Remembering our grandmother through food

Remembering our grandmother through food

My brother and I grew up having a normal life in a quiet neighbourhood in Tiruchirapalli. My brother belonged in the category of naughty kids and I fell  in the amenable, quiet, boring bracket. School, homework, playing with our dog, chasing each other around the garden and incessantly fighting with each other for the silliest reasons - this was our life.  

We disagreed on everything possible. Even food. I ate my greens and veg,  he would insist on roast potatoes and plantain for lunch. My grandparents raised us through most part of the day.  Granddad would draw our hot water and help get us ready for school. Mom would get breakfast done, get us ready for our auto. Lunch would be packed and handed to us.  While mom cooked and multitasked like no other , cooking, to her , was more a chore than a means of creative expression or innovation .   My grandmother was behind most of the cooking and grinding batter, podi, making pickle - pretty much anything that involved complex cooking.  

Grandmom was far more adventurous in the kitchen, though her repertoire of dishes was not wide.  However, everything she made, she made with flair.  Her cooking was strictly regional, stuff she grew up on or was taught to her.  We grew up eating her sambar, puli kuzhambu, rasam, poriyal, kootu, pickles, idlis , pongal, upma and  sweets . 

She certainly had a Kai Manam (what do I call this in English?  Special touch ? ).  Her pulikuzhambu would involve a paste of fried and ground shallots, garlic, coconut and there would be a second round of shallots, garlic and tomato while tempering the kuzhambu.  The end result was a silky, favourful, rich kuzhambu that needed no accompaniment when mixed with hot rice. 

Yours truly is vegetarian now.  As a kid, however, I loved the masala egg that grandmother made.  Growing up, in our house, egg was allowed on Sundays. Granddad saw to it that no meat or fish was cooked at home because he was vegetarian. My grandmother would take hard boiled eggs, cut them up in half and fry them in a red masala with chilli powder, turmeric and other spices. My brother and I would fight over who got the spiciest chunks. 

Grandma made the most delicious rasam. She had a couple of varieties of rasam up her sleeve, all delicious. But I liked the simplest, one she called "verum rasam" or plain rasam, which had no lentil water.  Her rasam started with boiling tamarind and a tomato till the tomato turned mushy. This would be cooled and strained, poured in the rasam bowl cold with water, rasa podi, pepper, jeera powder and then boiled on the stove, finished with coriander and spoon of sugar or jaggery. The sweetness would round off the tart rasam so well. You could drink her rasam as is. 

She had a unique way of making most poriyals too. They were never soggy and the vegetables never mushy. Her Vendakkai fry was never slimy and the carrot poriyal would be spicy and roasted till brown.  For the carrot poriyal , she would take saunf and garlic , pound them up in a mortar and pestle. The carrots would be cut into thin rounds, not finely diced.  She then tempered some mustard , threw in the garlic+saunf mix with curry leaves, then the carrot with chilli powder, turmeric and let it caramelize until soft. This spunky carrot poriyal would go beautifully with sambar sadham or mor kuzhambu.  Her mor kuzhambu always had cloves of garlic in the ground paste. She said that in her native town, a whole bulb of garlic would be peeled to make mor kuzhambu paste, though she herself would dial down the garlic in the recipe. 

Our grandmother is the singular reason my brother and developed a taste for spicy food and pickles. Her manga pickle is the best I have had, so is her Manga inji. I was her official taster.  She would ask me to taste for salt  and spice before she finished anything. I was only too glad to help. Grandma said she could tell if the salt is less by just smelling the dish on the stove. She taught me how to too. With practice, I got it.  Wherever in the house I was, she would come up to me with the ladle, blowing vigorously so I don't burn my tongue when I tasted. It was mostly perfect. But it gave her immense joy that I suggested small tweaks.  She enjoyed watching us eat. Almost everyday, she would eat after we were all done. I admired the way she ate. The rice would be on one side of the plate and the kuzhambu or thogayal on the other. She would mix each handful of rice and kuzhambu separately, not all at once. Knowing I liked the way she ate, she would call me and feed two mouthfuls off her plate. I was never too full to say no to those mouthfuls. 

Grandma taught us  food combinations . She would mix curd with fermented day old rice (pazhaya sadham) with lots of butter milk and drop a manga pickle piece into it and mix it up. She would then ask us to drink a mouthful and take a bite of the pickle.  The brother and I also learn to eat pickle rice - she would take the gravy from pickle, mix with some rice, a spoon of gingelly oil, roll into balls and divide it between us. Grandma also had a way of using up old rice to make she called "Pachai puli sadham" or raw tamarind rice. At night, the left over rice would be marinated in salt and tamarind. Next morning, she would temper mustard seeds, lots of crunchy paruppu, slit green chillies, loads of shallots , toss in the tamarind rice and make the most delectable puli sadham. The best bit was scraping off the sticky bits on the bottom of the pan. Grandma would reserve it for me.  

Grandmother was never one to waste a drop of food.  As a child, I grew up hearing her tell me a story.  In each grain of rice would be written the name of the person who would eat it. If it was wasted, Yama would collect each grain and whip the person when they reached Hell.  This was narrated to me in vivid detail - so I learnt early on not to waste food.  

Ammavaasai/ New moon day lunch in our Trichy home was always special when grandmother made it . It was standard fare - there are rules as to what was to be cooked on Ammavaasai. Poosanikkai sambar, paruppu, rasam,  vazhakkai /plaintain poriyal, kootu with native vegetables, payasam. On that day, food would be prepared without tasting, laid out on a leaf for prayers to the forefathers. Grandmother would go feed some crows before any of us laid hands on the food. The food for the crows was a mix of ghee and hot rice from the meal laid out for prayers, along with some of the poriyal ; delicious beyond words, flavoured from the banana leaves the hot rice was laid on. Though the crows got their share, a portion of this mix would be reserved for me. Grandma would wait till the crows ate and then shove my share into my mouth before she took a bite herself - it was a special grandma -grand daughter ritual.  To her, it meant her forefathers have started eating and now I could. 

She taught me to appreciate seasonal fruit and vegetables. We have guava and mango trees in the garden. She would meticulously pick the ones squirrels had pecked on, slice off the damaged part and feed us the rest. She told us the squirrels knew how to pick the tastiest fruit. I came to accept all of this as gospel truth.  We had a small gooseberry (Arunellikkai) tree in the garden. She would make a thokku and also a pickle with the whole fruit - my brother and I have downed hundreds of bottles of these. If I were to pick my favourite pickle of all time - this would be it.  Perhaps the most unique of all habits I picked up from her, is how to eat a banana. In Trichy, we were blessed to be introduced to fibrous varieties of native bananas - Pachai Nadan, Mazhai Vazhai, Then vazhai, Naatu Pazham, Rasthali etc. Most of these, had thick or thin inner fibrous tissue inside the peel. Grandma would deftly peel the delicate fibre, put it on top of a the banana and make me eat them together. "The fibre is where the goodness is" she would tell me, long before "eat fibre" became a health mantra.  Till date, this is how I eat bananas at home in Chennai. My kid eats the same way too - we feel empty eating bananas without the fibre and consider it wasteful to throw it off with the peel.  (Banana enthusiasts - this works only with fibrous native bananas. Please do not try it on the Poovan or the ridiculous sugary, long, uniformly ripened, industrial looking bananas that line super market shelves.)   Sweet limes would be peeled on the outside and inside, seeds removed and handed to me in a plate so I could eat like a queen without having to chew and bother myself with spitting out the finer peels and seeds.  

I am an idli batter fanatic and fuss over my idlis coming out spongy, melting in the mouth. It all started with watching grandma grind batter patiently for hours over a large stone grinder, deftly taking out the batter with her bare hands (No tilting mind you - our grinder is huge, the stone grinder held together by  chains and belts).  Her prepping and cleaning the rice and ulundu for idli batter was a sight in itself.  

She taught us how to make crispy dosai . My working mother seldom had time to indulge my idiosyncrasies. Grandma was only happy to. Half a ladle of batter spread thinly on the Dosai Kal, roasted to golden perfection and crisp like toast. You could see through the dosai and crack it like wafer. Thats how I liked my dosai . My brother and I make each other crispy dosai for each other - we bond over cooking and there is no doubt it started with my grandmother. 

I would be playing outside in the garden, only to smell her roasting dal to make idli podi and come running inside.  She always added a sprig of curry leaves and two cloves of raw garlic before she ground the idli podi. I developed a sharp sense of smell, thanks to her. It gave her great joy when I discovered what ] was cooking right at the door when I came back from school.   

Grandma was also the only beauty parlour I went to - she was the one who oiled and plaited my hair for school and otherwise, drew a pottu on my face. She never let anyone else cut my hair till I  grew up and left for Chennai. 

My love for good food and flavour, discovering the joy of cooking and feeding started with her. I never cooked till I turned 25. Once I started, she was thrilled when I cooked for her in the rare occasion Amma was not around. She believed it was a miracle that her granddaughter who could not light a stove to make hot water, could now cook for a family. 

I grew away from her with time and after moving to the city on work - we spoke very less and she also grew older, frail and stopped cooking about ten years back.  We lost our grandmother, Amaravathi Amma, 87, last week. A simple person whose world was her family and nothing more.  She lives on in our memories.  Rest in peace Appima. 

(A pic of me with my grandparents and a more recent picture of our grandmother)