger
a pinch of hing

for tempering, which is optional
1/4 tsp oil
1/8 tsp mustard seeds
1 sprig curry leaves

If using hing paste, dissolve hing in a tsp of water and add it to the yogurt. In a Blender, blend together yogurt, green chilli, ginger and hing. Add enough water to make it 4 cups. For the tempering, heat little oil , splutter mustard seeds, add curry leaves. Pour the seasoning to the spicy yogurt mix.

Serve chilled if desired. This recipe yields 4 cups of buttermilk.

Traditionally the drink is thin, if you like the drink thick, add more yogurt. Adjust the green chillies according to the desired hotness.

Red Hot Bhindi Curry(Benda Song)

Song is a authentic konkani side dish made with tamarind and red hot chillies. Its made very spicy and often paired up with the konkani dal ,daLitoy. The mildness of the dal balances well with the red hot spicy song. Song made with potatoes, Batate song is the most popular kind of song. I had no idea that song could be made with different other veggies too. When my Mom-in-law made song with bhindi i was amazed. I did learn a lot of other curries that resembled the song too. Will post them in future.


2 cup chopped bhindi or okra.
2 medium size onions
1 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1 inch cube tamarind
2 tsp oil

Wash okra/bhindi in plenty of water. Rinse them thoroughly, drain all the water. Slice them and set aside

Soak tamarind in a cup of lukewarm water. Squeeze the pulp and discard the fiber.

Heat oil in a kadai/wok and fry the onions on a low flame till golden brown. Its very important to fry them till golden brown. Add chilli powder, coriander powder and fry till aromatic. Add the tamarind pulp and another cup of water. Bring it to a rolling boil. Add the okra and salt, stir and cook on medium flame. Cook till all the water is evaporated.

When its still cooking,if the water is very less in the kadai, add some hot water. If the okra is cooked when the sauce is still thin, put on high flame and evaporate most of the liquid.

Serve with rice and Dal or chapati

Malabaar Spinach Curry ( vaali ambaT)

vaaLi in Konkani or basaLe in kannada is a green leafy vegetable available in Mangalore area. Its a kind of spinach but the leaves are thick, succulent and has a tender edible stem. It grows as a creeper, and usually grown on a structure to hold the vine called vaaLi mantap much like how grapes are grown in the vineyards. In Mangalore and surrounding areas they are sold along with the creepers, the leaves and the tender stem is used in the curries while the hard part o f the stem is discarded or planted to grow more.

I did some research on the Internet and found its called by different names - Malabar spinach, Ceylon spinach, saan choy, alogbati, mong toi, Vietnamese spinach. In USA, its available in most of the Chinese/Asian supermarkets under the name mong toi.



vaaLi ambaT is a curry with coconut gravy with roasted onion seasoning. One of my favorite konkani delicacies.

1 bunch malabaar Spinach/vaaLi.
1/4 cup tuvar Dal
1 cup shredded fresh coconut
6-8 dry red chillies
1/2 inch cube tamarind
1 onion
1 tsp oil

Snip the leaves of vaaLi from the stem. Retain the stem if its tender, discard any hard stem. Wash and rinse, chop the leaves, cut the stem 3 inches long. Set aside. Finely chop half the onion for the seasoning. and the other half a bit bigger.

In a tsp of oil roast the red chillies. Grind coconut, red chillies and tamarind to a smooth paste. The masala or paste is called maasolu in konkani.

Cook tuvar dal in a pressure cooker. Transfer the dal to a sauce pan, add chopped vaaLi, cook for 10minutes till the stems are cooked. Add salt and coconut masala. Chop half the onion and add to the curry. Continue to cook for another 10minutes.

For the seasoning, finely chop the other half of onion. Fry the onions in a tsp of oil under low flame till its completely golden brown. Add to the curry, cover and set aside.

Serve with rice.

The curry can be made with spinach too. Just substitute the vaaLi with spinach. Tastes very similar, one can hardly find out the difference.

Pomfret ginger onion curry ( Alle piyav gashi)

Mangaloreans love fish. Sardines/peDvo, Pomfret/maanji, Mackerel/raaju are the mot popular fishes among the konkani's. The konkani fish curries are often made with coconut gravy, that makes it very different from other cuisines. They are a bit hot and savory taste. Alle piyav gashi one of them. In konkani alle means ginger, piyav means onion and gashi is a curry with coconut gravy.

Alle piyav gashi goes well with pomfret or crabs. This time I made it with white promfrets.

2 white pomfrets
1 cup shredded coconut
8 red chillies
1 inch cube tamarind
1 onion
2 green chillies
1/2 inch cube ginger

Clean the pomfrets. Cut of the fins and tail. If you prefer to keep the skull you may retain it. But I discard the head. That's how I was thought to clean the fish by my Mom. Discard the viscera/internal organs. Rinse thoroughly changing the water a few times. Cut the fish across the bones with 1/2- 1 inch width. Set aside

In a tsp of oil, roast the red chillies on low flame. Grind together coconut, tamarind and roasted red chillies to a smooth paste. It is very important to get a smooth paste, do not stop grinding when the coconut is coarse.

Chop onions and ginger finely. Slit green chillies

In a saucepan bring the coconut paste to a boil. Add water and bring it to the desired consistency. You can keep it to the consistency of the Dal. But not too thin. Add onions, ginger and green chillies. Boil the sauce for 5 minutes, add salt. Add the fish pieces one by one to the sauce. Cook it on low flame. Cook for about 10 minutes. Adjust salt.

Serve with rice.