Can home taste like Pamban fish curry as well as soba noodles? For model-turned-photographer, and now cookbook author, Prasanna Pandarinathan, the flavours of home include both, along with English casseroles, dried fish poriyal and Singapore chilli crab. Which is why her recently released book, Ammi: An expression of love (Rupa Publications India), written as a tribute to her mother Nirmala Pandarinathan, serves not just as a personal culinary memoir, but also an intriguing example of how much there is to learn from heirloom recipes.
“This is basically my mom’s journey: the countries she has lived in, her life’s journey through food,” says Prasanna, explaining how, though her grandparents were from Rameswaram, they lived in Colonial Singapore where her mother was born. “The early part of her life was spent in Singapore and Malaysia, so my mom and her siblings had Malay Chinese nannies. Even now, when my aunts get together, they speak to each other in Malay and Singaporean Mandarin.”
