For the love of tradition

At the Southern Village Culinary Tour, Chef Damu promises good food and conversation

July 31, 2014 05:59 pm | Updated 07:31 pm IST - chennai:

It’s like watching an elderly member of your family cook while you carefully observe every step and repeat the same to yourself. Chef Damu at the demo. Photo: R. Ragu

It’s like watching an elderly member of your family cook while you carefully observe every step and repeat the same to yourself. Chef Damu at the demo. Photo: R. Ragu

Chef Damu stands behind a stove and instructs his sous chef to hand him a plate containing various types of dals to start making the cabbage  puttu . I am standing amid a family of 40 from Malaysia, all loudly cheering for Damu. They whip out iPads, phones, and cameras to film every second of what Damu has to say, apart from posing for photos. I have to jostle for space while carefully avoiding being in the frame of not one but five cameras around me.

While adding the finely chopped cabbage and onion to the tawa, Damu lists some tips for quick and healthy cooking. “Chopping vegetables beforehand gives you enough time to cook; all my recipes don’t take more than 7 minutes, it’s that easy,” he says, while the men in the family gesture to their wives, “Take everything down as he says.” The wives make faces and ask their husbands to do the same; it’s gentle, friendly banter and Damu laughs with them. It’s like watching an elderly member of your family cook while you carefully observe every step and repeat the same to yourself. The children are a step ahead of their mothers: everything is recorded on their phones.

Next, Damu makes a three-minute ladies finger and pepper fry. As he tosses ingredients in the tawa, the crowd lets out an audible “wow” in sync. He then goes on to make prawn fry, coconut rice, and rasam, which together take no more than seven minutes. “I don’t add tamarind to this (rasam). In villages those days, they used just tomato paste, jeera, cumin, garlic, pepper and curry leaves.” Following the bright flash of a camera, I turn to see two Japanese men waving to Damu, asking him to smile.

Clearly, the Chef is a rockstar here. Once the demo is over, people scuttle to the array of dishes to have their fill. I sample the coconut rice—it’s fragrant, sweet and very light with crispy cashew nuts adding complexity to the texture.

At Copper Point, GRT Grand Hotel where The Southern Village Culinary Tour is currently on, the adornments fool you into thinking you’re at a  tiruvizha  in a village; customers are handed strings of jasmine flowers when they enter. The room is filled with people; some in the process of finishing their meal, while others look longingly at their places, ready to occupy them.

As with all meals, this too starts with a drink, a jasmine-flavoured sharbat, and two soups—curry leaf and lamb breast. Both are spicy and soothe the throat on a cold, rainy evening. The deep fried chicken, a starter, is alternatively crispy and soft; it could very well give fast food joints a run for their money.

The menu changes daily and Damu is present every day to give demos and talk to people. I sample the idiyappam kappa podimas — it has soft colocasia pieces and reminds me of the sevai  my mother makes. This is simple food that reminds one of home. And that’s the kind of food Damu hopes to present; food that is traditional, with no commercially manufactured ingredients. Also, food that has medicinal value. “Food is medicine, medicine is food,” Damu tells me during dinner. The Trichy  vengaya vadagam vathalkozhambu  is a spicy delight and pairs well with paruppu podi, rice and the sweet  pachakari  stew.

The succulent prawns in the yera choru (not biryani, reiterates Damu, even though the palate disagrees) are a treat. It tastes home made. Karuvepillai Meen is the other highlight of the somewhat limited non-vegetarian spread. What is really striking is that none of the masalas overpower the taste of the different types of meat. 

After dinner, I sit with Damu who persuades me to try irutukadai halwa . It’s warm, gooey and slippery; the other sweets on the plate are ignored for a while.

With such an impressive spread it must have taken quite a while to collect recipes? Damu proudly declares they are his own, from his book in fact. “I direct chefs in the kitchen and taste everything. If dishes are not up to my satisfaction, the chefs redo it,” he says. Although, this requires a massive amount of ingredients, Damu says that all the ingredients are bought fresh every day, including the spices. “Nothing is readymade, especially the masalas. All we use are pepper, garlic, dried red chillies, curry leaves and ginger that we grind together before adding it to the curries. After all, that’s how it’s done in the villages,” he informs me.

It’s no surprise to see how popular Damu is; he is affable and approachable with a wide smile on his face. He goes from table to table talking to people. These are not obligatory two-minute conversations, asking how the food is. Each conversation lasts a minimum of 20 minutes and ends with a hug from Damu (I did expect some selfies to be taken though).

People are happy to talk to Damu. They ask for cooking tips, compliment him on his demo and even ask him to talk to their toddlers. “There is a reason we are holding this fest. People will easily forget our traditional grains such as ragi, kambu and thinai varities. Right now the humble koozhu is totally forgotten and we want to bring it back through this food festival,” he says.

The main challenge is convincing people who assume that cooking with age-old recipes will be laborious and time-consuming. Damu says his recipes don’t take more than three to five minutes. Ingredients are also extremely adaptable. “Take curry leaves for example,” he says, “grind them with pepper and dal and you get curry leaf powder which you can mix with rice. You can use the same to coat your fish and fry it. Or use it to make rasam. There you have three dishes already,” he grins.

For someone with such an enormous fan following, why hasn’t he planned to open a restaurant? “I’m really not interested in commercial ventures; this gives me enough time to pursue my passion and spend time with my family,” he smiles. “I just want more and more people to enjoy traditional food and that makes me happy. I’m doing what I love, what more could I want,” he asks.

Just as he finishes his sentence, and announces his plan to finally have dinner, a family of four asks him to sit with them and talk. Damu happily obliges.

The Southern Village Culinary Tour is on till August 3, Sunday. Dinner for two costs Rs. 1998 plus taxes. GRT Grand is at 120, Sir Thyagaraya Road, T.Nagar.

(With inputs from Susanna Myrtle Lazarus.)

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