Sacred Offerings :: Prasadam

Podi & Poriyal organized a themed dinner to showcase temple food and offerings across India. It partnered host and chef Rakesh Raghunathan to do this, and themed it as 'Podi & Poriyal X Rakesh Raghunathan presents Sacred Offerings Menu'. Of course we got together a table and went for it.

Rakesh Raghunathan also led a number of workshops to teach attendees how to make prasadam or prasada — vegetarian food cooked after praise and thanksgiving to the Lord and Hindu deities at the temple. Apparently there were singing and culinary history mentioned at these workshops for everyone to learn more about the temple meals after each festival. Unfortunately we couldn't join in for that. 

We were just here for the food. Teeehehehe. And excellent dishes we got. Podi & Poriyal does wonderful vegetarian food and didn't disappoint this time either. This 'Sacred Offerings' dinner was well curated and offer us a shortcut to peek into the various regions' food served at temples after a worship ceremony. It's up to the diners how much they want to read up about it. 

We began the evening with a refreshing welcome drink of panagam; it's served cold and lightly spiced during the summer festival of Sri Rama Navami. Then there were appetizers of idly from Kanchipuram and deep fried dosai from Madurai and a nobu kanji (a light lentil soup porridge) made during the month of Ramzan mainly eaten to break fast. 

The mains were all served together. The ven pongal from Srirangam was delicious. Depending on how you view porridge, this is either yucky or nice. Not everyone makes good pongal. This kitchen didn't make it too sweet. The combination of rice and moong dal ensures that you get all your carbs and proteins. The pineapple menaskai from Udupi Math, Karnataka went well with everything.

I thought I wouldn't like the samba sadam from Chidambaram Natarajar temple in Tamil Nadu because of the cumin. It's a mixed rice with pepper and jeera samba rice. However, upon first taste, I didn't mind it at all. The cumin ratio was brilliantly mixed, and went superb with the Chidambaram gosthu from the same temple, an eggplant in gravy. Some of the information about the food was scant because we were googling in English. Say, the kovil kadabam from Parthaasarthy temple in Chennai. The man couldn't resist it and asked for a second helping of this dish. It's like sambar rice, without poppy seeds and dry coconut. 

This is hands down one of my best meals of 2022. It was such a wonderful presentation of vegetarian food done well with spices, no garlic and no onions or chillies. Good old pepper did the job. The best part — we took the 6pm seating, stuffed our faces and had plenty of time to digest and get out of the food coma, and do other stuff before bedtime.