Every typical Tamil Brahmin household will make full use of the summer sun to make various sun dried savories and pickles. Drying green mango simply with salt or salt + chilli powder, Drying ripe mango juice to make 'manga therai', making vadaam, karodam,....
Anything which could be dried - bitter gourd, ladies finger, lotus stem...All were dried.
Everything for the rainy day.
How can I forget Chilly?
Special varieties of chilly are sourced from places (as far away as Palani) and then over the course of several days, dried under hot sun.
During the day, the chilly dry under the hot sun and at night time they soak in the cool curd!
Somehow this was so true of me and my cousins when we were kids!
We too played under the hot sun - became dark and thin like twigs, and then cooled off with liters of cool thayir / moru. By the time vacation got over, we had put on few inches of height and a few kilos in weight!!
Ingredients:
Green chilly (preferably round short variety) - 3 kgs
Thick Curd - 1 liter
Salt (preferably sea salt) to taste
Method:
Wash the green chilly well and dry them with a clean cloth.
Mix the curd and salt.
Make a small slit in each green chilly and add them to the curd. Do this in the evening.
Next morning, take a clean flat plate and place each chilly on it without any excess curd. Save the excess curd.
Dry it under the sun.
In the evening, immerse the semi-dried chilly into the left over curd.
Next morning, dry only the chilly under the sun.
Repeat the immersing process until you finish all the curd.
Then continue drying the chilly until they become crisp.
Notice that the green chilly is not green anymore.
Store in air tight container and use as required.
How to use:
Take out the required number of dried milagai.
Heat ample oil in a kadai and deep fry the chilly till it becomes deep brown.
If you want to maintain it's crispiness, transfer WITH the oil (after cooling) into a container with lid.
Even if you store it without the oil, it tastes good, but will become soft, not crisp.
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