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Vishu
The Malayalam New Year, begun by viewing the kani and eaten with a bitter, sweet and sour dish of neem flower, jaggery and raw mango.
Spices for Vishu
Vishu starts with the kani, an arrangement of gold, fruit, a mirror, konna flowers and rice, seen first on waking. The feast, the Vishu sadya, includes veppampoo (neem flower) rasam, mango pachadi and a sweet, thick payasam, and cooks say the dishes together represent the tastes of the year ahead: bitter, sweet and sour. Chilli, mustard seed and curry leaf feature in the tempering of the pachadi, and jaggery and ginger bring the sweet notes. The rice dish Vishukatta is a sweet rice cake, steamed with coconut and cardamom.
The spices
Written by the EveryMasala desk with AI assistance. Background: "Vishu" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Ginger: Venkatx5, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Cardamom: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Mustard seed: Pancrat, CC BY-SA 3.0, source