Preserving culinary knowledge

Art curator Tanya Abraham’s engaging recipe book, ‘Eating with History’ has recipes of Kerala which are hundreds of years old  

By Shevlin Sebastian 

As a child, art curator Tanya Abraham would often go into the kitchen of the family house at Fort Kochi. There she would see her grandmother, Annie Burleigh, in a white chatta and mundu, preparing dishes. “Her skills never ceased to amaze me,” she says. “She formed cutlets in one palm, throwing them in hot fat in a continuous rhythm and stirring curry with the other, while simultaneously monitoring the cooking for at least forty people.” 

Thanks to her grandmother’s culinary skills, Tanya always retained an interest in food. “There were so many communities, like the Christians, Jews, Anglo-Indians, and Muslims, who lived next to each other in Fort Kochi and the food would come from all these homes to my home during their festivals,” she says. 

Tanya’s turning point happened when her grandmother passed away at the age of 104 a few years ago. “A storehouse of culinary delights went with her,” she says. “It made me think of all the women, like her, who ran households and brought to life recipes passed down generations in their kitchens.” 

So, she decided she would bring out a cookbook, but with a specific angle. It should be the ancient trade-influenced cuisines of Kerala. After three years of research, the recipe book, ‘Eating With History’, has just been published by Niyogi Books, in an elegant, easy-to-hold edition, at 202 pages and priced at Rs 550. 

It starts with a bit of personal history: the impact of the different cuisines on her Kurishingal family’s household, and in another chapter titled ‘Kerala and Food’, Tanya delves into the history of food in Kerala during the past several centuries. 

The recipes have been neatly divided under different chapter headings: Vegetables, Breads, Rice and Appams with Chutneys, Meats and Fish, Sweets and Desserts, and Squashes and Wines (with a dash of spice). For Malayali readers, there is a distinct advantage. All the dishes have been identified with their Malayali names. So fish curry in coconut milk is written as meel pal curry while dry red chilli chutney is called unaka mulagu chamandi. 

What came as a surprise for Tanya was to discover how one dish was cooked differently by the various communities. So, for the meen pollichathu, the Syrian Christians used red chillies, onions and shallots. But the Latin Catholics mostly used black pepper, green chillies, garlic, and coconut milk. “The Latins have a vindaloo which is very specific to Fort Kochi and neighbouring areas,” says Tanya. “Then I realised that the Anglo Indians have a vindaloo but it is so different. And they live just two streets away from the Latins.”  

Thanks to her research, Tanya discovered that Malayalis developed new eating habits following the intermingling with the Arabs, Portuguese, Dutch and the British. So, when the Portuguese came in the 15th century, they introduced potatoes, tomatoes, and papaya. But the biggest impact of the Portuguese was their introduction of red chillies. 

“Fish and meat curries tasted different when red chillies were added,” says Tanya. “The Portuguese also invented the puttu (the steamed rice cake), which is one of the most popular dishes in Kerala today.” As for the Dutch, they left behind the Brudher (a sweet cake with dried plums), which is still baked in one bakery at Fort Kochi. And the British gave the spiced shepherd’s pie and the cardamom flavoured caramel pudding.  

All in all, this is a highly engaging book. Tanya has done an enormous service by collating all these recipes, which would have slipped into history and been lost forever. 

(The New Indian Express, Kochi)