Does your vegetable tray ever go beyond the okra, carrot, beans routine? Did you wonder how the menu never felt so repetitive back home?

I did and that’s when I realized that I’ve been picking the same vegetables and using the same turmeric-chilli powder-jeera-coriander grind every time and an occasional garam masala. To bring in variety without going for expensive pastas and fancy ingredients, I went back to my roots- Kerala!

Yes, it’s true. They use coconut everywhere, but well, you’ll discover that’s where the magic lies!

Olan is a coconut milk based dish that’s almost always a part of the traditional feast, the ‘Sadya’. However, it’s not an all-exclusive fancy dish that does not make its way into daily meals. My mother used to pair it with sambar, pulinkari or mambazha pulissery. And the combination with rice is just out of this world!

The vegetable vendor had two very conveniently cut quarters of pumpkin and ash-gourd, so I decided to try the olan experiment that day.

The process is simple. Boil the veggies, add coconut milk and slit chillies. You’re pretty much set. The trick to a great olan though lies in the details such as not having too watery a gravy and the veggies being cooked right.

So I made my olan with just ash-gourd, pumpkin and store-bought coconut milk. To make one in all its glory, you must add a few pieces of chembu/colocasia and some red cow peas as well.

The beautiful thing about how our folks traditionally cook pumpkin is that while they use the flesh for the dish, they use the seeds and the parts you remove from around the seeds to make the pumpkin seed chutney! Talk about maximum utilization! Also, in an age where we buy and add nuts and seeds to our cereal, this seems like a good way to do it more naturally.

I will share the pumpkin chutney recipe in another post. But if you’re ready with your veggies, go ahead and try the olan with the entire recipe below:

Ingredients: Ash-gourd, pumpkin, green chilli, coconut milk, coconut oil, salt

Method

1. For both ash-gourd and pumpkin, peel them and remove the insides with the seeds.
2. Cut the veggies into thin square-ish slices.
3. Boil 1 cup of water in a pan. Add salt and the slit green chillies.
4. Add the veggies to boil them.
5. When the veggies are cooked but with still a little bite in them, add the coconut milk.
6. Turn off the heat. The coconut milk shouldn’t boil.
7. Add a spoon of the coconut oil and mix.

Your olan is officially done!

You can pair it with rice and sambar or any other spicy curry. Or if it’s a weekday night option, just mix the olan in with rice and finish it up with a pickle of your choice. I recommend a root pickle like maahaani. Cheers!