Dew Moon Drop: Everything about Udupi

Monday, February 10, 2020

Everything about Udupi - well almost

All things typical Udupi, signature Udupi region.

Udupi Anantheswara Temple

Construction style

Bricks

Also seen in other Arabian Sea coastal places like Goa & Kerala.

Coconut Totha

Uggel or Well

One permanent feature in most traditional house compound - Uggel or Well.

Actually every new house construction as well begins with digging a well for water-source. These traditional ones have a different look thanks to the large bricks. They hardly make those anymore.

Udupi name is also linked to many restaurants in India. Udupi place has its own uniquely typical, delicious and healthy cusiine. And when the people from here immigrated to Bombay and further away, they setup hotels, to cash-in on their culinary skills. And I would credit them to introducing the idli, dosa, vada, sambhar and rasam to the rest of the world. Slowly these have become generic fare. Yet Udupi cuisine is much more different. Ofcourse, no hotel food is going to match the home-cooked fare. Mainly because it is not photogenic. And also because there are some typical veggies which are not found everywhere all year round. These veggies are the ones which have

Basale / Poi / Chinese Spinach

My earliest memories of leafy foods is Basale. Finding it in US farmers market was a thrill.

Pumpkin

Deeguje

Can there be a better vegetable than this ? We always called it baby jackfruit. I guess that what it translates to.

Jackfruits

Fruit

Leaf for idli mould

And last, but the most important identifier of Udupi - Tulu. The language of Udupi. I don't have any picture or video to capture the essence of my mother-tongue. Others have done better work of documenting it. Blogger Ee Prapancha has documented thoroughly, each step to learn Tulu. I am only beginning to use it to teach my kids, who otherwise don't have enough Tulu speakers around to learn from. I highly recommend this tutorial.

Dew Moon Drop