Delights of flowery cuisine

Cut the vegetables. Prepare tamarind gravy. Mix the vegetables in it. Throw in two tablespoons of `sambar' powder. Add salt to taste. Season it. And garnish it with some flowers. Yes, flowers. Preferably bright orange ones!

Flowers in food? Isn't it weird? Tell the same to this motley group of housewives lounged under a canopy of trees in the sprawling Public Gardens, they'll break into a big smile. "Put in as many flowers as possible," they'll insist.

No heady concoction or exotic eat this, but good old South Indian `sambar' with its inimitable flavour and lots of carrots cut in the shape of flowers thrown in good measure. "Kids just love it. Imagine flowers sprouting out of `sambar'," they smile again.

Here they were, housewives, college going students and good old grandmas - all strangers, but huddled up together and working in unison - trying their hand at a vegetable carving course organised by the Agri Horticultural Society.

Flower vases out of Pineapples, funny faces from brinjals, bunnies out of apples with those drooping ears, roses out of beetroot, innovations galore. "We can even carve a hen out of a pineapple," one housewife enthuses.

Says Hemchander, the Society founder, "People have an inalienable bond with nature, particularly plants and fruits. The response to our courses is building up like never before." The Society offers short-term courses in home gardening, indoor gardening, bonsai, flower arrangement, herbal gardening, vegetable carving, processing and preservation of fruits and vegetables, vermi composting and so on.

The unbridled enthusiasm among the participants is intonated by a housewife from Ashoknagar, C. Nirmala, who attended the first batch last year and is back now to know more. "Its all about imagination. You can give shape to it and also the vegetables too. When I laid out certain vegetable carvings at a get- together, people loved them. Kids seeing the vegetables chiseled in the shape of a flower or a funny face gobble them up," she smiles. "What more, I've taught my daughter-in-law and her friends too," she says enthusiastically.

Such is the involvement that Asiya Siddique, a housewife from Malakpet, says the course duration is too short. "It should be extended to four days so that we perfect the art," she says. Continuous practice is a must.

Mr. Hemchander insists that there should be more institutions offering similar courses allover the City. "After all the place has grown by leaps and bounds. Everyone would like to dabble in aesthetics. What better way than plants and vegetables," he says.

All of 76 years, the effervescent granny, Janaki Ramachandran was a picture of concentration carving roses out of beetroot. "I made a parrot out of a gourd and showed it to my husband. He was mighty thrilled. So was everyone else at home. They wanted me to teach them," she smiles.

A resident of Chennai, she is on a visit to her bureaucrat daughter, Gayathri Ramachandran's place. Says she: "We do not have such innovative courses there. This is so creative and engaging. Sitting at home, one would be deadwood." Receiving her certificate along with others, a majority of whom were five decades younger to her, she exclaims with a beaming face, "This is real fun."

The smiling lady rounds off in all eagerness, "I'll keep my creations in the fridge till my daughter comes back home. I have to show them to her."

By K.V.S. Madhav

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Section  : Southern States
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