This Hand-Written Recipe Book Preserves a Unique & Distinctive Cuisine
Rutuja Deshmukh writes about her great-grandmother who, far from home, kept Thanjavur-Maratha cuisine alive through meticulously documented hand-written notebooks.
Thanjavur Maratha cuisine has been a work in progress for centuries. It was born from a mingling, through marriage, of the distinctive culinary traditions of the Marathas of Thanjavur with a few aristocratic Maratha families of western Maharashtra and Baroda. What remains somewhat distinctive about this cuisine is that it never left the confines of aristocratic Maratha kitchens, and till date, is guarded as a prized inheritance by a handful of women in these families.
The Maratha connection with Thanjavur goes back to the 1600s. In 1673, the state of Thanjavur, anticipating an onslaught from the King of Madurai, called for help from the Marathas in western Maharashtra and north Karnataka. Venkoji (1629-1684), Shivaji’s half-brother, responded to this call, and rode into this historic Chola Nadu town, famous for its magnificent architecture and culture, with his full military might. After the battle, Venkoji settled down in Thanjavur with the Maratha forces, and thus began an eclectic fusion of Tamil and Maratha cuisine. Since the 1600s, the Maratha families of Maharashtra and Thanjavur have kept contact — earlier through marriages, political and military engagements, and later through marriage alliances alone.
Venkoji’s decendent, Serfoji II of Thanjavur, who ruled from 1798 to 1830s was a polyglot, who mastered Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, and Sanskrit along with a number of European languages, including Latin. He had a keen interest in astronomy, architecture and the culinary arts. It is during his reign that the Maratha dynasty in Thanjavur developed into a cosmopolitan cultural hub. During this time, the Marathas of Maharashtra and central India were invested in expanding their empire after replacing the Mughals; the kingdom of Thanjavur had an advantage of relative peace and stability with a proclivity towards the culinary arts, linguistics and other arts and sciences. The Maratha households of this region were also exposed to the cooking of Chettiyars who had travelled far and wide into Southeast Asia, and brought back with them the ingredients and techniques from these regions into Tamil Nadu.
In the early 1920s, one such woman was my maternal great-grandmother, Shanta Devi — whom we called Ajjima. She arrived in Kolhapur as a newlywed from Thanjavur. With, her she brought the cosmopolitan cooking of the Chettiyar cooks from her maternal household.
She was the second wife of my maternal great-grandfather, Shankarrao Shinde Nesrikar, who had just returned from London after completing his degree in the Arts. Kolhapur at that time was a hub of revolutionary social reforms, including reservations in state jobs and the abolition of caste segregation. The man behind these reforms was Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur State, who went on to legalise widow remarriage, and banned devdasi pratha in his state. Ajjima arrived as a young bride from Thanjavur, almost a decade younger than Shankarrao. His first wife had passed away, unable to recover from postpartum haemorrhage.
Ajjima brought with her slightly pungent and nutty flavours of curry leaves, the sweetness of fresh coconut, and something very unique to Thanjavur cooking, roasted split chickpeas. She also inherited the Thanjavur tradition of neatly documenting recipes, wonderful examples of which can be found in the Sarasvati Mahal Library, which flourished during the rule of Serfoji II, complete with artwork, manuscripts, translations, and volumes of Pakshastra or culinary canon. I inherited two of Ajjima’s hand-written cookbooks which have detailed recipes and anecdotes from her kitchen, and also home remedies for minor ailments, painstakingly documented for future generations. These notebooks read like the diary entries of a woman who craved the flavours of her homeland, and meticulously archived recipes with an urge to pass on her culinary inheritance.
From the stories I was told by my Aai (mother), Ajjima had a piercing sense of humour. This is evident in her notebooks. In one instance where she has penned down a home remedy for dysentery, her heading reads (in Marathi) ‘Dysentery tablet’ and in parenthesis she writes: ‘To Stop.’ In Marathi this interjection is hilarious and speaks for the wit of a woman, who loved to document.
Her notebooks have been a source of collective memories and an unconscious immersion into our shared cultural legacy. They kept alive the flavours of Thanjavur for me, even while growing up in small-town Madhya Pradesh.
Her notebooks also have plenty of loose sheets, with notes scribbled across, tucked away between the pages. These notes include grocery lists, monthly expenses of running a kitchen for a family of 12, and collection of postpartum recipes.
Her remedy for backache and sore muscles is something I have always used. A combination of equal quantities of Bhimseni (Borneo) camphor, peppermint crystals (obtained from mint oil in crystal form) and dried Ajwain or carom flowers, stored in jar. This mix is added to coconut oil, and used to massage sore backs or sore muscles.
One of her more unconventional recipes comes with an anecdote. Her husband was out on a hunting expedition, and having shot a rabbit, decided to cook it in the jungle itself. These expeditions usually extend over a week or so, and the hunting party would carry basic groceries to cook with in the forest. Having run out of most of their supplies, this rabbit was cooked using a chutney powder Ajjima had packed along with other ration. The chutney powder was made with classic Thanjavur ingredients — dry desiccated coconut and roasted chana dal. Some leftover coconut milk was added to the concoction. The twist in this culinary tale is that the coconut milk had gone sour, lending a tangy tinge to the rabbit curry.
When the cook who had accompanied her husband on this expedition told her about his clever use of ingredients, she recreated the same flavours, substituting the soured coconut milk with vinegar instead.
Kolhapuri cuisine employs a rather straightforward use of dry desiccated coconut, coriander seeds and dry red chilli, ground together with poppy seeds at times, especially for recipes using goat meat. One of the most flavourful additions to the Maratha kitchens of Kolhapur was bakhar, a shallow fried concoction of fresh coconut, fresh coriander leaves, finely chopped onions, finely chopped tender curry leaves, and fine juliennes of ginger and garlic. Bakhar became a versatile blend which is used both as a mixture to cook certain seafood and vegetarian dishes, and as a filling or stuffing for whole chickens, or even small aubergines.
This stuffing is highlight of bakharatli kombdi (stuffed chicken), a quintessential part of the Thanjavur Maratha feast. A relatively smaller bird is marinated in curd, ginger-garlic paste and salt, for an hour. It is then stuffed with the bakhar, tied with a string, and slow-roasted in a copper pot with generous amounts of ghee. It is usually served dry, but I like to conjure a gravy from the leftover juices of the chicken and coconut. (An addition I proudly jotted down in my own kitchen notebook!)
In the olden days, travel from Thanjavur to Kolhapur would take days by road; a variety of food had to be packed for the entourage. The long journey that many aristocratic women undertook, from their maternal homes to their husbands’ homes, introduced many travel delicacies. Sunkthi gole, or kair katti gole, as they are known in Thanjavur, is one such delicacy. Etymologically speaking, both Tamil and Marathi names often hint at the method involved in the making of this delicacy. ‘Kair’ is rope; ‘katti’ means to tie, and ‘gole’ quite literally translates to rounds. So here is a dish of meatballs, twice-fried and tied with a vaazai naru (banana leaf string). The goat meat is first slow-cooked with ginger-garlic paste, in its own juices. When it is half-cooked, it is deep fried in oil, deboned, and pounded till it shredded. This meat is flavoured with black pepper, cloves, mace, fresh coconut, lemon and curry leaves. A dash of roasted chickpea powder is added as a binding agent, and then gently rolled into rounds, and tied with a cotton string. It is then fried a second time. The Marathi name refers to this tying of meatballs, where ‘sunkthi’ means thread in an older variation of the language.
Since the meat is twice-fried, and lime juice acts as a preservative, this became the travel food of choice for Maratha families. Every summer, as tradition, the Thanjavur Maratha women would travel back to their maternal homes. In olden times, this meant days on the road. They would travel with lady attendants, bearers and sometimes even a cook. Curd rice was always a favoured staple, along with a coconut, sesame dry chutney powder. The Maratha penchant for meat would be satiated with sunkthi gole.
Sunkthi gole is hardly travel food anymore. It has taken on a special place on the feast tables of select Maratha families who have inherited the Thanjavur legacy.
Recipe: Bakhar
Ingredients
1 cup finely chopped red onions
1 cup freshly grated coconut
1 cup freshly chopped coriander
½ cup tender curry leaves finely chopped
3-4 finely chopped green chillies
¼ cup finely julienned ginger and garlic
Juice of one medium-sized lime
Handful of raisins (optional)
1 teaspoon garam masala
½ teaspoon of red chilli powder (optional)
¼ cup of cooking oil
Salt to taste
Sugar to taste
Method
Heat the oil in a pan.
Add onions and fry till translucent. Add ginger, garlic, and green chillies.
Add about 1 teaspoon of sugar to caramelise onions and then add coconut, curry leaves and coriander.
Keep frying on low heat till the mix starts releasing oil.
Add raisins, chilli powder, lemon juice and salt.
Sprinkle garam masala on top and remove from the heat.
To use it as a filling, let it cool down to room temperature. As an accompaniment just add cooked beans, fried potatoes or prawns to this mix and stir for few more minutes.
Rutuja Deshmukh is currently a visiting faculty of Journalism and Cinema at Flame University, and History of Indian Cinema at Savitribai Phule University.
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