BharatSangraha

Marava & Ramnad · Eastern Coastal Plains

Foodways

Chettinad food is the most confidently misdescribed regional cuisine in India. It is not simply hot. Its signature is a masala roasted and ground fresh for each dish rather than kept as a standing powder, built on black pepper as the primary pungency, with star anise, kalpasi, marathi mokku, fennel, cinnamon and clove supplying an aroma that is closer to a spice-trade warehouse than to a chilli field. Chilli is present but subordinate. Underneath that is the real logic of a dry country — everything that could be preserved was. Meat was salted and sun-dried, fish was salted and sun-dried, vegetables were soured in buttermilk and sun-dried, and a very large part of the daily repertoire is built on rehydrating those things. The coast eats the same way with fresh fish added.

Primary cooking medium

Gingelly oil, the everyday mediumGhee, used generously in the Nagarathar sweet repertoireRendered mutton fat in the meat kitchenCoconut used ground rather than as oil, and sparingly against Kerala's standard

Dominant sour agents

Tamarind, in almost every gravyLime, squeezed in raw at the end of a pepper frySun-dried vathal, which carries its own soured-buttermilk acidityRaw mango and mangai thokkuTomato in the modern kitchen only

Spice register

Black pepper first, and everything else arranged around it. Star anise (annasi poo) for a sweet top note, kalpasi — a dried lichen with no flavour of its own until it hits hot oil, when it turns smoky and earthy — marathi mokku, the dried flower bud used for a resinous depth, plus fennel, cinnamon, clove and a moderate quantity of dried chilli. Against its neighbours the difference is structural rather than one of degree: the Cauvery delta sours with tamarind and stays mild, Madurai leads with chilli heat and fennel, and this kitchen leads with pepper and lichen and roasts its masala for each pot separately.

Staple grains and carbs

Rice, including seeraga samba for meat dishesKavuni arisi — a black glutinous heirloom rice, brought back from Burma and still cooked hereKambu and cholam in the dryland villagesRaw rice and black gram, ground separately, for the region's very large paniyaram repertoire

Preservation methods

Uppu kari — mutton salted and sun-dried on the terrace, then rehydrated and friedKaruvadu — fish split, salted and dried on the sand along the Ramanathapuram coastVathal — sundakkai, manathakkali and kothavarai soured in buttermilk and driedVadagam — spice and onion pellets dried for use as a whole temperingRamnad mundu chilli, sun-dried whole and stored for the yearOorugai in gingelly oil, and tamarind pressed into salted cakes

Signature techniques

Varutha arachavitta masala

Whole spices are dry-roasted and ground for that specific pot, minutes before they go in, rather than drawn from a standing powder. It is why two Chettinad gravies from the same kitchen do not taste alike and why the cuisine is difficult to reproduce from a jar.

Also found in: Pandya Nadu, Kongu Nadu

Uppu kari sun-curing

Mutton is cut thin, rubbed hard with salt and turmeric and dried in full sun on a terrace for a day or two until it is stiff. Rehydrated and fried with pepper it becomes a dish in its own right rather than a fallback — the dry-country answer to having no way to keep meat.

Also found in: Marwar & the Thar, Rayalaseema

Karuvadu salt-curing

Fish is split along the spine, packed in salt and laid on clean sand or on racks in the wind. The Palk Bay and Gulf of Mannar catch has been preserved this way and traded inland for as long as there has been a record of it, and karuvadu kuzhambu is a staple of the interior villages that never see fresh fish.

Also found in: Nanjil Nadu, Malabar, Utkal

Paniyaram pan cooking

A heavy cast-iron or bronze pan of hemispherical wells, used for a whole family of small round items — savoury kuzhi paniyaram from fermented batter, vellai paniyaram from unfermented rice batter, paal paniyaram poached in sweetened milk, seeyam stuffed and fried. One pan, four completely different results.

Also found in: Pandya Nadu, Chola Nadu, Kongu Nadu

Manamadurai pot cooking

Unglazed pots thrown from a blend of three local clays and river silt, fired hard, and used for curd, koozh, fish gravy and kuzhambu. The porous wall holds a little of each batch, and a fish kuzhambu is expected to be cooked in a pot that has cooked fish before.

Also found in: Pandya Nadu

Vathal souring and terrace drying

Vegetables steeped in salted soured buttermilk for several days and dried through the hottest weeks, so they carry both salt and lactic acid into the lean months. In this region the practice extends to a far wider list of vegetables than in the delta, because the lean months are longer.

Also found in: Chola Nadu, Pandya Nadu

The foodway signature of Marava & Ramnad — cooking medium, souring agents, spice register, staple grains and the techniques that define it. (6)