The Bangala Table: Chef's Book of Secrets

The Bangala Table: The Flavours and Recipes from Chettinad joins the niche group of food books brought out by luxury hotels

“What did you use in the wet paste for chicken Chettinad?” asks Sumeet Nair. As I list the ingredients, I smile sheepishly when it comes to chillies. For lack of availability, I had replaced the  mild goondu milagai in the recipe with Kashmiri chilli powder. “Next time, visit Sree Rama Store in Munirka for goondu milagai,” advises Nair. It is a similar guiding touch, a gentle nudge in the right direction that one finds in the The Bangala Table: Flavours and Recipes from Chettinad, a book that Nair has co-authored with Meenakshi Meyyappan and Jill Donenfeld. Each recipe comes with “cook’s notes” that allow you to make the recipe your own, while meandering through the rich flavour palate of Chettinad cuisine. For instance, in the recipe for steamed green masala fish, the authors suggest playing with the ratio of ingredients in the wet paste by changing the quantities of coconut, coriander and mint to come up with your personal ideal green masala. This book, which was launched on Tuesday at The Park, New Delhi, is a comprehensive documentation of the traditional food served at the Bangala, Chettinad’s first heritage hotel located in Karaikudi, Tamil Nadu. It is now part of a niche set of food books that focus solely on the cuisines served in luxury hotels across India.

One of the first such books was the Taj Magazine cook book conceptualised by the Taj Group of Hotels in 2005 and featured recipes from its iconic restaurants like House of Ming, Zodiac Grill, The Tea House of August Moon, Masala Kraft, Wasabi and more. A special edition of the book, titled Chef’s Favourites, with recipes by Chef Hemant Oberoi of the luxury hotels and Chef Ananda Solomon of Vivanta hotels  was printed in 2010 due to popular demand. I have a heavily thumbed-through copy of the book and I can tell from experience that the recipes of murgh qorma, murgh hawa mahal, Telangana chicken and kombdicha rassa or Maharashtrian-style chicken curry are absolute must-trys. The fine cuisine to have emerged from the  kitchens of Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts in 25 years too has been the subject of a coffee table book, titled The Fine Art of Food. Brought out in 2011 by fashion photographer Rohit Chawla, who is incidentally also the lensman for The Bangala Table, The Fine Art of Food presented the dishes as abstract art and was an aesthetic tribute to Nouvelle cuisine. Chawla captured food in a minimalist approach, reminiscent of a visual haiku of colours.

The Bangala Table, on the other hand, is all about the rawness and earthiness of Chettinad cuisine. “I didn’t shoot with a flash as it gives unnecessary detail to the dish. I wanted the genuineness of the food to shine through,” says Chawla who shot the pictures in Karaikudi over 10 days. The handmade, non-glossy paper and the styling by Chinoo Sharma, add to this earthiness.

Nair, who too has firm roots in fashion [he was the founding member and ex-chairperson of the Fashion Design Council of India] but now has a working farm in Chattarpur where he refers to his collection of nearly 400 cookbooks to regularly cook up a storm, wanted this book to present a true picture of Chettinad cuisine. “What we know as Chettinad food in the north is such a poor version of the original. So I spoke with Meenakshi Meyyappan, the hotel’s owner, three years ago about doing a book to document this,” says Nair. He visited The Bangala 12 times in a span of three years to interact closely with the cooks who have been part of the family for the last 40 years. Though 85 per cent of the recipes belong to Chettinad cuisine, the rest of them have been sourced from guests who have visited the property over time and some from Sri Lanka where Meyyappan grew up, “as her father was the mayor of Colombo,” says Nair.

There is a very interesting section on sambars and curries. Who knew there were so many versions of sambar, a standard version of which is dished out in south Indian eateries across the country — there are recipes for whole shallot sambar, vegetable sambar, onion sambhar and so on. The book takes you through the various courses that come out from a Chettiar kitchen — from salads, rasams, fish, meat and poultry, vegetables, stews, raita, rice and desserts. It offers a glimpse of the diversity of the cuisine in which contrasts play a huge role. There is a juxtaposition of the hot with the mild, the wet with the dry. “For me the gems are the Chettinad mutton fry and Chow Chow Kootu,” says Nair.

READING A FINE MEAL
There are exciting times ahead for foodies as more and more luxury hotels are commissioning recipe books that allow you to create a fine dining experience in your home. Taj has come up with Chronicles of Whitefield, a vintage Anglo-Indian recipe book compiled by executive chef Arzooman Irani. It contains handwritten recipes from over 100 years ago. Shreyas Yoga Retreat in Bangalore too has released a cookbook titled Soul Food after repeated requests from the guests. The book, which focuses on ayurveda recipes, is not available in the market but can be purchased by the guests from the retreat. You can try recipes like kaddu aur mooli ke patte and ragi ka chilla, among others. Samode, a luxury boutique hotel in Jaipur, too has come up with a book titled Recipes from Samode. “The inspiration of the various recipes is derived from influences on food we used to eat while growing up:  my paternal grandmother belonged to the erstwhile Rana family of Nepal. My mother is from the royal family of Bhavnagar and my maternal grandmother belonged to the royal family of Tripura,” says Yadevendra Singh, co-owner of Samode Hotels, about the documentation of the family’s culinary journey. Chawla too is working on pictures for another book, this time by Indian Accent, the award-winning restaurant at The Manor, New Delhi, helmed by chef Manish Mehrotra . “This, I think, will be India’s biggest food book and will be out in a year or so,” he says.
The Bangala Table is available on Amazon and in leading bookstores for Rs 1,699. One can sample the delicacies at The Park, New Delhi, as part of the four day thali festival, on till August 30