Koorka is also known as seemakizhangu, chivakizhangu in malayalam, chinese potato in english, siru kizhangu in tamil and sambrali in kannada. It is grown in Kerala, Tamilnadu, Karnataka, Sri Lanka, Malyasia, Indonesia and Thailand.
It is a seasonal tuber with hairy, muddy and cleaning is a difficult task. It has got a unique flavour and taste hence I prefer to cook it with minimum spices so that the taste, aroma is not overpowered by the spices. In fact I prefer to make the meuzhukupuratti with coconut oil and serve with sambar rice or rasam rice. You can make various dishes out of it viz. molagootal, kootu, stir fry or can deep fry and add masalas like we prepare the dishes with the normal potatoes. slice it and fry like chips and then add chillipowder and salt in it or with black pepper powder.
You can either pressure cook and peel off the skin or put it in a sack and beat it against a rough surface for 5-6 times, most of the peel comes out then put it in water and start removing the remaining peel with the backside of the knife. Though it is difficult to clean this vegetable as it is time consuming, the end product is YUM and it is worth the hard work. The leaves somewhat looks like mint leaves and got a peculiar smell when we remove the kizhangu from the earth.
The koorka kizhangu is the most important ingredient during sankrant and pongal. While making Ven pongal my Mom in law used to put 4-5 kizhangu in the rice.
Let us look at the recipe now:
It is a seasonal tuber with hairy, muddy and cleaning is a difficult task. It has got a unique flavour and taste hence I prefer to cook it with minimum spices so that the taste, aroma is not overpowered by the spices. In fact I prefer to make the meuzhukupuratti with coconut oil and serve with sambar rice or rasam rice. You can make various dishes out of it viz. molagootal, kootu, stir fry or can deep fry and add masalas like we prepare the dishes with the normal potatoes. slice it and fry like chips and then add chillipowder and salt in it or with black pepper powder.
You can either pressure cook and peel off the skin or put it in a sack and beat it against a rough surface for 5-6 times, most of the peel comes out then put it in water and start removing the remaining peel with the backside of the knife. Though it is difficult to clean this vegetable as it is time consuming, the end product is YUM and it is worth the hard work. The leaves somewhat looks like mint leaves and got a peculiar smell when we remove the kizhangu from the earth.
The koorka kizhangu is the most important ingredient during sankrant and pongal. While making Ven pongal my Mom in law used to put 4-5 kizhangu in the rice.
Let us look at the recipe now: