Untitled Document

Chennai Sangamam - 2009

Sangamam brings taste of rural Tamil Nadu to city of Chennai

Chennai Sangamam’s food component, the Tamil Unavu Thiruvizha, was launched in a blaze of glory on Sunday, taking 50,000 people on a deliciously colourful culinary journey through the past.

The festival focuses on highlighting and popularizing Tamil Nadu’s traditional food, and it manages to accomplish the remarkable task of combining recipes from far flung villages, traditional master cooks and slick professional five-star chefs to be as authentic as they are flamboyant.

Presented by South India Culinary Association, the 'Tamil Unavu Tiruvizha' seeks to infuse hygiene to the street food and uncover long-forgotten, mouth watering food varieties of the state.

Chef P.Soundararajan, General Secretary of the Indian Federation of Culinary Association, which supports the festival along with Tamil Maiyam, talks of how they made a special effort to discover some of the state’s best cooks and bring them together for this unique festival. “We have not included anything ordinarily available,” he says, adding that the biryani, for example, is made by Venu, who is so famous in the small town on Dindigul that he caters to a 3,000 people every day. He also stated their expectation on half a million people to indulge in this carefully prepared spread. Over 400 Dishes will be on sale. Many of the head chefs of the participating hotels have done extensive research to make them taste authentic

The best part of course, is the festival’s cheery inclusiveness. Set in the city’s parks, it’s open to everyone, and meals cost between Rs 50 & Rs 80. This could explain why the ‘Iruttukadai halwa’ sold out in the first 15 minutes last year and the rest of the food in just an hour. The sale proceeds will be utilized to meet the food expenditure of more than 2,000 folk artistes who have come from various part of the state to perform in parks, streets and beaches during the coming week.

Star hotel chefs bring rural cuisine to show :

As the week-long Chennai Sangamam draws to a close, foodies in the city are trying their best to do justice to the street delicacies on display in 12 parks across the city. Artistes present a steady stream of folk performances as worthy accompaniment, yet the food queues in parks don’t seem to let up, from 6pm to 9pm everyday. Be it Nageswara Rao Park, Natesan Park, Anna Nagar Tower Park or any others, it is one big picnic, with families sprawled on the grass, digging into steaming plates of pepper chicken and parantha, a Coimbatore specialty for 35 years, spicy Venu biriyani from Dindigual and more.

At the launch of the festival last January, it was heartening to see the city’s leading chefs breaking ‘bread’ together and downing glasses of iced jigardhanda (a creamy Madurai Drink) at Thai hotspot, Benjarong. This Festival, they chorused, was a joint initiative to promote the state’s best-kept food secrets. Some of the food on display that day included Ragi Kalli (huge ragi balls) served with a thin mutton gravy (a Thiruvallur special), Virudhunagar’s kothu (mince) parantha and mutton sukkha (fried, spicy mutton), as well as Chettinad desserts like the light pal panniyaram and brown rice pudding (with the rice sourced from Burma as chettinad merchants were know to travel far and wide year ago). Over the next few days, we braved the crowds in several parks for a long feast, the verdict being the same: a brilliant effort from Chennai Sangamam and the Indian Federation of Culinary Association that will get only better over the years, we hope. We also learnt that the trick was to get there early (by 6 pm) and carry drinking water along.

It is considered to be a day of tasting the tradition, where each and every cuisine meant exclusiveness and set as a feast by itself. “The food you see at Chennai Sangamam this time is the result of research that spanned for almost a year. We had chefs going to remote villages to taste & learn recipes unheard of and almost dead these days. With 18 five-star hotels setting up stalls, it also comes as a way of offering street food hygienically at a very reasonable rate,” noted Soundararajan, stating that they had an offer of 400 items spanning 30 different styles of cuisines, from all over Tamil Nadu, a solid jump from the 150 dishes they had last year. “The number could be increased to 600,” he added with a touch of excitement.

The food festival, put up by the South Indian Culinary Association, a chapter of the Indian Federation of Culinary Association, will include traditional delicacies from regions such as Kongu Nadu and Virudhunagar, to ancient Tamil food and the Marathi-influenced cuisine from the court of Raja Serfoji of Tanjore among the many kitchen wonders for the people with the sweet tooth, they can look out for Irrutukadai Halwa, Srivilliputhur Pal gova, Kovil patti kadalai mittai Prema Vilas Halwa and the ever popular Madurai jil jil jigardhanda.

Besides the six specialty chefs from various parts of the state 18 city hotels will be making everything from the ancient food Kumbakonam to ever-popular Chettinad delicacies. Menus change daily. “There will be 400 different food items from 30 different cultures,” says chef Soundararajan.

Despite the crowds and chaos, the festival’s achieving some interesting results. Besides enabling traditional cooks and sophisticated chefs to learn from each other, and helping strengthen food traditions, it also seems to be cutting across social barriers, as people kick off their shoes and settle happily on the grass every evening balancing plates piled high with spicy kozhambus, flaky parathas and puffy vadais.

Last year, they catered to two-and-a-half lakh people. Though the food was made to be consumed in the park, people arrived with Tiffin carriers so they could take some home too.

Member of Parliament and Coodinator of Tamil Maiyam, Mrs. Kanimozhi said that the food festival added colour and flavour to the fine arts show. It’s getting bigger and better every year and I hope people enjoy and relish our Tamil culture through the event”. Tamil Maiyam founder Jagat Gasper Raj and M.Mahadevan, Director of Oriental Cuisines participated in the programme.

It was a moment of excitement with remarkable creations of foods. It was all together a grand fiesta to relish a cultural moment and to expect more of it in coming years with unbound tradition and tongue tingling foods, keeping you in touch with the bliss of flavor which had been believed to have no trace of existence in this fast moving metropolitan city, but now have reinvented itself in the form of “CHENNAI SANGAMAM”.

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	Chennai Sangamam - 2009 Sangamam brings taste of rural Tamil Nadu to city of Chennai Chennai Sangamam’s food component, the Tamil Unavu Thiruvizha, was launched in a blaze of glory on Sunday, taking 50,000 people on a deliciously colourful culinary journey through the past. The festival focuses on highlighting and popularizing Tamil Nadu’s traditional food, and it manages to accomplish the remarkable task of combining recipes from far flung villages, traditional master cooks and slick professional five-star chefs to be as authentic as they are flamboyant. Presented by South India Culinary Association, the 'Tamil Unavu Tiruvizha' seeks to infuse hygiene to the street food and uncover long-forgotten, mouth watering food varieties of the state. Chef P.Soundararajan, General Secretary of the Indian Federation of Culinary Association, which supports the festival along with Tamil Maiyam, talks of how they made a special effort to discover some of the state’s best cooks and bring them together for this unique festival. “We have not included anything ordinarily available,” he says, adding that the biryani, for example, is made by Venu, who is so famous in the small town on Dindigul that he caters to a 3,000 people every day. He also stated their expectation on half a million people to indulge in this carefully prepared spread. Over 400 Dishes will be on sale. Many of the head chefs of the participating hotels have done extensive research to make them taste authentic The best part of course, is the festival’s cheery inclusiveness. Set in the city’s parks, it’s open to everyone, and meals cost between Rs 50 & Rs 80. This could explain why the ‘Iruttukadai halwa’ sold out in the first 15 minutes last year and the rest of the food in just an hour. The sale proceeds will be utilized to meet the food expenditure of more than 2,000 folk artistes who have come from various part of the state to perform in parks, streets and beaches during the coming week. Star hotel chefs bring rural cuisine to show : As the week-long Chennai Sangamam draws to a close, foodies in the city are trying their best to do justice to the street delicacies on display in 12 parks across the city. Artistes present a steady stream of folk performances as worthy accompaniment, yet the food queues in parks don’t seem to let up, from 6pm to 9pm everyday. Be it Nageswara Rao Park, Natesan Park, Anna Nagar Tower Park or any others, it is one big picnic, with families sprawled on the grass, digging into steaming plates of pepper chicken and parantha, a Coimbatore specialty for 35 years, spicy Venu biriyani from Dindigual and more. At the launch of the festival last January, it was heartening to see the city’s leading chefs breaking ‘bread’ together and downing glasses of iced jigardhanda (a creamy Madurai Drink) at Thai hotspot, Benjarong. This Festival, they chorused, was a joint initiative to promote the state’s best-kept food secrets. Some of the food on display that day included Ragi Kalli (huge ragi balls) served with a thin mutton gravy (a Thiruvallur special), Virudhunagar’s kothu (mince) parantha and mutton sukkha (fried, spicy mutton), as well as Chettinad desserts like the light pal panniyaram and brown rice pudding (with the rice sourced from Burma as chettinad merchants were know to travel far and wide year ago). Over the next few days, we braved the crowds in several parks for a long feast, the verdict being the same: a brilliant effort from Chennai Sangamam and the Indian Federation of Culinary Association that will get only better over the years, we hope. We also learnt that the trick was to get there early (by 6 pm) and carry drinking water along. It is considered to be a day of tasting the tradition, where each and every cuisine meant exclusiveness and set as a feast by itself. “The food you see at Chennai Sangamam this time is the result of research that spanned for almost a year. We had chefs going to remote villages to taste & learn recipes unheard of and almost dead these days. With 18 five-star hotels setting up stalls, it also comes as a way of offering street food hygienically at a very reasonable rate,” noted Soundararajan, stating that they had an offer of 400 items spanning 30 different styles of cuisines, from all over Tamil Nadu, a solid jump from the 150 dishes they had last year. “The number could be increased to 600,” he added with a touch of excitement. The food festival, put up by the South Indian Culinary Association, a chapter of the Indian Federation of Culinary Association, will include traditional delicacies from regions such as Kongu Nadu and Virudhunagar, to ancient Tamil food and the Marathi-influenced cuisine from the court of Raja Serfoji of Tanjore among the many kitchen wonders for the people with the sweet tooth, they can look out for Irrutukadai Halwa, Srivilliputhur Pal gova, Kovil patti kadalai mittai Prema Vilas Halwa and the ever popular Madurai jil jil jigardhanda. Besides the six specialty chefs from various parts of the state 18 city hotels will be making everything from the ancient food Kumbakonam to ever-popular Chettinad delicacies. Menus change daily. “There will be 400 different food items from 30 different cultures,” says chef Soundararajan. Despite the crowds and chaos, the festival’s achieving some interesting results. Besides enabling traditional cooks and sophisticated chefs to learn from each other, and helping strengthen food traditions, it also seems to be cutting across social barriers, as people kick off their shoes and settle happily on the grass every evening balancing plates piled high with spicy kozhambus, flaky parathas and puffy vadais. Last year, they catered to two-and-a-half lakh people. Though the food was made to be consumed in the park, people arrived with Tiffin carriers so they could take some home too. Member of Parliament and Coodinator of Tamil Maiyam, Mrs. Kanimozhi said that the food festival added colour and flavour to the fine arts show. It’s getting bigger and better every year and I hope people enjoy and relish our Tamil culture through the event”. Tamil Maiyam founder Jagat Gasper Raj and M.Mahadevan, Director of Oriental Cuisines participated in the programme. It was a moment of excitement with remarkable creations of foods. It was all together a grand fiesta to relish a cultural moment and to expect more of it in coming years with unbound tradition and tongue tingling foods, keeping you in touch with the bliss of flavor which had been believed to have no trace of existence in this fast moving metropolitan city, but now have reinvented itself in the form of “CHENNAI SANGAMAM”. View the flash gallery