One of the main components of a sadya, that is often overlooked, but is very essential to maintain that balance is the pickle. Be it lime/lemon pickle or mango pickle or puli inji.

Whenever I talk about puli inji, a story comes to mind. This happened when I was 9 or so and I was at my cousin’s wedding. For the sadya, I had finished my rice with the curries and all that and was waiting for the payasam course. One of the servers, came with this bog bowl of brown looking thing and planted it right in the middle of my plate (banana leaf). Now, if you are familiar with Southern Indian cuisine, there is something called chakkara pongal which is a type of payasam that is made with jaggery and is one of the payasams that is not runny. It is not a very commonly served payasam for sadya, but I didn’t know any better then. I thought, whatever was served on my plate was this payasam and ate a big mouthful of it, only to realize it was a very particularly spicy inji puli! I turned red and my eyes started watering and I started getting hiccups. Everyone around me panicked and one offered some payasam, while another offered water, yet another offered bananas and others something more! I don’t remember what all I ate to get rid of the spicy heat from my body. But it sure was a lesson well learnt, to not gobbble up a huge mouthful of something just because it looks like something you love!

Well, with that little story, let us get to the recipe for puli inji / inji puli / inji curry.

Ingredients

Ginger, finely chopped – 1 cup
Tamarind – a key lime sized ball
Water – 1 to 1/2 cups, divided
Curry leaves – 10-12
Coconut Oil – 1/2 cup
Jaggery – 2 tbsp.
Thai Green Chillies – 12, chopped finely
Asafoetida – 1/4 tsp
Turm,eric powder – 1/2 tsp
Cayenne / Red Chilli Powder – 1/2 tsp
Salt – to taste

For tempering

Coconut Oil – 1 tbsp.
Mustard seeds – 1 tsp
Curry leaves – 5-6
Dried Red Chillies – 3

Instructions

Soak the tamarind in 1/4 cup water at a time and squeeze the pulp out of it, till the water becomes much lighter in color (which means there is not much of the tamarind essence in it for it to mix with the water and give out pulp to change the water’s color)
Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed pan.
Add the ginger, green chillies and curry leaves to it. Sauté till the ginger turns a darker brown in color. Be careful to not burn it.
Now add the tamarind pulp to it. Mix well. Add the turmeric, cayenne and salt to it. Mix well and add the asafetida and jiggery to it as well. Mix well and let it all cook together for a couple of minutes till the mixture thickens a little.
Heat the oil for tempering in a sauté pan. Add the mustard seeds. Once it splutters, add dried red chillies and curry leaves. Pour this on to the inji puli mixture. Mix well and store in an air tight container once it is cooled completely.
It will easily stay in the refrigerator for a couple of months. Make sure you always use a dry spoon to take this out.