Asparagus Paruppu Usili (Asparagus with Crumbled Lentils)

Paruppu usili is a side dish popular in Tamil Nadu where lentils (toor dal and chana dal) and vegetables are served together. Dal is soaked and then ground coarsely with spices. It is then made into round balls and cooked by steaming and then crumbled along with cooked vegetables. Here, instead of steaming, dal is cooked by stir-frying in oil, after seasoning with mustard, cumin seeds, chana dal, urad dal and curry leaves. When dal is half done, chopped asparagus is added and then both are cooked together.
Recipe Courtesy: Food for 7 Stages of Life

Celery Dal (Pappu)

Yet another side dish with celery. This time I made this delicious dal flavored with celery to go with either rice or roti. You can adjust the amount of celery in the dal depending on how much of the celery flavor you want in your dal. As you all know, a cup chopped celery can go a long way.
Recipe Courtesy: Uma's Trendy Relish

Celery Moong Stir-fry (Celery Cherupayar Thoran)

Celery and mung bean made a great combination for this stir fry. Whole moong is cooked first and then stir fried with onion, celery and other spices.
Recipe Courtesy: Liz David at Pachakam.com

Celery Carrot Stir-fry (Thoran)

Celery and carrot complemented each other in this delicious stir-fry. Celery gave a nice flavor to the thoran eventhough its strong flavor was toned down by carrot.
Recipe Courtesy: Pazham Pappadam Payasam

Brined Olive Curry (Salt Cured / Pickled Olives in Coconut Gravy)

Dishes made from brined mango (uppumanga) is one of my favorites. A colleague of mine shared some salt cured olives at work. It's taste remined me of uppumanga and couldn't help wondering how it would taste like if I replace them for salted mangoes in uppumanga curry. The curry came out good, but what was missing in the curry was mango's inherent sourness.
Recipe Courtesy: Yummy O Yummy

Red Radish Potato Stir-fry

This is a simple stir-fry with the small round red radish and potato. The bright red skin of the radish turns to pale red when cooked. Loved the yummy stir-fry.
Recipe Courtesy: Uma's Trendy Relish
Recently, I learned something very scary about potatoes. The sprouts that we see on potatoes that are stored for a long period of time are toxic and so are the green colored part (chlorophyll due to excessive exposure to sun) that we sometimes see on the inside of the skin of some potatoes. The flesh of such potatoes, if still firm, are edible, but care needs to be taken to completely remove the sprout or any green skin before cooking. Scary, huh, I never knew about it!!!

Kale Potato Stir-fry (Aloo Kale Sabzi)

This is the first time I'm trying kale (curly leaved Scots kale) and it tastes very similar to collard greens that I tried recently. This made me think, once wilted does all greens taste the same? Not really, huh! Potato and kale got together very nicely just like potato and spinach. The recipe that I followed calls for grinding roasted chana dal and coconut for gravy, but I left them as such because I wanted to make a crunchy dry curry.
Recipe Courtesy: Suganya's Tasty Palettes

Green Swiss Chard and Azuki Beans (Red Chori) Curry

I'm in love with swiss chard now which tastes very similar to amaranth. This time I bought the green swiss chard. It makes a good combination with azuki beans and the side dish could be served with rice or roti.
Recipe Courtesy: Annarasa Essence of Food...

Red Swiss Chard Sambar

A variation from the usual sambar that I make at home. I loved this leafy sambar too. Swiss chard gives a mild flavor to the sambar but it doesn't taste much different from the regular sambar since the taste of sambar mostly depends on the sambar powder that we add.
Recipe Courtesy: Daily Musings

Collard Greens Thoran (Stir-fry with Coconut)

Collard Greens is a very healthy leafy vegetable rich in nutrients with medicinal values. It tastes very similar to drumstick leaves. I couldn't resist to try this thoran since I'm a fan of drumstick leaves.
Recipe Courtesy: From My Home Kitchen

Red Swiss Chard Thoran (Stir-fry with Coconut)

Red Swiss Chard tastes very similar to Kerala's Red Cheera (Red Amaranth or Hopi Red Dye Amaranth or Chinese Spinach). I love greens and this stir fry forms a nutricious side dish with rice.
Recipe Courtesy: Sarah's Vazhayila

Broccoli Potato Sabzi / Stir-fry

Broccoli is a vegetable rich in nutritional and medicinal values. It makes a good combination with potato for stir-frying. This combo could be served as a side dish with rice or roti.
Recipe Courtesy: iCookiPost

Asparagus Thoran (Asparagus Coconut Stir-fry)

Asparagus is a vegetable with lots of nutritional and medicinal properties. As usual I started cooking with this vegetable with a thoran recipe. It turned out to be a delicious and nutritious side dish with rice.
Recipe Courtesy: Look Who's Cooking Too

Brussels Sprout Cherupayar Thoran (Brussels Sprout Moong Dal Stir-fry)

This is the first time I'm cooking with Brussels sprouts. I thought cooking them with moong dal is a safe way to start since I don't know how they taste. These mini cabbages taste very similar to cabbage and the combo with moong dal turned out to be great.
Recipe Courtesy: Sarah's Vazhayila

Baked Fish (Salmon)

This baked fish recipe uses only very little oil. If you are health concious or if you are short of oil (which was my case), you could bake fish in a convection oven. It tasted great!
Recipe courtesy: Yummy O Yummy