For the love of Indian food
Chefs Johnson Ebenezer and Sricharan Venkatesh of Nadodi reveal that they also prefer to cook Indian food at home.
WHEN acclaimed south Indian fine-dining restaurant Nadodi opened last year, the restaurant’s executive chef Johnson Ebenezer and chef de cuisine Sricharan Venkatesh wanted to offer Malaysian diners something a little different from the traditional Indian meals they were accustomed to.
“We wanted to recreate lost recipes and our childhood memories of certain meals, but not the authentic way. Instead we looked at how else we could enhance it, how else we could do it using other elements and techniques, but having that base memory of the original dish in mind,” says Ebenezer.
Both Ebenezer and his partner-incrime Sricharan are from south India. The two worked the usual rungs of five-star hotels in India – Ebenezer has worked in groups like Starwood Hotels and Taj Hotels and on cruise liners while Sricharan had a stint at the vaunted Gaggan in Bangkok.
At Nadodi, the two finally have the chance to flex their creative muscles, using the backdrop of South Indian cuisine which they both grew up eating, as their playground.
“We know the risk factor, we’re not using expensive ingredients, but we take the basics of what we eat at home and show people that this can be done the same way as how you have wagyu or truffle. So people might say, ‘This can’t be on a fine-dining plate’ but here you find it in almost all our dishes and plates, it’s there somehow,” says Sricharan.
Given the creative and artistic licences the two are allowed in their restaurant kitchen, one has to wonder just what they whip up at home?
“In the restaurant, you are in your zone, it’s more like going to a battle – you have all your soldiers ready and you’re on ‘Fire, fire, fire!” mode. You have a few hours to shoot all the dishes out and it’s exciting.
“When you’re at home is when you’re not in chef mode, which is a big relief. So it’s more casual and the dishes would be very simple. For me, it’s often just something very comforting that I grew up eating,” says Sricharan.
As Sricharan grew up in a totally vegetarian home, he often reverts to form, and cooks up all manner of vegetarian food. Like his incredibly delicious, creamy tempered chayote kootu, an all-vegetable offering that is also somehow rich, luscious and utterly satisfying.
“Kootu technically means to mix everything up. This is more like a meal by itself – you have a lot of vegetables, and you have a sauce which you get from coconuts. Whenever my mum makes it, I take it in a bowl, have a bit of yoghurt and some papadom and sit in front of the TV with it,” he says.
The dish of puliogare or tamarind rice meanwhile is something that Sricharan’s grandmother used to make extremely well and harks back to his formative years.
“This is my grandmother’s recipe destroyed by me,” he jokes. “When we have festivals or gatherings in my house, it is this rice that we eat. The purpose of adding tamarind is so the rice can keep for two or three days – it doesn’t spoil, instead the taste gets better!” says Sricharan.
With Ebenezer, meat and rice form the rich tapestry upon which his home-cooked meals are built. “I’m a hardcore carnivore, every single day, there should be meat,” he says.
Ebenezer does admit, however, that he generally doesn’t really feel like cooking at home, but does it for family events. “We don’t want to cook at home because we’re cooking all day, so the thing I like to cook is maggi goreng!” he says, laughing.
“When you have a family, then you do all the things to impress. The best thing I like to cook is anything related to rice,” he says.
This affinity with rice stems from the fact that Ebenezer’s father makes a phenomenal version of biryani, which is now on Nadodi’s menu. For family celebrations, Ebenezer makes a light, fun idiyappam prawn biryani instead, which does away with rice in favour of string hoppers. “When you put the word biryani in it, it sounds big so this is like rice but not rice,” he says.
Then there is his duck roast utthappam, which is based on the South Indian dish of curry dosa and a Syrian Christian roast duck staple in Kerala. The meal is delightful – soft fluffy uthappam with wellcooked, slightly spicy roast duck atop. Ultimately though, both Ebenezer and Sricharan say they feel extremely lucky to be able to make the heritage food they grew up with in their restaurant kitchen, as not many chefs get to do that, often having to forgo their roots in favour of other cuisines considered more “marketable”.
“What we cook at home and what we cook in the restaurant is the same, except that it is plated beautifully and the techniques used to recreate a simple rasam or dhal differ. The base flavour is the same.
“As a chef, I feel lucky because this is my own cuisine that I get to do and I have not deviated, so that helps me and motivates me to do better,” says Sricharan.