Vegetable stew recipe, Appam side dish

Name: Vegetable stew recipe
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 15 min
Ingredients: 3 cups Grated coconut (from 1 large Indian coconut); 1 Carrot; 1 Potato; 7 Beans; 8 Cauliflower florets (small bite size pieces); 1 tsp Corn flour (corn starch); 1 tbsp Ginger (grated); 2 Green chilli (slit); 1 sprig Curry leaves; Salt as needed; 1 tbsp Oil (I used coconut oil)

July 18, 2011 by Raks Anand 59 Comments / Jump to Recipe

Vegetable stew recipe is side dish for appam and idiyappam. It is a coconut milk base, mild spiced flavourful dish.

You can prepare this for breakfast or dinner when ever you prepare appam or idiyappam.

Check out my red rice puttu recipe in my website and idiyappam recipe that goes well with this stew.

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Side dish
Ingredients
My notes
Top tip
Recipe card
Vegetable stew method

Side dish

We always eat appam with sweetened (with jaggery) coconut milk. But when we had our dinner last month in Mango tree restaurant here in SG, for appam we ordered Vegetable ishtu from their menu.

Till then I have not tasted any stew. It was so simple, plain, pure white, with veggies and only the ginger flavour that wafted from the stew.

For me it was smelling like the potato masala we make for poori, but with the richness of coconut milk and onion, it was just tasting and smelling divinely.

So I tried at home, with recipe partially adapted from Divya’s blog, as well as keeping in mind of what I had in the restaurant. I could not get the pure white they had, but tasted the same.

Ingredients

Onion
Ginger
Green chilli
Curry leaves
vegetables
Coconut milk

See recipe card for full list and quantities.

My notes

I have updated this recipe with corn flour in it. The first time I tried, made without corn flour.

Had no issues in coconut milk splitting. It was probably because my second extract is very thin and diluted with less fat.

I used the Malaysia coconut which is different from the Indian ones. The second milk itself will be very very thin.

While in Indian coconut, we can take 3 extracts. So the second milk also is pretty much fatty. It makes it easily split. That's why I have updated the recipe with corn starch.

Even though I added after the veggies got cooked, I suggest to add along with the thin coconut milk step.

This gives smoothest texture to the stew. Nonetheless in case you forget, add it like me later if you miss.

Top tip

Do not add lots of oil as it will affect the look of the stew (texture too). Coconut milk have enough fat, we do not want more extra, haha!
You can have the boiled vegetables separately ready and add to the stew instantly. This gives most whitish stew.

Can we use coconut milk powder or readymade coconut milk in cartons?

Definitely yes. If using coconut milk powder (or coconut cream powder), prepare milk as per package instructions. For thin coconut milk, use it diluted with water.

Same way, for carton coconut milk, dilute and use for thin coconut milk.

Hint: While choosing carton coconut milk, avoid ones with thickening agents and go for organic and additive free by reading the ingredienst carefully.

Recipe card

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5 from 2 votes