Tomato Pickle / Thokku - Recipie

Whatever happens in the kitchen remains there always until today, as I decide to pursue that long pending interest of blogging it. I am starting it with a quick-fix dish which comes to rescue you every time there is a press for time in making a side dish for your chappathi or dosa or rice.

Tomato Pickle / Tomato Thokku / Tomato whatever

This is so easy to make and I am gonna post a few pics with description as we see how its made.

Grab as many tomatoes as your cooker can hold, cut them into whatever shape you like, and close the lid. Boil it in hi-flame. Don't add water. 

While the chemical and nuclear reaction happen in the cooker, prepare these and keep ready. You need Garlic, Green chillies, Curry/Chilli powder, turmeric powder. salt and mustard seeds. Start chopping chilles (and garlic if you wish).

Wait for 5-6 whistles as the tomatoes crush over and over.  

While the tomato cooks, fry mustard seeds, followed by chillies and garic in oil until it turns brown. 

So this is how it looked when I opened the cooker lid. It is surprising - the amount of water it contains. It takes effort to stir and let this evaporate, which is the reason why we don't add water and boil the tomatoes raw.

Add the fried garlic + chilli mix to the tomatoes, keep stirring once every 3 mins on medium flame for about 15-20 mins,  as the water evaporate and make way for a thick remanant. 

At the end of it, the stuff looks like this. Once you keep the lid closed for about 4-5 hours, it forms a much finer paste, highly rich in taste, and you can't avoid adding it your meal anymore.

I took this recipie from my mother and sister, it could have several variants, such as the one my aunt suggested - which is adding onion and capsicum to the garlic mix before mixing with the tomatoes.

Jilla - Movie review

Ten years back, I still remember what happened in the car streets of Madurai temple. Actor Vijay was tapping his legs and taunted at Prakash Raj as he took out on a thrilling challenge in rescuing Thrisha in Gilli. The speed of that movie, and its engaging screenplay is unmatchable till date, compared to any of his other movies. Vijay took one more round of attack in those same streets with the Madurai rowdies for Jilla before actually being one of them in the first half. His effort and challenge in Jilla failed to repeat the Gilli magic. A good amount of  its success, must be attributed to Mohan lal whose strong portrayal of his character lead to what was a good father-son contest.  

Jilla - official movie poster

Been to this ace actor - Vijay's flick today and it turned out to be another fun-filled action movie of his usual kind. The screenplay is The 600k likes of the official facebook page indicates the fan base of this ace actor, and the expectation for this new movie which hit the screens yesterday, scheduled in line with this year's Pongal festival. Releasing it a week before must be a strategic decision, to cash in on the fan crowd in the initial 4 days followed by the long pongal weekend which would attract other viewers. 

Vijay's ability to pin down several hundred rowdies with just a cell phone while also playing temple run on his iPad is worth a laughter. While shooting several good clips is worth an appreciation, not being able to organize them together resulted in a dragged fallacious screenplay effort having meaningless distractions every now and then. The comedy scenes were really good, so is the plot, and is supposed to turn out a very good movie if it was not for the length and lackness of engaging screenplay. A movie should make you glue to your seat with a "what will happen next" feeling throughout the movie. Like what Gilli did. Jilla failed to repeat the magic. 

And yeah, I forget to say that the movie also had a female lead who came here and there but then it was evident that its for just the sake of having one, and dance in the songs. Could have given more emphasis to that role.