Kovai Bhutti

Ivy gourd is one of those vegetables that seems perfectly happy being unremarkable until a Saraswat kitchen introduces it to enough coconut and chilli.

In this Bhutti, sliced kovai is cooked until tender and then coated in a thick masala of lightly roasted coconut, coriander seeds, two kinds of dried chilli, urad dal, fenugreek, garlic and tamarind. A little jaggery rounds everything out, and the masala is cooked down until almost dry, clinging to every little round of kovai.

It is a lot of flavour engineering for 250 grams of ivy gourd: hot, sour, sweet, nutty and deeply coconutty, with the vegetable still retaining enough bite to hold its own.