Mathur cuisine moves from home to restaurant (Eating Out With IANS)

CHENNAI - A critic need not be a performer, goes the general saying. Not true for Anoothi Vishal who has moved from being a restaurant reviewer to hosting food festivals showcasing traditional Mathur-Kayasth cuisine - from vegetarian delicacies like moong dal pakodis to non-vegetarian dishes like fish pyazi.

The 34-year-old columnist is now being invited by star hotels to rustle up food of the Mathur-Kayasth community - from northern India - she belongs to. She’s donned the chef’s hat once again for the ongoing Mathur food festival at Residency restaurant at the ITC Sheraton Park Hotel and Towers here.

“I learnt to make chapattis when I was in fifth standard. Food and music are part and parcel of our Mathur community. I have learnt Hindustani music though it may not be my favourite,” Vishal told IANS.

According to her, Mathur men are equally good at cooking apart from making their mark in the fields of book keeping, law in the courts of Mughals as well as in the courts of India’s princely states.

Ask her whether she got butterflies thinking of media reviews while hosting food festivals in Delhi hotels and she says: “I was a bit tense initially. Fortunately no one has given me a bad rating though I had given such a rating to several shows earlier.”

A cuisine still confined mostly to homes, Mathur food is slowly coming out of the kitchen.

Offering a crisp moong dal ki pakoris and pakoda for starters, she explained: “The core of Mathur cuisine is the blend of two cultures - the Hindu Vaishnavite and the Mughals. It is the secular cuisine of India.”

Pakodas are generally made of gram flour, or besan, mixed with onions and chilly powder, but the bite sized take on the pakodas made from the moong dal turns out to be delightfully mild and interesting.

While biting into the other delicious starter hari tali machli - batter fried fish pieces coated with coriander chutney - Vishal said: “What is now sold in most parts of the country as North Indian cuisine are Punjabi dishes which are faster to cook. But Mathur cuisine is cooked slowly to get the required perfection and taste.”

Mutton lovers can go for keema bhari aloo tikki - another starter, combining the humble potato cutlet with spiced, minced lamb and and grilled on a tawa.

Referring to Awadhi or Hyderabadi cuisines where dishes are also slowly cooked, she said: “Big hotels invested money and researched to come out with commercially viable items. But Mathur dishes have not come out of our kitchens and I feel they are slowly dying out.”

For the main course vegans and non-vegans have varied options with steamed rice and yummy matar ki tahiri, a type of peas pulav.

An interesting facet of Mathur’s cuisine, she says, is how it “eroticises” common vegetables like ridge and bitter gourd, the torai and karela.

The makhana matar - green peas curried with lotus seeds- is not only different and interesting but tastes great.

The non-vegetarians can choose from four items, two of which are made of mutton and the other two are fish and chicken items.

Mutton lovers can also indulge in badam pasande - lamb marinated and cooked in onion and almond paste.

The fish pyazi, a dry fish preparation with onions, and bhuna murgh, chicken cooked slowly in whole spices, also tastes good.

Those with a sweet tooth should necessarily try out all the three deserts - chawal ki kher, malpue and moong dal halwa.

The Mathur food festival is on till Aug 15 as part of a buffet at the hotel for Rs.1,350 plus taxes per head.

(V. Jagannathan can be contacted at v.jagannathan@ians.in)