I ignore the pall of gloom that follows me to the kitchen. The husband shuffles around with downcast eyes. The daughter looks as if she has been wronged and my mom looks less than enthusiastic. She shows her disapproval by telling me she can’t cut the pumpkin because the skin is too hard and she is scared her knife will slip. That does not work; I tell her I will deal with the recalcitrant pumpkin myself. I will not be moved from my resolve to make kootu for lunch. Is it like this in your home too? I mean sambar, rasam, kadhi and rajma all enjoy a certain status, while the kootu is a poor cousin and no appreciation or affection is wasted on it.
But I have always loved the dish. My favourite is ‘batani kuzhambu’, which is peas kootu by another name. It is a Hebbar Iyengar speciality, and for some reason I have not researched on yet, the community calls it kuzhambu. The dish is made up of arhar dal and peas (peas are the best, though beans, pumpkin, cabbage or the aforementioned pumpkin can be used), cooked with a paste of mustard, red chillies and coconut. And Malati Periamma is the undisputed queen of this K.
As a child, when we visited them, she would serve it to us at lunch. Malati Periamma is a great cook, and everything she makes turns out well, but somehow this dish belonged to her. So there we were, the cousins, sitting with shiny steel plates, impatiently waiting for food to arrive. First came the hot, white rice. Then two spoons of ghee would be drizzled on it with a tiny rounded spoon. We made a well in the rice to welcome the kootu dotted with fresh green peas. I never thought to ask periamma how she kept those batanis so green. When I boil the peas, they never look so perky. We ate kuzhambu sadam along with a tamarind and jaggery-based gojju, usually made with bhindi or karela and thickened with the same kootu masala. My mom does things a little differently. Her accompaniment is a pachadi that is nothing but a little kootu masala dissolved in curd. I have a hunch it made life easier for the ladies as the same ground paste was used for two different dishes. Clever.
I am forced to acknowledge that there are people out there who actually do not enjoy the pungent taste of mustard. That is sad because it means they will not enjoy the excellent sorshe baata dishes from Bengal. But to them I say, I can also make other kinds of kootu. The one with fragrant jeera and handsome red chillies, or with the paste made of golden-fried urad dal and fresh pepper corns, and so on. People need to know that the kootu is their friend. It is versatile; you can make it with leftover vegetables and any greens in a pressure cooker. And I have not even started on how healthy it is.
I remember once how my Dad leaned over and ate up a spoonful of kootu sadam I had saved up for last. I howled. He never let me live that down, and even not too long ago, when my mother made the batani kootu, he looked at me and laughed.
P.S. I just spoke to my cousin and, after consulting with Malati Periamma, she says to add a little bit of whole coriander too when grinding the mustard, chilli and coconut paste.
