Occupation: Head chef who specialises in payasams
It’s raining payasams here at Hotel Chaitram. There are traditional payasams like pal payasam, pal ada, ada pradaman and navarasa payasam and more innovative ones like pineapple payasam, mango payasam and beetroot payasam.
This is the hotel’s 28th year of holding a payasam mela during Onam. We must have been one of the first to introduce a payasam mela in the city. Chef Ramachander Iyer was the head chef then and I interned under him. I have been assisting him during each payasam mela ever since I joined Chaitram in 1994 after completing my course in hotel management. I took over as head chef in 2009 and have been leading the payasam fete ever since.
When we first started, we served only the traditional varieties of payasams. We began introducing new payasams as the tastebuds of the customers expanded. This year, date payasam is the latest on our menu.
It is sleepless nights now that the mela is on. I supervise the entire cooking process. The day starts at 2 a.m. with the mise en place [organising and arranging the ingredients]. The fruits and vegetables are chopped, milk is put on boil, the coconut milk is readied, the jaggery is strained… We have five burners on with 20 litres of milk boiling on each burner. By 9 a.m., the first lot of payasams are ready. Depending on sale, we start work on the second batch by 12 noon or 1 p.m. We make roughly 800 to 1,000 litres of payasam a day. All the recipes we use for the payasams are our own. The Navarasa payasam, for instance, is based on Chef Ramachander’s recipe. It has nine ingredients in it, four varieties of nuts and five different fruits. We still follow his recipe.
As it was the jackfruit season three months ago, the preparation for the annual payasam mela started then. We stored ripe jackfruit and made preserves. We will be using the preserves while preparing jackfruit payasam.
One has to be very careful when making payasam, especially the milk varieties; one needs to keep stirring to ensure the milk doesn’t burn. One also needs to use good quality ingredients when making payasams else the flavours won’t come up to the mark.
Of all our payasams, the pal payasam and the carrot payasam are hot favourites with the customers. The payasam counter is open from 10 a.m. till 10 p.m. We sell the payasams in disposable cups, in half litre containers and one litre containers. As the mela is extremely stressful, we have reduced the number of days of the fete from 10 days to five days. Apart from the four traditional payasams, we will be featuring two to three extra varieties at the mela daily. These varieties change.
Although I found cooking fascinating even as a child, I learnt the techniques behind preparing Indian, Continental and Chinese dishes after joining the industry, as my mother refused to let me in the kitchen. I reside with my wife and two daughters in Marthandam. While my wife is a homemaker, my eldest daughter is class nine and the younger one in class six. They love my pal ada. I hope our interview is done as I really need to get back to work.
(A weekly column on men and women who make Thiruvananthapuram what it is)
