As I lie in bed with a fever, remembering home ....,
My in laws are advanced in age and live in Chennai. But even today, the morning meal is a holy ritual, with both of them in active participation. Even simple fare involves elaborate preparation time. We put out all the cooking vessels the previous night. In the morning we inspect the fridge and pick vegetables based on the dishes that are paired. There is nothing haphazard about the menu which is steeped in hundreds of years of tradition. Besides, certain vegetables are eaten or avoided on certain days. For eg, raw plantains are cooked on new moon day when ancestors are remembered and special prayers offered to them. Also after oil bath, a ritual carried out on Fridays, dishes that aid digestion are consumed. Also on the days following full or half day fasts special greens are eaten which are light on the stomach and have medicinal and healing qualities.
This morning meal which is prepared only after we have bathed and changed into freshly washed clothes, and listening to Carnatic music on All India Radio, usually consists of rice, a light and thin lentil soup (rasam) cooked with tomatoes in a tamarind base and spiced with curry powder, cumin, pepper, coriander and curry leaves. Accompanying the rasam, there is usually one sautéed vegetable flavored with mustard seeds and coconut. And another salad or cooked vegetable in a sauce with a coconut base. A stew variously made of vegetables and lentils, in a tamarind or yoghurt base is the entree. To prepare the meal - we first chop up all the vegetables. We then soak the tamarind and dhal in water and measure and set aside at least 8 different spices. We then boil the water and measure and pour it into the prewashed rice and presoaked dhal which are placed in the rice and pressure cookers, respectively. The rice blooms nicely with this treatment, is not sticky, is cooked to perfection and stays piping hot in the rice cooker As the lentils cook in the pressure cooker, alongside in the next burner the tamarind water boils for the rasam until its flavours are just right for the cooked lentils to be added. The stew that makes up the entree comes next and the vegetables for it are precooked first in the microwave. At the end, all dishes are seasoned for which varying combinations of mustard seeds, cumin, asafotida, dried chillies and fenugreek are sputtered in oil or ghee and added with a flourish for that slightly smoked/flambé flavour. The rice/lentil crisps (papads) are fried in oil or microwaved.
Before the table can be laid - serving dishes are set aside for each and an offering is made to the Gods with a sampling of the cooked meal. But first, the gods are elaborately decorated with fresh flowers, incense is burnt and the oil lamp is lit. Customary prayers are chanted as a flame is lit on a plate with some camphor and shown as a final purification ritual. The food offering concludes the prayer. We all then prostrate before the altar giving thanks for this daily bounty and in eager anticipation of the hot, fresh, flavorful meal. It is now 11 a.m. and over the past three hours, the aroma from the food which we have prepared without tasting, further augmented by the incense and camphor, has stirred our digestive juices. But wait, we dare not put a morsel in our mouths until the crows have been fed.
We go into the backyard with a plateful of rice, lentils and ghee and call out with varying tones of caws. We lay the table putting out, besides the meal, three different types of pickle, chips, buttermilk, ghee, other preserves and condiments. We take our time enjoying the piping hot meal eating each of the entree, rasam and buttermilk, with rice. We start by pouring some ghee on hot rice and the flavour from that sets the tone for the meal.
On hot summer days, the meal is usually followd by a blissful siesta which further enhances feelings of well-being engendered by the meal.
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