A waft of sorts from that corner with a well.
Yes, that is the dearest corner. You tend to go there to see the frenzy there and to assist. You could get to taste some morsels before it reaches that enormous dining table. That is where the warmth of that home was shared. It had a corner that is sooth filled, but always wafting the best smell I remember from my yester years. Always there used to be a mud pot with fish curry simmering for all the residents in that huge house. There definitely would be an assistant who is assigned just to make the masala of coconut and spices on that girder, which sets the rhythm in that heavenly corner, with its grr -grr, the sound of the stone sliding over the stone, with that spice paste in coconut. Ammamma, mother’s mother, would often walk up to her and check the consistency and instruct her to continue, till it’s to her satisfaction. This insistence is what I think makes the dishes heavenly, can I find another word for the exquisiteness with which the food gets dishes out of that place?
The kitchen is an old kitchen, which hosts the firewood burners, two of them, which would have a pot simmering with bubbles of rice in big quantities which is getting ready for lunch. Together with that would be other curries, especially the raw mango-added, fresh fish curries which are the specialty of that corner. I remember it to be always a bit dark, maybe the bulbs were always sooth smeared. There was a corner which was dedicated for Ammama to sit and do the preps, it was a wooden stool, which creeks when she sits on it. On it, she perches and does her things, which adds magic to the dishes. It could be the bringing together of all the masalas which were kept next to it in an old cupboard which always used to confuse me, as it was very difficult to distinguish in it, which is red chilly powder to coriander, in that soothe-filled light. But she always used to mix her masalas from it and sit there and do all the shelling of garlic or the sambar onions, which were copiously used for all the dishes. The kitchen’s other elements were a small shaft through which the smoke goes up, a place where all the firewood where stored, and a cupboard where all the vessels were stacked. Quite very functional, with no fancy.
Now the well which is a beautiful element of that kitchen, had that pulley that would make that creaky sound and lets you enjoy that sound of the splash when the metal bucket hits the water in the process of drawing it. Always I would remember that water as the coolest I have ever consumed and was a great relief in those summer days. That sill on the side of the well was the place where fish used to be cut and cleaned, so the chicks which were rared used to peck on the waste.
Adjacent to it, is a little more modern kitchen, with a gas burner, where I remember none of the good stuff for lunch was prepared, If it is yummy, it has to come from those wood burners. Was it the smell of soot mixed or was it wood burning taste that sometimes got into the pot, when it was opened to be tasted, whatever it may be that is the smell and taste I associate with summer holidays which were spent in that ancestral home, which housed hordes of people.
Note: We are in the process of compiling all these heavenly dishes which were made in this kitchen which was next to the well, and also by others whose roots were in this house, but now flourishing in different lands with their families. Just setting the intent with this blog, so that I would work with my hordes of cousins to bring about this book, with these “heavenly” recipes which are specialties of each of these homes and may document some of our food-related memories and stories from those yester years, when these home cooked food was our heaven, when we never knew what can be ordered.
The book is inspired by Tia Anasuya’s Adukkala — https://www.amazon.in/Adukkala-Tia-Anasuya/dp/B0C4HZ5WLB
