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..
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.
