Agathipoo thambuli

The thambuli, or thambli, or tambuli is one of the simplest and most brilliant little dishes every lover of Indian food should absolutely borrow from the Udipi/ Dakshin Kannada culinary repertoire. You can call it a “raita salad” or a “yogurt dip” or as you please, but it’s neither, possibly both and always something else entirely.

The word of course conjugates thampu + huli, cooling+curry (usually sambar-like) which makes it roughly a body-cooling sour gravy eaten with hot rice, especially on days when the more substantial and significantly more sour sambars and rasams are either missing or just unpalatable because it’s so hot outside.

Thambulis are typically made with fresh coconut and chillies ground together with—and here’s the exciting part—all manner of unusual ingredients: pomegranate peels (Daalimbe sippe thambuli), drumstick flowers, brahmi leaves (available in small bunches), karpooravalli or doddepatre (no it’s not ajwain and it’s most certainly not oregano, but that’s another story), keezh nelli/ bhoomi amla/ Phyllanthus niruri (Nella nelli tambli), even guava leaves (Perale chiguru tambuli) and watermelon peels, Chakramuni or “vitamin soppu” (Chakramuni soppina thambuli) and hibiscus flowers (Dasavala hovina thambuli). I’m adding to that list with the agathipoo or the agase hoovu thambuli: a Kannadiga dish should carry a Kannada name, after all. [Also see Radhika’s version, with dreamy images.]

I realize I’m drifting away from regional and community-specificities in grouping all thambulis as one; Sushma Maheshwar of Khaadyaa for example told me of brined wild citrus (herelekayi or kanchi kayi) thambulis that are specialties of the haveeka community of Mangalore and Kasargod region. But borrowings inevitably value broad generalizations over specificities. We have loved the thambuli and enthusiastically adopted it in our meals for the simple reason that it is an absolutely perfect way to consume exactly these unusual ingredients which are either available only in small quantities, or which should be consumed sparingly, or which would be hard to consume in anything but small portions. Think: karpooravalli or even ginger with its sharp tastes, bhoomi amla or brahmi with its bitterness, or pomegranate peels which are inedible as they are. But in the thambuli, they’re all transformed—a little into more-than-enough, a texture that softens in a quick ghee sauté, a pungency or a bitterness that mellows in the company of chillies, coconut, and fresh curd. Think you can’t eat those watermelon peels? Tastes too sharp and the kids won’t touch? Don’t have enough greens for a dal or a full vegetable dish? Chances are what you do have is perfect for a thambuli.

A spoonful of sugar, they say, but really, curd-coconut-green chillies, perhaps ginger and a good tempering with all the usual suspects are even better delivery mechanisms for a good many ingredients with excellent medicinal and nutritive properties. One of those ways in which regional Indian cuisines demonstrate that food is medicine and medicine is food, precisely because it’s delivered in forms such as these, and in small, quotidian, measured, slow ways. Think “slow food” is just an Italian thing? Think again, with the thambuli.

Each thambuli version bears the unmistakable signature of its main flavoring ingredient. It’s a little like rasam that way: a single formula, a million possibilities. So what you see here is just one demonstration of what’s possible, using the seasonal, medicinal gorgeousness that is the agathi flower, or (in this case white) Sesbania Grandiflora blossoms about which I’ve written in greater detail in this prior post.

I haven’t yet found a perfect equivalent delivery mechanism for difficult and unusual ingredients in any other regional cuisine. The Palakkad Iyer “araichu-kalakki” (literally: ground and mixed) comes closest in its use of small portions of brined mango or nellikaya with curd and coconut, finished with a tempering comparable to that which completes a tambuli. But that pacchadi-like preparation seems more often made with brined fruit or even cooked elephant foot yam, and less often with ingredients like methi leaves, lightly salted. On the other hand, brined kanchi kayi or heralekai [a citron or micrantha citrus descendant] in a tambuli seems more the exception than the rule. [My thanks to Aparna Balasubramanian & Sushma Maheshwar for helping me work out this comparison.]

Agathipoo Thambuli or Agase Hoovu Thambuli

A light, cooling curd-coconut-agathi blossom preparation, best had with mouthfuls of hot rice, the thambuli is an Udipi and South Karnataka speciality—and the easiest way to consume unusual and medicinal ingredients in small, dosed portions!

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Ingredients

  

• ½ teaspoon ghee
• 6 large agathi flowers
• 1 small green chilli
• ½ cup freshly grated coconut
• 1-1 ½ cups thick fresh yogurt
• Salt to taste
• a pinch or two of jaggery, if the curd is very sour

Tempering

• ¼ tablespoon ghee
• ½ teaspoon urad dal/black gram dal
• ½ teaspoon mustard seeds
• 1 dry red chilli, broken
• Generous pinch of hing/asafoetida
• 1 sprig curry leaves

Instructions

 

• Prepare the agathi flowers by pinching off the calyces and pulling out the stamens. This is a good recipe to make use of any loose petals, so it’s no worry if the blossoms don’t hold together while cleaning. Rinse the petals, pat dry with a clean tea towel and chop roughly.
• Heat the ghee in a small frying pan or even a tempering pan.
• When the ghee is very hot, add the green chilli (broken into pieces) and fry for barely a minute.
• Then follow with the cleaned and chopped agathi flowers and sauté until they’re wilted and releasing their juices.
• Transfer the flowers and green chilli to the jar of a blender, along with the fresh grated coconut, a spoon or two of the curd, and a tiny bit of jaggery (if using). Blend to a not-too-fine paste.
• Transfer this mixture to a serving bowl, combine with the rest of the yogurt and add salt, to taste.

To temper and serve

• Heat the ghee in the same small frying or tempering pan.
• When it is hot, drop in all the dry spices. They will crackle and sputter; follow with the curry leaves. Once those are crisp, pour the tempering over the waiting tambuli and mix well to infuse flavors.
• The traditional method is to serve this at room temperature with hot rice, but if you want to chill it and use it as a side salad with hot parathas or other breads, that’s your call!