Southern Spice by Chandra Padmanabhan

One of my favourite authors - Chandra Padmanabhan - gives a wide range of South Indian recipes in this book. Indian cuisine has been perceived as one type of cuisine spanning across the country but nothing could be further from the truth. Just like the country is diverse in culture, language, art and lifestyle, so is its cuisine. If you go to the southern-most tip and drive 200 miles north, you will see that the entire scene around you has changed, most significant being the cuisine.

I am a South Indian. The food we cook is significantly different from North Indian dishes. We indulge in our idlis and dosa and variety rice dishes as opposed to the North Indians who love their roti and nan and subzis.

The book I am going to talk about in this post is Chandra Padmanabhan’s Southern Spice. As the name suggests, she has taken popular dishes from the 4 Southern states of India – Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. I am from Kerala and my cooking is dominated by the culinary practises of the state, mainly an exaggerated affection for coconut.

This book has a good collection of Kerala Recipes and the one I most recently made is Erissery. It’s a dry side dish made with pumpkin and freshly grated coconut. My mom makes this often and I found that the recipe given by Chandra had minor differences and I was eager to try it out. The result was quite fabulous and we had an aromatic, rich and colourful side dish to go with our regular serving of steamed white rice for lunch that day.

Kerala Erissery Recipe

What I Used:
(serves 4 as a side)

Pumpkin / mathanga - 3 cups, peeled and cut into 1" cubes
Grated coconut - 1/2 cup (fresh works best but you can use frozen too)
Cumin / jeera / jeerakam - 1 tsp
Green chillies - 2, or to taste
Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp

For tempering:

Mustard seeds - 1/4 tsp
Urad dal - 1 tsp
Grated coconut - 4 tbsp

Shallots - 3, sliced
Red chillies - 3
Curry leaves - a few
Coconut oil - 2 tsp (or any other oil you have)

How I Made It:

1. Boil the pumpkin in 1/4 cup water with salt and turmeric, until soft. This should take about 7 to 10 mins.

2. Grind coconut, green chillies and jeera to a paste with requred amount of water. Add this to the cooked pumpkin and keep fire on sim. Adjust water if the curry is too thick at this stage. Add spoonfuls at a time so that it doesn't get too watery. If curry is too watery, then let it boil or add 1 tsp of rice flour mixed in 2 tsp water. Cook until desired consistency is reached, add salt and keep aside.

3. Heat oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds. When they pop, add the urad dal, shallots and red chillies. Fry until the dal turns golden brown and the shallots turn transparent. Tear curry leaves and add to this. Mix well and pour directly over the cooked pumpkin curry.

4. In the same pan, add the 4 tbsp coconut and fry on low heat till crispy and golden brown. Mix this into the curry and serve with steamed rice and pickles. Adding the fried coconut in the end is very important for the flavour of the curry so don't skip this step!

Other recipes I made from this book include Coriander Rice, Potato Saagu, Tamarind Rice and Kathirikkai Poriyal.

If you are looking for an authentic, South Indian Vegetarian Cook Book, then this one is for you.