Tales from Nirmala’s kitchen

If you are enamoured by your mother’s culinary charm and want her to share recipes for a book you wish to write then you must add love to the menu. Else it will not happen.

That’s what Prasanna Pandarinathan, a top model turned photographer, did when she penned Ammi: An expression of love from the kitchen of her mother, Nirmala. Why Ammi? It is quite close to Amma, common in South India. And then, in Tamil, Ammi is the short word for Ammi Kallu, a traditional South Indian stone grinder used for grinding coconut and fresh spices. My mother had one, an unique, earthy mixer-grinder whose slow, stone grinding beautifully brought out the flavours, oils, and spices.

So, let’s call the writer Pressy, which is her nickname, and let’s discuss ingredients of the book. Widely travelled across the globe, Pressy now shuttles between New York and India and is a top shot name in the fashion world.
Nirmala, says Pressy in the book, had her memories stuffed with food. Getting into cooking was a natural process for Nirmala – all Indian women do – but the way she excelled with variety was simply mind boggling. In short, Pressy nearly says only God knows how Nirmala did it.

And then one day Pressy called her mother for recipes and was almost astonished when she said she had nothing written down. Maybe Nirmala watched her own mother cooking and learned by doing, which is how all Indian women learn to cook. Pressy feverishly started to collect the family recipes, I have a feeling she actually hovered over Nirmala with a pen and a bundle of papers, noting everything down.

Cookbooks are not easy to write and it is not only about photographs of the final product and listing of ingredients that make the dish. It is about understanding a deep-rooted culture, fragments of which lay all over the kitchen. It is like understanding what all goes into preparing those meals and how. It could be using something as simple as a wooden spoon and some generation-old steel utensils which – every day and year after year – created dishes full of personality, fire and spice.

I walked through the book with ease because I cannot cook anything myself, I can only make tea. I could easily feel how the pages connected Pressy with her family, her country and cultures.

I have a feeling Nirmala was charged with feeding the family and the one thing that was constant in her life was the ability to create a sense of home by continuing to cook multiple dishes eaten in southern parts of India. she had lived in. The book shows how strongly and deeply food binds and affects people, and how much joy it can bring to those who gather around a well-laid table, or simply sit on the floor cross-legged for a meal.

The book is full of food, and how many spices and ingredients were used over many, many years by the mother to create the magic.

The well-designed book looks to me like a silent promise Pressy made to her mother, to produce a book out of the shelves of the kitchen, and the fireplace that heated up everything to finish. I sense it is kinda homage Pressy pays to Nirmala through recipes and anecdotes and by opening up hundreds of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales about Ammi’s passion for cooking. The book is a repertoire of culinary treasures from different regions Ammi travelled and lived.

The part-cookbook, part-memoir published by Rupa features 108 recipes carefully selected by Pressy and her family and divided in ten sections ranging from vegetables, eggs, meat, seafood, poultry to rice and noodles, bakes and grills, pickles and chutneys, and desserts. And then, there are countless spices and masalas. And then, the book is naturally filled with resplendent photographs of dishes, interspersed with archival images from family albums.

The book, or the concept behind it, started when Pressy wanted her to walk out of her grieving following her son’s death who died very young in 2006. Pressy pushed her to document her recipes for a cookbook and worked closely with her mother. Slowly, the book started taking shape.

But then, it was not an easy process. Pressy not only put to table over 400, crumpled handwritten recipes from Ammi but also studied food photography and how to use natural light while shooting the dishes. The book took six years and then a year and half of the pandemic got added to the years. I get a feeling that Nirmala’s kitchen was full of too much hustle and bustle and so was the dining room which was full of all kinds of activities. And when Ammi crossed the rainbow bridge, everything fell silent. I read somewhere that Pressy missed the noise of her kitchen. And also, the love of her mother who would shower her with all kinds of foods.

This is not a simple cookbook or a book for South Indian delicacies, this is civilization in some near 300 pages, full of the fragrance of grounded spices synonymous with Indian kitchens.

Do not blame me for not listing my favourite ones. I cannot, I cannot because I don’t know how to cook but I have read through this book and it is my favourite. Buy a copy and soak in history. As the most genial Indian politician, Dr Shashi Tharoor, writes on the cover: “A joy for the palate and the heart.”

A brilliant read.