The taste of home
Bio Basics
Agleaming steel dabba along with a plantain leaf pothi and the promise of a hearty Kerala lunch awaits. As I unbox, familiar aromas of Kerala matta (red rice) and pumpkin erissery fill my senses. What follows is a hearty lunch of red rice with mixed vegetables sambar, flavourful potato masala curry garnished with handpound garam masala, and a satisfying coconut
chammandi just like what is made back home. Dessert is the buttery pudding,
Kerala katti payasam made with Uma red rice, jaggery and organic ghee that comes ensconced in the plantain leaf.
The Kerala lunch, homedelivered on weekends by Bio Basics, an organic online retail store passionate about bringing diverse grains to families, is a peek into understanding a sustainable way of life that starts with eating organic meals. Says Sreedevi Lakshmi Kutty, cofounder, “We are curating 60 different traditional varieties of rice and 10 kinds of wheat. Kerala rice alone, we have seven different kinds like
thondi, kuruva sourced from Wayanad, Palakkad, and Kozhikode. We also have aromatic kandagasaalai, mullan kaima and
jeerakasala rices from Wayanad. We started sample lunches to friends and customers with Kerala dishes I am familiar with.”
For the Kerala experience, she combines sambar and avial or adds an olan, erissery or
kichicdi. “All the ingredients are available to order on Bio Basics. We also want to showcase that Kerala meals can be wholesome and tasty. We source handpounded garam masala in small batches, may be three to four kilos at a time from Gujarat that goes well with kootukari we have with the sadya,” explains Devi. When the raw mangoes arrive in summer, she uses pacha (raw)manga in avial and chammandi while the ripe ones go into
mango pachadi for every weekend meal.“It’s an effort to help people value quality ingredients. We have introduced features like rice selector on our website to help people choose. We pack the food in sustainable dabbas and take the effort of collecting it back by our inhouse delivery team.”
Looking back at her eightyearold journey, she recounts, people are aware, but often there is a kind of lapsing and it takes some time to get the momentum back. “We have to also encourage farmers and not keep jumping from one fad to another leaving them in dismay. Our parents and grandparents eat seasonal, local food. Why can’t we do the same?”
They need a minimum of five meals per order. The lunch is priced at ₹350 plus GST. Available only for Bio Basics customers in the city. Call or WhatsApp 9790516500 for details. Prebooking closes on Thursday.
K Jeshi
Ainthinai Attil
The taste of home: this is what the
ulundhu kanji at Ainthinai Attil reminds one of. The newlyopened restaurant, that can seat 30 people, is inside the premises of Iyal organic store at Sowripalayam. Here, the focus is on using locallysourced ingredients. The menu, hence, changes every day, according to the availability of vegetables. “We chiefly source vegetables from organic farmers in the Kongu belt,” says N Karthikkeyan, one of the founders. “This includes places such as Palladam, Dharapuram, Ooty, and Annur.”
The restaurant is a natural progression of value addition to their organic vegetables, fruits, and pulses, Karthikkeyan points out. The idea, according to him, is to make best use of what their farmers send them. “We get fresh vegetables and greens on Tuesdays and Fridays, and hence, offer dishes such as
keerai poriyal on those days,” he says. We try their hot ragi
pakodas, crispy of thin onion slivers: they go well with hot sukku coffee, their evening snack staple. There are also thattu vadai sets and norukkal, that can be washed down with sweet coconut milk or freshlysqueezed sugarcane juice.
The spring rolls deserve special mention: the outer wrap is made of wheat instead of maida. They come stuffed with thin slices of capsicum, onions, and carrots; we polish them off in minutes and order another plate.
Lunch, at Ainthinai Attil, consists of rice (usually thooyamalli heritage rice variety), two kuzhambu variations such as pachaipayaru kuzhambu, peerkangai masala curry and kollu paruppu; a kootu,
poriyal, thuvayal, juice, a serving of variety rice such as lemon or carrot rice, chapati and kurma. Dinner and breakfast are simple affairs with idli, dosai and
idiyappam made of heritage rice, sevai,
chapati and poori.
Their evening snacks, points out M Parthiban, one of the founders, are among their highlights. Their allwomen team whips up dishes such as sweet ragi
kozhukattais, spring rolls, cutlets, momos, vadais and bondas. Karthikkeyan says that it is women who run the show at their restaurant, right from cooking, waiting tables, and billing. “We have a team of nine that handles everything,” he explains, “Our only briefing to them was to cook like they would at home for their family.”
Karthikkeyan says since all their ingredients are organic — they also use
chekku oil and milk from native cows — it is a challenge to keep prices low. But they have priced their meals competitively — lunch costs ₹130 a meal. “The trick is to offer quality, so that we attract repeat customers and are able to increase our production volume,” he says. “Once people taste our spring rolls, for instance, they will prefer them over the frozen ones that are served at most fastfood outlets.”
They prefer grinding their batter fresh to avoid refrigeration and reuse of overfermentation. Karthikkeyan says they are sticklers when it comes to ingredients, and ensure spice levels are not too high, keeping in mind children and the elderly.
“We also offer subscriptionbased lunch takeaways, that we supply to people in apartments in our neighbourhood,” he adds.
Apart from the food, an interesting aspect about the restaurant’s décor is the flooring: it is covered entirely with smooth pebbles, giving one the feeling of walking by a
river.
Ainthinai Attil is open for breakfast (7am to 9am), lunch (12.30pm to 3.30pm), snacks (4.30pm to 6.30pm) and dinner (7pm to 9pm). It is located at New no. 45, Rajiv Gandhi nagar, 80 feet road, Sowripalayam. A meal for two costs approximately ₹300. For details, call 9865290870.