More Veggies!

I don't think I would eat that much broccoli or okra if I didn't know these South Indian recipes. Incorporating vegetables into a regular meal plan is so much easier with the South Indian Meal formula:
2 vegetable curry (eg. spinach, broccoli, okra, beans, cabbage, cauliflower, vazhakkai, potato)
1 salad (eg. carrot, cucumber, tomato, radish, celery, lettuce, fruit)
1 lentil stew dish (e.g. rasam, sambar, vetral kuzhambu, more kuzhambu, poricha kuzhambu, kootu)
rice
yogurt or buttermilk
hot pickle
Its so easy to prepare meals when you have this formula to go by. I mean what I have written above is for an ideal lunch, but you can reduce it if only 1 or 2 people are eating. We usually have 1 curry, sometimes a salad, a sambar or rasam, rice, and buttermilk. I always keep hot pickles like vadu mangai or avvakai in the fridge.
This morning I decided I wanted to finish yesterday's rasam and so I made 2 curries to go along with it (in accordance with my theory that leftover food tastes better with something fresh). This afternoon's lunch was rasam, broccoli curry, okra curry, and buttermilk, with some sambar on the side and avakkai pickle. It was pretty good.

Broccoli Curry
1 ziploc bag of frozen chopped broccoli florets, 1 tsp mustard seeds, 1 tsp urad daal, 2 dried red chillis, a pinch of asafetida.

1. Splutter the mustard seeds, and then roast the urad daal, red chillis, and asafetida.
2. Add the broccoli, mix on medium heat, and then cover and steam over a lower heat.

Okra Curry
1 cup frozen okra chopped, 1 tsp mustard seeds, 1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds, curry leaves, a pinch of asafetida, turmeric, 1 dried red chili, 1 split green chili, 1 tbsp of yogurt.



1. Splutter the mustard seeds in oil, add the fenugreek seeds, curry leaves, and asafetida.
2. Add the okra and after a few minutes add the yogurt mixed with turmeric.
3. Cook this through.

Verdict: My husband commented that the broccoli could be a better quality, and the vendakkai though gooey still tasted great. Supposedly the yogurt can help the okra from becoming gooey. If anyone has any other suggestions please post them for vendakkai!