A guide to the Sunday virundhu
Twelve dishes on a banana leaf, and the order to eat them in.
The stone ural and why we still pound our masala
Every morning at 6, before the stoves are lit.
At 6 every morning, before the kitchen fires are lit, Meenakshi and one assistant sit down at a stone ural, a mortar sunk into the floor, with a long wooden pestle.
They roast the day’s spices in small batches on an iron tawa: pepper, fennel, cumin, coriander, dried chilli, kalpasi and marathi mokku. Each has its own heat and its own moment; fennel burns quickly, coriander takes longer. Then the spices are pounded together with shallots and garlic into a coarse, fragrant paste.
We have been asked many times why we do not use a grinder. The answer is heat. A fast mixer warms the spices and cooks off the essential oils that carry the smell of pepper and fennel. Pounding is slow, so the masala stays cool and keeps its aroma.
It takes about two hours each morning to pound enough for the day. It is the most tiring job in our kitchen, and the one nobody wants to give up.
