SACRED SERVINGS OF SUMPTUOUS FOOD

WITH an exciting line-up of authentic vegetarian dishes, Tamil Brahmin cooking is all about traditional culinary practices.

They are comparatively less spicy and taste unique. The nutritional value of the ingredients is given prime importance. The cuisine traces its roots back to the Vedic period and features traditional cooking methods like roasting, steaming, sun-drying (papad), pickling (mango, lemon), and roasting and grinding (idli podi, paruppu podi). The principles of Ayurveda are generally followed and the cuisine caters to the six essential flavours sweet, salty, bitter, sour, astringent, and pungent. Focus is given equally to nutrition, flavour, texture and variety.

Generally, Tamil Brahmin cuisine has two different styles of cooking the Iyer (Saivite) style and the Iyengar (Vaishnavite) style. Both have explored the infinite possibilities of vegetarian dishes with the Iyer cuisine alone boasting 27 types of sambar and more than 40 types of rasam. Some of these may overlap in both styles. Even within these two sects, the recipes change depending on their place of birth.