Mistress of Spice, And Everything Nice..

Nothing to do, and all the time in the world to do it in! The fundamental dilemma of a dowager well past any `mid life crisis'. 

"Write a blog!" Sameer suggested. You have a lot to say, and we're done being your sounding boards. "Let the world enjoy those pearls of wisdom too!" Was he trying to get me off his back, I wondered. Of course he was, but the idea stuck.

Having earlier helped my son run his foodie website `Chef at Large', written some reviews and recipes for it, this appeared the next logical step. But what do I write about?

Let's start with familiar turf. Food. No, this is definitely not meant to be a cooking or a recipe blog per se, that much is certain. But it's a beginning. Truth be told, my whole life has been closely intertwined with cooking. Both my mother and my grandmother being keen cooks, my instinctive curiosity concerning the intrigues of the kitchen, was the natural fallout of my upbringing. So it's only befitting that I choose to begin thus!

My love for cooking arose from the kitchens of ‘East End’, in Cannanore (Kannur now), where my grandmother stirred and shook and whipped up the most delicious delicacies. The kitchen was old fashioned. Wood fires burned throughout the day and my grandmother who was called Mamu, by all her grandchildren, had to blow frequently through a long iron tube to coax the fires to blaze. 

Mamu was an excellent cook. Her stews, cutlets and fish curries were cooked to lip smacking perfection in that smoky kitchen where she frequently wiped her teary eyes with the end of her saree, which, curiously, she wore, Parsi style.(more on that some other time). 

There were other women by her side to aid the process. A large built woman named Tachi sat on the roughly tiled floor with a large grinding stone in front of her. Her only job was to grind the various masalas and coconuts to a fine paste. Turmeric, chillies, coriander seeds, cumminseeds, sesame seeds, poppyseeds, ginger, garlic, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, were all ground fresh, everyday, on that gigantic stone. 

Mamu, 80 at the time, would sigh as she bent to check if the coconuts had been ground to the fine paste she needed. There was another woman to pound the jaggery along with grated coconut and roasted and powdered rice powder to make the most delicious ‘Ari undas’. Mamu would laboriously press the mixture, after over an hour of pounding, into large ‘laddoos’, which my brother and I eagerly devoured as soon as the first ones were made.

Mamu's Writing

The long dining table at 'East End', covered with a white damask table cloth, was always laden with food. Breakfasts were enormous and everyone seemed to eat everything. Eggs fried sunny side up, toast, butter and jam were the standard fare, accompanied by the main dish which could be anything from Dosas and idlis to vellappams, iddiappams, puris and potato curry, rice rotis with the fish or mutton curry that had been cooked the previous night, puttu (rice cakes)and ‘kadala’( black chickpea) etc etc- the list is long. Cooked Oats and milk and sugar sat in a corner for anybody who felt the urge to eat 'light'. Nothing was wasted, as the servants were all fed in the kitchens after each meal.

I often slept with my grandmother snuggling against her softness, savouring the smells of the kitchen that enveloped her person. Even though I had a poor appetite and had to be scolded and cajoled to eat, I loved the Minced Meat Cutlets my grandmother served with locally made loaves of bread generously spread with fresh, white, home-made butter. 

I still have the recipe, handwritten by Mamu in her meticulous style, her handwriting closely resembling the cursive writing books of the time. Paraphrased by me, it can be accessed at

http://chefatlarge.in/recipes/grandmama's-minced-meat-cutlets/

Mamu, of course, is long gone. As is her daughter, my mother. But the aroma of her kitchen still lingers. Her labours, honed to a fine art, live on in me. Of course I must pass these on, for that's how it works. And as I hand the torch to Gen Next, Mamu smiles at the assured immortality.

C'est la vie!