Keerai (greens) molagootal

This is a traditional Palakkad iyer dish which is quite famous at my home. One irony about the dish is, though it is called molagootal, we don't add any molagu(pepper corns)to it. I see lot of people mentioning about pepper in their molagootal recipes. But the authentic recipe doesn't have any pepper and this is highly nutritious, non-spicy food, good for everyone.Molagootal is made using ara keerai and since I get only spinach here, I made use of it. Other famous molagootals are cabbage,mixed veg(raw banana,carrot,yam,potato,chow-chow), just chayote squash(chow-chow), yellow pumpkin and you can always be creative and come up with your own combination. I'm tired today to post anything eloborate and so limiting myself to a simple recipe. This can be made in a jiffy specially with the kind of spinach you get here. It's so clean and fresh unlike Chennai where we got to spend a lot of time in cleaning up greens. But of kors, you don't get so many Indian varieties here. That's a trade-off and I am actually quite happy that I get a lot of Indian veggies here. I never expected so much.Spinach is a great source of iron,vitamin A,B and C and this is one great way to consume it without losing the nutrition. This has spinach,dal and coconut making it tasty,healthy and nutritious. Now let us get cooking.

Ingredients:

Spinach - 2 cups finely chopped

Thoor dhall - half a cup cooked

coconut - 1 to 2 table spoons

Red chillies- 2 medium

jeera - 2tsp

urad dhall - 2 tsp

Mustard - 2 tsp

coconut oil - 2 tsp

Asafoetida - a pinch

Method:

1. Cook the spinach and mix the cooked dhall.

2. Grind coconut,chillies and jeera into a paste and add to spinach.

3. Boil till frothy and season with urad dhall, mustard, asafoetida in coconut oil base.

Use the same method to make any molagootal substituting spinach with a diff veggie.

Goes well with vetha kozhambu or rasam rice. Also, plain rice and pickle makes a good combo to spice up this non-spicy dish.