Finest Recipes of “Kerala’s leading cookbook author”

 I was fortunate to be the recipient, today, of a new cookbook from Kerala.

Cover of late Mrs. K. M. Mathew’s 

“Finest Recipes” 

The late Mrs. K. M Mathew’s eldest daughter-in-law, Prema, has curated a book of the finest recipes produced by my aunt in her lifetime. 

I have been fortunate in my life to have tasted many of them produced by Mrs. Mathew and then, by what I think is the the only cook in India that I know, her protege Vasu, who received an EU 9000 certificate for  his cooking skills!

In a recent blog entry about a Gujarthi evening I had enumerated the publications of late Mrs. K. M Mathew.

I have been brought up on enjoying the variety of good food from all over the world. 

I love most types of food, various Indian cusines, Chinese, Thai, Fusion, Continental, cordon blue, and "even British” as Roast Beef with Yorkshire pudding and Welsh rarebit. 

I am, however, not a fan of fastfoods as the Macburger!

I was introduced to Finnish cuisine by Annikki starting with meatballs and meat loaf and many other exotic dishes, especially various preparations of fish. 

But Annikki became a master cook with her own versions of Indian cooking as Massla Dosai made in a Finnish style with Finnish ingredients.

Annikki ran the first cooking class of Indian recipes in Ylivieska polytechnic, and introduced the first Chinese cooking class in Oulu when she was the Chairperson of the English Club of Oulu!

I was introduced to cooking by Mrs. K. M. Mathew when I left India to study in London when she scribbled some great recipes for me and taught me the basics of cooking.

However, when Annikki married me in 1967, she quickly threw me out of the kitchen, despite my very good skills as producing Roast Lamb, as she found I was not to good at keeping the kitchen clean.

I have been through the new book and I give here the detailed Contents and the items contained in each of the Sub-Sections.

All the best recipes from my experience of Kerala cooking are in the book, especially my very favourite, Karimeen, the masala fried White Fish!

One anecdote tells the story of the hospitality of Mrs. K. M. Mathew.

We were on a trip through Kerala and Mrs. Mathew asked us to stopover at her home in Kottayam. When we arrived she had been called out for some work but she had organised lunch for us with her husband as our host.

The tablespread was fantastic as anything one could hope for was on the table. 

Our eldest son was having a problem and called one of the staff and whispered something in his ear.

This caused a great concern as the staff member went to speak with our host.

My uncle appeared greatly disturbed as he apologised to Jaakko that they had prepared chicken, beef, lamb, and an array of vegetarian dishes but was sorry that he had not included "pork".

We all split our sides laughing as, we as a family do not eat pork as it is forbidden by Annikki's religious belief. 

So we asked Jaakko what he meant to which he replied that all he wanted was a "FORK"!

We used to tease Mrs. Mathew's husband that the enormous circulation of the Malayala Manorama newspaper was because every Keralite housewife bought  the newspaper so as to produce the food which her husband would appreciate! 

A Keralite woman (and Annikki) knows that a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach !

I am yet to meet a lady from Kerala who does not know the contribution of Mrs. Mathew to her day to day life, not only with the daily recipes she produced for the newspaper but also for the best selling ladies magazine in India, VANITHA, which is now also published in Hindi.

Annikki and Thangam (Cochin 2014)

Here is a picture of my dear cousin, Thangam, at her boutique “The Weavers” in Cochin and Annikki when we visited her in 2014, our very last visit to India.

The front cover of the new book describes Mrs. K. M. Mathew's standing in the eyes of the New York Times. 

The back cover has a short note expressed from the very heart by the daughter of Mrs. K. M. Mathew, Thangam.

Thank you Prema and Thangam for sending us 

this wonderful gift.

A letter that we treasure

In our archives there is one letter that we especially treasure. It is one from Mrs. K. M. Mathew, Annammakochamma, which we received in January 1987.

Letter from Mrs. K. M. Mathew, Annammakochamma
received in 1987 to Annikki and me

Here was one of the busiest women on this universe, running her own top woman's magazine of India, active with social work to help the needy, active with the community to the extent of doing the hair of almost every young girl in the community getting married, holding daily morning singing and music lessons for the talented young people of the city of Kottayam, producing mouth-watering recipes on a daily basis from her kitchen, and all that with only half her organs left in her body, and she took the trouble to write to Annikki and me to tell us how much she loved us and cared for us.

Little did she know that Annikki and I cared for her more than almost any other individual on this planet. We prayed for her well-being, knowing how much pain she was going through, but also knowing she never cared for her pain but always thought of the pain and suffering of others.

We were so grateful when we received not one, but two copies, of the book written as a tribute to her by her husband, K. M. Mathew, Mathukuttychayan, my mother's younger brother.


"Annamma" by K. M. Mathew

The first copy was sent by Mathukuttychayan and the second by his youngest son, Jacob Mathew, Chacko.

Annikki is a very slow but thorough reader. She hardly has any time to do any reading other than the daily newspaper. But she picked up the book about one of her favourite aunts the evening it arrived. When I saw her later that night she told me she was so captivated by the contents, that she could not put it down till she finished it. She said that the moving text and the wonderful pictures were an absolutely faithful recounting of the life of a lady she had loved, respected and admired ever since she first met her when she took the time to visit our humble home in the sixties.

The two of them, Annammakochamma and Annikki, were on the same wavelength on everything about life - their art, their creativity, their views about humanity and their views about their need to be of service to all their fellow beings.

I, too, could not put down the book once I started reading it, and I remembered many of the events as I was very much a part of them. The sorrow I felt when they moved from Bombay to Kottayam was so moving as I lost my best friend and cousin, Rajen, as I loved to go to their flat in Byculla and play hide and seek in that old rambling flat on the second (or third?) floor.

The relationship that we built in the few months we lived in Bombay at the same time is something neither of us have ever forgotten - right through to when we were in college in Delhi together and he worked tirelessly with his friends to get me elected as the President of the Students Common Room and the de facto head of all resident students of the college. That is something I can never repay him for as at that time I was going through a major crisis of my life, as having lost the use of my index finger on my right hand, I had lost my chance to be in the college and university hockey team.

It is the same dedication that Rajen inherited from his mother that has helped him to drive the Malayala Manorama to the very top of the Indian media scene. He was the most deserving recipient of one of the highest honour's given by the President of India, the Padma Shiri, last year.


Rajen receiving the Padma Shree Award
from President of India, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Thank you for this wonderful book which we will treasure, just as much as we treasure that letter we received from Annammakochamma in 1987!