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Take for instance this neat little tempering trick for stuffed brinjal or ennai curry: Ultimately if you use the book well, you could end up with a dish that tastes as authentic as something only your Paati could make.
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But for a seasoned cook the book is full of nuggets that no YouTube video or for that matter, cookbook can offer. Someone learning to cook might find this book mildly terrifying, because the instructions flow like a stream of consciousness narrative albeit with slightly obsessive details. In a completely unexpected sentence in the fifth paragraph of a recipe you are warned of pulse balls that might break from wrongly shaped spoons, sweet kosumalli that must be cooked “soft as a flower” but not too soft or else…, Pongal that must only be served on Sankranthi and never otherwise, and so on and so forth. For instance, there was a time when my father would find me dreaming serenely on Sunday afternoons and attempt to break my reverie by asking me stuff like, “what is 167395 minus 578?” His is a lifelong mission to make me alert, either by shocking me with mental mathematics or dark warnings of potential accidents that would most certainly occur thanks to incessant day dreaming.Ĭook and See is similarly packed with sudden instructions and underlying threats.
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And also because the book reminds me of his particular brand of “strict reassurance” – this will annoy you but this is ultimately good for you. Strangely I can hear my dad in this book, perhaps because “third rate” is a word he uses quite often. Potatoes, chow chow and ashgourds are second best. But even that reassurance is mildly stern, like this particular note for making Butter Milk Sambar:įor this drumstick, brinjal and lady’s finger are best. The instructions inside provide alternative suggestions and steps to take care of kitchen disasters. Cook and See, says the title, implying it isn’t so hard really. More recently, families have taken to gifting their sons the book as they leave their homes for idli-less shores.Ī theme of reassurance runs through this iconic cookbook from the Tamil Brahmin community. As the book Samaithu Paar gained popularity, the norm was to hand it to young brides who’d often have to move to the north of the country with their husbands and learn to cook without the support of the ever-present maamis. In the 1960s Tamil Brahmins migrating overseas carried her cookbook along with a pressure cooker each, to cure homesickness with food from home. It seems to me that S Meenakshi Ammal usually appears to one under duress.
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