TAMIL CUISINE - THE FOOD TRADITION
OF AN ANCIENT PEOPLE

" Tamil cuisine is perhaps the oldest representative of the continuous vegetarian cultures of the world. The delicious dishes from the state are relished all over the country and abroad. The cuisine has important delicacies like dosa, idli and vada served with sambar and chutneys. There is a wide range of rice and vegetable preparations. The meals are traditionally served on banana leaves."

 "Tamil cuisine is known for its aromatic, flavourful and sometimes spicy food. These recipes create an unique blend of spices, that makes the food very appetising, nutritious and wholesome. Vegetables, Meats and Dairy products are the foundation. Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Cloves, Cardamom, Cumin, Coriander, Coconut, Rosewater etc, flavour the food and remind us of the sweetness of life. Curry Powder, Ginger, Garlic, Chillies, Pepper etc add the zest.."

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Idiappam -   இடியப்பம்

Mothagam - Kolukattai

Puttu - புட்டு

From the Introduction by Nesa Eliezer to Recipes of the Jaffna Tamils - Edited by Nesa Eliezer, Compiled by Rani Thangarajah

"The food traditions of a people express their attitudes to life. They are expressive not only of their geographical psyche but also of their beliefs about health and nutrition. They frequently summarise a people's views on interactive behaviour and etiquette.

In the case of the Tamils of the north and east of Sri Lanka, the regions referred to by Tamils as the Tamil Homelands or Tamil Eelam, the food traditions are characterised by a remarkable resourcefulness in their use of the locally available ingredients. In the Jaffna Peninsula (Yaalpaanam) the soil is harsh and arable only in pockets. But from this limited plenty the Tamils have created a cuisine that is so distinctive that it warrants closer interest than has been given it thus far. Tamils love their cuisine and wherever they go they relish the memories of it and try as far as possible to inculcate a love for it in their children.

I hope that this book recalls some of those memories, especially of the Jaffna Peninsula, in a meaningful way for the millions of Jaffna Tamils flung all over the globe. The mention of "Karupani" or "Susiyam" or "Pori Arisi Maa" brings a delighted twinkle to the eyes of Tamils in faraway lands. "Ah, yes, I remember my Amma used to.... " and off they go into warm, enchanting tales of a Jaffna childhood.

This book takes its spark from the warmth of that love for their land. The baths at Keerimalai the tall, tufted Palmyra trees swaying in cholai winds, the onion fields, the swollen kurakkan ears of grains on the sheaves. the oil monger grinding the goodness of the sesame seeds with his melancholy bull at the yoke . . . These memories are recounted in excited tones of beloved Tamil over hot meals of Odiyai Kool or Egg Hoppers in far-off lands.

Murukku முறுக்கு

The recipes have been lovingly compiled by Rani Thangarajah in Melbourne from friends and relatives both here and from Tamil Eelam. While every care has been taken to give a fairly comprehensive selection, this book cannot be exhaustive.

The book is intended mainly for Tamils who have settled overseas, from choice or necessity. I hope that a will provide them with a real link to their rich heritage.

Puttu & Murukku Makers

As in all recipe books, the weights and measures and methods are those of the cooks. Every cook in the kitchen will make adjustments as her spirit and knowledge of taste lead her. Less chilli here. more salt there, a little more tamarind, leave out this, add that . . . what delights the trying of a recipe brings! I hope this book will prove to be no less exciting for lovers of Jaffna Tamil food everywhere. Outside South and South East Asia. almost all the ingredients are available in most Asian groceries specialising in Sri Lankan and Indian produce in the major cities of Australia, Europe and the United States.

This book could not have been written without the help of the women of Melbourne who contributed the recipes from the storehouses of their mothers' and grandmothers' collections: I thank Dr Kanthi Kanavathipillay for help with translation from the Tamil. I also thank the family of the late S. Arumugam of Kuala Lumpur for permitting me to use excerpts from their family letters."

What’s cooking? Preparing and sharing food in Ambai’s Tamil short stories - Lakshmi Holmström, Fellow, East Anglia University, United Kingdom[also in PDF]

"...Food can be a means of defining a group identity: other people stereotype the ‘Madrassi’ by what and how she eats... while someone from Tirunelveli defines himself as much by regional landscape as by local foods... On the other hand, where a protagonist perceives her ‘self’ as fluid and changing, tastes and smells of food still feature prominently among the ragbag of memories, sense impressions including music, and emotions that make up her particular history.."

There is an abundance of tropes to do with food, cooking and eating in modern Tamil fiction. They appear consistently in the short stories of Ambai, a contemporary author in Tamil, who writes from a feminist perspective. She uses examples of food and cooking to highlight certain themes in her work: frames and boundaries; order, control and power relations within boundaries, and pleasures outside them. As a writer who grew up in Tamil Nadu but now lives in Bombay, a recurrent theme is the quest for identity, or sense of the self.

Food can be a means of defining a group identity: other people stereotype the ‘Madrassi’ by what and how she eats (‘Arat, a sparrow), while someone from Tirunelveli defines himself as much by regional landscape as by local foods ( ‘Journey 2’). On the other hand, where a protagonist perceives her ‘self’ as fluid and changing, tastes and smells of food still feature prominently among the ragbag of memories, sense impressions including music, and emotions that make up her particular history (‘A rose-coloured sari’).

Ambai also sees food and cooking as ways of imposing control within the family, and maintaining boundaries between communities. She questions the value of hospitality, which merely reflects the status and importance of the pater familias.‘A kitchen in the corner of the house’ examines the mother-in-law’s illusory authority in the kitchen, the establishment of a hierarchy within it, and how that authority can be subverted through ‘food wars’. In other stories (e.g. ‘Parasakti and others in a plastic box’), a mother’s food brings order to the day and the seasons ofthe year, but this order limits flexibility and choice. Outside the boundaries areforbidden foods: for example, impure foods sacrificed to the non-Sanskritic goddess Mariamman and then cooked into delicious chicken pulao; mouth-watering butun healthy street foods (‘Journey 3’) or palm toddy (‘Forest’).

These cross caste and class lines; they are dangerously close to ‘pain, blood and death’, and they afford the delights of indulgence and excess. Sharing food is a continuing theme in Ambai’s stories. Sharing food also means crossing boundaries between generations, communities and cultures (‘Gifts’,‘Age’, ‘Camel ride’). The ideal feast is one where the cooking is shared equally and spontaneously (‘Forest’). Everyone eats together, no one ‘serves’ another: the opposite of the hierarchy described in ‘A kitchen’. The feast also asserts the right to pleasure, which sometimes has to be earned through pain. The women in ‘Forest’cook their feast together, to the rhythm of Bahini Bai’s lyric which one of them sings:Arré, sansara, sansara, life is like a griddle on which you cook your baakris: It is only when you have burnt your hand that you get your baakris.