Pickling a most unlikely item

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In her childhood, spent in the green valley of Pandupara, overlooked by the Malayattoor hills, Mija thought the ‘eerkil thoran’ made in her home was a routine dish. It was a favourite of her father. He always plucked them tender, when the palm leaves had just started to grow from the long midrib (‘eerkil’). Those pale green stems made delicious ‘thoran’ and Mija relished it during the meals with her father.  At the Saras Mela going on at Manjalikulam ground, stall No 95 is a crowd puller. The pickled palm leaf stem is a runaway hit and Mija has already run out of stock. Her husband Thomas Paul has left for the manufacturing unit in Pazhanganadu, near Aluva, to dispatch a quick replenishment. “As a child, all I found intriguing was that the same stem we made ‘thoran’ from would harden into sticks out of which my mother made brooms. It took many years for me to realise that palm leaf stems are not cooked in other households and that it was a dish that my father ought to get a patent for,” laughs Mija.  When she got married to Thomas, he had been running a fertilizer business. It was fetching the couple the bare minimum to make ends meet when their son was born. Mija, banking on her natural talent for cooking, suggested they start a small scale pickle-making business. “Initially, we made the regular pickles - mango, lime and fish - and sold them door-to-door. It caught on and we soon had regular customers. Now, we have a pickle-making unit adjacent to our home with 25 employees,” she says. Though the couple take pride in all the 67 varieties of pickles they market, Mija and Thomas make it a point to start off a sale pitch with the ‘eerkil achar’, their unique selling proposition. “So far, we do not know of anyone else who makes ‘eerkil achar’. My father had learned the ‘thoran’ recipe from his mother. So, I am not sure who is the real inventor of the ‘eerkil’ recipes. But, it was my idea to try making pickles out of it,” says Mija. She says with a laugh that the ‘eerkil’ has to be cut at the right time, but would disclose nothing more about the processing. The couple has reaped a windfall from the Saras Mela. Besides the first batch getting sold out, they have bagged an order for 50 kg of ‘eerkil achar’ from a hotel in the city. The other orders placed by the city residents for their ‘idicha irachi achar’ (mashed dry meat pickle), ‘chemmen achar’ (prawn pickle) and other delicacies total a whopping 500 kg. The appetizing pickles had won the sunny entrepreneur couple the ‘Best product’ award at the Saras exhibitions held in Mumbai and Hyderabad. But Mija and Thomas insist that they prize happy exclamations from customers who taste samples of their pickles more than any award.