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Taste of rural Andhra

Palletoori Bhojanam is one of Chef Praveen Anand's efforts to unravel traditional cuisines

PHOTO: R. SHIVAJI RAO

AUTHENTIC ANDHRA The spread at the food fest.

Identities are clear-cut in village food. In the big cities, there are such high expectations of food, with so many chefs and culinary cultures battling it out by the stoves, that food tends to get standardised. A paneer makhani or malai kofta might have originated from the North, but now it's available on every multi-cuisine menu in the country. And standardisation of this sort that ensures you get the same kind of food whether you're in Chennai, Hyderabad or Bangalore, could make dining out boring.

In the villages, however, there still are a number of recipes that never really clamber onto trains and buses with people looking for jobs in the cities. And even when they do travel, in curry-stained handwritten family recipe books, they tend to stay true to their roots.

Chef Praveen Anand makes it his mission to find these traditional recipes and present them at Dakshin, the Park Sheraton's culinary showcase for the foods of South India. The Palletoori Bhojanam is a good example of his endeavour. The menu consists of a wide variety of meats, fish and vegetables, all made in completely different ways. However, thanks to the fact that each recipe has a strong individual character, every dish has a distinct taste — whether it's the tangy chicken Nellore vadala podi pulusu served with dumplings or the spicy miriyala chicken vepudu, wrapped in fresh roasted pepper.

Chef Praveen, a determined recipe hunter, spends hours in dusty libraries chasing the past. But he says, often his best resources are the people who make this kind of food every day in their kitchens.

The highlights of this festival are dishes that are exotic outside the rural setting, simply because they are so unusual in our sea of dal makhani-pulao-noodles everyday city food. Like the panasa pottu koora, a spicy tempered jackfruit mince, and the seemingly dry, but delicious jonna rotelu, made with maize wheat flour. While not every dish is wildly exciting, it's a nice way to take a culinary tour of rural Andhra Pradesh, especially if you enjoy wallowing in tradition.

The Palletoori Bhojanam festival, which literally means village feast, is on at Dakshin till April 20. Call 24994101 for reservations.

SHONALI MUTHALALY

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