Chembin Thal Thoran

the Kerala thoran made from taro stems, de-stringed and cooked hard with tamarind, then tossed with coconut, cumin and curry leaves

Origin: Kochi, Kerala & the Malabar Coast

From the journey of Taro.

This is a dish about a part of the plant almost nobody else cooks. Taro is grown across half the world for its corm and, in a smaller number of places, for its leaf; Kerala also eats the thal, the thick fleshy stalk that joins the two, and turns it into thoran, the dry stir-fry with grated coconut that is the state's most characteristic vegetable preparation. The stems are the most oxalate-heavy part of a plant already notorious for it, and the preparation is correspondingly careful. They are peeled of their outer skin and strings, chopped, and cooked hard with tamarind or kudampuli, and the acid is not a seasoning decision. A thal thoran made without sufficient acid or sufficient cooking will scratch the throat unpleasantly for hours, and Malayali cooks are entirely explicit about this: the tamarind goes in at the start, with the stems, rather than at the end. What you get for the trouble is a texture nothing else provides, somewhere between celery and young bamboo, faintly slippery and slightly crunching, carrying the coconut and cumin that are pounded coarsely and stirred through at the last moment. Thoran is defined by that coconut: fresh, grated, and barely cooked, added when the vegetable is nearly done so that it warms rather than browns. It belongs to the kind of thrift that a homestead garden encourages, where a plant grown for its corm is not going to be wasted from the neck up, and it is monsoon food, made when the stems are at their thickest and most tender. It is one of the reasons taro is a three-part vegetable in Kerala rather than a one-part one.

Ingredients

Stems

  • 500 g taro stems (chembin thal), young and thick
  • 2 tsp thick tamarind pulp
  • 0.5 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 150 ml water

Coconut mix

  • 100 g fresh coconut, grated
  • 0.5 tsp cumin seeds
  • 3 small shallots
  • 2 green chillies

Tempering

  • 2 tbsp coconut oil
  • 1 tsp black mustard seeds
  • 2 dried red chillies, broken
  • 2 sprigs curry leaves

Method

  1. Wear gloves. Taro stems irritate the skin more than the corms do, and bare hands will itch for hours.
  2. Snap each stem rather than cutting it, and draw the two halves apart: the tough outer strings come away with the break, in the way they do from rhubarb.
  3. Peel off the remaining outer skin and chop the stems into 1cm pieces.
  4. Put them in a pan with the tamarind pulp, turmeric, salt, and water. The tamarind goes in now, with the stems, and not at the end.
  5. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook for fifteen minutes, until the stems are completely soft with no crunch of rawness left at the centre.
  6. Uncover and cook off any remaining water. A thoran must be dry, and wet stems will steam the coconut rather than let it toast.
  7. Meanwhile pound the coconut, cumin, shallots, and green chillies together coarsely in a mortar. Do not make a paste; the coconut should stay in recognisable shreds.
  8. Heat the coconut oil in a wide pan, crackle the mustard seeds, then add the dried chillies and curry leaves.
  9. Add the cooked stems and turn them through the oil for two minutes.
  10. Stir in the pounded coconut mixture, turn everything together, and cook for a further three or four minutes only, so the coconut warms and dries without browning.
  11. Taste. It should be faintly sour from the tamarind; if it is not, the acid was too thin and both the safety and the flavour want more.
  12. Serve hot with rice, alongside sambar or a moru curry.

Notes

This is the most oxalate-heavy preparation in the taro entry and the acid is a safety measure as much as a flavouring, so do not reduce the tamarind and do not add it at the end. Wear gloves throughout the preparation. Use young thick stems: old ones are woody and stringy however long they cook. Taro stems are sold by Indian and Asian grocers under several names and are also the bạc hà of Vietnamese canh chua, so a Vietnamese shop is often the easier source. If the stems still taste sharp or scratchy after fifteen minutes, keep cooking and add more tamarind; they are not ready. Fresh grated coconut is not optional in a thoran, and desiccated coconut gives a dry, dusty result.

The Gastrographer

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