Kovakkai Fry Recipe – Tindora Stir Fry

Description:

Simple Tindora stir-fry with gram flour. Tindora / Ivy Gourd / Gherkin is the most infamous of all veggies, poor thing!  Somehow it has never been my favorite ,I usually hesitate to buy either considering it to be too boring or fearing the time involved in cutting. Like it takes forever!  Well I don’t love it as much as I love potato or carrots but atleast take an effort to make this occasionally at home. Zunka has always been my favorite North Indian style subjis, so  thought of using that concept in this veggie. It turned out great and worked out well with sambar sadham.

Pan Fried Tindora / Kovakkai Varuval / Ivy Gourd Stir – Fry / Dondakaya / Zunka / Kovakkai Zunka / Tindora Zunka / Dondakaya Vepudu / Tindora Stir-Fry / Gherkin

Instruction:

Here comes the tough part… chop the Tindora and onions lengthwise.

Heat oil in pan, splutter mustard, cumin and curry leaves. Add the chopped onions, tindora and ginger garlic paste. Saute for few minutes over high flame. Now bring down the flame to medium, cover and cook for 7-8 minutes or until the veggie turns tender. Make sure you give a stir every 2 minutes to avoid burning.

Once cooked add the red chili, coriander, turmeric and garam masala powder along with salt. Keep sauteing over medium flame to combine well.

Next part is adding gram flour (try to sprinkle) and giving a quick toss.

Keep frying until everything sticks well to the tindora. You will notice that the water content in tindora will start to absorb all the masala powder turning the dish little dry. Add curry leaves and fry for another couple of minutes and switch off.

The final dish should look something like this… little dry and crisp. Serve as a side for rice dishes, goes well with sambar, rasam or yogurt rice.

Notes:

Yield: 3-4 adult servings