The Making Of Ericcha Koottu

The past ten days of festival did have its fallouts in terms of various kinds of dishes beginning with sambar, koottu, mor kozhambu, rasam, poriyal, avial, etc., left over in small quantities over a period of time. Stored in the fridge safely though.

My mom was asking me to make an ericcha koottu out of all those leftovers for today.
The best vessel for such purpose was at hand - our new kalchatty.

She was telling me about how the leftovers from a big lunch on festivals or occassions, was emptied into the kalchatti and allowed to simmer away for hours in those days.

It would be mixture of just about all the dishes without adding anything, not even salt, as all the dishes would contain their own set of spices and ingredients like salt, coconut paste, spices, oil, etc. This was called 'ericcha koottu' where ericcha in Tamil means to 'heat' and koottu would mean 'a mixture of'.
So you got a new dish just by combining all you have as leftovers and re-heating them all up in a thick bottomed vessel, preferably a kalchatti/kal chatty. With time it would thicken without getting burnt in the bottom.
Usually the next day would be rest day for the women of the house.
Plain rice and the ericcha koottu would taste divine after a heavy feast.

This was perhaps done for the following reasons:

To take a much needed rest the next day after a function or festival which usually involved long hours at the kitchen in preparing several courses for lunch and dinner.

The leftovers were never wasted nor thrown away. Heating all the leftovers din't require any special talent. Moreover re-heating would ensure that all those dishes never got spoilt because those were the days when refrigerators were unheard of. Heating each dish separately never made any sense due to maybe small quantities of leftovers. Combining them all would give a good quantity enough to feed an entire family.

Distribution of leftovers was not considered good except to give it off to beggars who would come visiting homes for food on a regular basis in those days. Then there were unwritten rules about when to feed such people. They were never given food before the guests and hosts ate. They were never fed after sunset either. They were given food only after the last of the guests had left.
With so many restraints no wonder some clever housewife thought of this way to re-use so many dishes to save her energy and time the next day instead of wasting so much food on one hand and preparing fresh food all over again, on the other.

The 'ericcha Kootu' is a 'recycled' tasty food!

Cheers!

Mahalakshmi