Paati's Pumpkin Laddu Curry
This hot-sweet-sour laddu curry is a favourite across generations, made with soft-cooked pumpkin slices.
Paati, my grandmother, was one of those effortless cooks. She would know the perfect combinations of dishes, proportion and portions accurately. But she wouldn’t get into the everyday cooking in our large household and was happy to leave the responsibility to her co-sister, remaining a supporting member in the background.
Every morning, she would sit all the kids for breakfast — fermented rice mixed with curd and the day-old vatha kozhambu. Sometimes there would be previous night’s pumpkin laddu curry as well.
Paati would often choose the day after a heavy feast to make laddu curry because the sweetness would provide such a clear-eyed respite, as well as being a total indulgence. The creepers on top of our cattle shed that had grown and multiplied from a carelessly tossed seed gave us plump fruits. In fact, there were so many pumpkins ready for plucking at the same time that paati would distribute one to each household in the Agraharam every day. In those times, laddu curry would feature continuously on our home menu.
She would supervise the making of the laddu curry with tender, small pumpkins, and serve it as a sweet side to rice — a combination that was one of her favourites. She would serve it for everyone along with the vatha kozhambu and sutta appalam for dinner and save the rest for the following day.
When she cooked the laddu curry herself, paati would add each ingredient carefully for the right amount of time. The mustard seeds would splutter and only then the dals would be fried to a golden brown, until the outer layer turns crunchy.
The laddu curry is predominantly sweet, the sweetness imparted by the copious amount of jaggery in it. In fact, the laddu in the curry refers to the soft-cooked pumpkin pieces, caramelised to a melting-sweet goodness. Mild sourness from the tamarind provides a nice backdrop for the sweetness and the crunchy tadka brings about a textural relief from both the softness and sweetness. Paired with the spicy vatha kuzhambu and rice, the flavours of the curry explode on the tongue.
Laddu curry doesn’t exist outside our household. I am sure it was paati’s invention and I, who has inherited paati’s cooking style and looks, is the only one who can make the curry as tasty as paati did. Every time I make it, it takes me a back a couple of decades, to the times I spent with paati.
Recipe: Paati’s Pumpkin Laddu Curry
Ingredients:
500 g yellow pumpkin
Marble-sized ball of tamarind, soaked in little water for a thick extract
1 tsp mustard seeds
6 dried red chillies, torn into two
Handful of urad dal, soaked in water for 10 minutes
Handful of chana dal, soaked in water for 10 minutes
2 tbsp freshly grated coconut
1 lime-ball sized chunk jaggery
1 tbsp sesame oil for tadka
Salt to taste
Method:
Cook the pumpkins in salted water until soft. When they are almost done, add the tamarind extract.
Now in a separate kadahi, add 1 tbsp of sesame oil, splutter the mustard, add the chillies.
To this kadahi, now add the dals and fry until golden.
Strain the water from the cooked pumpkin and add the dals along with the tadka. Now add the jaggery, lower the flame and cook until the pumpkin caramelises.
Turn off the stove and add grated coconut.
Vijayalakshmi Sridhar is a features writer and a published fiction author currently based out of Bengaluru.
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