Meenakshi Meyyappan and the Quiet Art of Chettinad Cooking

Chettinad food, contrary to its fiery reputation, is not built on heat. Meenakshi Meyyappan, the 89-year-old host of the luxury property The Bangala, says the region's cooking is temperate and subtle, with coriander seeds used far more generously than chillies. Spices such as cinnamon and cardamom, she notes, have no place in a typical curry.

Meyyappan, fondly called aachi, has co-authored The Bangala Table, a cookbook of vegetarian and non-vegetarian recipes from the region. She is widely credited with preserving Chettinad cuisine in its purest form.

Much of that continuity rests on people like Karuppaiya, a chef who spent 58 years at The Bangala before retiring. He now lives in a village about 15 kilometres from Karaikudi, but whenever he visits, he makes dangar — a thick curry of shallots and tamarind. It is cooks such as him, Meyyappan says, who carry forward recipes and techniques handed down by her ancestors.

"We trained our chefs to cook the original recipes of my mother-in-law and mother," she says.

Growing up in a large family that frequently hosted guests, Meyyappan watched elaborate feasts take shape at home and masalas being ground on the stone ammi in the backyard. Her mother, she recalls, was deeply knowledgeable about food, though Meyyappan herself did not learn to cook then. "I had no interest," she says. Even so, the flavours and aromas of a Chettinad kitchen stayed with her, and when she opened The Bangala in 2000, she knew what she wanted to serve.

Her younger years were spent eating kootu and getti kozhambu, along with mutton and chicken kozhambu and offal soup — her mother's recipes, whose origins cannot be traced. "They were passed down generation to generation," she says.

A typical kootu from the region contains no coconut in any form, unlike in other parts of Tamil Nadu. "Our kootus are very light; they are made with dal and have no tempering; we only use a little jeera and shallots," Meyyappan explains. The getti kozhambus are unique to the region: curries of brinjal and tamarind, a paruppu urundai curry with crumbly balls of boiled dal soaking in a thick base, and one made with banana flowers that are first deep-fried as bajjis before being simmered.

For Meyyappan, precision matters. "The vegetables must be cut finely, the masala ground in an ammi. Food has to taste fine, it cannot be coarse in any way," she says.

She now prefers life at her own pace. She is not on social media and is content playing host to visitors from across cultures. She also conceived The Chettinad Heritage & Cultural Festival, which offers a taste of the region's traditions, customs and food; its second edition concluded in October this year.