The other day my kitchen ran out of onions. There is a vegetable cart vendor outside my son’s school. I usually buy the day’s requirements from him. 

As I was before time for school, I had the time to ask this question to him which I was always wondering about vegetable sellers. 

I ask my friend, I do call him my friend as I meet him 5 days a week, chat with him, miss him when he does not come as I have to go else where to buy my daily vegetables and inquire where he was when he comes back, thus he can be called my friend.

I ask him,” what do you do with your leftover vegetables? What happens to the surplus? Because the product is such its self life is just 2 days? Do you give the left over to the restaurants?”

He tells me, “Ben there is never surplus.”

I am amazed with his answer,”What ? How is it possible?”

He confidently tells me,” my calculation is such, its never extra, I know the demand and thats what I buy from the farmers market at 5 a.m. every morning, I do perfect hisab kitab (accounting) sometimes I have extra about 250 grams  of a particular vegetable left, we use it at my home…

” I never give it to the restaurants, they want to buy at throw away prices and my rule is I never sell if I don’t make a profit…”

Wow! just like that this simple vendor taught me two basic rules of running a business which sometimes big business units fail to remember…

1. Detailed  accounting 

2 Never sell if you don’t earn out if it..

So simple, so basic yet so right…

As I had bought extra onions, decided to make this onion churney we love, I make it with idlis…

That evening I also cooked buttermilk rasam, tomato chutney and Idlis. In this post I am sharing the onion chutney recipe from the cook book Dakshin. If you love south indian food, this is the ultimate cookbook..

Recipe: Onion chutney

Ingredients:

2 tbsp oil

2 whole dry red chillies 

2 green chilies 

2 tsp mustard seeds

4 tsp black gram dal 

1/2 tsp asafoetida

3 onions chopped fine

Small bunch of coriander leaves 

4-5 curry leaves 

Small size ball of tamarind

Salt to taste

Method:

• Fry in one tbsp of oil red chilies, green chilies, gram dal, mustard seeds, curry leaves, asafoetida powder. Keep aside.
• Heat the remaining oil and fry the onions till they are golden in color.
• Grind all the ingredients into a paste in a liquidised add the coriander, tamarind and salt

Serve with idlis or rice and ghee.