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| Meal on Leaf lunch |
We had a very interesting lunch at home yesterday. It was sent by Mumbai based home chef Trishla Lunawat of ‘Meal on Leaf.’ Trishla originally belonged to Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. Her parents and in laws are both in the food business and this helps her source pulses, spices and rice that are home grown and organic, says Trishla. She offers home cooked meals, primarily on Sundays, and her menu this time featured vegetarian food from the five states of south India
What was there? Well, here goes:
Carrot beans poriyal ( Tamil Nadu)
Chickpeas raw mango sundal (temple style from Tamil Nadu)
Aviyal (Kerala)
Potato masala ( Tamil Nadu)
2 pickles (Tamil Nadu)
2 varieties of podi (garlic podi, Moringa leaf podi) (Andhra& Telangana)
2 chutneys (tomato cabbage, beetroot chutney) (Andhra& Telangana)
Sambar (Karnataka)
Pepper garlic Rasam (Kerala)
Bhindi Kolambu (Tamil Nadu)
Semiya Payasam (all states serve this 
️)
Buttermilk
Mooru milagai (Tamil Nadu & Andhra )
Pachadi (Karnataka)
Ghee from Gujarat in the west
Supari (Tamil Nadu)
Banana
Applam (Tamil Nadu)
Vada (Tamil Nadu masala vada)
Kainaz and I loved the food. We enjoyed the clean and contrasting flavours and textures on offer. The light feeling that the sumptuous repast left us with. Which is rather funny, given that we are both ‘die-hard non-vegetarians’ and till recently the idea of a ‘meat-less’ (or fish-less) Sunday lunch would seem like the worst tragedy to have befallen mankind to us.
On top of that, Kainaz is not too fond of south Indian food. I enjoyed it while growing up in Kolkata, but in the ’80s and the ’90s ‘south Indian food’ meant idli, dosa and vada and we never ordered idlis? What’s life without some crunch, being the Bengali credo, and hence why order idlis. Mumbai ,with its restaurants serving food from Mangalore in Fort, Kerala in Fort and Mahim, opened my eyes to the diversity of South Indian food. I must admit that I had never taken to the vegetarian south Indian food hub of Matunga in Mumbai which has many fans. I had grown up to a template of similar Udupi restaurant food in Kolkata and then got to experience it at the source through my frequent travels to south India to places such as Bengaluru, Mangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Vizag, Kochi and Chennai. Hence, travelling there to eat when in town did not appeal much to me. Now we have Madras Diaries at Bandra which does traditional Tamil veg food which is nice, albeit pricier than Matunga.
Our perspective on south Indian vegetarian meals changed with the lockdown in Mumbai.
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| Oottupura Vishu Kani |
It started with we got to taste the food from Marina Balakrishnan’s Oottupura. An amazing lady who went to New York at the age of 50 to study to be a chef and then went to Thailand to work with chef Garima Arora at Gaa. Chef Garima advised Marina to focus on her (M’s) native Malayali food as Marina did it so well and so passionately. Marina’s plans to open a restaurant was put in cold storage thanks to the lockdown and she started Oottupura instead. Here she offers plant based (modern speak for vegetarian) Kerala sadyas (meals), which has its origins in her childhood memories of her grandmother’s kitchen in Thalassery. K and I were smitten by it the first time we had Marina’s food and during the many times that we have had the opportunity of having it since.
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| Perima’s Kitchen breakfast |
Last year was also when I came across Meena Subramanian who runs her home chef outfit called Perima’s Kitchen in Mumbai. Her origins lie in Tirunelveli in Tamila Nadu from where her parents had migrated to Mumbai. Perima’s Kitchen offers vegetarian Tamil brunches which I quite enjoy. At times I save the super soft idlis or the crunchy vadas that she sends to have as tea after lunch. Many of the dishes that she offers are familiar to one, but there’s a certain finesse and purity to what she presents which can only come from a lot tender love and care in the kitchen.
Incidentally we have ordered food from Oottupura and Perima’s for friends and family who are vegetarian and it was much appreciate.
And now there is Trishla who won our hearts with her south Indian vegetarian meal!
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| Digging into the Meal on leaf lunch |
What is the secret behind this volte face?
It’s the magic of home cooked food served with earnestness and honesty that did the trick, if you were to ask me. The sort of food which has won a million hearts over centuries. Ours being the latest!
You could say that it doesn’t matter if it’s red or green. With apologies to Michael Jackson.
One more clue. Each of the three home chefs send their food along with banana leaves to eat them on and eating on banana leaves form a significant part of K’s and my childhood food memories, but that is a story for another day.
Also watch:
The Oottupura story
Perima’s Kitchen:
Meal on Leaf:
