CHENNAI: There’s something vividly satisfying about watching a vessel of full cream milk swirl and thicken while mixed nuts, raisins, rice, semiya, or sago twiddle before they surrender to the milky clot and reach our rumbling stomach. What spars with gravity when it comes to a bowl of payasam, I don’t know, but what I know is that for some it could mean celebration; for others, it is the simple joy of relishing this south Indian dessert as part of an elaborate elai saapadu; and there are some like me, for whom it is a weapon that my family can use to easily drag me out of bed.
I have grown up slurping the delicacy prepared the Tamil way, but I’d any day choose the Kerala avatar — pradhaman as it is known — for its richness and dense texture. While all these years I had to wait for Onam or Vishu when my Malayali friends would invite me over to feast on some authentic pradhaman, it appears to me that the Food Gods wanted to serve me with a better plan or must I dare say payasam. Enter the five-month-old home kitchen, House of Payasams, which is here to satiate my cravings any day of the week.
Sweet beginnings
Making this dream come true for me and other sweet-toothed folks in Chennai are four home chefs from Shenoy Nagar — Vidhya Murali, Meenakshi Padmanabhan, Saraswathi and Malini Murali — who promise to offer a slice of Palakkad cuisine cooked with heirloom recipes. Their weekly menu which includes an assortment of payasams and pradhamans, regional sweets, milkshakes and smoothie bowls assures me that there’s no one way of sweet indulgence. So when I ready my senses to resign, Vidhya seems to have read my thoughts. and shares that the varieties of payasam and pradhaman are the assured winner. “Saraswathi chachu, my husband’s grandmother, used to offer nei payasam as prasadam to her Unni Krishna every Friday. It’s a family favourite. We thought that everybody should get to enjoy the family’s closely guarded recipe. That’s how House of Payasams came into being,” she narrates.
Slow-cooked to decadence, on their list is chakka pradhaman, pal ada pradhaman, moong dal payasam, samba payasam, nei payasam, elaneer payasam, chana dal payasam and carrot kheer. Decoding the difference between a payasam and pradhaman, Vidhya explains, “Payasams are usually made with milk, involving a single boiling process and are offered as part of the naivedya at temples. Pradhamans are usually made with jaggery and coconut milk, and are usually double-boiled. To master a good payasam, you need patience and focus. It might sound like a simple item but involves a laborious process.”
Treasured treats
Prepared to rouse some sweet will in me that’s gone all kinds of sour in the pandemic, I try their best-sellers — elaneer payasam, pal ada pradhaman, chakka pradhaman and paal kozhukattai. The crowd-favourite elaneer payasam with its semi-liquid delight, garnished with an array of nuts, right proportions of sugar, coconut milk and tiny pieces of elaneer is melt-in-the-mouth goodness. And to retain this true taste is why the House of Payasams doesn’t follow the usual style of preparing it; they don’t boil the payasam to ensure the elaneer chunks remain fresh, Vidhya explains.
Chomping on the palate-pleasing elaneer pieces, my tummy and I have a tacit agreement to retreat and make way for the jaggery-laden chakka (jackfruit) pradhaman, topped with dried coconut kernels. The success of the staple lies in procuring the right type of chakka with the right sweetness, shares Vidhya. “Recently we got around 100 kg of chakka. One of them weighed around 70 kg. The bigger the size, the sweeter it is. We cut the fruit, remove the seeds and boil the pods. After which it is ground in a mixer and jaggery is added to it. This is chakka varatti. Since the paste is boiled for 90 minutes, it has a longer shelf life. This paste is also used in elai adai and chakka dosa,” she says.
I agree, but putting a pause on my whimsical romance with jackfruit are other specialities — the classic and creamy pal ada pradhaman and paal kozhukattai, which I polish off in generous slurps. Yet, I seem to have a soft spot for the elaneer payasam and chakka pradhaman, which remind me that there is no such thing as dietary austerity because while food may or may not expand our waistline, it sure widens our cultural sensibilities. And who’s to reject that?
Such profound thoughts could only commence after four cups of pradhaman, and fanning my findings further is Vidhya with a glass of mango and gulkand milkshakes. A few sips later, I am fairly convinced that if you are not subscribers of payasams, then let yourself be bewitched by their mango milkshake with its ample chunks of the fruit, and the gulkand shake’s burst of paan flavours that can promise you a languid afternoon.
With love and longing becoming the prime narrative in the first and second wave of the coronavirus, for many of us, food served as the promise of returning to a full appetite for life. Perhaps that’s one reason the House of Payasams has received quite a fan following. “It’s heartwarming to see people order in payasams as a gift for their loved ones. Our orders spiked during Vishu and we’re hoping for the same during Onam too. We believe that everybody should be able to enjoy the payasams, and hence they can be customised and made diabetic-friendly upon request,” shares Vidhya.
After all, food is never about just eating. It is about holding close a drifting identity, it is about summoning memories of past joyful moments, it is about transmitting emotions, and it is about that umbilical relation that only dies when we meet the dust.