CHENNAI: Archana Pai was around 12 years old when she first fell in love with cooking. The cupids were her mother and grandmother who used to make tasty dishes with fewer spices but with almost all the parts of the vegetable or fruit. “The way my grandma and mom blended the spices fascinated me. Often very little spice goes into our cooking but it is always something beautiful that comes out of it,” she says. And with this, she invites us into her Konkani kitchen where she is cooking up a fair for Chennaiites at Samudra restaurant in Trident, along with executive chef Mothi.
The Amchigele Konkan festival will have homely vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes presented in a thali and as a la carte. Talking about this less-explored cuisine that predominantly has no onion or garlic, and often makes use of peels, Archana says, “Konkani cooking is more about sustainable cooking where even the peels of vegetables are not discarded; they are either made into chutneys or fries. When you cut ash gourd or pumpkins, a bit of the flesh gets discarded with the peel. Our elders found that the peels contain micronutrients which are good for gut health, enhances your requirement for magnesium and all those vitamins and minerals that your body needs in minute quantities.”
Coast to coast
From pickles and raitas to main course and dessert, Chennaiites can experience a new cuisine that’s polar opposite to Tamil cuisine. While the cuisine leans towards vegetarian dishes, they have non-vegetarian delicacies made out of fish. Sharing a story on how the Konkanis began to revere the sea and share their gratitude by consuming fish, Archana explains, “Once when there was a famine and no food found, the head of this community that lived in coastal areas, mentioned you can survive with food from the sea. Fish and seafood are normally termed as ‘flowers from the seas’. That is how most of our community survived the famine without starving themselves and that is why we still pray and do puja for fish and sea. In Mangaluru, on the eve of Diwali, it is compulsory to make fish as a word of thanks to the sea gods for saving the community during famine.” Varieties like kingfish, prawns, sardines, and crabs are used. Archana is a passionate cook who was caught up in the run of life. After the pandemic, she gave her first love a second chance. “I loved having people over and cooking for them and serving. When some friends, who are chefs, tasted my dishes, they said this cuisine needs to be showcased to the world,” she says.
Konkani cuisine, according to Archana, is light on the stomach and doesn’t cause acidity or bloating. The recipes and the ingredients have been safely guarded within the community with not many showcasing them outside. The cuisine’s no-onion-no-garlic dishes may have perhaps made people think twice before trying it, believes Archana.
Quoting chef Vikas Khanna’s interview where he talks about the wholesomeness of the Jain cuisine, which is onion and garlic-free, Archana says that Konkani dishes are similar. “I want to step in and show people that even without onion and garlic food can be tasty, you can have a tummy full and still feel very light on the stomach with our food,” she says. The seafood preparation also rarely makes use of onion and garlic, she adds.
Preserve and popularise
Archana had presented a food festival at Trident, Kochi, in October. Following the success, she was invited to Chennai. While setting up menus, she stumbled upon long-lost recipes. One of them being Shimpya Kheeri. “Shimpy translates to shell. In this dessert, you have shells made of rice flour and coconut ground together, dry. You make balls and you flatten them and you cook them in water and add jaggery and coconut milk to them. Very few people do that now because it is a tedious process,” she shares.
Pathroda is a Konkan favourite. The signature dish is made of batter stuffed inside colocasia leaves and steam-cooked on slow fire. “The cooking takes one to one-and-a-half hours as the whole bundle needs to get cooked. If it doesn’t cook properly you will have the itchy feeling. To get the complete itchy feeling out you need to slow cook it,” she shares, adding that this is on the menu at Samudra.
Along with this, on the menu are goli bajje, hittu, valval, soi bhajil ghassi, dali thoi, bibbya upkeri, palya polo, sungta ghassi, pedvya phanna upkeri, kurlo thadsayilo and more. “The pickle that we will be serving is made out of cauliflower, ivy gourd, carrot, and lemon, a mixed vegetable pickle which is done exactly the way my grandma used to do. There is no vinegar or any preservatives. It is freshly made and served,” she shares.
Archana tells us that, often Konkani cooking is slow cooking as it uses minimal water, and vegetables are often cooked in their own water. The water that is used, mostly to cook dals, is made into soup or gravy. The base for most of the dishes in the cuisine is coconut and coconut milk. They use jeera, and asafoetida, and rely on tamarind, kokum peels, amla, mango, or lemon, for sourness. Several types of weeds and leaves are also incorporated into the dishes. “Hittu is idli in a jackfruit leaf basket. The leaves are woven together with palm or coconut leaf sticks to make the baskets. Add batter into it and make idlis,” she says, adding that she brought all the leaves and certain other ingredients like starfruit from her hometown, Kochi.
Sustainable and how!
In a day and age when sustainability is being promoted, Archana points out that it is something that our ancestors have been practicing for long. “I would say, if every household follows sustainable cooking like this, we can have less waste, save the environment and make maximum utilisation of the resources we get. When you go to a Konkani house, you hardly get anything to compost. Even with cucumber peels, we make chutney, the core and seeds of pumpkin are transformed into chutneys, peels to chips. Potato peels are sun-dried or marinated and deep-fried immediately,” she notes. While she goes back to prepare the Konkan delicacies for Chennai makkal, Archana leaves us with food for thought.
“My grandma always said eat sensibly, eat your food as medicine. When you eat food as medicine you will not have to eat medicine as food. Now, I am going back to my roots to try and preserve the traditions and get the future generation to understand kitchen chemistry so that your immunity, strength, and stamina can improve too.”
The food festival is on at Samudra, Trident, for lunch and dinner till December 30. For reservations, call: 8910745965 / 8383916586