A hot romance

IT WAS romancing the chilly. Long, slender, smooth, curvy in a come hither red against the plant green, she oozes more oomph that any action babe on the AXN. If you are a bad boy/girl and get greedy, then you will understand why the French attached fatale to femme.

In the land of Shotgun Murugans it gets going only when it is hot, more hot and even hotter! The Athiruchi Andhra food festival at Southern Spice, Taj Coromandel, was a paean to this volatility.

From the starter, Pachi royyalu vepudu or spicy prawns to the main course, Kothamiri vonkaya, a.k.a brinjals in coriander chilli gravy, the seductress whether as green or red, young and tactile or wrinkled and potent... the chilli was the star.

The Andhra cuisine is merely a vehicle to showcase the CapsicumSolanaceae (chilli) family.

In the banana flower vadai, it was a perfect blend of garlic, ginger and green chillies with the lentils and banana flower to make a hot, crisp grandma's wonder. The chicken soup was another home-style classic. Though the non-veg dishes like chicken curry with the famous palate blowing knock out Guntur chillies and prawn curry were good, I was floored by the brinjal brigade. That kothamiri vonkaya was nothing short of poetry. Here the supporting cast of tamarind-coriander combination was magnificent. So was the gongura annam or the gongura rice and Dumpala karam (spicy deep fried potatoes).

Another surprise was the old favourite, pesarattu. It was both crisp and soft at the same time, beautifully browned outside and stuffed with rava upma it was a dream.

By the time I reached the dessert stage, it was merely a matter of testing the elasticity of the stomach muscles and mind power.

Potharekula, paper-thin sweet rice pancakes, was the dark horse here. The airy concoction literally disintegrated in the mouth. The chef Balaji's description of long toil behind the translucent layers would make you appreciate it more.

The other sweets were the moong dal payasam, kajalu and ariselu, all closely related to our traditional sweets. The last one was nothing but a rather limp athirasam. Kajalu was a variation of the badusha theme.

At end of the gorgeous feed comes the killjoy... the bill. Play- hard and pay-hard - universal law works here. Worse is the rider taxes extra. But hey, all that is part of life.

MARIEN MATHEW

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