<p>One of the biggest challenges, a bride faces, is to put her individual stamp on the culinary union of two guts. Twenty six years ago, this bride had to redefine the line of control, between Tamil Christian and Anglo-Indian cuisines. Post-engagement, every special meal was a romantic adventure with the exclamation ‘different, but delicious,’ but post-wedding, it was risky business. In choosing the menu for 3 square meals a day, the two already hyphenated identities were in danger of losing their original flavours.<br />The first year was a tightrope walk between bread and rice, kurma and stew, salads and pachidis and between tomato puree and tamarind paste. The mothers-in-law took their roles as defenders of their culinary legacies and as preservers of origin and identity very seriously. They religiously added their incantations to the cauldron of culinary mumbo-jumbo. I was determined to learn and blend both to make my own stew pot or kurma chatti!<br /><br />My mum-in-law was flattered by my decision to inveigle my way to my husband’s guts, (because that is where a large part of his heart lay), through a smorgasbord of flavours. She whipped me under her generous belt and made a devotee out of me. I soon learnt the tricks of the trade and used terms such as vindaloos, stews, pishpash, thin dol, pepper water and fugaths with cultured ease. In turn, I wooed her and her son with the piquancy of Madras fish curries, the delicate flavour of asafetida in sambar and the incredible lightness of idlis and drumstick sambar.<br /><br />Cooking, as I soon discovered was not only a cultural celebration but also a personal and intimate way of establishing your unique identity or flavour. Mum-in-law’s masala chops, brinjal cutlets, tomato sambal or chicken vindaloo were inimitable like her. They had heat and texture, colour and flavour. They were flavourful concoctions of fancy herbs or heady amalgamations of indigenous spices. In the middle of all this stood Wilson, mum’s Man Friday. Maker or master of synthetic vinegar, he gained a cult status with his band of believers. Quintessentially Anglo-Indian, it was a Black and White affair. ‘Black’, this High Priestess of soul food proclaimed, “for curries and white, for table use.” God spare the heretic who defied the doctrine of a ‘dash of vinegar.’<br /><br />Till recently, this 92-year-old matriarch sat in a wheel chair, her memory in tatters. The one thing that jogged her memory was a recall of her vindaloo recipe. When we got to the part of the hallowed incantation, ‘a dash of vinegar’ she would guffaw with much delight. Mum is somewhere beyond the blue probably adding her dash of vinegar to the heavenly banquet. Every time I add a dash of vinegar, I smile at the memory of those early days when mum worked her charm into her cooking and into the willing neophyte at her altar. She had, in turn, become my personal dash of vinegar, that little something that added a zing to things, that made the drabbest, blandest and most ordinary situations, come alive. On my kitchen shelf are two sentinels, Wilson, in black and white, paying homage to mum and her ‘dash of vinegar.’</p>
<p>One of the biggest challenges, a bride faces, is to put her individual stamp on the culinary union of two guts. Twenty six years ago, this bride had to redefine the line of control, between Tamil Christian and Anglo-Indian cuisines. Post-engagement, every special meal was a romantic adventure with the exclamation ‘different, but delicious,’ but post-wedding, it was risky business. In choosing the menu for 3 square meals a day, the two already hyphenated identities were in danger of losing their original flavours.<br />The first year was a tightrope walk between bread and rice, kurma and stew, salads and pachidis and between tomato puree and tamarind paste. The mothers-in-law took their roles as defenders of their culinary legacies and as preservers of origin and identity very seriously. They religiously added their incantations to the cauldron of culinary mumbo-jumbo. I was determined to learn and blend both to make my own stew pot or kurma chatti!<br /><br />My mum-in-law was flattered by my decision to inveigle my way to my husband’s guts, (because that is where a large part of his heart lay), through a smorgasbord of flavours. She whipped me under her generous belt and made a devotee out of me. I soon learnt the tricks of the trade and used terms such as vindaloos, stews, pishpash, thin dol, pepper water and fugaths with cultured ease. In turn, I wooed her and her son with the piquancy of Madras fish curries, the delicate flavour of asafetida in sambar and the incredible lightness of idlis and drumstick sambar.<br /><br />Cooking, as I soon discovered was not only a cultural celebration but also a personal and intimate way of establishing your unique identity or flavour. Mum-in-law’s masala chops, brinjal cutlets, tomato sambal or chicken vindaloo were inimitable like her. They had heat and texture, colour and flavour. They were flavourful concoctions of fancy herbs or heady amalgamations of indigenous spices. In the middle of all this stood Wilson, mum’s Man Friday. Maker or master of synthetic vinegar, he gained a cult status with his band of believers. Quintessentially Anglo-Indian, it was a Black and White affair. ‘Black’, this High Priestess of soul food proclaimed, “for curries and white, for table use.” God spare the heretic who defied the doctrine of a ‘dash of vinegar.’<br /><br />Till recently, this 92-year-old matriarch sat in a wheel chair, her memory in tatters. The one thing that jogged her memory was a recall of her vindaloo recipe. When we got to the part of the hallowed incantation, ‘a dash of vinegar’ she would guffaw with much delight. Mum is somewhere beyond the blue probably adding her dash of vinegar to the heavenly banquet. Every time I add a dash of vinegar, I smile at the memory of those early days when mum worked her charm into her cooking and into the willing neophyte at her altar. She had, in turn, become my personal dash of vinegar, that little something that added a zing to things, that made the drabbest, blandest and most ordinary situations, come alive. On my kitchen shelf are two sentinels, Wilson, in black and white, paying homage to mum and her ‘dash of vinegar.’</p>
