Samar Halarnkar: The multiverse of Meenakshi Ammal’s brinjal
Science fiction is like cooking, using fragments of alternate realities to create multiverses between flame and flavour, a form of mental transport and refuge from the grind of daily life
I enjoy cooking, and I enjoy science fiction, and I’ve realised there is a connection between the two. Both immerse you in an alternate world—between flame and flavour, between code and consciousness.
Let me round up some notable movies about multiple realities. The 1999 movie, The Thirteenth Floor, was about scientists creating the ability to plug themselves into 1937, getting their highs as they crossed the blurry lines between awareness and algorithm. That same year, we saw the first Matrix movie, questioning what was real and what was fake as people lived in a fantastical world controlled by machines. In 2011, Another Earth used parallel realities to explore redemption and possibility. In 2013, Comet examined the confusion of meeting alternate selves after a comet splits the timelines of life.
The timeline of my life is split, with my alternate reality emerging not from machines or comets but cooking. To those who do not cook, it is hard to explain how slicing, sautéing, broiling, baking, roasting—and thinking of all of these—creates multiverses in life. Cooking, like science fiction, is an act of imagination—a portal to other possibilities.
The process begins with thinking about a meal. If I have something specific in mind, that’s fine and easy. I make it quite mechanically. If I do not, I start plugging into the other world that runs alongside. That begins with pulling out cookbooks. Soon, as I begin exploring countries, cuisines, peoples and their stories, I retreat from the humdrum of daily life.
I was made aware of this transposition when I was struggling to find a vegetarian recipe for my notoriously hard-to-please spouse, who claims she does not care about food but is most displeased—expressed passively with underlying disgruntlement—if the food does not match her mood.
She claims to love south Indian vegetarian food, especially Tamilian, but that does not include root vegetables and sundry other mainstays. So, I recently turned to a classic, Samaithu Paar or “Cook and See", a legendary 74-year-old cookbook first published in 1951 by S. Meenakshi Ammal. A family célèbre of sorts, Ammal, writes her son P.S. Sankaran in a 2001 reprint, considered writing a book of her recipes.
Discouragement, in an age when patriarchy was an even stronger norm than it is today, was swift. But an uncle pushed her onwards, and the rest is culinary history. Samaithu Paar has been endlessly published and translated into several languages since, a mainstay of—I hate to say this—young brides.
I am, of course, an ageing uncle, and the weekend of rediscovering Samaithu Paar started my transition into its multiverse. The house was empty, and I had time to collect my wits and ingredients as I tried to recreate an Ammal recipe I thought my wife would approve. I picked an ennai kathrikai, or stuffed brinjal, its intricacies requiring a suspension of the world around me.
I’ve made eggplant before, and I use coconut regularly, but the complexities of both in the ennai kathrikai were soon apparent. I fried the coconut, but it took much longer than expected. It turned into a meditative process of moving the coconut back and forth on the pan for about 10 minutes, watching it slowly turn a golden brown. Then I was absorbed by the process of carefully slitting each little eggplant just wide enough to accept the stuffing but not wide enough to let it fall apart.
Now, I may be romanticising something many cooks do mechanically, but I don’t regard cooking as a mechanical effort. It’s easy enough to use cooking as a form of mental transport into the multiverse of your choosing, a refuge from the grind of daily life.
When I began stuffing the eggplants, it required my full concentration. I blanked out the honking outside and ignored the electricity switching on and off. When I cook, I move between times, places and selves, each recipe a world with its own logic, language and rhythm.
Meenakshi Ammal’s brinjal was a reminder that crafting food is like creating stories, using fragments of who we are to create meditative multiverses. We travel to other kitchens, imaginations and lives long gone. And when the dish is done, the multiverse collapses back into one reality—hot, fragrant, and real.
MEENAKSHI AMMAL’S STUFFED BRINJAL (ENNAI KATHRIKAI)
Serves 4
Ingredients
7 small, tender brinjals
6 dried red chillies
3 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp Bengal gram
2 tsp black gram
Half coconut, grated
4 tbsp oil
Salt to taste
Method
In a pan, heat 1 tbsp of oil. Fry the coriander seeds, red chillies and Bengal and black gram until they turn reddish-brown. Set aside. Use another tbsp of oil to fry the coconut until it turns golden brown. Set aside.
Grind the red chillies, salt and coriander. Add the fried dals and fried coconut and continue grinding to a coarse powder. Set aside.
Slit the brinjals into four from the bottom, making sure the brinjal does not split into four pieces. Stuff each brinjal with the powder.
Heat 2 tbsp of oil. Fry the brinjals on medium to low heat. Sprinkle water when needed. Cook till the brinjals are soft, turning them over often.
Our Daily Bread is a column on easy, inventive cooking. Samar Halarnkar is the author of The Married Man’s Guide to Creative Cooking—And Other Dubious Adventures. He posts @samar11 on X
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