Thoran: A Delicious Way to Use Greens

An abundance of greens is a wonderful thing - but sometimes it's hard to know what to do with them. This colorful and tasty dish goes great with many things, and especially well with spicy food!

Colorful, tasty and healthy - thoran is a wonder side dish and easy to prepare!

I was introduced to South Asian cuisine in my youth when I became friends with a boy from Sri Lanka. I spent a lot of time at his house after school watching movies and eating his mother’s amazing food - and every time we opened the fridge to raid the leftovers, I was dazzled by the variety, the colors and the flavors of her food. I was also routinely subjected to internal combustion due to his mother’s liberal application of hot spices to some dishes - but it was worth it. For a boy growing up in a very modest, blue-collar, (and not very cosmopolitan) suburb on the periphery of Halifax, Nova Scotia, my taste buds were being transported half way around the world!

Those experiences left me with a lasting love of trying foods from different places, and a willingness to try almost anything. Since I also love to cook, I try to make food from many different culinary styles all the time, and this has the benefit of offering more options for using up produce from the garden. One such dish is called “thoran” - a tasty and colorful South Asian side-dish that goes great with things like curry and biryani. Here’s how to make it:

Ingredients:

• 2 large onions

• 6 cups of shredded greens (cabbage/collards/kale etc.)

• 1 cup shredded carrots

• 2 cups grated coconut (I just use the dried stuff)

• 1 tsp chili powder

• 1/2 tsp tumeric

• 1 tsp cumin seeds

• 1 tsp salt

• 1 tbsp vegetable oil

• 1 tbsp lemon juice (fresh is best)

How to make it:

1. Slice the onions thinly, then place them in a large fry pan with the oil and sauté them over medium heat until they start to brown.

2. Add all of the spices and toss them around with the onions for a minute.

3. Add the carrots and the greens and the salt. Mix everything together, cover, then lower the heat to about 1/4. Let it go like that for 5 minutes.

4. Open the lid, toss it a round a bit, then replace the lid and let it go another 5 minutes. Continue doing this until the greens are soft. With collards this can take 15 minutes, whereas with kale this only takes about 5 minutes, and with spinach it’s almost instantaneous.

5. Add to coconut, mix it all together, replace the lid and give it all another 5 minutes to allow the dried coconut to absorb the moisture in the pan.

6. Remove from heat, add the lemon, mix and serve. Add more lemon if you like it that way.

• Note on technique: It’s important to monitor moisture levels during the cooking process. Thoran should not be wet and soggy when it’s done - it should be loose and somewhat dry. This means that you cook the greens using their own moisture, periodically removing the cover to toss everything and check to make sure it’s not burning on. It’s important to have the heat just right during that process. The dial on my range goes from 1 - 9, and I find that the “3” setting is just about right to cook everything properly without it getting so hot that things start to burn.

Why this works:

Thoran offers a wonderful array of sensations. The color is bright and pleasing to the eye. The texture, when done properly is more dry than wet, and it’s kind of chewy. The coconut makes it sweet, and the lemon gives it a nice acidity and an element of freshness. Coupled with curry and rice this dish adds a lot of color to the table, and it’s sweetness offsets the intensity of the curry in a way that is pleasing to the palate - but I also like it with many other things - like fried chicken or barbequed ribs. There are many ways to prepare it, and many alternatives to the way I have explained in this article (such as with green beans) - so if you like this recipe, by all means scour the internet for alternatives and explore the different options for preparing this fantastic dish!

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Here’s a video where I show how to make it using collard greens: