This recipe book brings out traditional, forgotten recipes of Tamil Nadu and Kerala

She knew that her father, who is an amazing cook, would help her. Not just Tarini, other millennials in their family also reached out to Sundar for easy, healthy vegetarian recipes. Seeing how the entire recipe sharing panned out, Sundar’s wife Jayshree decided to combine all the recipes together and publish a book titled The Tambram’s Recipes.

“For fun, I call my husband The Tambram. Whenever he shares recipes with the family members, he used to writes the recipes down. I asked him if he would collaborate with me on a book of his recipes. I thought it would be a good opportunity to put a spotlight on this cuisine, which is so much more than just idli-dosa,” says Jayshree.

The book answers many doubts of first-timers in the kitchen, like how to make the softest idlis, how to cook with very little oil, how to put together a south Indian brunch and so on. 

“If the book was being positioned for millennials then everything should be written and presented in a way they can understand. We were careful about the tone, look, feel, design, language, and content. Everything is abundantly available on the internet. But to have everything in one place with a lot of tips, variations and steps would be of great use. We positioned it as ‘your secret toolkit’- like partners to someone newly or intermittently into cooking,” the author adds.

A reader can find a mix of traditional and forgotten recipes from Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the book.

“We wanted to put a spotlight on the forgotten or less-known dishes like olan, upma kozhakatai, aval, etc. With the rising trends in preference for gluten-free and lactose-free options, we felt this cuisine supported those ideas.” The duo studied multiple recipe formats and came up with one that would suit the target audience the best.

“We came up with three additions to normal formats of ingredients, cooking methods, and time is taken. We have added the tips, variations of the recipe, and health meter,” Jayshree concludes.