Molagushyam & Parikkai thayir pachadi

Molagushyam is a simple and easy to make gravy to serve with rice. With pepper as the main spice and protien rich moong dal, makes it more healthy. My paati (Mom's mother) prepares this delicious molagushyam without adding dal. It is also referred as Kari molgaushyam, perhaps due to the color of the kootan due to the addition of pepper. (Kari indicates black color). It tastes wonderful with salted whole lemon. Whole lemon is pierced with a skewer and pickled in salt. Nothing else. After pickling for more than 6 months, the lemons will be gooey and melted salt mixed with lime juice will be dripping like honey. How I miss that. I don't bother to pickle lemons this way, since I am the only person who likes that. When I ever I visit my paati, I never miss to taste the salted lime. For my molagushyam, I prepared bitter gourd thayir pachadi as side.

Molagushyam
Vegetables are cut into cubes.
elephant foot yam (chenai) - 1 cup
raw banana - 1 cup
ash gourd (elavan/vellai poozhinikkai) - 1/2 cup (optional)
moong dal - 1/2 cup
turmeric - 1/2 tspn
pepper powder - 1 tspn (Adjust to your taste)
salt
Coconut oil
curry leaves

Wash the vegetables and transfer to a bowl to cook in pressure cooker.
Add 2 cups of water. Adjust the water according to how much you would like the vegetables to be cooked. It taste good if the veggies turn mushy also.
Add turmeric,salt, pepper powder.
Pressure cook for 3 whistles and cook for another 5 minutes on low flame.
Open the cooker after 15 minutes.
Lightly mash the cooked gravy by the ladle. Add water to adjust the consistency. If you are adding water, then boil on stove stop .
Garnish with a teaspoon of coconut oil and few curry leaves.

Parikkai thayir pachadi (Bittergourd Raitha)
Bitter gourd - 1 nos
Coconut - 2 tblspn
Green chilly - 2mustard powder - 1/2 tspn
Curd - 1 cup
salt
Seasoning
oil
mustard seeds

Method
Select BG which are less bitter. We get fluorescent green colored ones which are less bitter.
Slice the bitter gourd in to rings. Remove the seeds.
Shallow fry them till it turns brown.
What I do is MW for 3 minutes wihtout covering.
Take a pan, add a tablespoon of oil. Add some sugar and the half cooked BG. This way it gets fried easily.

Grind together coocnut, green chilly and mustard powder to a smooth paste adding little water.
Add the grinded paste to curd and whip. Do the seasoning using mustard seeds.
Just before serving, add the fried BGs to the pachadi, to have them crisp.

The pachadi is going to Pooja's VOW-Bittergourd event.