in days prior to hybrid seeds, fruits and vegetables used to be seasonal.
other than a few obvious fruits like mangoes, jackfruit, most knowledge of seasonaility has been eradicated from the memories of the populace.
but those like us who use mostly native seeds, seasonality is a real and an important factor in growing and eating.
till our parents' generation, one important skill that the women of the house had to master was the preservation of vegetables.
this is locally referred to as vathal making, i.e., sun-dried vegetables.
here is our experience with pavakkai/karela/bitter gourd.
as you would have guessed, we learnt this process from karpagam's mother.
fresh from the nearby farm - less than 24 hours since plucking from the field.
it is halved and then hollowed out (seeds removed).
sliced into thin discs and soaked in curd + manjal podi/haldi/turmeric + salt.
this soaking is done overnight and next morning, it is squeezed dry and laid out to dry in the sun.
it shrivels up in the heat for around 6-7 hours.
after the sun goes down, it is again soaked in the same curd mixture and kept overnight.
and laid out to dry the next morning.
this drying/soaking process is repeated for another two days/nights (with the same curd mixture) - this means a total of three days of drying.
you will notice how the discs swell up after the overnight soaking and shrivels up at the end of drying.
at the end, it will look like this.
this will store very simply for over a year.
they can be used after giving them a light sautee in all sambars/gravies or just deep fry and have it like crisps and have it with curd rice.
we did another vathal with kothavarai/cluster beans.
this is simpler.
boil the beans, lightly coat with the same curd mixture and dry.
if lucky, one drying day could suffice, else 2 days should be enough.
as a rule, the more the drying the surer you are about the shelf life.
for the hawkeyed, the final vathal shots are from batch 1 and the work-in-progress shots are from batch 2.
