Last night I made the unfortunate choice of making my mom's famous "pudhu vidha kozhambu" with chenai fry. The unfortunate part was not the kozhambu which turned out delicious, the recipe of which will follow sometime down the line in the blog. However the problem was more the chenai. Chenai or Suran or elephant yam is a popular vegetable in India and manifests itself in south Indian cooking as a "fry" of sorts where you simply toss the well-washed finely cut pieces in a bit of oil and roast/fry it or as a masiyal, a mash which is pressure cooked. Having found it at the Indian store last week, I was rather excited and picked it up. And so I opted for the "fry" version last night and patiently spent quite sometime cleaning the mud off and peeling away the thick skin and what not. And appearances-wise it looked pretty good and the couple of spoonfuls I did for the taste test passed too.
So imagine my surprise when during dinner my throat started hurting. I kept clearing my throat and gulping down water only for intense pain to shoot out, akin to what I imagine a few 100 pins stuck down your throat would feel like. I looked at S to see if he was showing any symptoms. However he was calmly munching and watching some Vadivel comedy. By now with the intense discomfort, I was half-sure that I had managed to somehow exclusively poison myself. With my panic getting more evident, S glances at me and states calmly that throat discomfort and a "cut" feeling of the tongue are common side-effects to chenai eating - something I was grossly unaware of in all those times I've had chenai in India. How could it be? I was pretty certain there was no such thing and after soothing my battered throat with some yogurt, proceeded to read about it on the Internet. Turns out he was right! Apparently though it may irritate your digestive tract a bit, it's very good for your stomach. Yeah right. I sure am in no hurry to buy/make/eat chenai anytime soon. Not after last night. No, thanks.
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