Sundaikkai/ Turkey Berry/ Pea Aubergine.........

What a delight it was to discover this lovely veggie - growing right under our noses (or rather right above our heads, since it is on our terrace), and that too just when Shirish was getting ready to chop it right off - why? ask him...some logic about, "we don't know what it is and it is unnecessarily occupying space". Thankfully, I intervened and requested an extension of time for a few more days - I wanted to photograph it and send it to a city farming group to ask if anyone knew why this particular brinjal plant was producing berries instead of brinjals.

This sunday we finally managed to take that pic and send it across - and before the day was over, we were overjoyed to find we were growing turkey berry. This is called Sundaikkai is Tamil and is an item found in its buttermilk-dipped sun-dried form (called vathal) in traditional households , which is then fried in ghee and had as a crunchy slightly bitter accompaniment to either curd rice or just the whole meal. We have been using the store-bought sun-dried version too for quite a while. However, this was the first time we have laid our eyes on the green berry, we sliced one open and found it is filled with tiny brinjal-like seeds underneath the thin outer skin.

Sundaikkai puli kootu

Pachai Sundaikkai mor kuzhambu

Soon we were cruising the web to download some of those delectable recipes using this berry (or should i say brinjal?) and needless to say enjoying them in mor kuzhambu (south indian form of kadhi) and kootu (wet subji with tamarind and lentils) forms in our next meal.



This berry supposedly has medicinal properties - helps with digestive disorders, keeps away coughs and colds etc...check out the wiki link for more info. I am hoping my tummy is magically set right after consuming all those sundaikkais. ;-)

I also found out that these brinjals are specifically used in Thai cuisine - esp. the characteristic green and yellow curries.

Characteristically they are supposed to be a bit bitter, however, we could hardly detect any bitterness in our berries. All the better for us, eh!

Look at how many we managed to collect from 2 such plants, in addition to the tomatoes and those 7 peas (he he!).

An interesting comment from the city farming group was "We have such amazing varieties of Brinjal with us and yet why are we running after the BT Brinjal!". Surely worth thinking about.