Chef Damodaran wants to make an idli for Deepavali. Just one.
“It will weigh 150 kg. I want to set a Guinness Record for the biggest idli ever made,” he says.
Popularily known as Damu to his many fans, the chef has just returned from Singapore, where he set a record for the largest amount of curry cooked at a single time, at an event organised by the Indian Chefs Culinary Association. “I cooked 15.4 tonnes of curry,” he says. He is back in town to whip up traditional fare for GRT Grand’s ‘South Indian Food Fest’.
“I present dishes in keeping with the philosophy ‘food is medicine, medicine is food’,” says Damu. “I want to revive forgotten recipes; kambu, kelvaragu, thinai, samai, kuthiraivali...”
He talks about rasam made of thippili, vadai made from five varieties of dal, nannari juice, ragi balls and kazhi.
“Our ancestors grew a lot of millets and incorporated them in their diet.” Somewhere along the way, “we forgot our heritage,” says chef Damu, discussing a rasam made of kollu (horse gram) that is cooked overnight.
“I have an old book of traditional recipes that I refer to,” he concedes. But apart from his collection of curated ancient recipe books, Damu says he depends on his travels across rural India for research. The thaathas and paatis he meets during these journeys are his inspiration.
“I once met an 87-year-old lady called Mani Aachi in Kanadukathan village, who taught me to make kaadai biriyani,” he recollects. “It’s one of the best I’ve had. She ground all the pastes necessary for the dish herself in the ammi (roller stone). That’s the secret behind her delicious biriyani.”
According to him, the best South Indian dishes are made with hand-ground spices and shallots. Damu has been to the villages in and around places such as Mysore, Cochin and Nellore; hobnobbed with men and women with decades of experience in cooking.
He presents some of the dishes he learned from them at the food festival, which will feature dishes from the five South Indian States.
The festival is on at Copper Point, GRT Grand, T.Nagar, till August 16. The dinner buffet is priced at Rs. 1,222 plus taxes and a lunch thali costs Rs. 825 plus taxes. Call 28150500
There will also be cooking demonstrations by Chef Damu at 7.30 p.m. every day.
