Cauliflower Thoran

At my home in Calicut, we will definitely have a minimum of three side dishes for lunch. They are any gravy kind vegetable curry, fish curry and a thoran or mezhukkupuratti, which would be like half fried vegetables. At times we have more additions like pappadam, fish fry etc. I think that the easiest among them would be thoran or mezhukkupuratti, with just the effort of chopping the vegetables. I usually do not go for all the three items for lunch, mostly the easiest one would be out of my menu. One of the vegetables that my hubby’s taste buds have approved is cauliflower and so I ended up in trying out cauliflower thoran.

 Ingredients:

Cauliflower                             --    250 gm

Shallots                                    --    2 small ones

Turmeric powder                  --   ¼ tsp

Cumin seeds                          --   ¼ tsp

Mustard seeds                      --    ½ tsp

Red chillies                            --    2

Curry Leaves                          --   few

Shredded coconut                 --   ¼ cup

Oil                                           --   2 tbsp

Salt                                          --   to taste

Preparation of Thoran:

Chop the cauliflower into required size. Mix the turmeric powder, cumin seeds and shredded coconut into chopped cauliflower. You can even grind these to a course paste and then mix it with cauliflower. Since I prepare a very small amount, grinding the coconut is quite not easy and I just thoroughly knead it before mixing. Also add finely chopped shallots, curry leaves, pepper powder and salt to the mixture and mix well.

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the mustard seeds and let it splutter. Add the red chillies broken into small pieces. Then add the cauliflower mix and sauté for 2 min.  Close the pan and let it cook for another 5 -6 min. Open the lid and sauté it at every 1 minute interval and make sure that it doesn’t burn.

Non-vegetarians: You can also add an egg to this which will give a special flavor, especially for pure non-vegetarians like my dearie.

When the cauliflower is half cooked, add an egg into the pan and scramble well. Let it cook together for the rest of the time.

Recipe Courtesy: Amma