The smell of the Chandrakaran mambazham slowly permeates through the house, and one knows Amma would make her delicious Mambazhapullissery soon. Just the thought of it is very comforting. It will be the perfect marriage of sweet and sour with a hint of heat from the smoked red chilli. The best part of this whole ritual is squeezing the mango, then biting into it and finally sucking all the flesh off till only a bald stone is left. This one’s truly finger-licking good!

There was a lone Chakka (Jackfruit) that had ripened way too much and there were no takers for the fruit at this point. But Amma seemed thrilled about this! She whipped up something quick for lunch with the Jackfruit that had been deemed too far gone. It was a simple dish with the Chakka cut up into small cubes and cooked with some salt and chilli powder. But she looked blissful as she ate it with the hot-hot Kanji and some Pappadam on the side. Apparently, this was her great-grandmother’s breakfast meal often but not something that was served to the kids. And as she told me this story, I imagined a little her looking into the kitchen from the verandah janala of that old ancestral home, probably with greedy eyes and a drooling mouth, watching the old matriarch slurping away at the long kitchen table. Clearly, an ancient craving was being fulfilled that day.

According to Amma, up until her generation, all the Thirikodi women have been born with a flair for ‘salkaraam’. Salkaaram loosely translates to ‘greet’ or ‘entertainment’. But the basic idea is to make the guests feel welcome and loved. For Amma, it is best expressed through her food.

How she’d single-handedly whip up a feast for an army is beyond me! Apart from the insane amount of food made, she would have considered personal preferences of everybody in the group. The Veluri would be fried to two different levels of crispiness for my aunt and my cousins; every single dish would be recreated without chilli for her grand-nephew. Olan would be prepared one way for my dad and another for the rest of us. I, for one, would scold her generously for going overboard with all that she does. And come meal-time, I’d shamelessly binge on the oh-so-big spread on the table.

Recently, Amma’s into making her specialties without onion and garlic for my sister, our very own ‘Malayali Jain’. These food restrictions have reduced her food options and usually ends up having to make do with whatever vegetarian option is available on a table weighed down by the meat dishes. But Amma won’t have it anymore. Her girls should have something special just like everyone else.

Any time she comes across a any interesting dish, she’s thinking of ways to make a Paneer or any other vegetarian option out of it. Not everyone thinks of making allowances for their food restrictions. But this simple gesture on Amma’s part brings them such joy and satisfaction. A little thoughtfulness does go a long way. So here’s her Paneer-ified version of the fish cutlet she makes.

Since her retirement, Amma often has this urge to attempt the unnecessary (or what would qualify as the impossible for a lot of us!). YouTube is her savior from endless hours of boredom and the go-to source for all such elaborate experiments. Unlike the regular, lazy folks like us who would buy stuff that we crave for at a store or head to a restaurant, I’d find Amma hunched over her phone with the YouTube app open and going through multiple variations of the same recipe. That day, she had got it into her head to make what the Mallus lovingly call ‘micher’, our version of the namkeen or the spicy mixture of crunchy munchies.

Once her intensive research is done, you can see the energy of a super-being flow through her. She methodically tackles one step after

another and in what feels like no time to us (the regular folks again), she has done it. With a gentle dusting of her hands and the satisfied look of a job well done, she gets to cleaning up the mess that is the kitchen now.

The next part is even harder for me to wrap my head around. Instead of pouncing on this home-made deliciousness, Amma will wait until tea-time to relish the snack with a hot cup of tea, just the way it should be. I wonder why are we (meaning I) the only greedy ones here? But only until I find her secretly binging on it the next morning. “Like father, like daughter”, she’d joke and I’d console myself thinking ‘like Amma, like daughter’.