By Nahla Nainar
Nathai Perattal, a lightly curried snail meat dish, has become trendy in recent weeks ever since New York-based Chef Vijay Kumar won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: New York State in June. The dish is one of the many delicacies on Chef Vijay’s menu featuring rustic and regional recipes that hark back to his native small farming village in rural Tamil Nadu.
“My grandparents lived in Arasampatti, where there wasn’t even a bus. We would go there on school holidays, and we were not such a rich family, so they kept us busy with fishing, hunting and searching for snails,” he said in an interview to The Hindu.
It spotlights the variety of Indian cuisine with rare, ethnic recipes using edible molluscs and insects.
“Foraging for and preparing dishes from scratch with nathai, eesal (winged termites) and oomachi (a smaller variety of snail) is common to many farming communities in Tamil Nadu. Snails and termites are season-specific, and cannot be bought commercially. Snails, for example, are not available when the rivers run dry. Termites on the other hand, start teeming over riverbeds a day or two after a spell of rain, and will vanish with the slightest hint of water. That’s why, when the time is right, very often, the entire village is involved in collecting them for a cookout session,” says V Subramanian, the farmer-chef who helms the popular Village Cooking Channel (VCC) on YouTube with his cousins V Murugesan, V Ayyanar, G Tamilselvan and T Muthumanickam, led by their grandfather and former caterer M Periyathambi.
Homestyle delicacies
VCC, that operates from the village of Chinna Veeramangalam in Pudukottai district, was among the first to put out videos on hunting and preparing winged termites.
The 2018 episode clocked up over eight million views, and made the team braver about showing food rarely seen on urban platters.
“People can be very judgmental and political about food choices. Though we were initially worried about the reception to our eesal recipe, the positive reactions convinced us that we were on the right path. We released three videos on snail recipes, again, to rave reviews,” says Subramanian.
Snails are usually found clustered around the riverbed vegetation. Families step out with earthen pots and wade into a river’s shallower spots to pluck the snails out from the mud.
“Once collected, the snails are soaked in river water and left overnight to remove impurities. Snail flesh is removed using a pointed stick, and cooked over a medium flame for a few minutes. We prefer to keep the spices simple, such as patta milagai (dried red chilli) and salt ground with shallots, to sauté the meat. The shells are discarded after the flesh is removed,” says Subramanian.
Owing to its small size, the oomachi is cooked inside its shell, and diners suck out the flesh flavoured with salt and pepper. “It is one of the most blissful gourmet experiences in our village,” laughs Subramanian.
Preparing eesal takes more effort. As the VCC video shows, the termites are trapped with the help of cloth canopies and dry-roasted over a low flame. Sundried and cleaned with hand-held winnowers to remove their wings, the insects are then further cooked and eaten with jaggery or puffed rice, as a snack.
The fisherfolks’ favourite
Fisherfolk consume snails on a regular basis. In Chennai, snails are available at the Kasimedu fish market in January and February, according to fisherman M Suman. “There are around 10,000 fishermen who depend on snails during the season,” he explains, adding that a kilogram of sea snails can cost up to ₹200. “To catch them, fishermen tie several tonnes of stale fish in nets and submerge them in water, leaving the arrangement overnight,” says the Pulicat-based fisherman, adding: “Snails, attracted to the strong smell, cling to the nets.”
Catching snails is labour-intensive, especially since only 25% of the weight amounts to meat, while the rest constitutes the shell. While sea snails have a shiny white shell, Suman points out that freshwater snails are brownish in colour. “Both are delicious, but sea snails are more special since they are not easy to come by,” he says, adding that he first boils them until the flesh is released. “I then fry the meat with onions, tomatoes, pepper, chilli powder, and cumin to make a semi-gravy that can be had with rice,” he explains.
In Pulicat, fishermen gather snails that end up in nets with their catch. “We will rush home to cook them,” laughs Suman, “The meat is tastier than mutton. The flavour retains the sweet smell of the soil in which the snail spends a major part of the day.”
Within the fishing community, it is believed that consuming snails is good for the skin. “They are also good for the gut,” says Suman. The flamingos love them too. “There is an unlimited supply of snails and prawns at the Pulicat river, and the birds are experts at picking them from the soil with their beaks,” he adds. Freshwater snails, caught in Chennai’s waterbodies such as Narayanapuram eri and Retteri, are sometimes sold in the city’s fish markets as well.
The seaweed collectors at Chinnapalam village in Ramanathapuram district too gather snails. M Lakshmi from the village near Rameshwaram says that women pick snails in the Tamil months of Thai, Maasi and Panguni when they set out for seaweed collection in shallow waters. “During other parts of the year too, we bring in a handful that we cook together,” she says.
Lakshmi likes to cook snails like she cooks chicken. “Once the meat is removed from the shell after boiling, I make a thokku-like preparation using plenty of tomatoes, and also add ground coconut for some variation,” she says.
Rising profile
The charm of rural cuisine lies in its simplicity and the implements used, says celebrity chef and Padmashri awardee K Damodharan (Damu), a pioneer in bringing southern Indian cooking to the attention of a wider audience through his television shows and online tutorials.
“Besides the actual ingredients like snails or baby crabs and the spices that are ground on stone tools like the ammikkal or ural, what also adds flavour, is the cook’s physical touch, what we call kai manam or the fragrance of the hand, in Tamil cooking. You will lose the authentic taste of traditional food if you overcook the dish or smother it in readymade spice powders,” says the chef.
Both Subramanian and Damu are thrilled with the buzz around rural Tamil cuisine in recent weeks due to Chef Vijay’s award.
“I am happy to see a young chef promote rare recipes from our State on a global forum. I wish him greater success,” says Damu.
Subramanian says the news had filtered down to their village, thanks to the Internet.
“We were so thrilled on Chef Vijay Kumar’s behalf, and excited to see our humble ingredients being held in such esteem. I feel his award is an honour for ournathai,” he says.