Indian Curried Cabbage with Toasted Coconut
I’ve always been an adventurous eater. From a young age I helped my father cook all manner of Chinese food and we ate homemade refried beans with tortillas for dinner twice a week. But as a kid, I was not enamored with Indian food.
I recall the first time I tried it, my father and I were out and about running errands of one sort or another, and he took me to a small Indian restaurant near the University of Pennsylvania. He knew I had never had Indian food before, but that I would be open to trying. Unfortunately, I think my meal consisted mostly of basmati rice.
Over the years, as he cooked Indian food at home, my palate expanded. First were poppadoms, fried “crackers” made of black gram, lentil, or other flours. Crisp and delicious, who could resist them? Then he made lamb biryani, spiced rice with hunks of lamb and other tasty additions. It was mildly spiced as Indian food goes, making it more amenable for my undeveloped tastes. And a rice dish is always comforting. Soon I learned to eat chutneys, sweet or spicy, perfect on buttery naan, a flatbread made in a tandoor or earthen oven.
It wasn’t until I was out of college when I really started seeking out Indian food, and I would argue that I have eaten more Indian food in the last few years than my first forty combined. This is partly because Hicksville, a nearby town on Long Island, has a large South Asian population with numerous Indian restaurants and several large supermarkets. I make excuses to visit Hicksville, and I always find a new place to eat. Sometimes it would be a seekh kebab (actually Pakistani, not Indian) – spiced ground meat kebabs, grilled and wrapped in fresh naan with lettuce, onions, and spicy sauces. Other times it was a lunchtime buffet with an abundance of curries, stews, and rice.
One of my favorite dining locations on all of Long Island is Dosa World, an unpretentious vegetarian spot that specializes in crispy, manhole cover-size dosas (crepes) made with a fermented lentil and rice batter and stuffed with a spicy potato filling. The food is delicious and inexpensive, flavorful with a wide range of spices.
My own children have hopped on the Indian food bandwagon from a relatively young age. My daughter is happy to eat medu vada – savory “donuts” made of lentil flour – and biryani, along with other dishes. And my son eats Indian food more than anything else. I think his boss was surprised several years ago when he interned at a California startup and ate three or four freshly-made dosas at a summer party thrown for the employees.
I understand that Indian food is not for everyone, but it is one of my favorite types of food to eat. Now I need to expand my Indian cooking repertoire so I can prepare more dishes at home as well.
Indian Curried Cabbage with Toasted Coconut
While all Indian restaurants serve vegetable dishes, and some are strictly vegetarian, I often find that many of the vegetables are mixed with potato or are stewed into submission. Sometimes I want the vegetables to be front and center, and a little less cooked, than what I find even at my favorite Indian restaurant.
As I searched for such recipes online, I came across Martha Rose Shulman’s South Indian Cabbage with Yogurt in the New York Times. It seemed simple enough, and if I left out the dal and yogurt, it was basically a quick, stir-fried, curried cabbage. Substituting toasted, dried coconut flakes for the grated coconut added incredible flavor and a hearty note to the dish. It has become a standard in my repertoire.
serves 4, about 15 minutes
⅓ cup flaked, unsweetened coconut
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 tsp. black mustard seeds
1 medium onion, sliced into thin wedges
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
½ tsp. turmeric powder
¼ – ½ tsp. cayenne pepper
½ medium cabbage cut into thin strips
¼ tsp. kosher salt
2 Tbsp. chopped coriander for garnish
- Heat oven to 350 oF. Toast coconut flakes in oven on a sheet pan, stirring occasionally, until lightly brown, about 5 to 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.
- Heat vegetable oil over high heat in a pot more than large enough to hold all the cabbage. Add black mustard seeds. Cook, stirring occasionally until the seeds begin to pop, about two minutes.
- Add onion, cumin, coriander, turmeric, and cayenne and cook, stirring until onions are soft, about two minutes.
- Stir in cabbage and salt, and cook until cabbage is cooked through, about four or five minutes.
- Mix in toasted coconut flakes, reserving a tablespoon or so as garnish, along with the chopped coriander.
