Lakshmi Santhanam

Amma gave all of us a handwritten book of Tamilian vegetarian recipes when we got married. The recipes included items such as payasam, sambhar, kari, and some snacks such as bajji and pakodas. Amma even wrote down instructions on how to cook rice and make filter coffee! As we entered the next phase of our lives, this set of handwritten recipes of traditional items that we enjoyed eating when growing up were very useful.

Amma enjoyed cooking, and we fondly remember not only the everyday flavoursome cooking but also the delicious sweet and savouries that she made on special occasions such as Diwali and Gokulashtami. Mysore pak was Appa’s favourite sweet and so Amma would make it often. The taste of Amma’s badam halwa and the crisp savoury mixture still lingers in my mouth!

We are very proud of Amma’s business “MUM’s Homemade Products” and her many innovations. Amma was always focused on researching and producing the best version by experimenting and getting the proportions as perfect as possible. In the process she innovated by making things tastier, healthier, faster and in a better way. For example, Amma discovered 40 to 45 years back that Bombay halwa could be made from corn flour; She made instant mixes in “paste” form very early on when mostly powders were available in the market. She innovated healthy versions by baking rather than deep frying South Indian snack items and developed related recipes.

This cookery book is a record of Amma’s recipes for her family & friends and the generations that will follow. In today’s fast paced life when everyone is busy with their education, career, families and travel, there is very little time to learn cooking. This book acts as a handy guide not only for everyday cooking and complex festival dishes but also for instant mixes and pickles. The book comprises four chapters and a glossary of terms. The kolams in this book were created by her more than 75 years ago.

Kavita, one of amma’s grandchildren who lives in Boston and who is also interested in cooking, kick started this book during COVID. Amma would dictate the recipes over the phone, and Kavita would write them down. Although the time difference between New Jersey and India was a challenge, Kavita completed more than 80 recipes in this book. Subsequently, I took over this task, and although I have been running a kitchen for three to four decades, I still learnt a great deal about Tamilian cooking from Amma during the course of writing the recipes. Amma and I collaborated on the selection, writing, structure and checking of these recipes over a period of three years. While this process was both joyful and informative, it came with its own unique challenges as Amma lives in India and I reside in New Zealand. Yet Amma stuck at it, and I admire her for persevering with this at the age of 90!

We are eternally grateful to Amma for teaching us how to cook and spending so much time passing on her knowledge. I am sure many of us and future generations are going to have a lot of fun trying out these recipes and will find this book very useful in cooking a traditional, nutritious and tasty Tamilian tiffin/meal.

As our grandmother turned 90 in 2024 we decided it was time to come together and publish this book. The recipes in this book now live in the cloud, but we had a strong desire to bring something more tangible into our hands. Something we could keep in our respective homes. Something to browse. Something to give as a gift. Something to reference. Something to help us decide what to make for dinner that night. Something to pass onto future generations. And something to remember our grandmother by.

I recently asked my cousins what their favourite food memories related to Patti were and what struck me was how much variation there was in the thoughts that were shared.

Of course there was a collective agreement that her food itself was excellent - ‘her Vathal kuzhambu is unmatched’ writes Shashank. Meanwhile Kavita has cooked her way through many of Patti’s recipes and has developed her own variations of the dishes, especially sambar! Abhinav is known to devour her Pal Poli and Prashant has great nostalgia for her birthday cakes and pal payasam.

Uttara, Pranav and I shared how impressed we were with the scale of her various production runs: Uttara recalls seeing her managing her employees “packaging pickles in full force”, and Pranav for many years has been a witness to her making omapodis and the mammoth “effort involved in making her delicious mixture”. I personally have vivid memories of drying vadams in scorching sunshine on her rooftop in Saradapuram, Chennai.

Manas tells of Patti sitting her brood of grandchildren in a circle and patiently feeding us sadham and kari - rendering an evocative picture of a cozy grandmother. While our grandmother is a warm presence and certainly looks the part of a traditional Mylapore mami, the truth is there is much more - she’s a person who has lived life with a great deal of curiosity and an entrepreneurial nature. Her multidimensional personality makes this collection that much more special.

Patti’s knowledge of cooking has depth and her recipes are the result of great perseverance towards perfection - As Kavita was taking down her recipes, she was struck by Patti’s forensic knowledge of her craft: ’She really understands why recipes work and how to make ingredients work for you.” Patti didn’t simply follow recipes, she studied their component parts, reverse engineered, and then worked out the alchemy that brought them together. She would then keep working on its improvement - making these dishes faster, better, tastier. Even as she passes her 90th birthday she shows no sign of ‘retiring’ - blending her own plant based protein powders for marathon runners in the family and making special podis for new mothers (myself included!).

While Patti could certainly cook South Indian complicated delicacies from scratch she wasn’t beholden to these traditions, she was always looking ahead and was keen to modernise. As her daughters were sent off to study (not very common then), she realised that there was a whole generation of women who might not be able to take on the multiple steps to producing a home cooked south Indian meal every night and also tend to their careers. She started concocting powders and pastes, and enabled young women (and men!) to make traditional rasams, sambars and idlis through some very simple, minimal additions.

Many of you will know that Patti’s love for creation is not restricted to the kitchen. She loved creating thematic doll sets and wanted to find ways to fund the cost of the materials for making them. That’s when she started her business of making and selling the aforementioned powders, pastes as well as pickles, vadams and more. With Thatha’s and Mythily chithi’s support, ‘MUMS Homemade Products’ grew from strength to strength - at its height she employed six full time ladies who manufactured all her creations in her home and a further six people who were in marketing who she cleverly paid on a commission basis to incentivise greater sales.

You will find the recipes for these mixes in this book - it’s an example of her generosity to so freely share the knowledge she has acquired with great difficulty. This is something she has always done - When Patti and Thatha moved to Bengaluru in the 70s, she first started taking baking classes for her neighbours. She learned through the years how to simplify steps, be clear, concise and give enough confidence to the novice. Such was her success she even appeared on television talking through her recipes.

It’s often said that “food is love”, and this book encapsulates Patti’s love for learning, experimenting, innovating, and nourishing those around her. We grandkids have certainly felt (and eaten!) our fair share of Patti’s love, and we are so pleased to be able to share her talents with you.

We hope that this book doesn’t simply serve you as a reference point for recipes (although of course it is that) but also a physical reminder that you can do whatever you put your heart into, and realise your dreams.