Chettinad cuisine is the cuisine of a community called the Nattukotai Chettiars,or Nagarathars, from the Chettinad region in sivagangai district of Tamil Nadu state in India. Chettinad cuisine is perhaps the most renowned fare in the Tamil Nadu repertoire. It uses a variety of spices and the dishes are made with fresh ground ''

masala Masala, Massala or MASALA may refer to: Spice * Masala (spice), any of the many spice mixes used in South Asian cuisine ** Masala chai, a flavoured tea beverage ** Masala incense, Indian incense using a spice mix ** Masala dosa, an Indian dish Pl ...

s''. Chettiars also use a variety of sun-dried meats and salted vegetables, reflecting the dry environment of the region. Most of the dishes are eaten with rice and rice based accompaniments such as '' dosas'', '' appams'', '' idiyappams'', '' adais'' and '' idlis''. The Chettiars, through their mercantile contacts with Burma, learnt to prepare a type of rice pudding made with sticky red rice. The chefs of manapatti village near singampuneri are experts in cooking chettinad cuisine. They always used to cook in bulk orders for marriage functions, political functions, e.t.c. though manapatti cooking is portrayed as madurai cuisine because it is located near to madurai district, it comes under chettinad cuisine only and it also comes under the chettinad region of sivagangai district. The entire village people is famous in the art of cooking. Anandas Chettinad Hotel, sample tray in Coimbatore

Anandas Chettinad Hotel, sample tray in Coimbatore

Chettinad cuisine offers a variety of vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes. Some of the popular vegetarian dishes include '' idiyappam'', '' paniyaram'', ''vellai paniyaram'', ''karuppatti paniyaram'', ''paal paniyaram'', ''kuzhi paniyaram'', '' kozhukatta'', ''masala paniyaram'', ''adikoozh'', ''kandharappam'', ''seeyam'', ''masala seeyam'', ''kavuni arisi, maavurundai,'' and ''athirasam''. In Chettinad food, major spices used include ''anasipoo'' ( star aniseed), '' kalpasi'' (a

lichen A lichen ( , ) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship.tamarind), ''milagai'' ( chillies), ''sombu'' ( fennel seed), ''pattai'' (

cinnamon Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus ''Cinnamomum''. Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes, breakfa ...

), ''lavangam'' (

cloves Cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, ''Syzygium aromaticum'' (). They are native to the Maluku Islands (or Moluccas) in Indonesia, and are commonly used as a spice, flavoring or fragrance in consumer products, s ...

), ''punnai ilai'' (

bay leaf The bay leaf is an aromatic leaf commonly used in cooking. It can be used whole, either dried or fresh, in which case it is removed from the dish before consumption, or less commonly used in ground form. It may come from several species of tr ...

), ''karu milagu'' ( peppercorn), ''jeeragam'' (

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) (''Cuminum cyminum'') is a

fenugreek Fenugreek (; ''Trigonella foenum-graecum'') is an annual plant in the family Fabaceae, with leaves consisting of three small obovate to oblong leaflets. It is cultivated worldwide as a semiarid crop. Its seeds and leaves are common ingredients ...

Historical influences

In the 2014 book ''The Bangala Table: Flavor and Recipes from Chettinad'' by Sumeet Nair and Meenakshi Meyyappan, historian S. Muthiah writes:

The Chettiars have traditionally been vegetarians. Their feasts at lifestyle ritual functions remain vegetarian. But trade once had them criss-crossing the southern reaches of peninsular India and absorbing non-vegetarian influences from the Malabar Coast, where Christians of the Orthodoxy of West Asia and Muslims lived in large numbers and Hindus too tended to non-vegetarianism. Further non-vegetarian influences became entrenched in Chettiar food habits from the late 18th Century after they established businesses in
Ceylon Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, French Indo-China and what is now Malaysia and Singapore. So did non-vegetarian fare from other parts of India through which they traveled en route to their overseas businesses.

Writer Guy Trebay adds in the foreword of the same book:

One is lucky to eat like a Chettiar, they say in South India. Chettiars say it themselves. They say it because a Chettiar table is a groaning board but also because the cuisine is uncommonly subtle and aromatic, a heritage of Chettiar participation in the centuries-old spice trade, the global import and export of pungent seeds and fruits and barks from places like Cochin and Penang, the Banda Islands, Arab ports in the Straits of Hormuz. To the coconut and rice and legumes that are staples of South Indian cooking they added Tellicherry pepper, Ceylon cardamom, Indonesian nutmeg, Madagascar cloves and blue ginger, or galangal, from Laos and Vietnam.

In places like Penang, in what is now Malaysia, the Chettiars developed a liking for the sweet-sour piquancy of Straits Chinese cooking, In Saigon, they adapted their cuisine to absorb the herbs that perfume Vietnamese food. In Buddhist Ceylon, they relaxed their dietary prohibitions typical of orthodox Hindus and came to enjoy meat.

Thus, the Chettinad region—a semi-arid zone comprising scores of villages, sleepy and agrarian, studded with important ancient temples yet far from major commercial centers—became an unlikely locus of internationalized tastes.

References

{{Chettinad Villages Tamil cuisine Culture of Chettinad

Historical influences

See also

References