CHENNAI: There’s more to a food book than the basic recipes and tips it offers. It can also be a documentation of forgotten culinary techniques, evolution in methods of preparation, advancements of equipment, historical and cultural references. As part of Madras Week, journalist-cum-food connoisseur Vikram Doctor chose ten iconic food books that reveal something about the city.
The audience at Radisson Blu GRT listened to Vikram in rapt attention. He began the session with Culinary Jottings for Madras by Colonel Arthur Kennery-Herbert. The book was published around 1878 during his stay in Madras for 33 years from 1859-1891. The focus was on the western style of cooking but with local ingredients.
“Most of the books written during that time fell into two categories — those written by housewives from their experience of household management and those by professional chefs. There are a plethora of regional language cookbooks in many libraries. By translating, they can be made available to a larger audience,” he said.
His next was the famous book from the south Indian household Samaithu Par (Cook and See) by S Meenakshi Ammal who played an important role in taking local recipes across the country. Some of the other books on Tamil cuisine at the presentation included Aharam by Sabitha Radhakrishnan that talks about different sub-community cuisines; Usha’s Pickle Digest by Usha Prabakaran who has documented 1,000 vegetarian pickle recipes in 2000; and Ravuthar recipes: With a Pinch of Love by Hazeena Seyad, on Tamil Muslim recipes.
There was an equal number of books on international cuisine that made its way into the city and continues to do well. “Chennai has always had a vibrant expatriate community contributing to the food scene. Their books help us look at our ingredients differently,” he said talking about Vietnamese Cuisine for India by Nhung Thomas.
Recipes of the Jaffna Tamils by Nesa Eliezer talks about the Sri Lankan recipes. “One of my favourite is Travels Through South India by Nao Saito. The architect travelled across south Indian households, sketched local kitchens and jotted down simple recipes,” he said.
Vikram included an essay titled In Those Days There Was No Coffee by AR Venkatachalapathy focusing on the consumption patterns of coffee. The talk concluded with Disrupt and Conquer written by TT Jaganathan and Sandhya Mendonca on how TTK Prestige went on to become a billion-dollar business. “These are books that talk about successful business models and developments in the culinary industry,” he said.