lead: For the sake of forgotten tastes

Strap: 265 homes and 70 toddy shops… Chef Regi Mathew and his team traversed across Kerala to look for traditional recipes that go beyond the conventional understanding of Kerala cuisine

Bindu Gopal Rao

Growing up in a small village near Trivandrum in Kerala, Chef Regi Mathew had an idyllic childhood surrounded with lush greenery and home cooked food made by his mother. While he never had the thought of becoming a chef then, he admits the memory of fresh ingredients that ware locally available was always distinctly imprinted in his mind. Starting as a Hotel Operations Management trainee with the Taj Group of Hotels, he has spent over 25 years in the industry and has opened over 100 restaurants to date. He now is co-owner and culinary director, Kappa Chakka Kandhari Foods Pvt. Ltd.

Mom’s magic

Self-admittedly, he wanted to have a fresh take on Kerala cuisine beyond the conventional appam, stew, Kerala parota and Malabar biryani. He found the answer in his new venture, which he started along with his friends, John Paul and Augustine Kurian. “When we were discussing this, each of us had our own stories about home food. We thought that if we actually went inside people’s homes, we could find so many more stories and recipes. The idea was to have a restaurant whose food would be a tribute to the cooking of a mother.”

The team visited over 265 homes and 70 toddy shops across Kerala to decide on what would define the food that would suit everyone’s palette. “As a result of this exploration, we found about so many more dishes that went beyond the conventional understanding of Kerala cuisine. For instance, the Chinese potato is something that is very local as is the ramassery idli cooked over a muslin-covered earthen pot, de-moulded with plachi leaves and served with either Kerala-style sambar or chicken curry.” In fact, the ramassery idli is almost forgotten now with only four families knowing how to make it; one of them works with Chef Regi.

The approach the team took was to first ask their mothers first and then get in touch with their mothers’ friends. “Since we structured it this way, we had references from each household and they all welcomed us and shared their recipes with us without hesitation.” He admits that they found some of the best food in toddy shops as the patrons needed different kind of food every day.

Quiz him on why these recipes have been forgotten, and he attributes it to the fact that “probably no one as the patience to listen to the stories”. “Even if you know the recipes, the ingredients may not be easily available and no one takes the effort to procure the same,” he says.

Quintessential Kerala

Some of the recipes that he has discovered and find place in his restaurant include chakka vevichathu — boiled jackfruit, cooked with freshly ground spices and grated coconut; kappa vevichathu, which is boiled tapioca, mashed with crushed bird’s eye chillies and coconut, served with two fiery chammandis (dips); and mutton puttu biryani, in which soft and steamy puttu is layered with biryani masala topped with papaddam. Likewise, there is prawn kizhi, a flavourful preparation with plump prawns cooked in grated coconut and kodampuli, steamed in banana leaves; a vegetarian version with mushrooms is koon kizhi. Snacks include the kappa vada, wherein boiled tapioca is mashed with bird’s eye chillies and shallots, and ayakura melodu vachathu, the chef’s pièce de résistance — spicy, tangy tawa-grilled seer fish, marinated in tart gooseberry, green peppercorn and bird’s eye chilli are dishes you will not find anywhere else.

Sticking to the roots

Chef Regi says they are all for local produce… Sourcing of raw materials directly from farmers is at the core of their cooking. “People have become health conscious and are looking at what the previous generation was eating as this is suitable for your genes. Because someone in France is eating cheese, you do not need to eat it in a tropical place like India,” he says, adding that food tastes different because of the region in which it is grown. “This is why I have ensured that each raw material is sourced from the place it is best known for and we encourage farmers to grow them for us. We always use the best quality ingredients from the source — like coconuts from Thrissur, tapioca from Kottayam, jaggery from Marayoor, peppercorns from Pulpally in Wayanad and fish from Paravur backwaters.”

A champion of old cooking styles, he is also working on a research project on ‘The Science of Indian Cooking and the importance of Spices’. “Our chicken curry is not called Kerala chicken curry but Ramapuram chicken curry as it is important to maintain the ethnicity of the region from where it comes.” His restaurant is named after the key ingredients of Kerala, kappa (tapioca), chakka (jackfruit) and kandhari (bird’s-eye chillies) and is all about bringing Kerala’s hidden culinary gems under the spotlight. He is clear that the future of food is in staying true to your roots and eating local regional food.