Re-posting recipe: This is my grandmother’s recipe, as remembered and replicated by my mother. For my mother’s recipe, check out this post.

Drumstick curry

Cooking time – 25 minutes

Serves 3

Ingredients:

• Drumstick/ Murungai – 1
• Potato – 1 large
• Onion – ½ medium sized
• ¼ fresh Coconut ~ ½ cup of scraped fresh coconut
• Curry powder – 1 tbsp, can add another 1/2 tbsp for more spiciness
• Salt to taste

 Method:

1. Cut the drumstick into 2’’ pieces and chop up the potato and onion.
2. To the scraped fresh coconut, add some water and squeeze out the first coconut milk and keep aside. Reuse the coconut flakes and squeeze out the second milk by adding some water. If you don’t like to squeeze out the coconut milk by hand, simply use a blender and strain out the first and second milk. An alternative is to use ready-made coconut milk but the different consistencies expected in this dish will not be there. The first milk is richer in consistency and fats while the second milk is thinner in consistency.
3. In a sauce pan, add four cups of water to coconut milk obtained the second time – the second coconut milk.
4. Add the cut vegetables (drumstick, potato and onion) to the pan as well as the chilli powder and cook the vegetables.
5. Once the potato and drumstick pieces are cooked, add the reserved first coconut milk and salt and let it simmer for five minutes before taking off the heat.
6. Serve hot with rice or pittu or stringhoppers.

A slight variation in my great grandmother’s drumstick curry recipe is that she did not add potatoes  to the drumsticks. Just before taking the curry off the heat, she lightly fried some chopped onion, dried red chillies and fennel seeds in a separate pan and added the tempered seasonings to the curry. This gives a nice aroma and flavour to the dish.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.