Tomichan Matheikal's blog

“Do you serve momos?” I asked the aging man in Monkz Café, the only stall that was open at about 11 this morning when I visited The Old Monk Food Street in my hometown of Thodupuzha. According to the omniscient Google, this is probably the only place in this town where momos are available. “What?” the man who managed everything – brewing tea/coffee, serving snacks, and collecting the cash – nearly scowled. I repeated the word ‘momo’ in singular since Malayalam has an aversion for plurals and the man’s demeanour made me defensive. He gave me a smile that was typically Malayali: mocking as well as naughty. That smile made me wonder whether the word ‘momo’ has some vulgar connotation in Malayalam. I told him to give me a dal vada and a coffee, a common order in a Malayali tea shop. As I sat in the elaborate food court which was empty except for a group of youngsters and one other client, I observed that all the stalls in the ‘food street’ remained closed. A few shutters were par...

From CNN  whose headline is:  Holy cow! India is the world's largest beef exporter The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is perhaps the only novel I’ve read in which food plays a significant, though not central, role, particularly in deepening the reader’s understanding of Christopher Boone’s character. Christopher, the protagonist, is a 15-year-old autistic boy. [For my earlier posts on the novel, click here .] First of all, food is a symbol of order and control in the novel. Christopher’s relationship with food is governed by strict rules and routines. He likes certain foods and detests a few others. “I do not like yellow things or brown things and I do not eat yellow or brown things,” he tells us innocently. He has made up some of these likes and dislikes in order to bring some sort of order and predictability in a world that is very confusing for him. The boy’s food preferences are tied to his emotional state. If he is served a breakfast o...

Pearl Spot or Karimeen You won’t expect fish to be staple diet in a state like Rajasthan just as you don’t find millets in Kerala’s regular cuisine. Food is deeply intertwined with local cultures; it reflects history, geography, climate, religious beliefs, social structures, and economic conditions. Fish has been a regular presence on the Malayali dining table for centuries thanks to the state’s 600 km of coastline and 44 major rivers, not to mention countless rivulets and streams. My childhood reeked of sardines and mackerels, the most abundant fishes in our region. Fishmongers came on bicycles selling these two varieties usually, probably because they were the cheapest. These two varieties are becoming extinct now, I’m afraid; they are not seen much in the markets. My cats do miss them occasionally. The queen of the Malayali dinner menu is undoubtedly the pearl spot, known as karimeen in Malayalam. This fish can appear in infinite varieties on the dining table, karimeen pollic...

If you want to have a typical nonvegetarian Malayali lunch or dinner in a serene village in Kerala, here is the Garden of Eden all set for you at Ramapuram [literally ‘Abode of Rama’] in central Kerala. The place has a temple each for Rama and his three brothers: Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna. It is believed that Rama meditated in this place during his exile and also that his brothers joined him for a while. Right in the heart of the small town is a Catholic church which is an imposing structure that makes an eloquent assertion of religious identity. Quite close to all these religious places is the Garden of Eden, Eden Thoppu in Malayalam, a toddy shop with a difference. Toddy is palm wine, a mild alcoholic drink collected from palm trees. In my childhood, toddy was really natural; i.e., collected from palm trees including coconut trees which are ubiquitous in Kerala. My next-door neighbours, two brothers who lived in the same house, were toddy-tappers. Toddy was a health...

When a cousin of mine posted the following video on a WhatsApp group, my first impulse was to locate the Punjabi restaurant presented in it, merely because I love Punjabi cuisine. One of the foods I missed in the last ten years – that is, after Maggie and I left Delhi – is tandoori roti with chicken tikka masala. My first association with Punjabi food – if that can be called so – is the Patiala peg that I was served when I was in Shillong. A friend who wanted to see me inebriated too quickly for his own reasons told me that he was going to pour me a Patiala peg. I was familiar with the largeness of Punjabi kurta-pyjamas. Later Maggie would teach me about the enormous size of Patiala pants for ladies, which a friend of mine nicknamed Elephant’s trousers.   When Maggie and I settled down in Delhi, we came across many Punjabi people including students, and the first thing we noticed was the largeness of their hearts. Yes, there’s something big about everything that is Punjabi, e...