In Memoriam Ammini Ramachandran

Ammini Ramachandran passed away peacefully and surrounded by her family on Friday 16^th August. She was 81. Her evocative, yet meticulous accounts of the vegetarian cuisine of her native Kerala, the state at the southwest tip of India, will be known to many of my friends and acquaintances.

Her husband, Rama, and her son, Raghu, asked me to pass on the news of her death to this community. I am honored to do so and we have decided that a blog post is perhaps the best way to share an appreciation of her culinary work.

 As Ammini’s obituary makes clear, she led a remarkable life. Geographically she moved between Kerala Rhode Island, Dallas and New York. Career-wise, she moved from homemaker for her husband and two sons to financial analyst in international banking to food historian. And, something I would never have known about my gracious, dignified friend unless I had read that obituary, she was also a long-time fan of the Dallas Cowboys.

The thread that ran through Ammini’s life was the elegantly simple vegetarian cuisine of Kerala aristocracy and royalty that she and her husband had enjoyed since childhood. Arriving in the United States in the 1970s long before every town had an Indian grocery store and six-packs of coconut milk could be picked up in Costco, Ammini wrestled with the problem of preparing their familiar dishes.

Translating this knowledge into a book that conveyed a sense of the cuisine to Americans was neither quick nor simple. Ammini turned her mother’s hand written recipes with their pinches and handfuls into the teaspoons and cups that Americans favored. She explained to readers that for Kerala cuisine parboiled rice was best. The basmati rice that had come to be associated with Indian cuisine in America had a flavor that conflicted with the accompanying dishes. She introduced breadfruit, jackfruit, moringa , plantains, taro and a wealth of different dals with detailed instructions on their preparation and use.

With these preliminaries accomplished, Ammini invited her readers to share the the sensory setting of her distinct regional cuisine. The hard, crunchy snacks that the children broke up in the hinges of the heavy teak doors of the multi-family matrilineal dwelling. Her mother’s instructions prior to visiting the royal palace to tip water into her mouth without letting the glass touch her lips. The sound of coconut being ground and coffee being brewed. The careful folds of banana leaf packets for rice. The colors of hibiscus and bougainvillea. And her four-day coming of age celebration when she was twelve, the visit to the temple, the adornment with the family jewels, and the special rice flour sweet prepared only for such occasions.

As I wrote this, I thought of one passage in her fine book, Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts: Recipes and Remembrances of a Vegetarian Legacy (2007):

“Kanji is my favorite comfort food. We enjoy it for supper on cold and snowy winter evenings. As the dollop of ghee melts and spreads over the hot kanji and the steam from it clouds my eyeglasses, I am transported, for an instant, to my tropical homeland.”

May you rest in peace, Ammini.

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 If you don’t already know it you might want to visit Along the Peppertrail, the website that Ammini maintained for many years. It includes  details of Ammini’s third career in the culinary world as author, speaker, and educator as well as many articles on the culinary history of Kerala so important in the spice trade, and on the broader history of Indian cuisines.

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