Root to peel

Senguttuvan S is 72 and, in a word, cool. The former business manager from Chennai had never cooked before retirement. After, he began taking down his 62-year-old homemaker wife Jayanthi S’s recipes and posting them online because friends and family seemed to enjoy them and find them helpful.

The discussions his wife’s recipes sparked got him interested in the different variants that one recipe could have. Senguttuvan now has an Instagram account (@sengut2006) with 13,600 followers, documents traditional Tamil recipes on it, and made it to the Top 24 on this year’s MasterChef India – Tamil, a local offshoot of the global franchise.

The main reason he posts his recipes on Instagram, Senguttuvan says, is “to let Gen Z know the values of the traditional food staples like different types of rice and millets”. Many young people don’t even know what millets are, he adds, even though we’ve been cooking them in our homes for hundreds of years.

Senguttuvan’s page is full of simple traditional recipes, from ragi rotis to traditional dishes that use the peels of vegetables. “My traditional South Indian cooking — recipes from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh — seem to draw more viewers to my feed. The ones where I use my tawa to make dosas of different varieties are always a hit,” Senguttuvan says.

It makes him happy, Senguttuvan says, that his passion for cooking is inspiring people of varying ages, and men too. “Not many men in my age group are active cooks on social media. I try to inspire and motivate people of my age to come out and extend their support to the women in their homes.”