Two mustard seeds, lime-sized balls of tamarind, and hand smells

Kerala Chicken and Vegetable Stew

The first time my dad complimented me on my cooking, it was a very big deal. My mum was more wont to dish out compliments; with her, what started off, doubtless, as maternal indulgence, turned to pride that her daughter, could, indeed, cook.   But my dad, not so much. The ability to produce good South Indian fare was, to him, the sign of a good cook. I remember the first time I put some garlic in my bajji batter; I was making raw plantain bajjis, and decided I wanted to see what they would taste like with a wee bit of garlic in them (they were incredible); I was rewarded by a look of sheer disgust on his face with his first taste. I totally ruined the bajjis for him that evening – I don’t think he ate any, apart from that initial taste. To this day he tolerates garlic only in Chinese food (Indian Chinese), which has, I think, as much to do with the one mug of beer he allows himself prior to imbibing said Chinese food as the actual food itself.

So the first time I produced a rasam or sambaar to his liking, and he said “Chandri ki kai manam irreke,” (/cçʌn̪d̪ɾɪ kkɪ kaɪ maɳam ɪɾɨkkɨ/) I knew it was a really big deal. A simple translation of the sentence would yield “Chandri can cook”. But it means a whole lot more than that.

Kai manam (kaɪ maɳam/), has the unfortunate literal translation of  hand smell – so the sentence translates to Chandri has hand smell. Which definitely warrants an eewww gross from you.  Only a South Indian could truly understand the depth of this sentence, but let me try to explain.

Kai manam is something that is possessed by someone who understands food, who has an instinct for combinations of foods; someone who knows that something will taste good. Or terrible. And this part can be taught.

It also has to do with the intangible, a certain love for cooking – the love that goes into a dish. That extra ingredient that goes into a dish when it is cooked with love. And every culture has an equivalent for this feeling, this intangible ingredient. And this part is more difficult to teach.

So apparently I had kai manam.  My mum boasted to her friends when I was learning to cook that Chandri could tell if a rasam had enough lime juice in it simply by smelling it. Or if the sambaar was slightly lacking in salt simply by smelling it.  Now while I doubt the veracity of the latter statement, the former is true. And this does have to do with the kai manam, that I was partly born with, but that was also nurtured in the household I grew up in.

So how did I develop kai manam? How did I learn to cook?  By watching and doing.

My dad tells the story of how he learned to cook when he was a boy – in the 1930s and 1940s. My grandfather, apparently, couldn’t even “boil an egg” – although why this was the yardstick for a person who hadn’t ever eaten an egg in his life, I’ll never know. Suffice it to say, the man was pretty helpless in the kitchen. My dad comes from a family of 8 children, and 6 of them were born after him. As was customary in those days, when his mum was pregnant and close to due, she would return to her parents’ household to be cared for before the baby arrived, and for several weeks after said arrival. My grandfather, then, had to be “looked after” by his mother, a lady who was almost completely blind. On several occasions, then, my father, a boy between the ages of about 6 and 12 or 13, became my blind great-grandmother’s eyes. She would sit and instruct him on how to do cut up vegetables, to bring her a little bit of this, a little bit of that, to heat the oil, to allow the mustard seeds to pop. Now he didn’t exactly have a choice, but I think he was fortunate enough to be born with the innate part of his kai manam (which is, possibly, why he was asked to be her eyes, as opposed to his older brother; but this is conjecture on my part), and the result of his blind grandmother’s instruction was that my dad, even today, is a pretty terrific cook, although his repertoire is limited to very traditional Tamilian Brahmin food. He definitely has kai manam.

And he is the only male of his generation I know who can cook. More on gender in a couple of weeks.

And he learned never to measure with anything other than his eyes.

My grandfather and me, circa 1982.

That tradition continued for me. Once my mum discovered my interest in cooking, and that I was her willing partner in crime as far as experimenting with food went, she nurtured and further developed my natural kai manam. Learning to cook never involved measuring anything. It was a little bit of this, a little bit of that, seeing how a a bit of salt or sugar looked on the tip of my hand (to this day, I rely on that). Or measuring something against something else – like a lime-sized ball of tamarind.  Because, of course, we all knew how big a lime was. In Tamil, I also learned to use two to mean a few – so two chilies – meant a few. This extended to things that couldn’t be quantified – so two mustard seeds meant a few….a teaspoon, perhaps. So how did I understand what exactly was meant by a few? I learned that it depended on what we were cooking. I learned to cook by measuring with my eyes, by smell and feel. And sound. By hearing the doneness of something from the way it sizzled in a pan. By hearing the thickness of a sauce by the sound and quality of it bubbling.

So my mum’s (and dad’s) food traditions were passed on. And my kai manam developed.

At this point, it would be very easy for me to bemoan the loss of such food traditions – because yes, fewer people cook today, particularly in urban India. Fewer kids learn to cook like my dad and I did. But I can’t bemoan a loss. Because even in the face of rapid globalization, Indians have, it seems, learned to reinvent how kai manams are developed and nurtured.

Part of the inevitable movement towards the west has been the development of a vast audience for cooking shows. We have our own Master Chef, the country’s many TV networks have numerous food competitions – many structured along the lines of what is on the Food Network, featuring various celebrity chefs. Who still talk about the chicken tikkas and tandoori naans of India over much else.  But there are also many, many local food shows, featuring unknown regional home cooks. And over the past couple of years, the number of home cooks displaying their cooking prowess on YouTube channels has increased at a dizzying rate. Home cooks sharing family recipes in Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Bengali, Telugu, and these are just the ones I have come across. And yes, some of their recipes definitely point to India reinventing itself gastronomically, as it has done numerous times before, and will, I know, continue to do.  Because that is inevitable. And wonderful, because, well, diversity.

But there is also a whole lot of traditional cooking going on. And many of the cooks measure ingredients and gauge a dish’s doneness in exactly the same way I learned to. What occurred to me as I was as I was thinking about the shape of this post is that perhaps what these multitudes of YouTubers are trying to achieve is akin to what my mum did when I was young – nurture the country’s kai manams. And this, I rejoice at.

So when I think of what sorts of dishes would demonstrate one’s kai manam to me, I think of simple recipes, with few ingredients, that just work together. And today’s recipe is one such, from the state of Kerala. It is a coconut milk-based stew – can be veggie or meat, and today, I give you a chicken and veg stew. If you’d like to keep this vegetarian, just increase the quantities of veg in it.

And as I was thinking about this recipe, it struck me that this is the first time I am doing a recipe with cardamon, cloves, and cinnamon in it, three spices that are, in the eyes of most non-Indians, epitomize Indian food.

But when I was young, we never used these spices in savory food. Cardamon was always a part of a dessert. Cloves and cinnamon, not even in desserts. In the Tamil Brahmin food I grew up with. I asked a few people in the family, both immediate and extended about this, and they acknowledged that these spices are never used in traditional savory dishes. Why? Maybe because we associate them with non-Brahmin foods (and therefore non-vegetarian), they said. But, but…cardamon is used in sweets?  And Kannadiga Brahmins do use cinnamon and cloves in a few savory dishes? What??

Food and caste – curiouser and curiouser.

But here’s Kerala Chicken and Vegetable Stew.

Chicken and Vegetable Kerala Stew

Ingredients (Serves 4-6; vegan if you make it with just veggies)

1.     5 cups of mixed vegetables, all cut into large bite-sized pieces. If you are using fresh veg, keep them separate, though, as they cook for slightly different lengths of time. You can use frozen veg, if you must. I used green beans, carrots, potatoes, and fresh green peas. If you are not using chicken, increase this to 8 cups of mixed veg.

2.     2lbs (about 1kg) of chicken – I used a combination of thighs and drumsticks. If you use chicken breast, cut it up into large bite-sized pieces, the same size as the veggies.

3.     1½ Tbsp grated/finely-chopped ginger. If you use ground ginger, use 1 tsp.

4.     2-3 green chilies – or more or less, depending on how spicy you want the stew, cut up into small pieces. Leave them in large pieces if you want to take them out of the stew before you eat it.

5.     2 Tbsp coconut oil

6.     ½ tsp turmeric

7.     4 sprigs of curry leaves (if you don’t have any, do try this recipe. It won’t be the same, but the result will still be lovely)

8.     1 can (400ml) of coconut milk

9.     1½ tsp salt

10.  4 green cardamon pods - whole

11.  5 cloves - whole

12.  1 stick of cinnamon, about 2 inches long, broken up into two or three pieces

Please don’t use ground spices for this recipe; whole spices are milder and taste a lot better in this preparation. Ground spices would also greatly muddy the color of the dish.

Method

1.     Heat the coconut oil in a pot and add the whole spices. Allow them to fry for about 30 seconds to release their flavors.

2.     Add 2 of the sprigs of curry leaves, turmeric, ginger, and green chilies. Cook for about 20 seconds.

3.     If you are using chicken drums and thighs, put them in now, and add 1 tsp of the salt, and 1 cup of the coconut milk.

4.     Allow the chicken to cook with the spices and coconut milk for about 7-8 minutes with a lid on.

5.     Now add in the carrots and beans, and the remaining ½ tsp of salt. If you are using pieces of chicken breast, put them in now. Cook for about 5 minutes with a lid on

6.     Now add in potatoes and peas (if fresh; if frozen, add the peas in for the last minute of cooking), and cook everything together, stirring occasionally, till everything is done. I cannot give you an exact time here, because that will depend on what size your pieces of chicken are. If, at this point, you think the sauce is too thick, add about ½cup of water.

7.     When the chicken and veg are done, add in the remaining couple of sprigs of curry leaves and the rest of the coconut milk. Put a lid on the stew to allow the curry leaves to wilt.

8.     Serve hot. You can eat it on its own as a stew – it tastes fantastic on its own. Or you can serve it with a bread of your choice to mop up the juices with. Or you can serve it with a Kerala appam, a kind of pancake/crepe made of a coconut and rice batter. We ate ours the night I made this with appams - not exactly the traditional shape because I don’t have an appam pan, and also a bit browner and crisper on one side than they traditionally are, because that’s how we like them. And they were glorious.