In a three-year-long cookbook project spanning the Coromandel coast, Bhagath Singh A. writes a tribute to his late mother.
Seasoned by the Sea—or Neidhal Kaimanam in Tamil—is more than just a typical cookbook. Documenting India’s Coromandel coast, it dives into the ebbs and flows that define coastal food across the region: from the lives of the inhabitants to the cooking methods they employ, and the labour and ecology that ties their recipes together.
Spread over 300 pages, the book introduces people like Suguna, a sharp-witted fish butcher who can handle the most eclectic catch; Alumbu, a skilled matti-gatherer who forages for clam clusters in the middle of the sea with no tools except her hands; and Nazeera, who can stuff era vaada with as many as six whole baby prawns, “like chocolate chips in a biscuit”.
Beginning in the Ennore-Pazhaverkadu wetlands, the cookbook drifts across coastal Chennai where the bustling Kasimedu harbour, Pattinapakkam, and Besant Nagar lie. It ends on a note of impending change in Pondicherry.
The book took three years to compile. The unforeseen, year-long delay occurred due to the shocking events that took place in Ennore in December 2023, where oil and ammonia leaks from a nearby refinery and a fertiliser plant spurred spontaneous six-month-long protests by residents. Niranjana R., a journalist-turned-geographer and one of the compilers of the book, shares:
“Bhagath was an active participant in these protests and we felt that it was not the appropriate time to be working on a project about the pleasures of coastal foods. However, in the aftermath, we’ve felt the need—more than ever—to stress the complex, joyful and productive lives led by fishers and other coastal inhabitants, even amidst seeming industrial ruin.”
Read the following excerpt from the section titled From the sea to the self: Amma’s journeys with seafood, written by Bhagath Singh A. and translated from the Tamil by Niranjana R. Here, the author writes about his late mother and the fallout of industrial transformation in their coastal hometown Ennore.
“Do you make seafood at home everyday?” asked a classmate when I started middle school. I’ve heard this question in various forms and tones all the way until college. Before I even opened my lunchbox, “Is it fried fish today?” a classmate would ask, part eager and another part mildly curious about what kind of different life I lead. Whether it was sambar, tamarind rice or other lunch staple, my mother always packed fish, squid, prawns—food from the sea—to go with it. It was only dried fish that she would never pack for school lunch. I never quite understood why back then.
My tiffin would usually be finished by the morning interval between teaching. The teacher handling the following session would then open with, “What was it today—fish fry?” The entire class would turn towards me, seated in the back rows, giggling. When friends visited home, they knew they could look forward to having meen kulambu and era thokku. Amma would make a vegetable dish as well just in case. When I went around to my friends’ place, I only had to mention I was from Ennore and their parents would exclaim, “Oh you’re the boy who brings seafood for lunch everyday!” It was thus that seafood became my identity and talking point among friends. It wasn’t an identity that I had sought for myself, it was handed to me by Amma—a woman who was far from restricted to domestic life. She spent most of her time organising around feminist, environmental and other political issues.
Born in a small seaside fishing village, she didn’t have the opportunity to pursue education beyond primary school. But, the social education she gave herself through field experience was unparalleled. When Covid struck in 2020, she jumped straight into aid work until the second wave of infection in India took her away from us in 2021. In the memorial service we held for her, people remembered the seafood she cooked as much as her many other facets including as an organiser and performance artist (yes, she was that too!). Even during the off-season for fresh seafood during the monsoon, she would make it a point to fry up some dried fish for any meal she served, they remembered.
As for me, Amma was my gateway not only to the world of seafood but to the sea itself. All her life, she had never let the sea out of her sight, living not more than 50 metres from its shore, always able to smell and feel its salty touch. The sandy coast had practically raised her, she would sometimes say. It is then perhaps unsurprising that her taste for seafood was wide and deep.
Fish head kulambu
Amma’s favourite food was perhaps kulambu made with the head of large fish like trevally or kingfish, similar to how goat’s head is cooked in pastoral cultures. In every fishing village, there are typically a few fishers who take to the deep sea on their kattumaram to practise hook-and-line fishing. This type of fishing targets trevally and kingfish specifically as they are hefty and fetch a good price in the market. Since they are caught without a net, they are sometimes called marathu meen, referring to the erstwhile wooden boats they were caught on. The fish weigh anywhere from 3 to 10 kilograms. Fish vendors—usually women—buy these at the landing auction, butcher them and sell sectioned pieces using a measure called kooru, a small pile weighing less than a kilogram in general.
All her life, she had never let the sea out of her sight, living not more than 50 metres from its shore, always able to smell and feel its salty touch.
A kooru of 5-6 cut trevally pieces—weighing about half a kilogram and costing about rupees 40 then in the 1990s—could be fried to make the highlight of a family meal. For reference, a mackerel kooru (about 10 pieces) cost about rupees 20 while sardines were only about rupees 10 for a portion that could easily make a big pot of kulambu. As soon as news of the butchering of a trevally or kingfish makes its way around the market, a small crowd would gather, ready to compete for the prime cuts. My mother would also be in that crowd. But, she was not interested in the cut pieces. Her target was the fish head, typically reserved for the fish vendors, who would sell it separately.
Many of the fish vendors in the market were related to Amma or her childhood friends. She was also acquainted with all of them through her trained work on women’s welfare. Many of the vendors might have approached her at some point about legal aid or mediating familial conflicts. She built such a relationship of trust and solidarity with those women that they became tightly knit as friends too. This resulted in her receiving her favourite cut of fish through one of her friends even if she couldn’t go to the market on occasion. But, those were rare occasions as Amma enjoyed visiting the market almost as much as she appreciated the seafood itself.
When some special kinds of trevally (thelappaarai, thookunasi paarai) and kingfish (maavulasi) were butchered, she would buy the head and a portion of cut pieces. The fish head kulambu she thus made would envelop the household in a heady aroma and matching taste. It had a beautiful glistening layer of oil floating enticingly on the surface. It is the oil separated from the bones in the fish head that made the kulambu so tasty, as Amma explained. She would, hence, also make extra rice to soak up the extra flavour. She would further chop up the portion of cut pieces and fry them up. At the table, we were encouraged to have the fleshy bits of the head and she would tackle the bones, chewing on them until she had savoured all their flavour.
She had a similarly enthusiastic taste for fish roe. In seasons when the catch was plenty, she would pre-order roe from large fish with the vendors at the market. She would steam the palm-sized roe she obtained and fry them with chilli powder and turmeric. Imagine the taste of fried chicken egg yolks only. This was tastier than that, especially as she paired them simply with plain rice and a watery sambar.
It’s only the beginning
I cannot imagine my mother’s rich and tasty life or mine anywhere apart from all the littoral things that made up Ennore, my home town. When friends from school visited home drawn by the promise of seafood, their attention would turn to the calm and unpolluted sands or the dramatic pier part submerged in the water. I would take them to the beach and we would inevitably end up getting into the water. Early signs of industrial development seemed too far to be bothered about. Returning home with salt water on our skin and sand on our feet, the aroma of nethili (anchovy) kulambu would welcome us. By the time I joined college, the seashore had transformed. The sands had all been usurped by the port and industrial development happening all around us. When friends from college visited home, they could only enjoy the seafood, not the sandy beach nor the clean waters.
I cannot imagine my mother’s rich and tasty life or mine anywhere apart from all the littoral things that made up Ennore, my home town.
Now, all that the wider world knows of Ennore seems to be the rocky seawall and industrial effluent. Do school and college goers in Ennore even bring friends back home anymore, let alone for a seafood feast? Do young women grow into feminist icons and creative artists while building bonds with the sea and community through a shared love of seafood? Culture, after all, is inseparable from nature as we’ve known it. This is why my mother, along with other activists in our town, started organising more against environmental degradation in her later years. I’ve followed suit and what I’ve realised is that it is easy to identify that polluting industries and other coastal infrastructure like ports directly damage the seashore. But, how far does the broader public understand or value life along the seashore to actually want to protect it from such deterioration? Do they cherish the coastal environment and the people who invest their labour and wealth of expertise in bringing them their favourite seafood?
Fishermen navigate the now treacherous Kosasthalaiyar river mouth to ply their fibre boats into the sea, venturing far enough to get a good catch. They learn new fishing practices, to adapt to their circumstances. River fishers find patches of water still inhabited by prawns that haven’t become grey from fly ash, and practise the paadu—literally labour—system of fishing. Fisherwomen make the most of the local catch, or commute to Kasimedu harbour and Pazhaverkadu to purchase seafood to be sold in the Thazhankuppam market.
The sea, the brackish water, Ennore, Pazhaverkadu and the rest of this coastline are still delicious in many ways as every cook in this book demonstrated to us, the editorial team, over the past two years. More accurately, they showed us how they made it delicious with their labouring hands, bodies and keen knowledge of the relationship between taste and the natural environment they inhabited. I know my mother would vigorously approve.
This is an excerpt from ‘Seasoned by the Sea’ by Bhagath Singh A. and Niranjana R. and published by Uyir Pathipagam (2025). Excerpted with permission from the authors and publisher.
Try the recipe for Dried King Fish Sambal and Crab Pepper Fry from the book.
