My Grandmother in her Kitchen

Jayantha Perera’s delightful article in last Sunday’s Island about how his grandmother made jaadi in her Paiyagala home was absorbingly interesting, nostalgic too. He said he still smells that extra pungent kind of dried fish which when fried was the best of a meal. Reading his article, a conjured up curry smell wafted below my nose – not jaadi though. Accompanying the whiff was a vision that passed through my remembering mind: my maternal grandmother in her warm kitchen.

Their home

My maternal grandparents lived in Boyagama, one mile from Peradeniya. The house had an open verandah supported by four tall white columns which had the less decorative Ionic ornate tops. The middle door led to my Aththa’s domain: sitting room, office, bedroom, dining room with a shrine room tucked beside it. The door at the left led to a newly built wing lived in by two uncles. The right hand door led to the vee maduwa – a large room with cupboards above for storing paddy.

This led to the pantry beside which on one side were three bedrooms and on the opposite side the kitchen. The doors leading from the verandah were used by relatives and respected visitors A side door to the paddy stocked room was used by the upper echelon of servers. A door from the back yard opening into the pantry was for manual labourers and servants. A fourth door led to the place where paddy was pound which was adjacent to the meda midula and used by the padu women who converted paddy grain to rice using mortar and pestle.

While Aththa lived in comfort and had as his domain a Yati Nuwara Korale, Amma as we called our grandmother, mother being Mamma, ruled her kitchen area. We should have called her Aththa or Athamma but my siblings and I used this more intimate term.

The kitchen proper was a large room with a cowdunged floor and five hearths build at floor level along one wall. Above this was the dum messa with hoisted up mats and such like, also tucked in the corner a kurini petti of delicacies and bundles of jaggery, treacle tied up in arecanut spathes – absolutely non porous and non spilly. Especially when grandchildren were holidaying, a cupboard in the pantry had containers of sweets – kavun, aggala, and lots of other goodies, the crème de la crème being of course, unduvel.

Our Amma (Athamma really) was a small, very fair, eternally active person always neatly dressed in a sari with jacket, bodice and petticoat festooned with hand crotched lace. Aththa was very tall, very imposing with a flowing beard and dressed in a Palayakat sarong at home with a silver havadiya wound many times around his waist. Going out he wore a tweed cloth and coat with a watch in one pocket. She too would dress herself to the nines when she went for a wedding. I saw her once thus, in a rich Indian silk, decked in jewellery made by the galadda (goldsmith caste), seated on the verandah of the house.

THE Kitchen

It’s her kitchen I mean to write about and culinary specialties. I mentioned the ground level hearths. The last one to the left was always kept glowing with paddy husks (dahaiya) alight. Over it hung a black kettle, eternally on the boil. The room was large and always rather smoky but we loved the comfort and warmth within with a fat cook woman and one or two young girls bustling around.

The latter were my friends. They’d sneak in bringing us three siblings a saucer of blobs of semisolid jaggery as it was being made. When oil was extracted by stirring for long scraped coconut or king coconut kernel over a fire, the residue was a dream tasty sludge. This was supposed to upset one’s stomach but the kitchen friends would smuggle this delicacy too, to us.

All the coconut oil needed for cooking and hair dressing was made in-house, so also treacle and jaggery. Not much sugar was bought. A man of the panna caste (learnt much later) would climb the few kitul trees in the vast compound and tap the inflorescences. Amma would give us a cup each of the thelijja – newly brought down, unfermented sap. She considered it healthy and she was right, even though vitamins and such like were not known to her. This was boiled down and treacle made, or boiled longer till it became semisolid and poured into moulds to produce ‘sophisticated’ patterned jaggery or in cleaned half coconut shells to harden into hakuru bewas.

The vegetable garden and dairy were under grandmother’s jurisdiction. True, most of the vegetables needed including chilies, lime and tomato were home grown but potato, onions of both kinds, garlic, salt and some other stuff like dried fish was bought from P S Fernando Store in Kandy. Spices – cardamom nutmeg, cloves, ginger, tamarind – were home grown; cinnamon bought.

A milk giving cow was always in the dairy but when one of his daughters was expecting a baby, Aththa would buy a cow to yield milk of the correct consistency for the new mother so she could breast feed her infant. The milking man not arriving one day and the udder full cow mooing, grandmother took the milking pail and went to the cow, placed the stool beside her, sat on it, and was about to stretch her hands to the cow’s underside when the creature gave a hefty kick sending poor Amma somersaulting and landing very undignified. Women ran to her rescue. Aththa did not have to tell her the dairy was not within her rule!

Curries Polos,

the young jak fruit, was selected from trees known to yield super fruits for cooking. The skin was sliced off, the inside cut into right sized pieces and plenty of coconut milk and condiments used in the curry. I don’t remember how Grandmother did it but my sister would tie all the spices in a cloth bag and let it be boiled with the pieces of polos. An absolutely aromatic ambula had to have the pieces of immature jak reddish in colour, of the very correct softness, and the gravy, red, with a film of oil on top, with of course a delicious smell emanating.

The major elements that turned out such a curry were ath guna–skill and good luck of the cooking person – and the seasoned pot being placed overnight on a glowing dahaiya hearth. Usually the cooking was done outdoors since the pot was extra large, but the final simmering was indoors. A little before the curry was fully cooked, pieces of coconut about two inches long were thrown into the pot.

Two other special curries were katu puhul –a spicy curry of chunky pieces of ash pumpkin which was rid of its skin whole, then vigorously pricked with a fork and cut to pieces. The redish gravy was excellent. A kind of ala kola, large leaves off a marsh plant were picked, washed, rolled into cigar shapes, sun dried and then cooked dry. These two curries with others like karola badun were a must when rice and curry was taken to a relative’s home in a kurini pettiya – reed woven, circular containers.

Served Lunch

I have to mention how the Queen of the Mahagedera kussiya served lunch. We had dinner at table, serving ourselves or being served. Breakfast too which was invariably kiributh made in different forms, like blobs rolled in cut arecanut spathes with polpani inside. But lunch was different in the way it was laid out for us. Grandfather had his lunch in his domain, dished out separately in fine china, table laid with silver cutlery. He did not use his fingers when eating by himself. He would invite us kids but we shied away. Amma’s domain was best for meals.

Maybe there were many outsiders for lunch. Vast amounts of rice and curry were cooked. The kitchen helping girls would lay out the plates: fine china for uncles and any visitors, decorative china soup bowls for Mother and aunts present, and bakelight plates for us kids. The servants had belek pigang. I shudder now but it went unnoticed then – the way it was and not complained about – round shaped arecanut spathes for the rice pounding padu women and garden working men.

Grandmother would sit on a stool surrounded by these plates laid on a mat on the ground. The rice thambaheliya (brass pot) would be overturned on a washed, woven square mat with raised sides and the rice evened with a spoon. Then Grandma would ladle the rice to the plates, and the cook woman the curries. The kitchen was filled with delicious aromas and we kids sat on very low kolombas with three legged stools holding our plates.

Those were the days, my friends and Ajantha Perera, of spacious living, ordered and secure. Corruption was not heard of; arguments and fights mild and easily settled; politics left severely to politicians and persons knowing their place and work to be done. However, the caste system accepted by all was an unjust aberration; not even those who were deemed of low caste seemed to notice discrimination. Free education and marching time fortuitously did away with this ignominious societal blemish.