5 chefs share Onam memories that take them right back to childhood

The dinner table heaving with a mélange of dishes, shared camaraderie with friends and family, and moments that stay with you for a lifetime. Like every other celebration, Onam is all about this and more. During Kerala’s auspicious harvest festival that spans 10 days, Malayali families dress up in their finest, make intricate poolakam (rangoli) on their doorsteps, and cook up an extravagant feast—the Onam Sadhya, which has anywhere from 26 to 64 dishes, traditionally all vegetarian, laid out on a banana leaf. On the occasion, Bazaar India speaks to five chefs about their most evocative memories of the festival. 

Chef Regi Mathew | KCK Foods

Chef Regi Mathew, a culinary heavyweight with a career spanning three decades, brings Kerala cuisine at the forefront with his award-winning restaurant Kappa Chakka Kandhari. Every year, the restaurant celebrates the much-loved harvest festival through a traditional Onasadhya along with special Onam gift boxes. The Onam spread at KCK, while still having all the usual classics, also has different variations to cater to everyone’s taste, like the four varieties of payasam that find their place on the leaf. When it comes to Chef Mathew’s Onam at home growing up, it was all about using local ingredients, in the literal sense. “When I was in school, I used to have Onam celebrations at home. I remember my mom preparing dishes with hyper-local ingredients, and when I say hyper-local, I mean using produce straight from our backyard, like drumstick, raw banana, and yams. The most important dish that we all looked forward to was definitely the payasam," he says. That is also his favourite dish as a kid. He says, “Always payasam–especially the ada pradanam (payasam made with rice flakes) my mom used to prepare. Although, once I grew up, inji puli (a tamarind-based curry) also got added to that list.” 

Chef Vinod Nair and Chef Sara Nair | Nair on Fire

The memorable Onam moments for Chef Vinod Nair, founder of Nair on Fire, are high on childhood mischief and delicious snacks. “My favourite memory of the festival is of my mother in the kitchen—her younger days when she was sprightly and full of energy, she’s over 90-years-old now. It used to be a bustling kitchen during that period, with all my aunts cooking and my mother being the boss. When all the aunts got together, they didn’t cook just for Onam but the whole season. As kids, we used to sneak in those snacks while our mothers were preparing it. Among all this, the happiness on my mom’s face is what I remember most fondly," he says. A dish that most love but Nair could never get himself to like during his childhood was the parippu payasam (payasam made with lentils). He says, “I always thought it’s a matter of taste, but as I grew up I realised I didn’t like it because of the mouthfeel. When you the cook chana dal that goes in the payasam in bulk, it doesn’t fully cook—it gets chewy and sticky.” The parippu payasam that features on the Sadhya at Nair on Fire is cooked to a melt-in-the-mouth texture keeping this in mind. Tracing the evolution of the meal, Nair says the most remarkable change for him has been going from Sadhya to the "Unsadhya". “It has been largely influenced by my wife Sara, who’s a Syrian Christian. While the traditional Sadhya, whether you go to the Muslim side, the Christian side or the Nair side, is always vegetarian, what other communities do is add some extra chicken, mutton, or beef dishes on the side, though they’re not part of the leaf. So, I wanted to create a change where these dishes become a part of the leaf—the Unsadhya”, he explains. 

Chef Sara Nair, who is the founding partner and executive chef at Nair on Fire, too, has fond memories of celebrating Onam with her family in the village. “Onam was one festival where we could spend time with family as well as friends. Though I grew up in Kochi, my grandparents lived in a village and come holidays the cousins would assemble there and play all sorts of games. Cheating on these games and not letting opposite teams win was the only objective.  The ensuing fights and cheers were so much fun, especially since all the adults too became silly and child-like. It helped us build a great appetite for the Sadhya.” Speaking of the elaborate spread, Nair reveals the dish she always made a beeline for was the pumpkin erissery (curry/vegetable). She says, “It was my favourite because of the combination of pumpkin and nutty cowpeas. I could just eat a whole plate of it with just some papad!” Onam celebrations for Nair look a little different now though. “The biggest change is that we now manage to catch a Sadhya with some friends and nothing else. Meeting family for Onam is increasingly difficult with most of them being far away," she concludes.

Chef Rekha Raghavan | Magic with Spices

Chef Rekha Raghavan, who helms her venture Magic with Spices, has been preparing the traditional Sadhya in Delhi-NCR for the past three years. This year, too, she is doing an Onam pop-up at Westin, Gurgaon. Her favourite memory of the harvest festival is all about the joy of getting together. She explains, “As a kid what excited us the most was the gala party that we used to have at home, my granny would cook all the delicacies. We were usually given the task of making the pookalam.” When it comes to the festive spread, Raghavan sticks to her roots, “My Sadhya is as traditional today as it was 40 years back when my granny used to make it. I’ve not dared to make any changes," she says. We ask her aout her most beloved Onasadhya dish growing up, and Raghavan mentions her granny’s avial and parippu pradaman without missing a beat. 

Chef Chalapathi Rao | Simply South 

He may not be from Kerala, but Chef Chalapathi Rao, founder of the fine-dining restaurant Simply South and a judge at MasterChef India Telugu, loved celebrating Onam with his Malayali friends growing up. “I used to celebrate with them at their houses, and like any other kid, one thing I always looked forward  to was the food.” He goes on to share the two dishes that stood out for him from the spread. “Avial is no doubt one of my favourites, and the other dish that I liked is ada pradaman—not only the dish itself, but the experience of eating it is what I enjoyed the most. Ada pradaman is usually served last on the leaf, when you’ve already eaten all the other dishes, so licking it up with my fingers is something I really relished—it’s heavenly!” Rao notes that the Sadhyas of today aren’t much different from the ones of his childhood. He says, “I don’t think there’s much change in the Sadhya itself, but people today have got more innovative with the side dishes like the pachadis (curd-based condiment) and pickles. In terms of the standard Sadhya dishes like the thoran (dry vegetable preparation), olan (an ash gourd and cowpea curry), and erissery, they are still the same.”

Lead image: Kappa Chakka Kandhari/Instagram