What’s your Nectar list?
Rasam Week…ish continues with two new recipes : Rasam Podi Chili Oil + Rasam Caesar
One of my favorite parts of food research, origin stories is that most modern dishes in the world comes from a mix of cultures. Food is inherently fusion. Makes very obvious sense, food culture is certainly from many different kinds of people. Which makes the word, “authentic” not very relevant to food writing, and yet seems to still (still! In 2024!) creep in some dish descriptions; but it is at least considered gauche at this point.
Rasam is no different to this claim I have. The dish has a lot of theories in origin, we’ll explore a lot of those stories on this week’s podcast, but the majority of the stories have the same theory as much of South Indian food; footprints of trade, exploration and many other influences. It honestly makes me love the dish more knowing Rasam started to emerge in South India with ties from other places.
In our house we would call Rasam, “Sathamudhu”, which I’m still not sure if the slang “sathenduh” was just in our family or colloquial, (Tamilian origins as I’ve found are incredibly hard to decipher). I used to think “Sathamudhu” meant the nectar of the gods, and my mother corrected me for it to be “nectar of food.” Which makes the word far more appealing in meaning. Food, which is nectar, generally speaking, is already in a pretty good stasis, nectar of food, well, that’s nectar of nectar.
This is where I started to think about my own personal nectar of nectars: Birria consommé, oyster brine with a spicy mignonette, an incredible gin martini, Dee Dee’s, (a Thai food trailer in Austin) chicken soup, and Rasam aka Sathenduh. Every single one of those things on my personal nectar list has two things in common, (all liquids…is that strange?), and the other being that they are the consequences of different cultures converging. To make a nectar of nectar occurrence, you need diversity of thought and culture. I hate food trend lists but I don’t think I would mind seeing people’s personal Nectar of Nectar lists.
On that note, I present to you, two new Rasam recipes. The first one is pretty much a condiment I’ve been using on everything and plays a significant role in a couple more recipes featured in the coming week, Rasam Podi Chili Oil.
The second is the most incredible Caesar dressing I have made to date, it also has led me to discover that Parmesan + Rasam Podi is a pairing that feels so natural and should have been talked about earlier than this newsletter.
Both recipes are under the Paid Subscriber paywall, and when next week brings some recipes not under the paywall, there will be substitutes given in where Rasam Podi Chili Oil is mentioned, though I do hope you take the opportunity here to subscribe to this Substack!
Coming up on SP:
An oral history of Rasam hits the podcast
A surprise Rasam- centric interview
Recipes on recipes on recipes
Wine Review subsection reveal!
Rasam Podi Chili Oil
Ingredients:
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