Vepampoo Vathal [Soured & Sun-dried Neem Flowers]

Vathal, vadagam, veppillai katti, vadaam. So many preserving techniques beyond salting/pickling and sugaring that make full use of the sun’s blazing heat in the summers, occupying terraces and nesting on the soft cotton of old, thin saris repurposed to catch flowers as they fall, hold things as they dry or protect them from crows. Think it’s only your grandmother who wore saris? Think again. The garden and the terraces wear them, too. Full meal solar cooking is one thing, but really we’ve been using the sun to “cook and keep” for a whole lot longer.

Vathals are typically chilies, cluster beans, sundakkai/turkey berries, manathakkali/ black nightshade/ Solanum nigrum and a few other vegetables, cooked, soaked in curd, and sun-dried. They’re then stored and deep-fried to a crisp, and eaten as a crisp-sour-bitter but always intense accompaniment to curd-rice or as a dry condiment, as part of a bigger meal.

Vathals are related to vadaams insofar as they both result in what folks like to call “fryums“–those brightly colored bits in all kinds of shapes you’ll find in big sacks at any local market, and which get similarly fried like applaams or papads to accompany a meal. The difference is that they are just prepared (usually from rice flour and sabudana/sago) and dried, while vathals are (thanks to the addition of curd) also lacto-fermented.

Vadagams are a different sort of thing altogether. Usually made from little onions or sambar vengayam, garlic and other spices which have been finely processed and dried, formed into balls and stored to be used as incomparable flavor-enhancers for fish and meat gravies and sambars and kootus alike [Vijayalakshmi Sasiram has a nice recipe for thalippu vadagams on her blog]. All the hoopla about umami as the 7th taste beyond our conventional understandings of arusuvai? I think the vadagam challenges the theory that there is one, such wonders does it work with just the existing 6 and brings umami to your palate anyway.

Vepillai katti, unlike the others, is a specific preparation rather than a category–made from dried narthangai (not citron!) and maybe other native lime/lemon leaves and other spices into a dry pickle, often in the form of little roundels. It’s a lot like vadagams in its self-sufficiency and flavor-bomb-like qualities, except it’s not used in cooking but in eating. It’s a fabulous accompaniment to curd-rice.

All this is the “ecosystem” within which this present addition to this repertoire exists. Eshwari Kishore seeded the idea a long time ago; her mother’s recipe. It calls for a curd-based spice paste in which neem flowers are soaked, the process repeated multiple times. A simplified version would be just to use curd to soak neem flowers, much as is done to prepare the common mor-molagai or curd-soaked sun-dried chilli. My version is a middle-path, inspired by Eshwari’s mother’s recipe, and a bit less minimalist than my own.

Whatever the path, the intensifying sourness of curd balances the slight-sweet bitters of neem flowers perfectly, and then there’s a bit of spice added–or not.

This vepampoo vathal can be stored and used two ways: fried with seasonings and added to plain white rice or as a seasoning for something else, like a plain moong dal that could do with a bit of a sour-bitter finish, perhaps, or a majjiga pulusu or curd-gravy which is sour anyway and would love that slight neem bitter. These vathals are simple little ways to enhance the subtle flavors of a dish via its tempering (in that, not unlike the vadagam).

Vepampoo vathal

Neem flowers, spiced, soured with curd and sun-dried are a seasonal addition to the Tamil repertoire of vathals–which are then fried and become a condiment accompanying a traditional meal, or a tempering to lift something a simple dal off its feet!

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Ingredients

  

• 1 cup of dried neem flowers washed and picked over for any remaining stems or dirt
• 1 tablespoon yogurt
• 1 small green chilli or 1/2 teaspoon red chilli powder
• A pinch of hing
• A pinch of salt

Instructions

 

• Chop the green chilli (if using) and add it to the jar of a small blender—blend to a paste. Alternatively, you can pound it into a fine paste using a mortar and pestle. Remove any larger bits by hand.
• Add all the ingredients to the neem flowers and mix very well.
• Let this mixture soak for about an hour. Then spread on a plate and set in the sun to dry.
• Allow the neem flowers to dry very well for a day or two in full sun. Turn them over to ensure even drying.
• Bottle and store. This should keep at room temperature (in an airtight jar) for a year, but to be safe you can refrigerate it.

To use & serve:

• Heat some oil and add the dried-soaked flowers. Fry till darkening and serve with hot white rice or as a condiment/ an accompaniment to a meal.
• You can also add cumin and garlic slices while frying and make a burnt garlic and neem topping for white rice.
• Alternatively, add a generous pinch of the neem flowers to the tempering for a simple, plain dal or a curd gravy or buttermilk rasam (keeping in mind that this will sour it further).