Video: Prepare a feast to celebrate Onam

Presented below are a few details on each specialty, in correspondence with its appearance in the video. Also, make sure to take the traditional route and serve everything up on banana leaves:

First up is Parippu, which is dal prepared from split red gram and then mashed to a pulp before surviving.

Next we have Koottukari, a popular yellow dish that consists of vegetables, yams and ash gourd cooked with Bengal gram dal and coconut.

Third is Erissery -- like Koottukari, it contains vegetables and yams as well as raw bananas cooked with Bengal gram dal and coconut.

Pachadi -- This consists of fresh pineapple and pumpkin, both cooked with added yoghurt and coconut.

Kichadi -- It is made of yoghurt and raw cucumber.

Kurukku Kalan -- It is prepared by thickening beaten yoghurt and boling with raw bananas and yams.

Olan -- It is a simple, watery ash gourd and pumpkin dish.

Avial is a very popular semi-dry preparation of vegetables cooked with yoghurt and coconut.

Inji Kari Kozhambu -- A mixture of yoghurt and ginger.

Then is Inji Puli (Puleenji), dark brown and consisting of tamarind pulp, ginger, green chillies and jaggery.

Thoran -- This is a dry curry of sliced vegetables.

One needs no introduction to Sambar -- it is a most popular dish relished by most Indians and prepared from split red grams, a variety of veggies and tamarind pulp.

Rasam -- Prepared from tomatoes treated with tamarind juice and split red gram pulp. It also has a high medicinal value.

Banana chips -- who doesn't love this salty plaintain fried preparation?

Sarkarapuratty -- These are also plaintain chips, but they're prepared with jaggery.

Up next we have Pazhanurukku -- cooked ripe plantain.

Then of course, is pickles...

Followed by lime leaf powder chutney.

Pappad

And finally, Payasam Paladapradhaman -- 'pal' means milk, 'ada' stands for rice flakes and 'pradhaman' is pudding. So it is literally rice flake pudding.

Video: Hitesh Harisinghani