here is south indian cuisine

You can say a lot about Schraalhans, but not that he isn’t a handy boy. The cucina povera or poor man’s kitchen, as it arose in all kinds of scarcity situations, excels at tricks and techniques for making something out of nothing – and that ‘something’ sometimes an astonishing amount of deliciousness. In southern Italy, where the term was coined, you will find countless pasta shapes and stale bread dishes with a choice of sauces that are as simple as they are effective. In South India, like Italy largely beyond poverty, we find modest, plant-based basic ingredients such as rice, beans, peas and lentils in hundreds of forms. Tension and flavor are added by concentrated condiments such as chutneys, pickles and saucy soups, and sometimes a little meat, fish or egg. Lashing peppers, intoxicating spices, rinse tamarind and funky asafoetida (devil’s dung, see box) give splashing color, aroma and depth to a cuisine that is both interesting and endlessly invigorating. Masala dosa, a giant, obscenely crispy rice-lentil crepe filled with spicy mashed potato and at least three types of chutney on the side, is probably the happiest dish I know; as suitable for a scorching afternoon when sunstroke threatens, as for an April day when, disappointingly, it has suddenly started snowing.

Unknown

Yet this infectious cuisine is still virtually unknown here. When India gained independence from England in the middle of the last century, it was mainly people from the northern provinces such as Punjab, Rajastan and Bengal who fled to Europe. What is often seen here as ‘Indian’ is therefore in fact a limited representation of the cuisine of the vast country: hearty, heavy stews, generous use of dairy and other animal products, many things from the tandoor oven, and with breads and long-grain basmati rice as the main starch source. The Amsterdam restaurant The Madras Diaries, as one of the few in the Netherlands, serves cuisine from the tip of the Indian peninsula: the southern provinces of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Madras is the ancient name of what is now Chennai, a city that (as the sixth largest in India) is home to nearly six million people.

The restaurant is located in the heart of the shabby tourist gribus behind Leidseplein, right above Lil’ Kleine’s party cafe (don’t worry, it won’t open until 11pm). At the top of the stairs, a fairly large, U-shaped dining room awaits us, where waiters step into it. Loud music plays over the speakers, which during the evening will progress from agonizing film music via Punjabi rock to the extremely danceable Tamil music style – there that Kleine downstairs can play another dot suck on.

The menu is rather intimidatingly large and completely cluttered, so we limit ourselves first to the nice range of drinks. On the alcoholic side, there are several gin and tonics to order (long before it became a ubiquitous hip drink, it was the malaria-repelling pick-me-up of the British colonial army), some cocktails and wines, Indian Cobra beer and Heineken from the tap. But we are especially intrigued by the large list of homemade non-alcoholics: both salty and sweet lime sodas (sparkling waters) and lassis (yogurt drinks), fresh and spicy ginger soda with green pepper and mint, a sulphurous cumin drink and floral, bright pink rose milk.

Snacks and dishes

We decide to criss-cross the map and start with a few tiffin, snacks that sit between a snack and a meal and often form breakfast or light lunch in the scorching south. The best known are idli (steamed rice cakes, €7.50), the aforementioned crispy dosa masala (€8), uthappam (a thicker, woollier dosa, €7.50) and vada, deep-fried savory donuts made from legume flour, which in the Netherlands through Surinamese Hindustani they are better known as bara. There are also all kinds of vegetable fritters, which come to the table crunchy and very hot. The dishes are all served with plenty of condiments: dal (mild split lentil soup) and sambhar (spicy legume-vegetable soup with coriander and tamarind), various excellent dips such as coconut and tomato chutney, and gunpowder (not a powder, but a kind of dry, grainy, acidic spicy tamarind pepper dip). On weekends, Madras Diaries also offers a number of extensive and enticing-looking thali: vegetarian or non-vegetarian combination dishes with all kinds of small dishes served around rice. The egg roast (€7) are hard-boiled eggs covered with a very fragrant and also quite spicy sauce, with lots of soft sweet onion and warm spices such as allspice, cloves and cinnamon. We are also enthusiastic about the relatively dry, but tender and also very spicy lamb curry from the city of Usilampatti (usilampatti kari chukka, € 14).

Where in the north of India long grain rice is used, in the south people eat the super short, egg-shaped rice. jeeraga samba which is about one third the length of a basmati grain, has a fairly neutral taste and a relatively high starch content. This is also the rice used here in the kongu-style biryani (€17) on the menu with chicken, egg, fresh mint, coriander and green pepper. The rice is tasty but there is hardly any chicken in it, the fresh herbs have been forgotten, and because the dish is soaked with ghee and covered with fried onions, the whole is a bit cumbersome.

For dessert we choose the carrot halva (€7), an almost almond paste-like delicacy made of grated carrot with cardamom and roasted cashew nuts, confit in sweet milk. Malai kulfi (€4) is Indian ice cream made from reduced milk, served on a stick. Coffee is an integral part of the meal in South India, and The Madras Diaries serves traditional Indian filter coffee. This involves first brewing a very strong coffee, cut with chicory, which is then mixed with boiling sweet milk and placed in a traditional metal cup and saucer with a high rim (dabarah) served. When serving, the coffee is poured back and forth between cup and saucer several times to cool it down and to make the drink foam. Festive!

In short, The Madras Diaries is a great place to get acquainted with South Indian cuisine.