Mushroom Pepper Fry (Kaalaan Milagu Varuval)

Mushroom, a protein packed fungi is liked by most of the people for its flavor and taste. It contains more water and while cooking it gives out plenty of water. Because of this, it shrinks to one third of its volume after cooking. It tastes well when cooked with pepper and garlic.

Here is Mushroom Pepper Fry (Kaalaan Milagu Varuval). To bring out the flavour of mushroom prominently in the dish, I use minimum spice in this fry. I use microwave oven to precook mushroom instead of boiling. This saves time and makes the job easy.

Mushroom is known as Kaalaan (காளான்) in Tamil, Pepper is known as Milagu (மிளகு) in Tamil and Fry is known as Varuval (வறுவல்) in Tamil.

Ingredients

• Button mushroom –  1 kilo gram
• Black pepper – 1 tablespoon
• Onion medium size – 3 no
• Green chilli – 3 no
• Garlic cloves – 10 no
• Ginger – 1 inch long piece
• Turmeric powder – generous pinch
• Red chilli powder – half teaspoon
• Coriander leaves – few for garnishing
• Salt – as per need
• Butter/oil – 1 tablespoon

Method

• Wash and chop mushroom into slightly big pieces; chop onion, green chilli, ginger and garlic finely; powder black pepper to a fine powder.

• Precook mushroom; this can be done by boiling or in a microwave oven; I used microwave oven.

• See the quantity of water released by mushroom; drain water and keep it; if you want, you can use this water in soup, dal etc.,

• Heat a pan with butter; when it melts, add garlic, ginger and fry for few seconds.

• Add onion, green chilli and salt; fry till the onion is pink.

• Now add turmeric powder, chilli powder and fry for few seconds.

• Add precooked mushroom, mix and cook for for four to five minutes.

• Lastly add pepper powder and stir it for few more minutes till all the spices blend well.

• Now delicious Mushroom Pepper Fry (Kaalaan Milagu Varuval) is ready.

• Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot as a side dish.

Tips

• As mushroom shrinks too much in size after boiling, it is better to chop it into bigger pieces.
• Adding freshly powdered pepper gives very good taste to the dish and quantity of pepper may be varied to suit your taste.