Thondekai (Tindora) Godambi Sasive Anna

I have come a long way in my relationship with Thondekai (Tindora). Progressing in stages from being perfect strangers to distant acquaintances for years on end and out of the blue, to being very much in love now. Not a love story that I anticipated, but glad that it happened.

ps: Be warned of a picture heavy post.

For the first half of my life, there was little chance for me to get to know this vegetable. My grandfather’s kitchen (which I have almost always talked about on many posts) was and (still is) strictly sattvic pure vegetarian, alright. One where onions and garlic or even a mention of the duo were forbidden and quite a many vegetables welcome in everyone’s homes barred. Simply put, anything that belonged to rajasic and tamasic categories were off limits of which, Thondekai/Tindora, Nuggekai /Drumstick, Mushrooms, Radishes and Bottlegourd are a few that come to my mind as I type.

It was during my engineering days, the days of living on my own for the first time that I caught a glimpse of them up close in cooked form in the hostel mess. Glimpse because, tasting was far from happening, as by then it was etched in my mind to steer clear of eating anything from the barred list, out of sheer habit. I had no regrets about it and life continued normally without Tindora for a long time.

After marriage, Thondekai made a re-entry into my life through my mom-in-law’s culinary repertoire – a mouthwatering mix of traditional Andhra, Tamil, Mangalorean and North Indian cuisines and a mishmash of everything that she had made her own. Much loved by everybody in my new home, Tindora was not just one of my Mr.K’s favorite vegetables but also a nostalgic one that transported him to his childhood days of growing up in Mangalore. Knowing that and even after having tasted Thondekai in different dishes, it never quite entered my kitchen for years.

A couple of years back, I found a plastic bag filled with miniature cucumber lookalikes in the refrigerator one morning while digging up vegetables for the day’s menu. Over the years, I knew that if a particular vegetable appeared in the refrigerator without my involvement, it was Mr. K’s way of non-verbally hinting at a favorite dish he had been craving to eat.

To not complain is a virtue that honestly I feel lack terribly. The opposite is true however with Mr.K. So, the last thing I wanted to do is throw an excuse with my lack of experience in cooking with it. Instead, I started devising delicious plans in my mind.

This recipe has been a favorite of ours for as long as I can remember. So, I played around with this safe recipe featuring Thondekai and whole cashews as the main characters. It surprised me like a bollywood small budget super hit movie cast with debutante hero and heroine, as if it was beginner’s luck!

Each morsel is a sensory roller coaster – curvy whole golden cashews beautifully contrasting the crunchy slender Tindora quarters smothered in a masala paste of fiery red chillies and pungent raw mustard seeds mellowed by the sweetness of freshly grated coconut, spiked with the tartness of tamarind, resplendent with shades of yellow from the turmeric and ground mustard and their earthy scents complementing each other like a lovelorn young couple.

Hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do.

One a tangential note, I believe in the ayurvedic way of cooking and eating right for one’s body type and care about well being of the mind-body-spirit and aware of the ill effects of tamasic and rajasic foods on these aspects.

In this day and age, however hard we try, our lifestyles are woven in such a way that we eat far more tamasic food than we might realize be it pizza at a birthday party or samosa at a get together (who knows how old the oil was or if it was frozen and re-fried) or cakes and pastries laden with preservatives, to name a few. In comparison, Tindora might be less tamasic after all when cooked fresh and consumed at home.

There might come a day when I move away completely from all of those including Tindora. But for now, here is this punch of a recipe.