Keerai Molagootal Recipe | Palakkad Recipes

Keerai Molagootal is an authentic Palakkad Iyer recipe which is prepared out of spinach,toor dal and coconut mixture. I saw this recipe being posted by many of my tamil friend bloggers all these years but I never thought of making it by myself. Tamil cuisine is a bit unexplored territory for me apart from the usual breakfast recipes.I had mentioned in this post about my helper who had introduced the Chinese chye sum greens to my kitchen, she only has introduced even this dish to us.She had learnt it from her earlier employer who is a Tambram belonging to Palakkad and hence I would say this is an authentic version of the recipe.So, do not get surprised if you see me posting more Tamilnadu recipes in my blog.

I have mentioned many times in my blog that we eat lot of greens in our regular cooking and spinach is one such green which gets featured more.There are lot of options in North Indian cooking but have limited options in south Indian cooking and hence I always end up making spinach dal, spinach sambar and spinach chutney.Repeating the same dishes might be boring and hence a change in recipes is always welcome and this is one such dish which is getting featured now often in my menu.

Check out south Indian green recipes to serve with rice:

• Thotakura(Amaranth leaves) Stir fry
• Dill-Dal Stir Fry/Sabasige Soppu Palya
• Gongura Pulusu Kura, Gongura Pappu
• Thotakura Pesarapappu Podi Kura/Amaranth-Moong dal Curry
• Menthikura Pappu/Methi Dal
• Palakura Pappu / Spinach Dal

Keerai Molagootal Recipe:

Serves 3-4 | Author: Prathibha

Prep time: 10 mins | Cooking time: 30 mins | Total time: 40 mins

Cuisine: Tamilnadu | Category: Side dish for Rice

Ingredients:

1 bunch Spinach/Palak

1/4 cup Toor dal

1/4 cup grated Coconut or 1/3 cup chopped Coconut pieces

2-3 Red chilies

2 tsp Urad dal

3/4 tsp Cumin seeds

1/4 tsp Turmeric powder

Salt to taste

to temper:

2 tsp Coconut Oil/ regular Oil

1/2 tsp Mustard seeds

1/2 tsp Urad dal

1 Red chili,broken

4-5 Curry leaves,optional

Method:

• Clean ,wash and cut the spinach roughly and boil it in water for 3-4 mins and drain it.Pressure cook toor dal and keep it ready.

• Heat 1/2 tsp of oil and add urad dal and red chilies and fry until they turn red in color.Cool them a bit.

• Grind the roasted urad dal and red chilies with grated(chopped) coconut and cumin seeds to a fine paste by adding enough water. 

• Add boiled spinach to the ground coconut mixture and grind it again.

• Add the ground mixture to the pressure cooked dal and add salt and turmeric powder and cook for 4-5 mins until the mixture boils.Adjust the consistency as required.

• Heat coconut oil or regular oil in a small tadka pan and crackle cumin seeds.Add urad dal, red chili and curry leaves and fry until the dal turns red and add it to the cooked mixture.

Serve it hot with steamed plain rice, some dry curry and papad.

Notes:

1. You can avoid grinding the spinach and instead add the finely chopped and boiled spinach and follow the recipe, it will not look green like this.
2. Greens like green Amaranth or red amaranth can be used to prepare this molagootal recipe by following the same recipe and also few vegetables like beans, cabbage or a mix of vegetables.
3. The quantity of spinach should be more and the toor dal should be less in the recipe.
4. Coconut oil is said to give the best flavor in the recipe, but I used regular oil in the recipe.

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