The Hindu Business Line : Cuisine-in-law!

Muttamala! That’s the first thing that just popped out of my mouth, as memories of the most unusual recipe have been floating in my mind since the mention of the Moplah food festival at Dakshin, the South Indian restaurant at Chennai’s Park Sheraton. Genial Chef Sekar laughs, and it’s evident he’s trying to hold some of the laughter in. Plainly, he doesn’t think much of it, and he tells us as politely as he can, but finally, we strike a deal t o try a bit of everything so we are given two thalis, one vegetarian and one non-vegetarian, and all the three desserts on the menu.

The muttamala is usually described as a garland of egg yolks (just the yellows) cooked in sugar syrup. (The whites are usually steamed to make a custard and garnish the muttamala, though they are not on our menu now.) Chef Sekar is right, though – the muttamala neither looks nor tastes exotic, tasting like most sweets that come soaked in sugar syrup. But it’s the chatti pathiri, baked layers of rice pancakes filled with a mixture of coconut and nuts, topped with honey and reminiscent of baklava, and the succulent elai adai, rice pancakes again, but soft and filled with a tantalising sweet and tangy mixture of melty jaggery, coconut and jackfruit, that spell a luscious finis to the end of our meal.

The Chef insists on the alisa, and we are not disappointed. It materialises on our table as a thin soup of broken wheat and shredded lamb redolent of cinnamon, and makes me marvel, not for the first time, at how tasty simply spiced food can be. The Malabar Muslims, or Moplahs (sons-in-law in Malayalam), as they came to be known because they married women from Kerala, trace their roots back to the Arabs. The Alisa is probably an adaptation of the Harees/Harissa, which is a savoury porridge made from cracked wheat, meat and spices and sometimes served with sugar.

Then there are the Chemmeen (prawn) and Kozhi (chicken) biriyanis, the former a rather bland affair where the spices that went into it refusing to reveal themselves, and the latter, a definite improvement over the former. They even look different, the prawn biriyani is a pale salmon and its chicken counterpart is a green-brown. The Nei Choru (ghee rice), though, was both good looking and tasty, speckled with golden-fried onion and bits of cashew. The Pathiri (rice pancakes) are an ideally bland vehicle to soak up the tastes of the several gravies on offer – you can take your choice of Kozhi Varattiyathu (chicken in an onion-tomato gravy), or a Kozhi Kurma (described as ‘country chicken’ cooked with green chillies in a cashew-curd gravy), or the Chemmeen Manga Charu (prawns cooked in a mango-flavoured red gravy made of roasted and ground spices), or the extremely tasty Thakkali Vattichathu (tomatoes in a coconut-chilli-aniseed gravy) or Kaipa thiyal, which, you will find, is bitter gourd only if you’re very attentive.

The gravies are like velvet and Chef Sekar confirms a long-held suspicion when he says the texture is an advantage of using the grinder rather than the mixer. I depend on readymade batter for idli-dosa breakfast, and my mixer never turns out such smooth pastes, but now I’m thinking of investing in a grinder solely to be able to make and indulge in these glorious gravies!