Podis, pickles sold by city restaurants gain popularity

Tarun Alexander of Ninan’s restaurant in Parry’s Corner has been selling various pickles after the lockdown. “Soon after the lockdown was announced, we had to shut the restaurant because of the restrictions. During that time, my friend Shamini suggested the idea of making pickles. We started making meat, prawn, pork, beef and fish pickles at home. We recreated recipes of my grandfather and my parents’,” says Tarun.

The youngster does not make pickles in large quantities and store them. “Apart from selling via social media, we sell pickles in our restaurant. Sometimes, I do angling at Covelong and make pickles with what I catch. But the most preferred fish pickle is vanjiram. I started by making 2 kgs of each pickle and now I am preparing 10 kgs of each. This shows how the demand for the pickles has increased in the past few months,” he adds. Apart from non-veg varieties, Tarun also makes mango pickles.

For the past four years, Nalina Kannan, the owner of Thaligai restaurant, has been making sambar, rasam and karamadhu powders. But during the lockdown, she decided to prepare different podis like coconut podi, karuveppilai podi and paruppu podi. “These podis can be used in various ways — can be readily mixed with rice and eaten or you can make other dishes with the podis. For eg, you can add our coconut podi to sambar and make arachuvitta sambar. You can also make thengai thuvaiyal with the podi. Similarly, with karuveppilai podi, you can make traditional karuveppilai podi sadham and also make karuveppilai kuzhambu — you just have to add tamarind paste and boil it. Our podis are free from any preservatives, fillers or colourings. We make our products fresh and in small batches,” says Nalina.