Photo courtesy of itc hotels
The velaku or traditional brass lamp and the bell metal uruli (a large vessel) filled with water and flowers sit just past the entrance to the restaurant that takes inspiration from the temples of South India. The soft Carnatic music playing in the background and the piquant aroma of fresh paan leaves are alluring. The walls are decorated with framed delicate zari patches. The mehndi green upholstery contrasts beautifully with the table linen’s salmon pink, lending the restaurant, opened in 1989, a festive yet contemporary look. The menu opens like a temple door and even resembles one, with thick, golden, finely etched covers that hold a treatise on lip-smacking vegetarian and non-vegetarian delicacies from the four southern states.
While Master Chef Velu runs about to look at this-and-that, he leaves me in the company of a plateful of five different kinds of popadums and dried-salted fried red chillies to be had with four different chutneys made out of coconut, tomato, mint and tamarind. While I single-mindedly polish them off with loud munches, a platter of bite-sized vadas, paniyarams, and banana and vegetable fritters arrive. Velu joins me at the table and settles down with an aromatic kaapi.
Photo courtesy of Praveen M Tomy
With an illustrious career spanning two decades, Velu’s an authority on southern cuisines. He launches into a discourse on the menu’s specialities. “While you can sample the gongura mamsam or the red-hot mutton curry from Andhra Pradesh, there’s the meen moilee or home-style stew (cooked in coconut milk) from Kerala, the Chettiyars’ Chicken Chettinad and the masa stew from Karnataka’s Bunt community. Many of the dishes are served with rice, and others come with spongy, crisp appams or string hoppers idiappams,” Velu says.“Fish and rice have been the mainstay of food in Kerala,” says Velu. “Rice, as a staple, is used in unimaginable forms from, puttus in breakfast to payasams for dessert.”
Highlighting the cooking styles, ingredients and food habits of the various communities down south, he says, “Tamil Nadu’s Chettinad cuisine came from Sri Lanka, as is evident from the use of Lankan spices like star anise, stone flower, and cinnamon sticks. The Chettinad chicken, the most famous import from the region, is not only peppery and rich, but also uses stock, something that’s not used in South Indian cooking.” “Local Andhra dishes are quite similar to Tamil ones, but are spicier, mostly because of the use of Kundur chilli. Rice, in Andhra cooking, is used sparingly — only in biryani and curd rice,” he tells me.
Photo coutesy of MichellePetersJones
“When traders landed at Calicut, they brought with them different styles of cooking. So, you see a biryani being added to the Malayali menu. However, the Nair brahmins have a strictly vegetarian menu consisting of olan, kalan, toran, and avial, using white and yellow pumpkin, arbi, beans, carrot, kundru, coconut and kokum,” he says. “In Karnataka,” he explains, “the Mangalore cuisine mostly uses coconut and coconut oil, and is similar to the Parsi cuisine — like patrani machhi and meen rawa. Coorgi cuisine, from Karnataka’s Coorg region, has a touch of French cooking — roast pork, pork curry, steamed rice dumplings, and steamed rice noodles called nool puttu. No bread is used except for sannas, made of toddy mixed with rice batter, fermented and steamed.”
“Dakshin’s menu is the result of years of research and trials across the four southern states by a team of chefs and culinary experts who sourced information and ingredients from celebrated cooks in the region. Gourmands from the traditional communities were invited to sample the dishes, resulting in delectable, authentic dishes from the region,” he says.
Photo courtesy of heymrleej
Posted by Debangana Sen