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Erissery Recipe – Kerala Pumpkin Erissery Recipe – Onam Sadya Recipes

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Erissery (with pumpkin or mathanga) is a typical Kerala Onam sadya recipe that’s almost always made during a festival or wedding. I realised a couple of weeks back that its been quite a while since I posted any Kerala recipe in here. It wasn’t surprising because when I think of making a new dish, I always try to look up Brahmin recipes since that’s something TH would enjoy and something I can learn too.

But on this particular weekend, I was all “I want Kerala food, coconut all the way”. I usually shop for my vegetables for the week on Sunday evenings but that weekend, I headed off bright and early, ok 11am to be precise, on Saturday and guess what I saw first thing I stepped into the vegetable section.

This beauty right here. I am no pumpkin lover but erissery has always held a soft spot in my heart. Mom doesn’t make it that often, actually. She makes pumpkin koottu more often, with dal. But erissery is a quintessential part of the Onam Sadya and I realised I haven’t even tried it myself yet. That idea and this pumpkin combined, and the rest is history 😉

I couldn’t resist more pictures of the pumpkin. It was bright orange-yellow and smooth spotless on the outside. Since this was during Chinese New Year, vegetables in Singapore supermarkets were fresh and mostly from China.

If you would like to check out more Kerala recipes, then my favourites are inji curry, Kerala avial, and cabbage thoran.

PUMPKIN ERISSERY RECIPE – MATHANGA ERISSERY RECIPE

Ingredients
(serves 4 as a side)
Pumpkin / mathanga – 3 cups, peeled and cut into 1″ cubes
Grated coconut – 1/2 cup (fresh works best but you can use frozen too)
Cumin / jeera / jeerakam – 1 tsp
Green chillies – 2, or to taste
Turmeric powder – 1/4 tsp
For tempering
Mustard seeds – 1/4 tsp
Urad dal – 1 tsp
Grated coconut – 4 tbsp
Shallots – 3, sliced
Red chillies – 3
Curry leaves – a few
Coconut oil – 2 tsp (or any other oil you have)
How to Make Pumpkin Erissery:
1. Boil the pumpkin in 1/4 cup water with salt and turmeric, until soft. This should take about 7 to 10 mins.
2. Grind coconut, green chillies and jeera to a paste with requred amount of water. Add this to the cooked pumpkin and keep fire on sim. Adjust water if the curry is too thick at this stage. Add spoonfuls at a time so that it doesn’t get too watery. If curry is too watery, then let it boil or add 1 tsp of rice flour mixed in 2 tsp water. Cook until desired consistency is reached, add salt and keep aside.
3. Heat oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds. When they pop, add the urad dal, shallots and red chillies. Fry until the dal turns golden brown and the shallots turn transparent. Tear curry leaves and add to this. Mix well and pour directly over the cooked pumpkin curry.
4. In the same pan, add the 4 tbsp coconut and fry on low heat till crispy and golden brown. Mix this into the curry and serve with steamed rice and pickles. Adding the fried coconut in the end is very important for the flavour of the curry so don’t skip this step!

Mathanga Erissery

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  1. that really IS a mighty success for you and the recipe Carly 🙂 Thank you so much for dropping me a line to let me know the recipe worked for you!

    Reply

  2. Thanks for this great recipe! I was looking for a way to use up some butternut squash and I immediately thought of your site and all of it's yumminess.

    I'm still new to Indian cooking (but not Indian eating) and I was thinking about the pumpkin curry my mother-in-law makes – so I thought I'd give it a shot.This turned out really well and wasn't too hard, even for a beginner like me.

    I wasn't sure how it turned out, so I gave a bite to my husband. His response, "Mmm, it's good…it reminds be of Kerala." Success!

    Thanks again…

    Reply

  4. I tried calling my mom for this recipe and could not get through her so my second option was to check out your blog! I made it for a potluck and everyone loved it and asked me for the receipe. I love what you make and love your presentation too! Good job 🙂

    Reply

  8. Loved the pictures of the pumpkin..only you could have made it look so pretty;-).We make a similar dish called Alchikeri[Konkani],and I love both.Only difference is we skip the shallot part.

    Reply

  11. It was our wedding anniversary on feb 21 so I decided to gift my husband with a whole week of 5 course meals from almost all over the world and one such menu was entirely from your blog – Coriander rice, Tomato Chutney, Pepper rasam, brinjal in roasted spices, kerala fish fry and chocolate logs. Well needless to say my husband was one happy married man for that whole week and he was drooling over your kerala feast and calls it the Nagging menu now :). thanks for the lovely and simple recipes. By the way you have made me feel guilty after bombarding both your blogs with posts and I had to finally make a post in my blog…U, Mishmash, Divya of easy cooking and Shaheen of Mallugirl are true inspirations…u guys make me move my lazy self around..

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  18. i generally try out new recipes from the internet and i have some mathanga lying in my fridge. i was searching the web for mathanga recipe and i happen to see urs. Am a person who chooses a recipe to be cooked only after carefully going through the ingredients and process of cooking and i found ur style pretty interesting. i get a idea how the curry will taste while going through the recipe and am sure this will be tasty and am gonna try this today itself. Planning to make mathanga, mor curry, matti fry. yummm…i know the mathanga will be waiting to jump out of the fridge into the kadai. thanks =)

    Reply

  20. This is a really good recipe. Thank you sooo much for your site. I made it today with the variation that I added tamarind and I had a steamed beet leftover which I also added to the coconut mixture in the food processor. The color was beautiful and I liked the zing of the tamarind – though I know this is quite different than the original. Please do keep posting.

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  33. Sakshi – you made my day, you really really did. Shaheen was my inspiration too, to start a blog 🙂

    A huge thanks to everyone who liked my pics. It makes the constant nagging backpain totally worth it 🙂

    Reply

  34. My most fav recipe..was planning to make n post it in coming days..My mom makes it another way.adds vanpayar too.curry will look lil dark so n with all the golden brown coconut flakes on top..:)
    Btw,Its long since I saw you in my space…:)

    Reply

  35. It was our wedding anniversary on feb 21 so I decided to gift my husband with a whole week of 5 course meals from almost all over the world and one such menu was entirely from your blog – Coriander rice, Tomato Chutney, Pepper rasam, brinjal in roasted spices, kerala fish fry and chocolate logs. Well needless to say my husband was one happy married man for that whole week and he was drooling over your kerala feast and calls it the Nagging menu now :). thanks for the lovely and simple recipes. By the way you have made me feel guilty after bombarding both your blogs with posts and I had to finally make a post in my blog…U, Mishmash, Divya of easy cooking and Shaheen of Mallugirl are true inspirations…u guys make me move my lazy self around..

    Reply

  42. lovely pics, Nags! I have a piece of the pumpkin lying in the fridge and coconut too at home, I have not made errisery in a looong time too…guess u get the drift..:-)

    Reply

  44. Wish I could get my hands on that lovely Pumpkin!! We get Butter Squash here easily, that;s it. Erissery looks yummy! I am going to make 2 Kerala dishes for next week’s post! :))

    Reply

  47. Divya – you are too kind, thanks a ton for your sweet comments 🙂 The shallots are optional, btw. I just love adding them while tempering, especially to Kerala recipes.

    Reply

  48. Loved the pictures of the pumpkin..only you could have made it look so pretty;-).We make a similar dish called Alchikeri[Konkani],and I love both.Only difference is we skip the shallot part.

    Reply