Everyone loves a Moily.

Whilst most Indian dishes pride themselves on using scores of ingredients and combination of spices, the beautiful ‘moily’ from Kerala uses merely 6 ingredients, salt and whatever you may choose to cook in it. Even after 20 years of cooking, there has not been one instance when people haven’t been wowed by its simplicity. You can cook this as a soup or a main, using shrimp, seafood, fish, chicken or in this instance using mussels

2 tbsp. of coconut or vegetable oil
20 fresh curry leaves
1 large onion sliced
6 green chilies slit open length ways
1 inch of fresh ginger cut into julienne
½ tsp. ground turmeric
3/4 litre/3 cups fish or seafood stock
1 cup thick coconut milk

1 tbsp. salt
500g fresh mussels, scrubbed and de-bearded

Method

Heat the oil in a large pan; add the curry leaves, onion, ginger and green chilies and cook, stirring until the onion is soft. Add the turmeric, followed by the fish stock, coconut milk and salt, and bring to a simmer. Let simmer for a couple of minutes, check that the seasoning is right then add the mussels, cover with a lid and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Remove the lid and check if all the mussels have opened, for those that haven’t opened, cover the pan with a lid and simmer another 1 minute. Remove from the heat, discard the unopened mussels. Serve with plenty of bread.

You can serve either fresh naan bread or some pre-made rice pancakes ( Uttapams) with these….