The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : A celebration of culinary expertise

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 13, 2007
ePaper

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

A celebration of culinary expertise

"A pleasant and happy mind set will reflect in every dish one makes"

Revathy Shanmugham. — Photo: Shivaji Rao

Cooking, according to her, is a celebration. It indeed sounds like one when culinary expert Revathy Shanmugam talks about her experiences in the kitchen. Fascinated by the art form, she says cooking is totally enjoyable if one develops a taste for the process.

"It is after all about enjoying what we do. A pleasant and happy mindset will reflect in every dish one makes," she tells Meera Srinivasan.

Surprisingly for Ms. Shanmugam, learning how to cook was not part of the preparatory phase before her wedding. As the much-revered Kavignar Kannadasan's daughter, her childhood was marked by a conservative upbringing that did not miss out on fun.

Married off at 15, she had hardly been to the kitchen before that in her life. Even a few years after her wedding, Ms. Shanmugam took up basic cooking only because of the demands of nourishing a nuclear family. "I would visit our neighbour and ask her how she made a certain dish. Like many others, my initial lessons were from the Meenakshi Ammal series of cook books," she says.

Ms. Shanmugam laughs as she recalls her first, unsuccessful tryst with rava while attempting to make upma. "I bribed our helpers into eating that so that others at home did not find out how bad it was."

But slowly, she started experimenting with what was available at home. Dishes got tastier and the menu, wider. In fact, this is what became her strength later — making a variety of dishes with ingredients available at home. She went on to specialise in traditional recipes.

"I am in awe of Chettinad cuisine. The nuances in preparing those dishes are amazing," she says.

She shot to fame after being featured in `Mangaiyar Choice', a television programme produced by AVM Saravan's daughter Usha Saravanan. She has also been writing in women's fortnightly magazine Aval Vikatan for over six years. With 14 books (covering more than 2,000 recipes) to her credit, she says she learns something new every day.

Ms. Shanmugam takes cookery classes and has trained nearly 1,000 students so far. Men are increasingly showing more interest in learning how to cook, she says.

Through Srishti Catering Services that she runs, she takes orders for small gatherings and parties. For a client from Sri Lanka, she took the pains to learn highlights of their cuisine and incorporate them in the dishes served.

A late bloomer, it was no easy task for Ms. Shanmugam to become the successful entrepreneur and sought-after teacher she is. However, during challenging times, there was always a song penned by her father to comfort her. "I was once feeling very down as something went wrong in business. I heard a faint mayakkama ... kalakkamaa somewhere. I was touched!"

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail