Over 34 years, Saraswathi Kurian taught more than 6,000 students the fine art of cooking at Cultural Academy, Santhome. Homemakers and graduates cooked as she instructed them, based on recipes she’d tried, re-tried and tweaked till they were perfect.
Rebecca Chandy, 92, who was principal of the Academy, has now come up with tried & true , a compilation of recipes taught by her late sister from 1971-2005. The book will be released at 4 p.m. today at Amethyst.
Growing up across Kerala — in Kottayam, Quilon and Trivandrum — Saraswathi and her younger sister Rebecca rarely visited the kitchen. Their father wanted them to study and “come first in class”. Rebecca started cooking after marriage, but Saraswathi, keen on the culinary arts, followed up a degree in Zoology in Trivandrum with another in Home Science from Lady Irwin College, Delhi. “She then got married, lived in a mansion, threw parties and was a graceful host,” recalls Rebecca. Especially popular during these eclectic get-togethers were the “eats she made”.
Rebecca joined the Cultural Academy, set amidst the sands of the Marina Beach, and was appointed Principal in 1969. A cookery teacher had resigned and they were on the lookout for another. That’s when Saraswathi offered to teach. Rebecca’s reaction? “You?” But Saraswathi, then about 35, felt it was a great opportunity to teach interested students and stay active.
Then on, till 2005, she taught twice a week — two sessions each on Monday and Thursday. Her daughter Usha Abraham, who lives in Bangalore, remembers waiting for her mother and aunt to get back from the Academy — they would bring back a small box that contained samples of the day’s lessons! She says her mother was a meticulous cook, fast but exact in her measurements and recipes.
Rachel Kurian, another daughter who lives in The Netherlands, recalls her mother and sister Usha (15 years older than her) discussing recipes over the phone. The family home was full of cousins, laughter, love and the aroma of good food. Saraswathi would churn out food for all, even coming up with a ‘quick’ version of biryani that could feed a hundred people.
Rachel and Usha have varied “food” memories of their ammachy. Rachel speaks fondly of the twice-a-year Easter and Christmas treat of appam and ishtu and aval, while Usha mentions breakfast of puttu and irachi ulathiyathu, made often because their father loved it. Rebecca’s smile reaches her eyes when she speaks of her sister’s pizzas.
Saraswathi had written down the recipes in various dog-eared notebooks, speckled with turmeric and chilli powder, and bearing the aroma of spices. Rebecca went through all of them, and whittled down the list to “recipes that I remember her cooking, and my tasting”. She also edited the instructions, keeping them taut.
As Principal, Rebecca would taste the dishes made by every batch. “There would be five students to a table, and I’d go around sampling. Sometimes, I would tell them the recipe had to be tweaked,” she says. Saraswathi would work on it, and the sisters remained “best friends”, despite their age difference.
Rachel says food fascinated her mother. “During our trips to Kodi, she would want to know how the cakes sold at Mr. Mathew’s CLS Book Shop were so soft,” she smiles.
Many people, especially her four children and eight grandchildren, were the recipients of Saraswathi’s largesse. Her cakes, decked up with dolls in skirts made of icing sugar, were legendary. But, most of all was her ability to persist till she cooked a dish the way it had to be. That’s exactly what the book hopes to inspire people to do.
Sabita Radhakrishna will release the book at Amethyst on Wednesday, July 20 at 4 p.m.
