Indian Flat Beans Curry/ Chaprada Avere Palya

Indian flat bean or Val Papdi in gujarati or Chaprada Avere Palya in Kannada is prepared as a side dish and served with hot roti or rice. I generally prefer with rice than roti. This curry is one among those vegetable which was never made in my house (Marwari Jain family). The reason for this is my parents are from Rajasthan and Rajasthani cuisine do not include lots of green veggies, due to the climatic condition of the region. I was born and brought up in Bangalore but still this vegetable didn't make it entry in my list either, until I got married to my hubby belonging to Iyengar family from Bangalore. In States this veggie is easily available in all Indian store year round and for first time my hubby thought me how to cook it? I made couple of changes and came out of my own version.   

Ingredients
1. 1/2 lb of Indian flat bean
2. 1 medium sized onion
3. Few curry leaves
4. 1-2 whole red chilli break into half
5. 3-4 green chillies finely chopped (increase it if u want more spicy)
6. 1 teaspoon urad dal
7. 2 teaspoon grated coconut  ( I use frozen)
8. 3-4 teaspoon oil
9. 1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
10. 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
11. 1/4 Asafoetida (Hing)
11. Salt to taste
12. 1/4 cup water

How I Prepare
1. Wash beans thoroughly with cold water, using your hands remove strings from both the ends. Take handful of beans at once place on cutting board and cut beans into small pieces (1/4 inch)

2. In a pressure cook add cut beans, 1/4 cup water, little bit of water and cook it for 1 whistle. The reason I do this sometimes the beans tend to be hard and pressure cooking them lightly will make sure all beans are evenly cooked. Alternatively you can boil direct on stove for few minutes

3. Take a pan add oil. Once the oil is heated up add hing, mustard seeds. Let the seeds splutter. Add urad dal, curry leaves, green chillies and whole red chilli.

4. Saute until the urad dal is golden brown in color.  Add onions, saute them until translucent.

5. Lower the flame, add turmeric powder, salt to taste and cooked vegetables. Mix everything nicely and cover the pan with lid and cook it for few minutes.

6. Garnish with coriander and coconut. Serve it hot.

Note
1. While adding beans to the tadka mix make sure to drain the water. This curry should be dry. You can drain the beans and keep water handy in case u see the curry to be too dry you can add it little by little.

2. I  put the frozen coconut packet in microwave for 30 sec. This helps the coconut to thaw quickly and easy to garnish.

3. Alternatively beans can be cooked without pressure cooking too. Add the cut beans to the tadka mix and cook it. It's just that it takes more cooking time.

4. You can skip onion's too and just go with basic tadka ingredients.