If you pick up Feast on a Leaf: The Onam Sadhya Cookbook for a few authentic Nair recipes, you will be pleasantly surprised. The book begins with chapters outlining the legends associated with Onam, giving insights into the festival’s traditions, including Kerala’s culinary culture. “Today, recipes can be found at your fingertips through various digital channels. So just putting together recipes would not have been very appealing. The Onam sadya is intrinsically associated with the festival, and highlighting the latter helps put the food into context,” says filmmaker-turned-chef-turned-author Arun Kumar TR. Readers get an insight into how the Vishnu–Mahabali tale became associated with Onam, its many interpretations, and how they gave way to Onam’s key elements, such as the pookkalam and onathappan.
Arun Kumar TR | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
For the New Delhi-based 68-year-old, writing a book had always been on his to-do list but he kept postponing it due to professional commitments. From being a journalist and film critic for over eight years, Arun became a filmmaker for around 20 years. “I produced and directed a feature film, television serials, documentaries, and corporate films,” he shares, adding that alongside filmmaking, he was doing “a lot of cooking” for friends and family. “In the early 2000s, nudged by friends, I went on to host what was, perhaps, the first food pop-up in Delhi, focusing on food from the Deccan. I did this for a few years during the winters. Later, I went on to be the brand chef at Zambar, a restaurant that specialised in coastal cuisine, for more than four years and am now running a catering company, Zeaside, since 2017.”
With his fascination for Onam lingering since childhood, it seemed natural to peg his first book on the festival. “A couple of years back, I put pen to paper and wrote a proposal and a couple of chapters. I was told not to be experimental and write a cookbook, but I was trying something different by mixing fiction with recipes,” says Arun, adding how his Onam memories are filled with savouring goodies for ten days and playing with mud and flowers to make pookkalam. “Even as a journalist, whenever I was home, I made a sadya for family and friends. This extended into my days as a chef when I organised sadyas at all the outlets I managed. I found that no one had documented the festival.”
The Onam sadya featured in the book brings together science, ayurveda, and textures | Photo Credit: Dinesh Khanna
The process of writing the book took Arun more than a year. “I attended all the celebrations in Kerala last year with Dinesh Khanna, the photographer. We documented each day of the 10-day celebration, interviewing people from my erstwhile tharavads. Given the lack of written records and archival material, I had to rely a lot on recall and I ran it through more people to make sure nothing wrong went in. That was a long process,” he says, adding that although the recipes were familiar, he prepared each dish while documenting it in terms of ingredient measures.
‘There is science and a little bit of ayurveda involved’, he writes about the sadya in Feast on a Leaf. He highlights that the meal balances six tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent, and how the acceptable way to serve the Onam sadya featured in the book brings together science, ayurveda, textures, and his observations. So you will not just find the menu and recipes for a full-fledged sadya with 35+ dishes but a sadya for two, a vegan variation of the meal, a gluten-free sadya, and how to host a sadya-themed party.
Behind-the-scenes of a sadya preparation | Photo Credit: Dinesh Khanna
Arun also addresses how the ‘tharavad sadya’ ticked all the boxes of today’s concerns of going local and creating minimal wastage. This was an important aspect to highlight because he feels Indians traditionally ate local and wasted very little. “It is only with time, modernisation and fast transportation that our habits changed. Even if an avocado is not grown in one’s backyard, they would still buy one that has come from Mexico!” He adds, “Today you find a growing movement among restaurants and chefs in dealing with waste. Peels, that are normally discarded, are finding their way into dishes.” This is in common with the sadya wherein most dishes involve using all parts of an ingredient. The banana, for example: the raw fruit is used in making chips and a stir-fry; the ripe one is used in payasams or eaten steamed; the leaf becomes the plate; the flowers are also used to make fritters and a stir-fry, and the stem goes into a stir-fry or curry.
Arun cooks a sadya every Onam, be it for family, friends, or clients, and this year is no different. “This year, I am hosting a food festival at Hyderabad where we will serve a sadya for four days.”
The book has menus for gluten-free, vegan sadyas as well | Photo Credit: Dinesh Khanna
Given his vast repertoire of sadya favourites, which ones are closest to his heart? “There are a couple of ‘touchstone’ dishes that connoisseurs of a sadya normally taste before having the entire meal: the pullyingi and the kalan. That gives them an idea of how good the sadya would be. So the kalan is my favourite not just for this reason, but also because it is the one dish that took me the longest to perfect, especially to get the okay nod from connoisseurs in the family,” concludes Arun.
Published by Bloomsbury, Feast on a Leaf is available on amazon.in for ₹799
Published - September 09, 2024 04:58 pm IST
