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Journalism of Courage
“Use just enough water to cook vegetables”. “While making payasam, if raw rice is not cooked well, before adding sugar, lumps will be formed”. These are valuable tips for any novice in the kitchen. For generations of beginners, KM Mathew’s cookbooks have been a primer to swear by, a manual to follow blindly when learning to cook fish, meat or vegetables.
It all began in May 1953, when sandwiched between news about Winston Churchill and Jawaharlal Nehru was a six-inch column, Pachaka Vidhi (Method of Cooking), in the Malayalam Manorama by Mathew. It was her father-in-law KC Mammen Mappillai, then editor of the Malayalam newspaper, who had noticed her love for food and passion for cooking and insisted that she write the column. This weekend column would continue for nearly five decades, making Mathew a household name. She would go on to be the founder editor of Vanitha, a popular Malayalam magazine for women.
Mrs KM Mathew’s Finest Recipes is the latest compilation by her family, two decades after her death. Mathew’s interest in food took her to restaurants around the world, meeting chefs and making copious notes as she went along. The book reflects that culinary enterprise. She ventures into her own version of murgh mughlai, inspired by her visits to Delhi’s Moti Mahal and Karim’s, there’s a chilli fish recipe, after her trip to Hong Kong, which fuses Indian and Chinese flavours, and a Thai pudding with jaggery syrup.
With a smorgasbord of soups and gravies, dry preparations and desserts, jams and snacks, Mrs KM Mathew’s Finest Recipes has you covered, with lip-smacking photos that do justice to the food. If one has ever tasted a dish by her, it’s hard to forget. Isn’t that proof of an excellent chef? That it lingers in your mind long after it has left your tastebuds? That it turns an oral tradition — of handing down recipes — into a treasurable guide? At the launch of Mathew’s husband’s autobiography, The Eighth Ring (2015), jurist Fali S Nariman remembered Mathew’s tender coconut souffle, which has been a family favourite for years. And in that lies her merit.
