Tilo sent me to gastronomic memory and back with this post. My mother had all three volumes of Samaithu Paar (lit. translation – Cook and See) as written by Meenakshi Ammal in the house. Hardbound into one volume, I never saw her consulting it much. But she seemed to like the presence of the book as some sort of comfort – that if ever doubt should arise, the wealth of Tam Brahm culinary knowledge be at her thumb’s disposal.
I don’t think much of recipe books. Mostly because I hardly have any patience with them. Books by themselves are clumsy. I prefer working with print outs. These days I hunt online, take a printout and furiously make the food sizzle and boil the exact same way that it apparently should. Recipe books are difficult to handle. They don’t tend to sit flat on the table and are usually too bulky to be carried about, as you dig inside a fridge for that elusive 10 gms of ginger.
But I make an exception for Samaithu Paar. Much like Tilo, I found the first volume of Samaithu Paar with much serendipity in one of the second hand book stalls in Hyderabad on my first weekend. I was house-shopping. I had moved into my own abode – and it lacked everything. I swooped down on the book and picked it up for 6 rupees, not so much because I wanted recipes, but it somehow reminded me of my parents’ kitchen. I left it in corner of the kitchen for the next two weeks. I frequently was found in my kitchen, on long-distance phone calls with my mom and dad dishing out (literally) instructions. While I didn’t cook too much in Hyderabad (it can be awful cooking for yourself especially when you come back home at 10 PM), on the days that I did – I made feasts for myself. (The remains of which ordinarily went to the three street dogs.)
The first time I actually reached out for the book was when I came back home rather late from a far flung district. It was too late to go out and eat. Three days out of home meant bad food. It was too late to call my parents for gastronomic advice. I dug out a recipe – which would fit the three tomatoes, one onion and four okhras. I think I almost cried when I ate it. It tasted like heaven on a stainless steel plate. When I got married – I didn’t get any recipe books, but I got my mother to hunt the books down and now they sit in London. Sri doesn’t know (I think he has a natural distrust of written recipes) but once in a while I quickly look up a page and bookmark it. The interesting thing about Samaithu Paar is its frequent use of words like ‘a pinch’ of something. From the extremely metric world of grams and litres, Meenakshi Ammal plunges you into small cups, pinches and the classic “as desired” quantities. There is a certain element of comfort to some of them. An almost “Don’t get worried if the damn thing burns – this is how you mask the burning smell” tone to the books. If that’s not all, my favourite bit in the books is about how to go shopping for your pulses and find the right utensils for cooking. I suspect more than coy brides in the 1960s, it was the young and single unmarried person carrying these books to the US and UK while they attempted to graduate from some university abroad.
Last night, Sri and I were discussing how much trouble our mothers (even more so, our grandmothers) went through to ensure that piping hot food was ready for everyone. I am quite sure that more than calcium deficiency, it is the constant running about in the kitchen that ruined many a woman’s bones. Part of me is filled with a certain anticipatory joy when I flip pages of the recipe books – but another part is filled with gratitude towards the women in my life who made sure that my stomach was full on any given day. The whole of me is overjoyed that Sri enjoys cooking and is sympathetic to failed experiments. Perhaps the kitchen often indicates certain elements of a relationship.
In the early years (before we got married), Sri and I shared a volatile relationship in the kitchen. We came from different cities and it was often a matter of “Well, that’s how my Mom does it”. We couldn’t cook a dish together without threatening to fling pots and pans at each other. But as of now – we’ve learnt to establish our comfort zones. We can actually cook together and enjoy it. We almost actually trust the other’s judgement when it comes to salt. (Almost.) :)
Posted on May 8th, 2006 by Neha Viswanathan
Filed under: Books, Food and Gastronomy, Self, Sri
wonderful. amazing how some cookbooks become *comfort books* in a way. and thanks – for this great intro to a TamBrahm cookbook, have been trying to get hold of one for ages!
Another thing with cookbooks is that they being what they are, stain very easily. So you take the average cookbook at my home, you can also smell and taste the food along with the written recipie. Sorta like Scratch ‘N Sniff.
flygirl: If I find another copy – I know who to send it to. :)
Anand: Agree. I have food stains in my recipe sheets too. Luckily it’s all vegetarian.
Hi!
I read your blog regularly but this is the first time I am making a comment.
I have all three volumes of Meenakshi Ammal’s Cook and See and they are on my kitchen self too. They give me some sort of comfort especially when I am homesick. That I bought them after three years of marriage is another story. Both hubby and me are TamBrahms but our styles of cooking are entirely different. So the books are mostly only witness to our arguments over whether he should add the ‘vellam’ to the ’sambhar’ or I should season the ‘kootu’ only with coconut oil. After eight years of marriage, we still share a volatile relationship in the kitchen. And to all those who say, ‘Aren’t you lucky? Your husband cooks so well,”
Well, bah!!!
Rekha
srujan: I so relate to your comment! Word!
Neha,
Thanks for the post. It was nostalgic reading for me – for Meenakshi Ammal is my grandmother (though she passed away much before I was born). Once in a while, I do some googling on her name – and that was how I chanced upon your blog. Just some details, may interest you – she was a very traditional Tam Bram who was widowed at a very early age – had to look after a two year old son (my father), a seven year old brother-in-law, and a forty/fifty year old mother in law. Believe she started writing out recipes for her relatives when they started getting married – found that she was doing a lot of repetitive work and decided to put down all the recipes as a book (maybe one of the earlier examples of a productivity study :-)). That really was the genesis of the book. In fact, even today, the house I live in is called “Samaithupar House” (the ribbing I had to undergo because of this when I was in school….) – because she bought this house out of the proceeds of the book.
Interesting that the book was once reviewed in Cosmopolitan magazine – given what she was, she probably would have had a massive heart attack if she had ever set eyes on the magazine!!
Anyways, apologies for boring you. Was nice to read what you’d written about my paatti, and got a bit carried away, I guess.
Ram: Amazing. Meenakshi Ammal’s grandson! I am grinning! Really!
I did know something about her background. I think my grandmother once filled me in on the stories about your grandmother. Not that she knew her or anything like that, but Madras air is ripe with gossip and stories. And this was one such story.
I think Meenakshi Ammal broke a few barriers with her recipe books. The one thing I really liked about her recipes is that she never assumed that a woman was doing the cooking. You’d be surprised how many recipe books make that assumption. The “Samaithupar House”. :) Are people who hop into Madras casually invited for food?
Actually I have great faith in the maamis. I have seen my own grandmother change considerably. She used to come across as a very conservative person, but she’s far more progressive in her thought than the Sun-TV influenced generation. Your comment wasn’t boring at all Ram. Delightful is the word for it! Thanks so much for coming by and getting carried away!
sir\mam
where can i get a copy of the book samaithu par. iam staying in cochin and iam unable 2 get it here. can u send a copy by vpp? i shall pay the amount. pl reply
regards
binesh
Binesh,
I’m not sure Neha would be too happy if we start using her blog for commercial transactions. I wouldn’t be too comfortable doing that either. Why don’t you mail me at rks2806@yahoo.com, and I will send you the details then?
Sorry Neha. This definitely wasn’t the purpose of my post on your blog :-). Ram.
Binesh: I didn’t know how to respond, but looks like Ram did the trick!
Ram: Always ready to link individuals. :) Commercial or otherwise. Someone needs something – somebody else has it – can’t think of a better way to connect them.
[...] With Samaithu Par and one phone call to Ma as guides, we successfully converted rice flour, jaggery, coconut, gingelly oil and cardamom into kozhakattais. And what magnificent ones they were. We didn’t even have our usual flare-ups while making them. Cooking as we know, is a sensitive matter when both people think are somewhat brilliant. Just finished eating half of them. Stomach very full and homesickness slightly taken care of. Ganesha, that iconic, cult status pantheon member creates quite a ruckus in Mumbai around this time. You dare not step in the way of LalBaugCha Raja (The King of LalBaug). How can you not be fond of a person with a really fine pot belly and an elephant’s head? And this, was my post last year. [...]