Chettinad food has been plagued by chillies, grease and stereotypes for too long.
Over decades, the food of the well-travelled Chettiar community has been interpreted and reinterpreted by restaurants in a culinary game of Chinese Whispers. Today, the spicy dishes that define it bear little resemblance to what comes out Chettinad’s home kitchens.
Till The Bangala came along.
At the Raintree Hotel, on Anna Salai, The Bangala cooks C Pandi and G Kasi are busy making a fragrant Chettinad mutton fry as part of the hotel’s food pop up, on at Madras Restaurant till the end of this week.
Contrary to how most restaurant kitchens make this popular, heavily spiced, meaty dish, in Pandi’s version, only red chillies, shallots, garlic, tomatoes and salt are added to the mutton. His secrets are simple: a slow fire, rock salt, and restraint.
At the restaurant, over a bowl of chicken rasam (made with country chicken for maximum flavour) Meenakshi Meyyappan, the driving force of The Bangala, talks about how she moved to Karaikudi two decades ago, and decided to throw open her majestic family home to visitors. The Bangala, built in 1910, slowly started garnering attention for its food: think Raj era dishes like potato croquettes, delicate vegetable mandis cooked with a slurry of rice water, and king prawns flavoured with spring onions.
She’s just back from Mumbai, where The Bangala Team did a successful pop up at The Bombay Canteen with Insta-famous Chef Thomas Zacharias. “The idea was to showcase the mansion, at first,” she smiles, adding that they didn’t really plan to run a food forward establishment. However, now it is their kitchens that draw visitors and chefs from around the country, many of whom who sign up for intensive cooking classes with her cooks.
CHENNAI, TAMIL NADU, 24/05/2019: Mrs Meyyappan, at the Raintree Hotel, Mount Road, in Chennai. Photo: R. Ravindran.
“We just started serving visitors what we cooked at home,” Meyyappan says, discussing why the meals they create taste so different from most Chettinad restaurants’ food. “Our food is not meant to be highly spiced — we use more coriander seeds than chillies. We tend to use a lot of pepper. Also garlic and shallots.”
The menu at the Raintree includes unconventional dishes, including a creamy curry riddled with mellow boiled gooseberries, fried spinach vadais and pepper roasted quail, in addition to well-loved Chettinad staples like mutton chops, pepper paya curry and a fragrant crab rasam .
The Raintree’s executive Chef, Litwin Shanjit, says that although his kitchens have been cooking Chettinad-inspired dishes for years, working with Pandi and Kasi was an eye opener. “It’s the little details,” he says. “For example, with chicken, they add the masala last, while we tend to put it in much earlier on. The other secret is the ratio in which they combine ingredients. When you get the right quantity and you blend them correctly, the dish becomes so much more aromatic.”
CHENNAI, TAMIL NADU, 24/05/2019: Chef Kasi and Chef Pandi from The Bangala, Karaaikudi, at a culinary pop up, the Raintree Hotel, Mount Road, in Chennai. Photo: R. Ravindran.
The Bangala is getting increasingly popular with both hobby cooks and professionals, who go to Karaikudi for its intensive culinary courses, which cover cooking techniques, grinding masalas and creating menus. The three-day schedule begins with sambars and curries, then goes through meat, poultry and palakarams . For people who opt for a week long course, there are also classes on pickles, offal and sambols.
“We were giving guests demos all the time, so we thought we may as well formalise it into a course,” says Meyyappan, adding that they teach cooks and chefs from all over the world, but particularly Japan. “A lot of Japanese people come to us. My favourite success story is a Japanese chef who has been coming to The Bangala to learn from our cooks for eight years. He finally started a restaurant in Tokyo, serving pure Chettinad food.”
The Chettinadu Food Festival is on till June 2, 2019. For reservations, contact: 43939999.
