Among the various people who have adopted me as their own, a notable pair from Mumbai, is ND and his lovely bride RD. ND without fail will call me every Sunday morning to check if I am still alive and to assure himself that I have not removed his name from my last will and testament.
Today was no exception but, our conversation took off into a different orbit when he grandly announced, to irritate me, that RD was making Undhiyu for lunch today.
That took me to my younger and more adventurous days when I used to travel extensively and taste local cuisines wherever I happened to be. I have had Undhiyu the way it should be had; under a warm winter sun in an open field in a farm with the dish being cooked in the field. I have also had the dish made the modern way using pressure cookers in a number of places and, one notable occasion was when ND’s sister in love JD, one day caught an early morning train from Mumbai to come to Pune for a day to cook Undhiyu for us. She brought all the ingredients from Mumbai as she had doubts that she could get some of them in Pune. She landed up at 11.15 am, came home, cooked and had lunch with us. She then caught the 3.30 pm train back to Mumbai.
So many memories of this particular dish today and to rub salt in my wound the rascal ND, decided to send me a photograph in WhatsApp of what RD had made.
I’d have been all over that dish Ramana, how absolutely delightful, fragrant and multi flavoured, each mouthful a joy!
XO
WWW
You would have had to reduce the chilli portions though!
the internet has a lot to answer for – with “instant photographs”
Catherine de Seton recently posted..Cutting, ripping, gluing and some Knitting
Whatsapp and Facebook are under pressure lately to revise their policy and hopefully things will settle down soon.
That sounds delicious. I’m going to look up a recipe and give that a try.
It is and I would just caution you to go easy on the chilli.
That looks good! I probably would need to chill the chilli, too. My husband always seemed to tolerate much higher seasoned food than my stomach would allow, so I have had to be careful.
I have posted a video of the process of cooking the dish with all the ingredients. I am sure that you will enjoy seeing it.
It looks wonderful, Ramana, but the lazy cook in me thinks it might be an awful lot of work! Although it seems that JD accomplished it in record time!
It does involve a lot of work. JD came with all the ingredients already marinated and ready to be cooked. All that she had to do was to cook it in a pressure cooker. Please see my next post on the traditional way to cook it.
I wonder if other dishes would benefit from being cooked “under a warm winter sun in an open field on a farm”? In fact Wikipedia tells me that “the dish is traditionally cooked upside down underground in earthen pots”. Sounds a bit tricky! But your Undhiyu looks delicious, however it was cooked!
Your comments made me regret not having done something that I should have done in the post. I have now made amends and have posted a new one with a video showing the upside down cooking trick. Thank you.