Mouth-watering Aromatic Spicy Lime Pickle.
Lime has a special place in the life and style of Indian. From religious uses to the humble Lime Urugai aka pickles, lime can never be separated from the Indian culture and cuisine.
Besides colourful flowers, lime is also used as part of religious offering.
Various types of home-made Lime Pickles.
Life for an Indian becomes beautifully tasty with pickles, podi, thuvayal and chutney added into his daily gourmet. Everyone in the family likes these add-on delicacies. These items are the taste enhancers for the colourful Indian meals. Who needs commercially produced flavour enhancers such as MSG when pickles and thuvayals are there to satisfy your tastebuds!
Podi simply means powered lentils, dhall, or leaves. I made the mint podi below and is an exciting side dish for dosas! All we need to do is add drops of sesame oil, ghee into the podi and mix it into a nice wet consistency. Alternatively, add podi to your favourite yogurt. Dip your dosa into the podi and enjoy the hidden umami taste! Now your dosas will never taste the same again! I am giving you a link on how to do Pirandai Podi (devil's backbone creeper/ Veldt grape plant). Pirandai podi is the best bone health podi known only to Indian until recently.
Mint Podi
You can do your mint podi in the similar way you do do piranha podi! Just go slow in drying your mint if you want to retain the lovely green colour. I dried my mint but not under direct sunlight! Super easy tasty podi.
Thuthulam Podi
Delicious Pirandai Thuvayal
In the olden days (and still in many families), mealtime in traditional Indian families food used to be very elaborate. People ate on freshly cut banana leaves. The meal items in the leaves were as exotic as the Indian people, culture and land! Food was and is still infused with various colours, tastes, smells, hues, shades and form! Add on condiments were prepared to create - pickles, chutney, podi and thuvayal. Lime, mangoes, chillies, brinjals, kotthavaram pods, Indian gooseberries and many others vegetables are salted, soaked in pure yogurt and sun-dried. These are then fried in oil and are eaten as crunchy extra add-ons into the main course. An elaborate Indian meal is a meal to remember forever!
My simple home-cooked Indian style banana leaf meal menu.
Items in the menu: Rice, dhall sambaar with potatoes and carrots, spicy tofu sambal, cucumber, fried ikan bilis, lime pickle, sun-dried salty fried brinjal, sweet-sour mango pickle, and papadam for added crunch. Spicy deep-fried chicken,
* Yogurt and Rasam are served as well in small tumblers.
In the good old days, all these condiments were prepared traditionally using stone-ground methods. Healthy coconut, sesame and groundnut oils were used. There was rice, dhall, papadam, pickle, thuvayal, chutney, gravy, payasam, sweets, moor, yogurt, rasam. All the taste were in one meal. And people ate well. In fact, Indian meals had travelled around the globe mainly because of the delicate play of balance with the aroma, colours and taste. Every kind of taste is present in the meals to cater for the body's needs and cravings: From salty papadoms, dried fish, and veggies, sourish and spicy pickles and condiments, bitter vegetable such as bitter gourd, pungent asafoetida rasam, sweet laddus, and savoury snacks everything can be found in one single Indian meal. Indian meal is life inspiring experience. Every Indian meal includes gluten-free rice in the main course. Rice is a superb item suitable for any hungry stomach. Rice is made into congee and eaten with peanuts, onions, garlic, meat, chicken, and even salted fish and pickles. Congee is the best non-gluten meal for the sickly as well. Parboiled rice is for people on diet and those who want to lead a healthy life and style. Parboiled rice is also the best friend for a diabetic person. Rice is steamed for those on diet. Rice is turned into healthy snacks for celebrations. Rice is offered to the Gods as a sign of bounty and abundance on Ponggal. Rice is cooked as sweet rice, pepper rice, milk rice, herbal rice, ghee rice, jeera and mint rice, biryani rice, lentil rice, chicken, rice, mutton rice. The list is up to your imagination and creativity!
Another simple home-cooked Indian fusion. This is my favourite Indian fusion food. Parboiled rice with steamed brocolli, bok choy, spicy fried fish and mouth-watering sweet-sour mango pickle.
Going Indian Style is Easy
Now anyone can go Indian! Here are a few ideas as to how you can incorporate the Indian add-ons into your daily bread and butter or er, potato and wheat. Wherever you are going Indian meal style is super easy. The thuvayal, podi, pickle, sun-dried yogurt-infused vegetables and chutneys can be prepared in advance and stored in the fridge to turn your meals into exotic Indian-style meal menus anytime you feel like indulging in an exotic Indian meals!
All you need to do is play with your imagination and gather all the exotic Indian taste into your kitchen and then into your tastebuds. Spice and chilies can be adjusted according to your tastebuds. From now, the Indian taste is here to stay in your home.
Here's how you do it:
Mint Thuvayal (Savoury Mint Paste)
Ingredient: 1 onion, 2 pips garlic, 1 inch ginger, 1 dry chili (I don't like very spicy thuvayal), coconut scrapes (optional), tamarind puree or pure tamarind, sesame oil/olive oil, salt, a little water
Method: 1. Saute sliced onion, inch ginger, dried chilis, and garlic in oil. I use sesame oil for taste and aroma. Alternatively, olive oil can also be used. Then add salt to taste and two tablespoons tamarind puree/ dry tamarind. Add about 150-200grams mint leaves. I don't saute my mint leaves so as to keep maximum nutrients and colour!
2. Then blend all the ingredients into a thick paste. Add only 1 tablespoon of water if needed. The paste /thuvayal should be in a thick but not dry consistency. Taste for salt and tamarind consistency. The thuvayal will have a distinct minty aroma with a salty and sourish taste-mix.
Store in a glass container and keep refrigerated. Can be used in rice meals and as a fusion food - Replace unhealthy sweet jam with delicious, savoury mint thuvayal on your morning bread! Mint thuvayal is an excellent herbal tonic to treat stomach bloat and keep up healthy digestion.
Note; You can used the same method and prepare other Indian thuvayal using coriander, parsley, curry leaves, and sour grapes. all these are good to keep our stomach digestion in good condition. For those of you who cannot tolerate the spicy taste of chillies can reduce the chillies.
* You can also add some cream cheese into the thuvayal to replace coconut scrapes. Well, with the addition of cheese the thuvayal would go western! East meets West!
Have your morning toast with savoury mint or pirandai thuvayal. Or with Jam. Better still have both!
* Remember the thuvayal can be made with herbs from your own locality. Feel free to make this delicious savoury thuvayal using curry leaves, parsley, coriander, rosemary or sage.
These thuvayal can be eaten with hot steaming rice and other-rice based food as well. Baked potatoes can be eaten with thuvayal as well. Thuvayal is a stomach friendly Indian dish which can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner and even supper! In fact, pirandai, mint, and curry leaf thuvayal are best for inducing healthy stomach condition and increase digestion.
Rice based breakfast food goes well with podi as well. The next time you crave for fluffy idli don't forget your podi! Hey you are on a diet remember....
Try fluffy white rice idli with sambaar and podi.
With modernisation the influence of Western food has made way into the Indian cuisines as well. Nowadays, Indian food carry many nuances- Indian food can be spicy in various degrees according to the part of the world in which it is celebrated!
💚💚💚Cheerio for now!💚💚💚
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