Groundnut chutney and post diwali vegan meetup

 

This is yummilicious groundnut chutney is a substitute of coconut chutney for us south Indians. Though a south Indian home maker is not worth his/ her salt if he/she (I am trying to be gender fair here) does not possess full coconut in his/her pantry or grated fresh coconut in his/her freezer, there are some pseudos like me who keep neither. But I do love to eat dosas and idlis once in a while (now that’s quite a worldwide trait now) and not without a nice chutney. Though I do not have fresh coconut or the typical south Indian manual grater or the time and energy to break and grate a fresh coconut, what I do have is some groundnuts. And this groundnut chutney is low fat substitute of our good old coconut chutney.

Just roast 1 cup of groundnuts (with skin) and ½ cup of chana daal lightly without oil in a shallow pan and let it cool. Meanwhile chop an inch of ginger and 2 green chillies. After the groudnut chana daal mixture has cooled down, pulse it in a mixer. Now add ginger, green chillies and ½ teaspoon salt. You may need to add ¼ cup of water too depending on the consistency you want. Don’t run the full mixie as you want the chutney to be slightly coarse and not completely smooth.

This chutney can stay in the fridge for 4-5 days unlike its original coconut chutney which cannot stay fresh for more than a few hours. Its good for the calorie counters and people with high cholesterol  as its fat content is much less than the coconut chutney. I learnt this from a Punjabi friend of mine in my recent NY trip who married a hyderabadi. I will share another chutney I learnt from her in another post. My mom says instead of roasting the groundnuts, I could also soak them in water for a few hours and pulse them raw to give more rawy coconutty tatse. Have to try that version too sometime soon. For now try this with your dosa some day!

And now for some news from the vegan networking front. I went for this post diwali vegan meetup organised at one of our fellow vegan’s bunglow in Kemps Corner. The host had a huge lawn which was perfect for accomodating a lot of guests. More than 80 people had showed up, most vegans and some just there on the fence. Vegan food was catered by Vegan Bites and there was a food competition too. Sadly I could not participate in this as was coming straight from my exam. But I tasted all the various dishes which other people had prepared. There was khandvi, raita, som baked idli dish, moog daal mini idlis and pumpkin kheer. The baked idli dish got the first prize. They all tasted absolutely yum and pumpkin kheer is high on my to do list right now.  Lot of questions answered, information and recipes shared. All in all an awesome evening with awsome people!