Indian Festival Fare

by Devika Rajan

Uploaded 16 Apr 2008

© Devika Rajan

This is a traditional Kerala (located in South India) meal, served on a banana leaf.
The items on the leaf are--roughly from left to right-- 'pachadi' (gourd in a base of yogurt), 'erisseri' (unripe bananas cooked in a coconut based masala), cabbage foogath, okra foogath, 'avial' (mixed vegetables cooked in a base of curd and coconut masala), rice mixed with a yellow lentil curry ('dal'), 'kaallan' (ripe nendran banana cooked in a base of coconut milk), banana in jaggery syrup, pappadam, banana chips, banana chips coated with jaggery and a ginger pickle. The main item is rice, and the rest are accompaniments. The brown liquid in the dish with the ladle sticking out -- touching the left side of the leaf is the 'sambar'. This is a home-made sauce which is poured over the rice. Here's my recipe for sambar.
Cook a cup of Bengal gram lentil ('tur dal') preferably in a pressure cooker. Then add water to the cooked dal to make it liquidy. Add 2 tablespoons of sambar powder (available in any Indian store), a teaspoon of asafoetida powder, half a teaspoon of turmeric powder, a small ball of tamarind, some scallions (small onions) and a few pieces of cut capsicum to this. Cook this till the masalas and the vegetables are cooked. To season, heat a tablespoon of oil preferably in an iron ladle and add a spoonfull of mustard seeds to the oil. When the mustard sputters add curry leaves to this, and mix this with the 'sambar'.
It's not possible to give you the recipes for all the items served on the leaf. But you can download them from google by searching for Kerala recipes, and mentioning the name of the dish (given by me earlier)
Traditionally, we sit on the floor (not at the table) and eat from the leaf using our fingers.A traditional meal is normally wound up with a sweet dessert (payasam) generally rice cooked in sweetened milk.
This meal was cooked by me for a festival.
Most Kerala dishes use rice, coconut and bananas. (Nowadays, people here love to eat pizzas and Chinese food too)

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