CHENNAI: I have been extremely passionate about food and cooking since my childhood. I would always watch my mother cook. I learnt from her that cooking is also an art. So I decided to pursue my passion as my career and in 2003 I was appointed as a South Indian chef at a popular hotel. I have worked in a couple of places including Malaysia, Hyderabad and Chennai.
There are are lot of cuisines in South India and I cook them all. But, my specialities are Chettinad and Andhra cuisine. Although they might seem similar, there are a lot of differences between them — be it in terms of the ingredients used or the flavours. Both these cuisines are spicy and make use of lot of dry spices. But the way they are used to give flavour to the dish is entirely different. For instance in Chettinad cuisine, traditional spices like black stone flower, peppercorns, are used, whereas in Andhra cuisine hot spices like Guntur chilli, garlic, are used.
Another difference is that in Andhra cuisine, we use a lot of salt and there are many varieties of pickles and chutneys. Most of the Southern cuisines follow a similar cooking method. The difference comes in the intensity of the spices used or the substitutes each one uses to give a different flavour. For instance, in Kerala cuisine, we primarily use coconut oil as the base, whereas in Chettinad it is mostly gingelly oil and in Andhra cuisine we use refined oil only.
Rice is a staple food in all the Southern States is something we all know. However, the kind of rice that is used differs in each State — for Chettinad cuisine we use jeeraga samba rice, for Andhra cuisine we use ponni raw rice. Event the meat used differs in each State. So these little elements define South Indian cuisine. During my stay in Malaysia I realised that most people there prefer our cuisine and they love our spices a lot. So it was indeed a pleasure to cook for them.
In Malaysian cuisine they don’t use rich spices like we do. They use a lot of lemon grass. So our dishes seemed something new. I was particular not to tamper with the authenticity of my dishes. I don’t like to play around with the flavours. I want to learn and specialise in Arabic cuisine, as that’s also rich in spices.
Chapa Pulusu
Ingredients
Method:
Heat 10 ml of oil in a pan and add curry leaves. Fry for two-three minutes. Don’t overcook the curry leaves or they’ll turn bitter. Grind the curry leaves to a smooth puree using little water. Soak the tamarind in hot water and extract the pulp. Heat the remaining oil in a vessel and add the mustard seeds. Add urad dal, red chillies and curry leaves. Keep aside. Lightly crush the garlic, add to the tempered oil and fry for eight-10 minutes on a medium heat until the colour changes lightly.
Then add chopped ginger and fry. Add the tempering along with the pureed tomatoes and cook. To this, add curry leaf puree, turmeric, coriander powder, red chilli powder, green chilli, salt and mix well. Once it starts to boil, add the tamarind extract and boil for five minutes. Then add the fish cubes; simmer until the fish is cooked thoroughly and the gravy thickens slightly. Garnish with curry leaves. Serve hot.
Pachakari Stew
Method:
Wash, peel and cut the carrot, beans and potatoes into cubes. Cut cauliflower into small florets and soak in salted warm water. Peel and slice the onion, and wash and slit the green chillies. Peel and grind the ginger and garlic to a paste. Soak coconut in two cups of warm water, grind and squeeze out thick milk. Repeat this process two more times, but with only one cup of water, to get three extracts of varying density.
Par boil the vegetables one by one, and keep aside. Heat oil, add spices and fry. Add onion, curry leaves and green chillies. Add the vegetables and green peas and sauté for a couple of minutes. Pour the third extract of coconut milk and boil. Now add the second extract of coconut milk and milk powder. Simmer and let it reduce by half. Season with salt, remove from heat and add the first extract of coconut milk. Bring back to simmer, and serve hot.