There was a time when breakfast was a standard fare of idli and dosa. My address at that time was, needless to guess, Chennai! During my school days, Idli and Dosa were consumed with ghee and sugar. Jam was only for special occasions! Then, as tolerance grew to include spiciness, chutney, sambar and idli podi were all brought forth to the table. Chutney could be the chaste coconut and green chilli variety or the more adventurous type that had onions ground with coconut and red chillies. The other chutney that lingered on my tongue was the one I tasted at my aunt’s that had a sliver of ginger added to the coconut and green chillies to bring that zing. The other chutney that we were crazy about was the ‘ulli sammandhi’. This was a coarsely ground chutney of lightly fried sambar onions, tomatoes, red chillies, curry leaves and a generous drizzle of coconut oil. The onions would almost be raw but the flavours were aplenty. My dad’s favourite was the same chutney minus the tomato. It was more a relish than a chutney and it went beautifully with steamed tapioca.
My Kerala roots added coconut and coconut oil to almost everything! Even sambar was made with coconut browned along with coriander seeds and a few sambar onions. This would then be ground to a fine paste and added to the vegetables cooking in tamarind juice. Even though I make the ‘podi’ sambar (you just add the sambar powder to the boiling tamarind juice) for convenience, I sometimes just have to give in to the ‘aracha sambar’ (Ground masala sambar) temptation.
Puttu-kadala curry, aappam-mutta curry, idiappam-stew were all saved for special breakfasts. They meant a bit more work than idli and dosa! Then came a time when adai and aval upma became a part of the breakfast menu. That was when the Brahmin influence entered my life. Until then I didn’t even know that there were so many types of rasam! Tomato rasam, milagu(pepper) rasam, Poondu(garlic) rasam, paruppu rasam…you name it! For us Nairs, rasam meant a wholesome hash of pepper, jeeragam, garlic and tomato boiled in tamarind juice till your cold vanishes! After my marriage to an Iyer boy, I became an expert in making all types of ‘kalandha saadham’ (mixed rice). I could make lemon rice, coconut rice, tamarind rice, pudina rice and even ellu (til) rice. Oh and curd rice, of course! I learnt the trick of mashing the rice with milk and salt and then adding just a little curd to it. This allows the milk to turn to curd along with the rice in it ensuring the freshest curd rice ever, nit too sour, not too milky. The tadka of mustard seeds and mor molaga (chillies soaked in salted buttermilk and sun dried, which is then fried in oil to a deep brown) adds the colour and flavour to the otherwise plain curd rice.
In London, the cold weather permeates everything; even food. I was aghast that people actually relished cold meat, cold salads, even cold sandwiches! But to be fair, the British do have an extensive culinary history, like any other country. Although for an Indian who is used to dousing food with flavours and not flinching while throwing those spices and chillies into what they are cooking, the British cooking will appear absolutely bland. The British pride themselves on their reserve. They show this reserve even when they cook. Spice is added to bring flavour, not to kill the germs in what they are cooking. They even baulk at our tea, while asking politely, why is it that we are stewing our tea?! We do believe in cooking things till they become a slave of the spices added.
I learnt what the potato tasted like when I tasted my first jacket potato (Whole potato baked with its skin on). Until then I had only tasted the turmeric, chilli powder and the mustard in the urulai podimas and the jeera, garam masala and coriander powder in the aloo jeera. I had never tasted the potato till then!
Armed with knowledge of how an artichoke looks, what a petit-pois is and that white wine goes brilliantly with fish, I moved back to India. This time my address was Hyderabad. The land of biriyani and haleem was a “zor ka jhatka”. But now I can eat guthuvankaya (stuffed brinjals cooked in a thick gravy of dry coconut, peanuts, tamarind, garlic and sesame seeds among other things) without breaking into a sweat. I can cook it too. I do like the biriyani and mirchi ka salan combination, although I still believe that the Malabar fish biriyani is the queen of all biriyanis.
Somewhere along the way, Marathi and Mangalorean influences have crept into my cooking, from the numerous dinner and lunch invites from my friends. I can make a mean sabudana khichdi (which is supposed to be vrat ka khana, but is a sinfully addictive dish) and know that each neer dosa has to be lacy thin and soft in order to complement the spicy mangalorean chicken curry.
While the flavours of the North and the South are abundant on what appears on my dining table, the East and the West are not so well represented. Bengali cooking and Gujarati cooking eludes me. I think it is time to make some Gujarati and Bengali friends…!
