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.

I learn a new sport theoretically -,Cage Cricket

 Last Friday I got an invitation to watch on YouTube a demonstration Cage Cricket match between two sports teams from Jyväskylä.

This was followed  on Saturday and Sunday by a men’s snd women’s tournament called  Cage Cricket.

Most Valuable Player of the Tournament - Ritu Ghanghas

I had not encountered this form of cricket earlier  and even an AI Search did not yield much data. However, it did say that the  Finnish Cricket Association was organising a tournament on Cage Cricket as part of its schedule! 

With great interest I watched the first demo match. Not knowing the rules of the game,it seemed a very messy game to me me. Having been a  Cricket buff all my life,  I soon worked out the issues with the sport.

As two Oulu teams were taking part in the tournament, I did send a message to a friend who was attending the event that if Oulu weanted to do well, they had to develop a new startegy in keeping with the rules of this game.

For instance, I noted that if a bowler bowled a perfectly good ball, it could yield between 3 and 7 runs for the batting side, whereas, if the bowler bowled  a wide ball, it would yield just 2 runs. So the incentive on the first four overs of every batting pair would be for the bowler to bowl wides and give away just 30 runs.

As I watched the games unfold, there was just one lady captain who had understood this and I could hear her telling her bowlers  to bowl wides to good batters!

There were several other inconsistencies in the rules showing that this sport was in its infancy and would have to be developed condiderably to be considered to be an interesting sport! 

Of the teams, only one player, a young lady from Oulu, Ritu Ghanghas, was head and shoulders above everybody else.

I had seen the cricketing genius of Ritu Ghanghas  when I had attended the launch of the Oulu Women's Cricket inauguration last year. Her skill was not because of cricket but because she had a super eye based on her skill at frisbee.

Others may play Cricket but this is a new sport and it is not  traditional  cricketkng skills that are important,

I hope that organisers of cricket understand  this and make their decisions of choice of teams and leaders based on the skills necessary. Even in normal cricket there are totally different skills that are required by players of T20, one day Cricket (T50) and 5 day test matches. Even the selectors have to have different skills. The Cricket Boards should  understand that no size fits all.

Me sitting on the floor!!

Cage Cricket in Finland

The Jyväskylä tournament was well organised and my congratulations to the Jyväskylä Cricket Club which won the Men's Cage  Cricket Trophy. 

The last time they visited Oulu, the whole team turned up, after the game, at my house with flowers! Thank you guys.

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PROJECT MOREFROFT - Restoration

With the advent of artificioal intelligence (AI) and my superficial association with it, I have decided to launch a new Project - which I have named as PROJECT MORECROFT.

 ( I apologise for the misspelling in the title! It should be Morecroft and not Morecroft!!  Unfortunately it cannot be changed after publishing!)

Late Arthur D. Morecroft

Those of you who were my clsssmates in 1955 when we were in Standard VII in the Cathedral and John Connon Boy’s High School, Mumbai, will probably recognise the significance of why I named this project such!

As I have already covered this incident in more than one blog entrty, I am linking you to one of them if you are interested in the more intricate details. of why I have chosen this as the name for this project.

At the top pf this blog entry is a picture of Arthur Morecroft for which I used AI to enhance and colourise from this picture below.

'

The transformation is quite unique as this is the individual who gave me a second life, revived and restored to wholeness 69 years ago!

Here is the list of the staff members of our School in 1958. You will see the name of Arthur there with his qualification. He had the Army Certificate for Physical Training and it was his quick action that revived and restored my life at Vasind.

As I restore old and scratched photos from the past, I dedicate my work to the man who gave me back my life.

I do hope this project will rejuvenate the lives of many.

If you have a photograph which you think needs to be restored and colourised, send them to me and I will try my level best to get it into the best shape I can. 

To give you a few examples of what I have done, I am showing below a few of the results that I have obtained from my past archives.

Viney Sethi, my dear school friend produced a black and white photograph of us on a class picnic in 1959 at Anil and late Ashok Ruia’s seaside resort Silver Sands at the very end of Juhu beach. 

During Viney’s visit to Oulu a year ago, I cleaned up his black and white version with some degree of success. 

Now, with the use of AI I now have this result.

That is me in the white vest, second from the left in the foreground. The earlier version had so much shadow that most of us were indiscernible.

Here is a photo from 1944 of me in my mother’s arms with my elder sister sitting on the floor.

Amazing result and one which makes me happy with the power of AI.

In 1971, late Basu John, who was an expert on photographic lenses, developed a camera with me, where I contributed to the plastics outer design and moving parts. The first camera was prototyped with these plastic pieces joined together. The total cost in 1971 was just Rs. 20 (€0.10). 

The first photograph was taken at our son’s birthday party on 1st November 1972 at our home in Defence Officer’s Colony in Nandambakkam in Madras.

Basu John enlarged the picture and found no breakdown of the image even at the edges. A tribute to his lens design and the power of glass and plastics technology.

However, as we were working on the final designs at my home, he received a phone call that his photographic shop on Mount Road, called Klein and Peryl, was on fire. We dropped everything and rushed there to save as much as possible.

This was considered by Basu John as a bad omen and we dropped this project.

Given above are the colourised version of the enlarged version which hung in his shop for many years and the close up of the AI revamped image of our two children, Susanna and Jaakko.

I would like your views on this project and would welcome all those who feel they can contribute to it in my areas of interest, 

These include my relatives around the world, alumni from my alma maters, Bishop Cotton School, Bangalore, Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and my colleagues from my professional and other life around the world, as I recover and restore photographs, just as the dedication of late Arthur Morecroft!

Vive la memory of 

Arthur Morecroft.

History repeating itself?

Annikki and I were enjoying our regular Friday buffet lunch (with a speacial spicey chicken vindaloo) at The Royal Garden restaurant in Oulu when a young couple walked in. 

Michelle showed them around and they settled at a table. (Obviously they were new!)

MG University, Kottayam (School of Chemical Sciences)

(Photo from Mahatma Gandhi University website.)

As they came to the buffet table I asked the young gentleman where he was from. He was from India, then Bangalore. 

Having established our primary connection I dug a little deeper and found out he was a Polymer Chemist, and then came the shocker, when he said that he did his degree from Kottayam.

I had to travel 7000 km to do my studies in Polymers. At that time only London and Akron, Ohio, USA had reputed courses in polymer science and technology in the English speaking world. Although there were excellent courses in Germany, France and Italy, those were not an option for me.

As my brother was already in London, the choice was automatic, as Ohio seemed to be a little too distant for me.

When I did a little digging I found that the director of the Dept of Chemical Sciences at the Mahatma Gandhi University is a Prof. Dr. Anitha C. Kumar. She had done her Polymer Science degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, with which I was actively cooperating with in the early seventies when Prof. Guenter Menig from Germany was there to start the department. 

Prof. Menig and I had worked on similar research areas, especially the use of the Brabender Pladtograph to characterise the processing behaviour of polymers.

When Prof. Menig left back to Germany, we took his maid, Susheela, to look after the children as she spoke English. Annikki was at that time just starting to learn Tamil.

I hope to share a few evenings with Anupam, just to catch up on what is happening in the polymer field. I have more or less stopped reading stuff in my primary area of work for almost 15 years!

The only subject I do keep abreast of these days is the controversial topic about Polymers and Recycling technology.

Welcome Anupan and Juyel to a great city, Oulu, Annikki and my  home for the last 40 years

This is indeed a very small world!