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`PONNI RICE’ IS SO FLAVORFUL
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`PONNI RICE’ IS SO FLAVORFUL

Eating is Fun / Eating is Yuck! - A variety food column, Life & Living, Sep 13- Sep 19, 2025 September 12, 2025 , by

I tasted it for the first time while enjoying the Onasadhya spread at Fidalgo Hotel’s `Southern Basil ’ with some friends…

INDIA’s age old recipes of tradition are wholesome and utterly agreeable more often than not and need to be revived in every home so that our parameters of health improve. I keep discovering this over and over again. For example, take this year’s Onam festival Onasadhya banana leaf meal at Fidalgo Hotel’s `Southern Basil ’ which I was fortunate enough to savor, it was the grandest ever feast this year. The menu listed something like 24 traditional recipes of Kerala, everyday recipes as also the special ones which I would say are heirloom recipes…on the verge of being lost maybe, but hopefully are returning to live like say the delicate “olan” (which features the ash gourd or white “bhopla”). It’s a most mild and flavorful recipe and easily made too although white ash gourd is a more expensive gourd in the market.
Some Onasadya in Kerala in five-star hotels will feature as many as 56 recipes because they offer options in the appetizers and desserts and some of them are not strictly speaking traditional to Kerala cuisine traditional or modern, in any case there is a lot of culinary influence in the southern states of India and sometimes one may never tell if the popular combo of say “ven pongal-avial” traces its roots in Kerala or Tamil Nadu, for ven pongal is very Tamil cuisine while the veggie medley traces its roots to Kerala family food.
The traditional recipes are invariably are more health-conscious. Of course coconut, jaggery and rice flour feature in most dishes, with urid dal thrown in, or chana or mung…black pepper is traditional; chili peppers green and red are from the New World of America and brought in by the Portuguese to India during colonial times…and this is so with very many veggies and fruit we think are native to the Indian sub-continent. Not so!
Funny or not funny, I prefer black pepper seasoning in many traditional southern dishes in preference to green or red chilies fresh or in powder seasoning. Also, the traditional sweetener and palm jaggery and not refined white sugar (deadly industrial product which is in every industrial junk food of today along with other killer ingredients)…
BUT to stay with my Southern Basil meal this Onam, I was so happy to discover what chef… here told me was “ponni rice, boiled rice ponni rice” – of the four types of rice served, I fell for this ponni rice for the first time in my life! It’s a rice from Tamil Nadu I understand, and “ponni” in Tamil means “gold”, therefore “gold rice.” It grows in the special golden silted waters of the river Cauvery basin fields and of course enjoys a reputation of being richer in nutritious values than other kinds of rice varieties. For example, it is richer in magnesium, iron, fiber, etc, and yes, I love the wee aroma about it, also how it tastes – perfect to be laced with a veggie-enriched sambar or light-hearted ginger or lemon rasam (rasam can be so flavorful and of course one may sip them as a hot beverage to clear clogged chest and nose).


The grated coconut-laced “avial” I’ve always relished with pancake “appam” but the one thing which is always a highlight in the Onasadhyam banana leaf meal is this mist tantalizing ginger chutney called “inji puli” – a most yummilicious ginger-tamarind saucy chutney sometimes oozing, sometimes a little more solid. It goes with just about every soft fermented rice-urid dal batter pancake in various versions – thin dosa, thatte idli or the usual idli, all the set dosa or uttappams…indeed, down south India one may find a world of these steamed or semi-fried appam of many varieties and very desirable too. The roll-call of appam if you want to explore…pallapam, kalappam, idiappam, utthappam, and then the paniyaram, paddu and kuzhi paniyaram which are little dumplings. Yes, all turned out with the basic fermented batter of rice and urid dal with fenugreek seeds soaked in before grinding for good measure in some recipes. All these southern staples are served with a variety of freshly made chutney and single or multiple veggie redolent sambar (southern curry)…
(Sigh) Now that I’ve just discovered this Tamilian ponni rice I think I can live on ponni-sambar and inji puli forever after! India truly has a roll call of rice varieties and the southern versions will come either raw or “boiled” as in semi-cooked rice varieties which preserve nutrients better and perhaps get eaten up by bugs like weevils too fast. Forget the elitist basmati, my dears, go find ponni!
In homes of old the food cooked for the day is usually offered to at the altar of the gods and goddesses first, then meals are served. I like to think that this ensures that food is cooked with a devotion of sincere love! Needless to say I’m planning on switching over to southern Indian cooking in my home kitchen henceforth…and may I love what I cook for myself.

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