The Essential Taste of Rasam

An Essential Taste of Rasam

At once a humble dish that can be conjured out of pantry basics and a sophisticated creation that showcases the rasa—or quintessence—of its star ingredients, rasam effortlessly straddles the everyday and the exalted.

TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHY Deepa S. Reddy

Dedicated to all those who shared recipes, insights, tips, elaborations, stories, enthusiasms, fathers and mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers with me in all our endless conversations about this most beloved dish called rasam.

It all started with maavilai rasam—an infusion of

tender mango leaves melded with the stock from cooking toor dal, only so lightly soured and spiced that the delicate vegetal scent of mango leaves remained distinct, turning a familiar olfactory experience into a gustatory one. A sizzling tempering laid on top of the froth that inevitably rises on a good rasam, everything perfectly timed lest a rolling boil destroy the effect. Such a preparation is both familiar in principle and unusual for its use of tender mango leaves, which are both seasonal and rarely used in cookery except perhaps as a cleansing tea. For me, however, tender mango leaves were a way to make a familiar dish unusual enough to push the question: what is a rasam anyway? What makes it so beloved, so special?

The word “rasam” refers to a category of light, soupy preparations served either with a soft, mashable rice as rasam-saadam (the Tamil term of endearment is “rasanjaam”) or as a stand-alone hot drink. In the classic south Indian meal, rasam is the penultimate course. It comes after the thicker, heavier sambars, meat or other gravies and vegetables, and before the concluding, cooling curd rice and pickle. It is a fiery, intense interlude and a

wholly contextual response to what that stage of eating is thought to require: an awakening of senses from inevitable first-course-induced stupor and an all-important aid to digestion, which must now proceed apace.

And yet, rasam is not just one thing but a vast array of preparations typically associated with southern Indian cuisine. Variants in the form of Karnataka-Konkan saar, the Andhra/Telangana chaaru, Gujarati osaman, Maharashtrian amti, Bangla tok/tauk and Axomiya tenga take us much further into other regional interpretations by turning the dish thicker, eliminating or specifically highlighting sour tastes and so on. The Sanskrit “rasa,” after all, which means “juice” but refers at once to taste, effect and aesthetics, is a wide idea hardly limited to South India. It’s familiar, if not always deeply understood, a bit like the dish itself.

Intent on exploring the category further, I began gingerly documenting my rasams during endless Covid lockdowns via my blog’s Instagram handle @paticheri using the hashtag #rasamseries. I say gingerly, because I have learned to make and love rasams not via watchful maternal tutelage in some bustling, smoky Indian kitchen, having lost both my grandmothers by the time of my birth and having grown up with a mother who cared more about her books than anything in the kitchen. I simply hadn’t the pedigree of those doyennes of Tamil cuisine: Chandra Padmanabhan, Chitra Viswanathan (ChitVish), or Usha Prabhakaran, whose Rasam Digest has been much anticipated in all the papers for some time now.

I came to rasams as a novice, having spent many of my college and graduate school years befuddled by how tricky it was to nail a dish everyone claimed was so simple. My path to rasam was via conversations over innumerable meals at which excellent rasams were served, my husband’s frequent remarks about his grandmother’s signature chaarus, a million failed rasams, some cookbook instruction, scholarly curiosity and a whole lot of determination.

As it happened, my documentation of this very ordinary, everyday preparation sparked considerable interest, reflection and recipe-sharing, particularly with Archana (@thethiruvarurgirl) whose grandmother, mother, aunts and others suddenly became like my own missing extended kin. It wasn’t long before we, along with Ranjini of @leftofwrite, opened #rasamseries to contributions, which came flooding in. Suddenly, we were in the midst of an enthusiastic conversation about any number of elements of rasam-making. These included ingredients (typical, unusual, and all between); technique (do you use your hands or a knife to prep tomatoes? A stone or mixie jar for ground pastes that some rasams need?); preferences (what’s all this “debris” floating in a rasam—shouldn’t it be clear?); the use of spices (a pre-made rasam powder, the mel podi or spices freshly ground to finish, or any spice mix at all beyond the customary black pepper and jeera/cumin); cooking vessels (clayware or the classic eeya chombu or tin vessel for its unique flavour?) and some fairly staunch views about methods, flavour combinations, and in short, what makes a rasam a rasam. Everyone had a perspective, a bank of recipes, and a set of family practices.

Rasam was community, rasam was identity, rasam was home, rasam was “emotion.” The #rasamseries, therefore, delivered me into a hundred kitchens I had never known, and all the (mostly feminine) tutelage I’d never had. It was both joyous and overwhelming. I needed a way to assemble the gush of little details and find the story that connected them all.

Rasam at the Confluence of Great and Little

Scholars speak of the “great” and the “little” traditions as a heuristic of sorts to understand the development of cultural ideas and practices. The great traditions are generally the cross-regional or pan-national ones; in the Indian context, they are classical, Vedic, conceptual. The little traditions are their regional counterparts: folk, Puranic, material. The two streams feed into one another, and from their confluence emerge well-near all our cultural traditions. So the epic Mahabharata exists as grand narrative but gathers much by way of folk insight and is re-told in local idioms or re-interpreted in vernacular performances. Likewise, the iconography of tertiary village goddesses often associates them with Shiva or Vishnu, inserting local belief systems into wider ideologies. Muharram rituals have similarly found “fractal” expression among the multitude of Shi'a communities in Mumbai, as Reza Masoudi Nejad writes in New Diversities. And as Robert J. Miller writes in his paper Button, Button…Great Tradition, Little Tradition, Whose Tradition?, “elements of great traditions and reactions to them” [emphasis added] both appear in Mahar and Chamar (Dalit) practices." Examples spanning region and community are countless, but in each, whether from consonance or contestation, the local and the pan-regional meld and are mutually constituting.

Rasam, it struck me, was another instance of the conjoining of “great” and “little.” Conceptually, it is a refined theory

"The Sanskrit 'rasa,' after all, which means 'juice' but refers at once to taste, effect and aesthetics, is a wide idea hardly limited to South India. It’s familiar, if not always deeply understood, a bit like the dish itself."

of aesthetics and taste that is translated, interpreted, and materialised into a familiar, everyday dish. Through it, formal Ayurvedic insight becomes everyday Ayurveda. No other category of Indian cuisine exemplifies this convergence quite so remarkably. While sambars and biryanis, chutneys and khichdis are each specific ingredient assemblages or simply creative mélanges, rasams, saarus and chaarus explicitly promise distillations of taste in the quest for aesthetic experience and bodily well-being. In this, the common, everyday rasam holds up something of a mirror to what the linguist and folklorist A.K. Ramanujan once called an “Indian way of thinking.”

The Rasavada, or the Path of Rasa

Our most common contemporary translation of “rasam” to mean “juice” derives first from Rg Vedic literature, where rasa is just that: a sap, specifically that of the plant which produces soma, elixir of the Gods. The word “ras” is also closely associated with that other Sanskrit word, “saar,” which denotes both essence and value, the strength of a thing, its inner constituent nature—not just essence, but quintessence.

Quintessence, however, can be of anything. So, says G.B. Mohan Thampi in “Rasa” as Aesthetic Experience, interpretations of rasa range bewilderingly “from the alcoholic soma-juice to the Metaphysical Absolute—the Brahman,” and can include "sap, juice, water, liquor, milk, nectar, poison, mercury, taste, savor, prime or finest part of anything, flavor, relish, love, desire, beauty.” The idea is so large that it lacks specificity.

The particular notion of rasa as taste or relishing enters via Bharatamuni’s seminal text on dramaturgy, the Natyashastra (200BCE-200CE). Bharatamuni postulates that there are eight fundamental emotional states (sthāyibhāva) contained in each of us as latent impressions (vacana), which we will have gathered over multiple births. We become conscious of these in the right life situations (vibhava), and as a consequence of physical effects (anubhava) and other transitory mental states (vyabhichari bhava). In other words, the union of these three conditions—life situations, physical effects, and mental states—evokes the corresponding sthāyibhāva and expresses it as rasa: aesthetic experience, relish, delight.

Bharatamuni’s explication is tellingly grounded in gustation: just as the cook combines various herbs and condiments to evoke inherent tastes and produce rasa, so also do performers evoke emotions in their audiences and produce enjoyment. The rasas of the performing arts are thus quite literally the ‘tastes of theatre’ (or nātyarasa). In this interpretation, the idea of rasa becomes not just “juice” or “extract” but also the savouring of these things.

Still other layers of meaning accrue via what scholars will know as the “rasa debate” of CE 9-10, and several further conceptual refinements. In these commentaries, synthesised and summarised by the Kashmiri aesthetician, Abhinavagupta, rasa is intensification, mimicry of an

inward state, or its dramatic revelation. No longer is there the explicit analogy of performance to cookery, but the two remain tied.

Culinary offerings, like theatrical performances, concentrate our perception of the many latent impressions acquired over multiple births. Think of the way we can experience fear intimately in drama, or the fundamental quality of a tomato in a saar. It is almost a kind of remembering or process of coming-into-consciousness of something already known. Rasa therefore does not occur in ordinary life any more than taste exists in the natural world. It needs to be invoked and drawn out so that it can be recognised. The intimacy of fear in a drama, or the rawness of green tamarind in a chaaru are each “ahaa!” moments of recognition, remembrance and comprehension. In this sense, rasa is also knowledge. The Caraka Samhita, a 100CE compendium on Ayurveda, is in fact precise on this point: rasa is that specific “knowledge perceived through rasanā indriya [roughly: gustatory senses] located at jihvā (the tongue).” In this reckoning, rasa is the knowledge, taste is the resulting experience.

The Caraka Samhita itself adds an elaborate classification of the various rasas that can be received on the human tongue or produced during stages of digestion. Madhura, amla, lavana, katu, titka, kashaya: sweet, sour, salt, pungent, bitter, astringent. These six essential tastes, called shadrasas or arusuvai in Tamil, are correlated to the doshas or “energies” dominating physiological function. Rasa in the Caraka Samhita thus explicitly guides nutrition and therapy.

Likewise, says Suśruta—the main author of the sixth century BCE medical and surgical treatise Suśruta Samhita—the ideal diet is comprised of six rasas, which are the definitive guide to the nourishment of the body. These six rasas work through diets to determine the strength, immunity, complexion and the physical health of a living system. And although rasam as a dish promises a distilled, singular essence, all six tastes are present and essential to the expression of this essence.

Put it all together, and the task of the person preparing a common rasam for an everyday meal, then, is nothing short of momentous. The cook must be something of a polymath—aesthetician, performer, and experiencescripter with the task of ensuring that a certain essential knowledge is clearly stated, perhaps intensified, certainly concentrated, or as it takes to land precisely on the tongue

such that the eater’s memories of lost lives are awakened into consciousness of rasa. The uniqueness of rasam is not just that it is tasty, but that it is in this manner precise. Any other accompanying perceptions would be anurasa, or sequels. Were there ever a dish that seamlessly united both grand theory and humble practice in the Indian repertoire, it would have to be the rasam.

In the Theatre of the Rasam

Yet, for all its conceptual complexity, the rasam can be among the simplest and quickest of Indian dishes to prepare. Stories are told of sudden guests arriving late in the evening, needing food, and brilliant rasams being conjured out of a bare minimum of ingredients: tamarind water, spices, tempering. Kottu rasam, made with barely anything but tamarind and tempering, is a foil for an empty larder. Leftover puli kuzhambu (a richer, spicy tamarind gravy) or coconut chutney can be magically transformed into a suddenly plentiful rasam. In examples such as these, the art of the rasam is not only aesthetics and taste, but managing the household economy. The art of the rasam is fluid, and literally so.

Rasam typically requires five basic elements: a stock, a star ingredient, a souring agent, a powdered spice mix, and a whole spice tempering. From these five arise a beguiling array of possible variations. Let’s consider each in turn and the gathering pace with which they are each assembled, finishing with a tempering flourish (in Tamil, thalippu).

You prepare a stock first, unhurriedly. This is the foundational taste onto which other flavours are layered. It is usually dal or lentil-based and must be done slowly. Meat-based stocks are less common, likely owing to cost and the time required for preparation. But they are used to make Chettinadu chicken and crab rasams, the Telangana bokkala rasam or bone broth that holds Ayurvedic authority as an immunity booster, or the famous Mulligatawny that was for so long the signature “Indian soup” of restaurants abroad, derived from the Tamil milagu-thani or pepper water. Starchy stocks prepared from water used to wash rice or with potato add flavour but are also end-ofpay-period rasams, resorted to when dal and lentil rations run low.

Many will say that the stock is the prime nutrient source of rasam. Leave it out, and you get a sattu illaada rasam: rasam without strength. Depending on the constitution of the stock, rasams can be thicker like the Andhra chaarus, lighter and thinner like many Konkan saarus or thelivu/ clear rasams of Tamil cuisine. Richer rasams are common at festivals. At catered wedding meals, guests are more prone to see the more typically watery rasams as signs of cost-cutting. Cooking time is variable but long. For the famous Andhra ulava chaaru, horsegram can be cooked on hot coals overnight. Bone broths take hours, while dals can be simmered for a half hour or more on a stovetop.

Next, there must be some specifically selected vegetable, leafy green, fruit, spice or even flower which becomes the eponymous hero of the resulting rasam. You could have tomato, thoothuvalai keerai (purple fruited pea eggplant or Solanum trilobatum leaves], lemon, pepper or murungai poo (Moringa oleifera flower) rasam. Vedic “rasa” is a juice, after all, whose distinctive taste, enjoyment, and nourishing properties this dish must deliver. Rasams will thus always have a protagonist.

Each has a taste that becomes the aesthetic centrepiece and a value: pepper’s heat for a cold, wood apple (Limonia acidissima) sourness for liver detoxing. Often, this star enters with the slow-cooked stock, but it can also steal the show as a final entrant as citrus invariably does, adding a vitamin C boost. Or as watermelon juice does in Chennai’s celebrity wedding chef Mountbatten Mani Iyer’s novelty watermelon rasam.

"The spices splutter and pop vigorously. The dried flowers brown, releasing fragrance. Smoke alarms are liable to go into paroxysms; kitchen windows are best left ajar. But flavours are at their peak."

Souring agents introduce another wide range of variations, and can play double roles as protagonists themselves (or be left out entirely as with some saars). Tamarind is favoured in the south, kokum distinguishes the Konkan coast and beyond, and curd and citrus use feature throughout. Many have a perception of rasam as being a sour preparation, but really sourness is only one of the six tastes that any rasam must effectively combine. Rasam is one of those rare dishes that sets itself an objective: highlight one taste in relation to five others. You’ll pick the appropriate one, sometimes using the vegetable, fruit, or leafy green to double as a souring agent or combine with another. For instance, pineapple rasams use a little tamarind, tomato rasams are made both with tamarind and without, but tender green tamarind or citrus tastes stand entirely on their own.

By the time a souring agent like tamarind is added, too, the clock is on, the time for slowness past. As soon as the raw tastes of tamarind or tomato dissipate, things must happen

in quick succession. Turmeric is already in the stock or is added now. Some jaggery goes in for a touch of sweetness. If a premade rasa podi or spice mix is to be used, it’s added now. Rasam powders will typically introduce anywhere from five to 15 or more spices, depending on regional and household preferences, each in quotidian quantity but specific proportion.

Complex podis can be substituted for more minimalist combinations of freshly roasted-crushed spices. Together, these spices are the rasam protagonist’s comrades and confidantes; they draw out its true qualities and hold these in store. They usually also introduce digestive or therapeutic properties of their own. A rasam with a specific combination of garlic, cumin, and black pepper serves as treatment for common colds, a marunthu “medicine rasam” or thippili (long pepper) rasam perks taste buds that have been numbed by fevers, and jeera (cumin) rasams help in convalescence. The spices in a rasam podi, ingested in miniscule quantities over years, act as lifelong therapies. Rasams are thus both nutritive and curative by nature.

If you can forget about the rasam when the stock is being prepared, all your attention must be at the stove once the powders are going in. Things happen fast from here. Controlling the boil "or rather preventing it" is key to capturing the right flavours, sufficiently cooked, appropriately fresh. So also it is only certain vessels that are used to make rasams: the eeya chombu or tin vessel, for instance, is a Tamil favourite as it is reputed to give rasams a refined je ne sais quoi excellence. Stone vessels or others that hold heat too intensely after leaving the fire are unsuited to rasam preparation. The choice of cooking pot is thus not incidental and can be an element of taste.

At this point, the dal content in the rasam has produced a froth and the rasam is starting to rise as though it might spill over, an effect enhanced by the generally smaller-mouthed vessels that are typically used. Now the appointed time for the tempering to get layered on is fast approaching. There must be fat as a conveyor of taste. The use of coconut oil distinguishes many Kerala rasams. Tamil Nadu uses more sesame oil, and ghee is common everywhere, to those who can afford it. You choose, bring the fat almost to smoking point, and drop in, in swift succession, whole or only roughly crushed spices—a broken dry red chilli, cumin and mustard seeds, maybe some crushed black pepper and garlic, asafoetida/hing and curry leaves. Dried flowers like neem or night-blooming jasmine can add distinctive floral tones. The spices splutter and pop vigorously. The dried flowers brown, releasing fragrance. Smoke alarms are liable to go into paroxysms; kitchen windows are best left ajar. But flavours are at their peak. Before the rasam’s characteristic froth can break from its initial simmer, you pour this perfectly crafted finishing oil over in a sizzling flourish as distinctive and anticipated as the dish itself. “Srrrrr” is the sound of that moment, say some; Gujaratis go cham! It lasts but a second but extends in redolence. Enjoyment truly begins from this moment of private climax. It is the first taste of rasam, as it were. Switch off the flame. Throw a garnish in (usually fresh coriander stems and leaves) or squeeze in some lemon juice, maybe add some reserved fresh ground spices (the “mel podi” or “powder on top”). Rasam is ready for the table.

Time resumes its normal pace as the kitchen fills with invitations to a meal that must, for all that smoke and aroma, be close to ready. The rest happens at the table, and although eating is the culmination, tempering is the dramatic climax.

Dregs: The Final Delight

At the bottom of the eeya chombu or other cooking pot, after the meal is eaten and done, lies the settled dal mixed with tempering spices, bits of tomato or other ingredient, often some of the whole pulses that did not soften and dissolve into the water that became the stock for rasam. These are “dregs”, but they are their own delight. Rasavandi becomes a delicious accompaniment to curd-rice or even dosas and idlis at a later meal. It is one last relish.

“Indian doctrines are of one mind about the fact that… the path to sensual refinement passes through an intensification of feeling,” writes Grazia Marchianò in An Intercultural Approach to a World Aesthetics.

Rasam is that point of intensification on that path to sensual refinement, but it also opens others: the precision and pleasure of tempering, the lingering scents on fingers used to mash soft rice to absorb and slurp rasam, the rasavandi.

Like that, these closing words settled at the bottom of a tall container of (hopefully thelivu/clear) words about rasam are equally dregs—but with any luck, also their own special delight.