Carrot Paruppusili

I want to share the recipe for Carrot Paruppu Usili, which is a very popular curry, pallya, side dish or whatever you call it, at my place now. If I tell you that my mother-in-law who is averse to all those foreign vegetables like cauliflower and carrot, loves this dish and never refuses a second helping, you will have a fair idea as to how popular it has become.

Most of my traditional cooking is as per what my mom used to do at home. Not that I ever learnt at her hands in my growing years. My mom was and still is one of those who goes into the kitchen and comes out in a jiffy, saying ‘ok, food is ready’, whereas I belong to the type who slogs long and hard to do the same stuff. And so my mom never had all that much of patience to teach a slowcoach like myself. Ours was a big family and so we girls had to help out in the kitchen doing all the odd jobs and you can be sure there were squabbles as to who did painful jobs like peeling sepankizhangu (arbhi) (yes Wiskyd, I know it is your favourite and Sundar’s too), grating coconuts, which was liberally used at home as we hailed from that part of Tamilnadu, that was just over the hills from Kerala. And everyone knows how much coconut, mallus love in their food. Well we were not far behind. Anyway I am diverging from my ramble so to cut short the chase, most of the cooking I learnt was through helping out in the kitchen and from eating of course. And when the days of cooking for myself and family came around, I collected recipes assiduously from all sources and most especially my mom. Well this Carrot Parrupu Usili was one such recipe and I was doing it for years until one fine day about two/three years back when my mom was here on one of her visits, she stopped me in my tracks saying I was not doing it properly. We had a bit of argument over it for what she was proposing was a more painful way of doing it and let me tell you that to start with usilis are one of those dishes that involve more work than your regular curry. This was not an unusual thing though. Her questioning my way of doing something. And that after I follow her recipes. She keeps on changing and evolving her ways of cooking, picking a tip here and a recipe there. And when I try to tell her that she used to do cook in a certain way, all she would say is.”Maybe, but try this. Nee paaren.’

“But you were the one who told me to do it this way”. I might as well have tried to stop an avalanche. When she gets started, there is no stopping her. Cooking and that too for those who love her cooking is what keeps my mom ticking, and most of my siblings, hand over the kitchen reins more than gladly when she arrives. I have a problem with that as the family I married into is not from anywhere near Kerala and they crib about the quantity of coconut I use and let me make it clear that I use much less than is used at my place. “Oh you have added vegetables to coconut rather than garnish vegetables with coconut”, is the sort of subtle and not-so subtle comments that I faced in the early days. So when my mom is around, she cooks for me stuff like Porricha Kuzhambu over which I drool, and I cook for Sundar, my mother-in-law etc.

Well, she got her way and did the usili in a new way and in double-quick time I started doing it this way, for it made the usili so yummy and well-cooked too. This is just not a recipe for carrot parrupu usili. Any other usili like beans, cluster beans (kottavarakkai) or banana flower (vazhai poo) can be done this way.

Ingredients

4/5 carrots, peeled and shredded

½ cup Thuvar Dal, washed and soaked for 1 hour

1 or 2 red chilli

Method

Rough grind together, thuvar dal, red chilli along with a pinch of asofoetida and 1 tsp off salt. Steam the ground mixture for about 15 to 20 minutes. Cool the ground dal and run it for a minute in the mixie. The dal will now be a soft, powdery mixture.

And for all those wondering what were the modifications, I have put those steps in blue.

p.s. To steam the dal mixture use a small colander or a perforated bowl placed on top of another bowl and steam it in your pressure cooker or idli cooker. Do not put the 'weight' on the vent though.