Amaranth leaves or the Indian spinach is loaded with iron and vitamins. The amaranth comes in shades of red, purple, and green. On my recent trip to Trivandrum, I had the red amaranth in the form of ‘aviyal’ at Chandrika’s house. The leaves were from her garden.
The other day, I spotted these glorious red leaves and decided to make the Amaranth Aviyal. The malayalis call the leaves ‘cheera’ and the red cheera is widely available in Kerala. The stems of the leaves are also used here. For the sourness either raw mango or tamarind is used.
Aviyal is a delicacy of south India that has ground coconut paste mixed with stewed vegetables.
Discard the hard stems and and scrape the outer fibers from the tender stems and use this along with the leaves to make the aviyal.