O is for Olan!
If you are a regular visitor here, you’d know I am not big into Vegetarian cooking. Growing up I used to like very few vegetables, my mom used to include at least one vegetable dish into every meal. Some of those I truly hated, but we were supposed to eat everything that was on the table, something about building character! Among those dishes that I disliked were anything with eggplants or snake gourd, sambar, rasam, and most types of dry legumes and daals except for chana daal. Olan is made of black eyed beans, which belongs to the aforementioned category, but the good thing was that my mom made Olan only for Sadyas (Feast prepared for holidays like Onam/Vishu) where there were too many dishes on the plate- I mean banana leaf- for anyone to actually notice if anything is being wasted. So I used to throw this one away anytime I got a chance.
After I grew up and moved away from home, I started to appreciate food more, eggplant is one of my favorites now, and I can tolerate Sambar, though I draw the line at Rasam. Also I no longer hate any ingredient as such! As far as pulses and legumes are concerned, I am still not a big fan, but there are some dishes that I actually like! I made Olan for our Vishu Sadya last month, just for the sake of keeping it authentic, who can think of a Sadya without Olan! But I was surprised when I actually enjoyed this dish, not because I did anything special to the recipe, but after all these years my taste buds sure have evolved!
All my Kerala cookbooks have a slightly different variation of this recipe, this is the way I made it. I used ash gourd, but you can use any kind of gourds or pumpkins in this. Normally the red color black eyed beans are used for Olan, but I only had the white ones, which I didn’t even know existed till I read Musical’s Lobia-Shimla Post.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup black eyed beans
- 1 1/2 cups ash gourd skinned and diced
- 4 slit green chilies
- 1 cup coconut milk
- a few curry leaves
- salt to taste
- For seasoning
- 1 tsp oil
- 1 dry red chilli
- mustard seeds
Method
Cook the black eyed beans in 2 cups of water till soft.
Three-fourth of the way through the cooking process (about 12 minutes), add the ash gourd pieces and green chilies and salt.
When the gourd is cooked, add the coconut milk and curry leaves and simmer for a few minutes till the gravy is thickened. Remove from fire.
To season, heat the oil, splutter mustard seeds, add the split red chilli and fry till the chilli turns brown. Pour over the Olan.
Serve with rice along with some hot pickle and papadams.
This is my contribution to Nupur’s A-Z of Indian Vegetables event for letter O.
Get It While It's Hot!
You can get Live to Eat updates instantaneously by e-mail or in Facebook or through your favorite RSS Reader.
|
|
 Subscribe to RSS Feed  Follow
on Facebook |
You might also like these posts...
Olan is a must for any festivals at my place.you can make this with yellow hubbard squash or kabochan squash as well.
wow lovely looks inviting! i never knew this is called olan thnks for sharing
I do not think I have ever had Olan before. What I do know is you and Bee are on the same wave length this time. Both of you have the OLAN stews for the “O” in Indian cuisine!
You make this sound really intriguing.
hi ur recipe is so mouth watering feel like eating now…..nice blog nice recipes…
Sig, This is amusing. I thought of posting Olan by Saturday and now I see that Bee and you beat me to it. All 3 Malayalis could only think of O for Olan
):))
Your presentation is beautiful and I can understand what you mean by hating all veggies. There was a time when I questioned the existence of rice and sambhar and anything green
)
u r not alone…i guess most of us have developed new taste bud especially after getting married and started cooking;) he he…are all mallu’s gonna cook Olan for O?
but it is a beautiful dish. so no complaints there:)
Sig, both my kids are not great fans of eggplant…hope they develop a fondness for it when they grow up, like you did…this is a very new recipe for me…must be a very popular dish if all three of you thought about it…
hey sig, this is a new recipe for me, though I had heard of it, never tasted it, looks yummy in that kadai
I did not know till recently about the red color black eye peas 
lots of learning happening in the blogworld
hahaha… I am with you on running away from eggplants!!!!!
What is ash gourd!!!! I will have to goole for that!!!
Another olan recipe I have come across today…great dish…thanks for sharing…
Look what Bee has for “O”!!!:D
Sig,that’s why I come up with strange recipes,I thought of this Olan too and changed my mind!:))
Looks delicious.I LOVE Eggplants,send them to me if you don’t want!
Have a great weekend:))
Oh wow…this is a new one for me,certainly a healthy one though…
you don’t like rasams? Eggplant is a fav. of mine too…esp, the bharwa kind.
have a lovely weekend,
trupti
sig, you should post on postsecrets.com. “i hate eggplants, i hate sambar”. i’ll join you. lol. i definitely will add green ebans and cabbage to my list. your olan looks thick and yummy. i’ve grown to love this dish.
Olan …I have never had before. That Kadhai is to die for
WOW! i so love olan. Never tried it with white lobia, am gonna do that now. and look at that picture, it just says, “please have some”. Yummy yummy, feel like packing some for lunch.
and tell you a lil’ secret
Olan was my first thought too for dishes with O 
) Am happy, i got my fill 
.
WOW looks lovely….its a different recipe…
now its raining Olan;)) lovely pic. but the color looks different from regular ones. will bookmark this.
Sigma,
You get black eyed red beans from any grocery store in the mexican aile. I get GOYA brand here.
I truly agree that this is your version of Olan, but traditionaly we don’t granish it with mustard and red chillies. Once you prepare you just add a littlebit of coconut oil on top of it and top it with fresh curry leaves. May be variation from this made you feel that Olan is tastier than your mom makes.
I have always wanted to make this dish, your recipe looks tempting.
good to see a foodie from WA, me from Vancouver WA
Thanks for sharing yet another delicious traditional dish, Sig! Glad you know you are starting to appreciate vegetables more!
Thanks
U r most welcome home ,
actually there a mallu store , they get the frozen fish pretty regularly.
Lovely! I always use redchowri for Olan and colour becomes different..This is really Good..I will try with this beans..haha..Thodunnathokke ponnakunna kootukari ninne njan namikkunnnu..
KeralaFish, you are right squash will be a great addition in this too!
Roopa,
now you know!Glad to be of help.
Meeta , O is tough, so I knew there will be more Olans out there… It is such a simple dish too.
Shanti, Thanks!
Reena Lol, you should post your Olan recipe too… I am sure it is different from both these… Will be easier for Nupur to round up
Supriya , yeah cooking really makes us appreciate food more I guess
… Mallus and Olan way go back 
Sunita, I bet your kids will develop a taste for it later. My theory is that the kids concentrate more on the look and texture etc more than the taste, may be thats the reason for hating eggplants now? But it sure tastes great, so may be later on they will start appreciating the taste
Richa, wow really, that is funny…
I thought the only black eyed beans that existed was red!!!
Coffee Ash gourd is also called winter melon. Check out more info here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_melon
Dilip, Thanks and welcome!
Asha Lol, I know… Nobody can beat your unique dishes…
. I wanted to try something new, but its been a busy week, and had the Olan picture from my Vishu feast.. 
Trupti, I know, I might be the only southie that doesn’t like Rasam….
. Love eggplants now.
You have a great weekend too!
Bee Lol… yeah definte candidate for postsecrets… I actually like cabbage
Sandeepa, hey cool, you learned something new today
…I always learn something new from your site 
Musie, Yes I remember your Olan love from my Vishu post. Next time I will try with cucumber.. this one is from Vishu.
Sukanya, Thanks!
Sharmi, lol it is indeed raining Olan.
The color is due to the white beans instead of regular red ones…
Asha R. I normally buy the red beans, but my darling husbnad had no clue what is black eyed beans so brought me all varieties of beans except for the one I wanted
. BTW you are right, we don’t garnish the Olan, but it looked so white I had to add something to it 
Mallu, welcome to my blog and good to meet a neighbor… thanks for the fish tip, but we don’t have a mallu shop around, and never seen Karimeen… I might drive down to Vancouver next time I get the craving
Nupur , I have to thank you for inventing such a great event, that really forced me to make some veg dishes I would’ve never made!!
Kitchnfairy, hehe… nalla kavitha aanallo…
ponnu mathrame post cheyyarullu, backiyellam kandal chilappol karanaju pokum 
The picture looks so beautiful. I am sure it tastes great. As you might know, I am a great coconut fan, so will surely try this sometime.
I am a mallu-late 50s-living abolutley alone for last 15 years. No friends or relatives. Cooking for a single person is always a disaster. But this Olan proved otherwise. ThanQ.