In search of RAMASSERI IDLI
- The Hindu Ramasseri idlis being made. Photo: K.K. Mustafah
- The Hindu Ramasseri. Photo: K.K. Mustafah
- The Hindu Ramasseri idli. Photo: K.K. Mustafah
-
In a tea shop in a nondescript village near Palakkad, K. Pradeep
discovers a flatter version of the idli, almost like a mini dosa, whose
secret restaurateurs and chefs have not been able to decipher.
A narrow, ribbon-like road that deviates from the
Palakkad-Coimbatore Road at Puthussery (or turns from Kootupathai on the
Palakkad-Pollachi Road) takes you to Ramasseri, hardly eight km from
Palakkad town. It’s nearing noon when we stop at Sankar Vilas, one of
the two tea shops in this nondescript village whose only claim to fame
is its idlis.
Sankar Vilas is at one end of a row of
tiled building strips that house a quaint grocery, a few houses and a
rice mill. A few women, with colourful plastic pots, wait their turn at
the water tap. A dog wakes up, stares, stretches, and goes back to
sleep. The palpable silence is broken by the occasional vehicle that
passes by and the strains of a vintage T.M. Soundararajan film song from
the radio at the tea shop.
A bleary-eyed, ruffled
Jeevanandan, who runs this tea shop, ushers us inside. He still has
customers gorging on leaves full of soft, puffy idlis. Two men, who have
finished a rather late breakfast, discuss the daily newspaper. While
serving his clients Jeevanandan offers us a hot cup of coffee and talks
about this tradition of making Ramasseri idlis that have become popular.
“I
took over when my father (Sankaranarayanan) died,” says Jeevanandan.
“This shop must be more than 75 years old. I have heard my parents say
that the Ramasseri idlis date back to over 100 years. It is believed
that the Mudaliars, the community to which I and the other families in
this village who make idlis belong, migrated from the neighbouring
districts of Tamil Nadu. We have been following a tradition handed down
to us by the elders. We now have only four families and two shops that
sell these idlis here. In the past, this village had handloom. Now it is
the idlis.”
Jeevanandan says the tea shop is not
profitable. He sells 500 idlis on an average every day. A set of two
idlis costs Rs.8. “We make them twice a day, depending on the demand.
What helps us survive are the bulk orders we get from hotels, weddings
and other functions. During this time, families get together and make
them. We don’t give them the chutneys; they have their own combinations
like stew and sambar.” The voices of TMS, P. Susheela, and P.B. Srinivas
take turns to keep us company.
What makes the
Ramasseri version of the idli so special? Jeevanandan and the others in
the village still make idlis the same way their forefathers did. They
use rice, black gram, fenugreek and salt to form a batter. “The trick,
the taste, of the idlis is in the way we cook them,” Jeevanandan says,
even as he moves to serve chutney to new customers.
What
strikes you first is the unique shape of these idlis. The Ramasseri
version is a trifle flat, unlike the more common ones; it is almost like
a mini dosa. It feels fluffy, spongy and soft.
Jayan,
a carpenter, stays close to this village. He is at Ramasseri on work
and has been eating these idlis for many years now. “Though I stay
nearby we don’t make these idlis at home. We have tried, but they never
come close to what we get from these families. Only they know the
‘trick’,” he says breaking a big piece of idli, and mixing it well with
two varieties of chutneys and the podi (a powder of pepper, roasted rice, black gram and red chilly) before shoving it into his mouth.
Even
restaurateurs and professional chefs have not been able to decipher the
secret taste of the Ramasseri idli. “There is a popular story among our
families that the recipe of the idli and the podi was handed
down by an old woman called Chittoori Ammal. I’m not very sure about
this. I was married into this family, and ever since I have been making
this. I was ‘trained’ by my mother-in-law and the other older women in
the family,” says Rajammal, Jeevanandan’s mother, and the oldest member
of the clan.
It is noon and customers begin to
dwindle. The shop opens as early as 4 a.m. and remains open till 9 p.m.
every day. It is not unusual to see people queuing up and cars and vans
halted under the tree close to the shop in the morning. “We have our
regular customers from the village and the surroundings who come here
almost every day. Then there are people from the restaurants in the city
who come to collect their orders,” says Jeevanandan, as he gestures to
us to follow him to the “kitchen”.
Jeevanandan stays
with his family behind the tea shop. He leads us to the dark, small
kitchen. Four fireplaces occupy most of the space. One of them is
burning. Jeevanandan sits down and opens a large pot of idli batter. He
takes four round clay steamers (like the ganjira), almost eight-inch in
diameter, tied tightly on the mouth with a piece of wet cotton cloth. He
pours a ladle full of batter on these net-like cloths on each of these
hollow-bottomed steamers and stacks them one over the other. Then he
places them on a large pot on the fireplace. The fire logs flicker and
it is hot inside the kitchen. He then covers them with another blackened
pot.
“Earlier we used only earthen pots. We used to
have expert potters who made them for us. But now we don’t get that kind
of quality. Most of them tend to break in the heat. We have substituted
them with aluminium pots now. But the round steamers are still made of
clay. In the past only three steamers were stacked together. Since we
need to make large numbers we use four,” Jeevanandan explains even as
the idli gets steaming.
Once they are done, he lifts
the cover, removes the stack of steamers one by one, places a wet leaf,
usually of the jackfruit tree, over the steaming idli and turns the
steamer upside down, sliding the idli into a huge tray. “The firewood we
use is only from the tamarind tree. It takes hardly a minute or two to
make an idli. But it’s tough during summer to stay close to the fire
right through in a hot kitchen.”
Vallakutty, a
spinster, who walks with a slight shuffle, has been working in Sankar
Vilas for “more than 20 years.” “She reaches here by three in the
morning and by seven makes around 300 idlis and leaves. We take over
after that,” says Jeevanandan.
There was a time when
Ramasseri idlis were packed and carried abroad. It used to have a shelf
life of three to four days. “Not any longer,” confesses Jeevanandan. “At
the most it may last a day. The quality of rice has gone down. Earlier,
we used to get it from our own fields or buy from those who cultivated
rice. Not any longer. The taste starts right from the boiling of paddy
itself. In fact, we used to use parts of the husk to make the podi.
We now depend on the grocer who chooses the variety of rice we need. We
use electric grinders and mixers to make the batter and the podi. This has also affected the quality.”
We
sit inside the shop as Jeevanandan places fresh-washed banana leaves
before us. The fluffy idlis fall on the leaf. The coconut and tomato
chutneys give the green leaf and the snow-white idlis a dash of
brightness. The podi is served last. For the next few minutes we
are not sure if Jeevanandan said anything or if TMS was still singing.
The peppery-hot podi hits you hard, yet you keep going for that
lovely, tangy taste. We clean up the leaf in quick time, and buy a
parcel of idlis to take home.
Now I will believe
those who told me of the separate queues at the two tea shops in
Ramasseri from the crack of dawn. Watching the idlis being steam-cooked
in those mud pots, arranged in a three-tiered method till they are
slipped on to the green leaf before you is an experience.
In
minutes our car has sped past the little village. The TMS songs are
heard no more, and the aroma of steamed idlis cannot be felt. I touch
the packet of idlis in the bag — some reassurance.
HOW IT’S MADE
The ingredients and process are almost the same as those for the usual idli.
Soak
one kg of good parboiled rice and 150 grams of black gram in separate
pots for some hours. Wash and remove the skin of the gram and grind it
with a large pinch of fenugreek to a smooth, thick batter. Wash and
grind the rice separately and combine the two. Add salt to taste and
stir well. Cover it and set it aside for 10-12 hours, overnight
preferably, to ferment. Use this batter to make the idlis.
