Resurrecting a dead relish

A favourite childhood memory of mine is me coming home from school to a mound of steaming rice topped with a ladle of thick pappu (boiled mashed green gram) and a generous helping of homemade ghee surrounded by a moat of tangy chinta charu (tamarind rasam). 

It was my first tryst with nostalgia. The first bite would transport me back to simpler times when the school days and my trousers were both half in measure.

I’ve always maintained that my ammi, my late grandmother, invented the dish. One of the most unfortunate outcomes of her passing was the loss of the recipe. You might think I’m being inconsiderate, but the dish is to die for. And my mother’s version just doesn’t taste like what ammi used to make.

I’d been on the hunt for this elusive dish for years. I’ve scrounged around the annals of the internet long enough to know that it isn’t familiar, let alone popular.

So, I took it upon myself to recreate the dish, from memory. 

It took me years to perfect it. The pappu was easy enough - water, green gram and a pinch of salt cooked in the pressure cooker and mashed using a special kitchen tool called a wooden-stick-with-a-semispherical-attachment-at-the-business-end. But the chinta charu was my white whale. It would often come out too tangy, too sweet, too spicy, too… just not right.

Several failed experiments and a host of offerings to the higher power later, the realization dawned on me, clear as day. To draw parallels with the pappu. To simplify. To eliminate unnecessary floating variables and return to the roots. 

So, I stripped away the bells and whistles and threw together a bare-bones tamarind rasam. Tamarind pulp, loads of water brought to a boil, and enough salt and chillies to balance the sourness. A simple tempering. 

The aroma unlocked the deadbolts of forgotten memories of me coming home from school and reminiscing the days when I was younger still. A nostalgia-ception, if you may. 

Now that I have successfully brought back a piece of the past with me, I’m on the hunt for yet another comfort food - endu royyala chaaru (dry prawns curry) the way ammi used to make. Red. Tangy. Delicious.