Majjiga Mirapakayalu – Oora Mirapakayalu

Majjiga mirapakayalu or Oora Mirapakayalu

These buttermilk soaked, sun dried chillies are best accompaniments for daal rice, curd rice and various other dishes. This one is again an Andhra recipe. My mother who is a kannadiga makes a a different version of these sun dried masala chillies called as “Mente Menashinakayi” literally translated to Fenugreek Chillies. More on this one in a different post coming back to majjiga mirapakayalu a very  basic and simple list of ingredients  are required, though the process is elaborate and time consuming one. Also weather needs to cooperate :-). We will need continuous sunny days for at least a week. So Met dept predictions may come handy although in my case it didn’t help much 🙂

We will need long firm green chillies which are not too thin. We get specific chillies for this in summer season. However like everything else these days, we may get these chillies in other seasons too.Like I made my last batch in November last year.

Ingredients

1. 250 gm – Long and medium thickness chillies.
2. Curd ( approx 500ml for 250 gms of chillies)
3. Salt ( Per taste and the mix should be tad bit salty)
4. Carrom seeds – 1 tsp
5. Hing – 1/2 tsp

Process

Wash clean and dry the chillies.  Once all the moisture from the chillies is gone, make long slits with a knife and deseed them if these are very hot variety.Based on spice levels of the chillies you may retain some seeds or remove them completely.

Caution: Use a small spoon or tooth pick to deseed. For people like me who are sensitive to chillies,  please wear gloves. You will be handling a god amount of chillies and believe me it wise to do so.

 Now take curd in a blender, add salt, carrom seeds( ajwain), hing, little water and blend it all together. If the curd is not thick you may avoid adding water. Also the Curd mix should be tad bit slightly saltish as this will get balanced by the spice of chillies.

 

Place the chillies in an airtight bottle jar or a plastic container. Pour the curd mix over the chillies so that all of it is properly immersed in the curd. (Do not use steel containers as the curd and salt mix will corrode the steel). Now close the lid of the bottle and keep it aside. You need to let these marinate for 3 days. Every day twice i.e morning and evening mix the chillies and adjust these down to ensure all of them are properly covered in the curd. On the fourth day morning remove these chillies.. drip the excess curd off and line them on a sheet or plates and dry them under direct sun.  As I mentioned earlier, we had a bad weather and had lot of stray kittens when I made these, hence had to dry them indoors. Even this worked well without any issues. In the evening get these chillies back in and soak them in the curd mix again and let them sit for the night. Next morning we will again drip the excess curd off and line them and dry in the sun. This process needs to be repeated for 2-3 days at least.

 

You will see that most of the curd has been soaked up as well. Post that you dry the chillies for a day or two more. Once you see that the chillies are very light and crisp store them in an airtight container. These have. Very long shelf life ( even upto a year).

Fry these in medium hot oil as these turn brown to burnt very quickly. It’s a quick frying process. These chillies go very well with plain daal rice (we call it  mudda pappu  in Telugu),  tomato daal and rice. I personally can eat these with anything even with chapatis and daal also.

#ootaayita #majjigamirapakayalu