Tamil Table's Kartik shares some Tamil recipes

At Goya, celebrating home cooks and recipes have always been at the heart of our work. Through our series, #1000Kitchens, we document recipes from kitchens across the country, building a living library of heirloom recipes that have been in the family for 3 generations or more. In this edition, Anisha Oommen speaks to chef Kartik of Goa’s Tamil table about puli rasam and thuvaiyal, dishes from his great grandmother.

This season’s stories are produced in partnership with the Samagata Foundation—a non-profit that champions meaningful projects.

“Shall we go sit at the bar?” We follow Kartik and Sasha, leaving the humid Goa afternoon outside.

The cool red oxide beneath our feet gives way to a black and white checkered floor. There’s a Tamil playlist on, and soft candelight casts a glow on portraits of goddess in their shrines. The aroma of samrani fills the room.

“I wanted to evoke those Iyer places with marble-tops and India coffee house brass mugs. We waited a long time for it,” Kartik knew exactly the kind of place he was dreaming of. He points to the limestone walls and fluted glass windows. “The throw of light is just different,” he says, as if that explains it all.

We are at Tamil Table, a restaurant run by chef Kartik who moved here from Pondicherry. Kartik spent his early years at Dakshin, an award-winning south Indian restaurant at the Sheraton, Delhi. He then ran a café in the courtyard of an old French house, in Pondicherry, his hometown, before moving to Goa. Here at Tamil Table, the food is is homestyle Tamil cuisine. The papadams and spice mixes are made in house, by Kartik’s mother in Pondicherry, based on recipes she inherited from her grandmother.

“When we got here in 2019, we would search for good south Indian food, but there were hardly any options,” Sasha, his partner explains. “And I grew up eating my mum’s food…”Kartik begins. Then he pauses.

Sasha reads his expression and picks up the thread. “The truth is, he missed the food he had grown up eating. It dawned on him, how meaningful it was. We take these things for granted when its being served to us every day,” she offers in observation. “You only realise when you step outside of it and think back: Oh my god, what was that!”

Kartik began reconstructing everything he had tasted as a child. Documentation started with his mental notes. “And over phone calls with mum.” As he cooked, people dropped in to eat. The flavours were clean, unexpected. “Friends would ask us to cater small events,” recalls Sasha. “We were just cooking for people we loved. There was no hurry to start a restaurant, no business plan. It just started from the need to cook.”

But the more people he fed, the more Kartik felt like cooking. A ripple effect, you could say. “It had a real romance to it,” he reflects. As if the joy somehow multiplied itself with each meal.

Today, in the restaurant kitchen, he is cooking a puli rasam and thuvaiyal, two of the simplest dishes, it could be argued, in his repertoire. They come to him from his great-grandmother, and represent a quiet sort of homecoming. “When I’d return home after travelling, mum would ask me, ‘What do you want to eat?’ I’d always say, ‘Make me puli rasam and karavadu.’”

Rice kept overnight with water, and thuvaiyal. “I’m coming home to eat rasam rice and karavadu. That means I’m home, and I’m safe.”

Very often, it’s the simplest things that require the deftest hand. Not unlike a two-ingredient martini — when everything hangs in the balance, there is nothing to hide behind. Kartik begins with shallots and an aromatic aged tamarind. “My great grandmother, we called her paati, she was a real character. She ran a bookshop for students in Chidambaram. As a working woman, everything she cooked was a quick fix. Quick but delicious. She could made incredible things with basic ingredients.”

Puli rasam is a very basic family recipe, with a few everyday ingredients, in keeping with her culinary style. Tamarind water, fresh coriander leaves. So simple, in fact, it run the risk of being called ‘poor man’s food’.

“While my mum would serve 10-12 dishes at least, for a family meal, paati would serve only two. But everything was flavourful and tasteful.” He remembers her spending barely any time cooking, “You could never see what she was making. Paati would be in an out of the kitchen. You could never catch her in the act.” Kartik believes his mother got her recipe because she spent a lot of time with her grandmother. He recalls another favourite dish, teasingly called kili-potha sambar — a sambar made with a pinch of everything. “It’s all in the hand — a pinch of curry leaves, of chilli, dal.” A phrase more melodious phrase than its English counterpart — to eyeball a recipe

In the monsoon, when it is too wet to go out and find fresh ingredients, meals were served with dry meat. Karavadu. It is also the season for tamarind. Dishes were cooked with tamarind to preserve flavours and avoid spoilage in high humidity. Coconut, another beloved ingredient on the East Coast, is known to spoil quickly especially in the humid monsoon months.

The tamarind at Tamil Table is a rich, plummy tamarind, aged 8-12 months, and used in fish curry, or mango-aubergine curries that is signature at the restaurant. “Tamil cooking is like this: Prawn with drumstick and radish, tamarind and coconut oil. Fish curry made with seasame oil for added depth. Everything tastes better the next day, more tangy with sweet notes from the aged tamarind.”

RECIPE FOR PULI RASAM

Ingredients

Sesame oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp broken urad dal
2 tsp toor dal
1 lemon sized ball of soaked in 3 cups of water for few hours. Strain and set aside the water
2 green chillies, split
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 sprig curry leaves
1-12 whole shallots, peeled
1 generous pinch, asafoetida
Rock salt, to taste
1 tsp turmeric powder
Coriander, for garnish

Method
Heat the oil in the wok, add in mustard seeds, urad and toor dals and fenugreek.
When it crackles, add in the chilli, curry leaves, and shallots.
Roast the ingredients on a high flame.
Salt generously.
Add turmeric powder, and then the tamarind water.
Add in the asafoetida and allow to simmer for 20 minutes.
Finish with fresh coriander leaves.

RECIPE FOR RIDGE GOURD THUVAIYAL

Ingredients

2 tbsp sesame oil
3 pcs whole asafoetida
10 cloves garlic
12 slices of ginger
2 dry red chilli, halved
Peels of 1 ridge gourd
Rock salt, to taste
1 handful peanuts
1 sprig curry leaves
2 red chillies
1 tsp toor dal and urad dal
1 pinch asafoetida powder

Method

Heat the sesame oil in a hot wok. Add in the asafoetida.
When it puffs up, add in the garlic cloves, ginger rounds, and broken red chilli.
Now add the ridge gourd peels.
Allow to cook and move into a blender. Be careful not to over-roast, as we want to preserve the vibrant green colour of the peels.
Add a fistful of peanuts.
Season with rock salt.
Blitz till it forms a paste.
Separately, prepare a tempering of curry leaves, red chilli, toor dal, chana dal and asafoetida.
Add the blitzed thuvaiyal in, and stir-fry for a minute.

Words any Anisha Oommen. Photographs by Nachiket Pimprikar. Art by Aparna Patidar.
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