Kerala Mushrooms

Strictly speaking this is not a BIR style (British Indian Restaurant) recipe, but being quite quick to make doesn't benefit from using curry base sauce. Neither is it strictly traditional as it uses ground cinnamon instead of stick and creamed coconut instead of milk and chopped & purée tomato instead of fresh. The ingredients are, however, typical of the south Indian state of Kerala.

Ingredients

For 1	Continued...
2 tspn oil	¼ tspn turmeric
75 gm onion (prepared weight)	1 clove
½ tspn garlic	1 tspn tomato purée
½ tspn ginger	3 tbspn chopped tomato
1 tspn ground coriander	¼ tspn salt
½ tspn hot chilli powder	150 gm button mushrooms
¼ tspn ground cinnamon	20 gm creamed coconut block

Preparation

Finely chop the onion.
Chop the garlic.
Chop the ginger.
Grate the creamed coconut block.
Crush the clove to a powder in a pestle and mortar.
Chop the mushrooms into moderate sized pieces (see pic).

Cooking - 15 min

Heat the oil in a wok or heavy pan and cook the onion, garlic and ginger for 3 min.
Stir in the ground coriander, chilli powder, cinnamon, turmeric and clove and cook for 1 min.
Stir in the tomato purée.
Stir in the chopped tomato, salt, mushrooms and 100 ml of hot water and simmer, stirring regularly for 10 min, adding a little hot water as needed to maintain the required sauce consistency.
Turn the heat to low, stir in the coconut and cook for 1 min.

Serving

Serve with rice and garnish with a little freshly chopped coriander.

The main ingredients

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The finished meal

Creamed Coconut

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