I love cooking elaborate, full-course South Indian meals. I have shared quite a few on my blog; you can find them all under my “Indian Thali” category. Like every other festive spread, this is also a no-onion, no-garlic spread. Before getting into the individual recipe details, let me quickly share about the ugadi festival.
Ugadi
Ugadi or Yugadi is the New Year’s Day for Karnataka, Andhra, Telangana, and Maharashtra. Maharashtrians celebrate the same as Gudi Padwa. Yugadi means Yuga (age) + adi (beginning). It is the beginning of the new age/year. We celebrate Ugadi on the first day of the lunisolar calendar.
The Feast
We (parents and grandparents) are Kannadigas born and raised in Tamil Nadu. So, our food is an amalgamation of both Kannada and Tamil cuisine. One thing we don’t skip on Yugadi is the Bevu Bella Pachadi; I have explained its significance in this post. In the US, we don’t get off for Ugadi. If the festival falls on weekdays, I typically ensure the Ugadi spread has bevu bella, panagam, neer mor, kheer/payasam, and kosambari. Then I either make sambar rice or bisibelebath and raita so that we can pack the same for lunch. If it falls during the weekend, I make elaborate meals with sambar, rasam, palys/poriyal, vadai, and obbattu like below.
Prepping for the Ugadi spread
As always, chop the required vegetables the day before or before cooking. If I plan to make vadai, I start by soaking the lentils for vadai and kosambari and then pressure cook the toor dal for sambar and rasam. Along with toor dal, I pressure cook the required vegetables. Parallely, I roast ingredients for sambar and rasam. While it is cooling, I make other recipes like panagam, neer mor, kosambari, and pachadi. Then I do sambar, rasam, payasam and vadai. I always keep poli towards the end.
My Ugadi thali
I did not include fryums in this spread as we don’t fry store-bought papad or fryums on Amavasya day. But you can add that as well. Here are the delicacies and their details. You can find the recipe links below.
As always I have Anna (rice), Tovve (Cooked toor dal), Thuppa (ghee)
Obbattu – A sweet flatbread with channa dal – jaggery stuffing. Recipe in my Essential South Indian Cookbook. I will post a different version here soon. Those small laddoos are the leftover stuffing.
Happy Ugadi to all. I hope you can all draw inspiration from this no-onion no-garlic Ugadi spread. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. I will share the daily updates on my Instagram and my FB group. So stay connected! Happy Cooking! Vidhya Update notes: Earlier posted in 2018, now updated the list with WPRM recipe roundup items.
