Cooking: Mini onam

 This Onam was supposed to be special and grand being the first since we tied the knot, but it was a MONDAY! A Typical Monday where I had to run the rollup and review PRs and work on my code to raise PRs etc etc. So many pictures on Instagram and Whatsapp status flooded my phone every hour, on couples celebrating their first Onams! It was all so tempting. 

Thankfully the next day was a holiday for Ganesh Visarjan in Mumbai office! Yippee. 

With an initial round of cleaning, I happily started preparing the Onam-like lunch I could with the available resources in our fridge.  I was attempting things I never had in my life, but well that has been the story of my life ever since I got married. For the past 8 months, I had been attempting to cook North Indian food in the authentic Malwa/Indori style after all. This was more closer home for my taste-buds and senses. So what the heck right! 

The menu for our Mini-onam was as follows: 

1. Rice
2. Sambhar
3. Beetroot Pachidi
4. Injipuli (Ginger-curry)
5. Papadam
6. Custard

So by the time my husband decided to go for his usual shopping - I had to be ready with lunch following the above menu where 3 and 4 were still a mystery to me. 

I quickly finished 1 and 2 because I was trained to cook this since I was a child (just kidding - I picked it up only 2 years ago :P ). 

Then I decided to call out for help. No, not Youtube. My Mom. The more direct and quicker form of youtube tutorials. Also because these were her specialities and my taste-buds would resonate with only her recipes. 

Beetroot pachidi 

Cut the beetroot as tiny as you can. DO NOT grate. 

Cook it with water and salt. Set aside. 

In a pan, add some magical coconut oil, mustard, some ginger, green chilli and curry leaves. 

Add the cooked beetroot.  NO Turmeric. Pachidi is supposed to be white/raw.

Grind into a FINE paste -  some magical freshly grated coconut. Note it must be a smooth paste. with some mustard at the final pulse (do not grind the mustard too much to avoid the rancid taste) 

Add this paste into the pan. 

If your pachidi doesn't look like this : 

Then take what looks like a beetroot thoran and grind it in the mixy (without the curry leaves) to get the above. 

Inji pulli - Ginger curry

Peel the skin and grate 50-100gms of Ginger (as much as you have in the refrigerator) 

In a heated pan, add coconut oil. When that's also hot, add mustard, curry leaves, sliced onions, hing, fenugreek powder. 

Once the onions are golden brown, add the grated ginger, salt and red chilly powder to taste. 

After the ginger is cooked, add sambhar-pulli/meen pulli water(boil the tamrind(pulli) in water boil separately). 

Take the pan off the heat and add jaggery water(boil a small chunk of jaggery separately) 

Voila, there you have it! Ginger curry. 

Consume as little as you would any pickle with every meal. It gets tastier as the days pass just like wine. So do try it.