Avial, sambar, velarika itta mor curry, sambharam, errisery, ethakka pachadi, inji curry, papadam, parippu, cabbage thoran... a meal for ten people in three hours. I am really fast at cooking and this in no way means that I compromise on the quality or the taste of the recipe. I COOK WELL. PERIOD.
But there is something that I'm always unhappy about. Every time I cook the proper Malayali fare, I'm judged. Now the problem is not the judgement. The problem is that the judgement comes from someone who's been always of a very closed mind when it came to recipes of dishes like sambhar, avial and theeyal. And since yours truly belongs to the category which believes that cooking is all about experimenting, she uses tamarind instead of tomatoes and tomatoes instead of curd. It's called the culinary art.
Let's take avial as an example. My mom puts all kinds of vegetables into avial, even the humble potato. She uses tomatoes for tanginess and they add more piquancy into it. My aunt in Kerala adds onions to avial, which believe me is very rare. In fact I don't remember eating avial with onions anywhere else but her place. And it does taste good. M makes avial the traditional way, lots of coconut, privileged veggies like yam, carrots, raw banana, beans, snake gourd, drumstick and white pumpkin. They are privileged because they are the chosen few for M's avial. It's always tamarind juice for tanginess. It's dry, but it's the traditional way, so it's supposed to be right.
Now the avial from La Cocina de Mira.
Lots of snake gourd, white pumpkin, yam, carrots, beans, potatoes, colocasia, drumsticks, raw banana, cluster beans, jackfruit seeds...sometimes tomatoes and at other times tamarind juice. For me avial is something that can be personalised. It's like...hmmm...what you call the melting pot of culture, just keep adding and it gets blended. In short it's your dish...be sensible and keep adding veggies. Peas, bottle gourd, my mother once had gone to the extent of adding aubergines and bitter gourd. And I swear it didn't taste bad.
Strangely, everytime I cook avial M always manages to give her inputs on the avial. And this happens when people are eating their food and relishing avial the most.
What do I do?
Yesterday the scene was repeated. And I heard someone say," What the hell? Someone's taken the effort to cook this grand meal and instead of appreciating it we are discussing how it would have been better without the tomatoes". Hmmm! I wish I could do as you said M, but can't help it. I'll continue experimenting. I'll continue putting yam into sambar and make prawns theeyal with tomatoes on a Sunday and with tamarind juice on a Wednesday. I belong to the Madam Benoit school of thought:
"A recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent cook can play each time with a variation".
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