april-2012

SCALING BACK
Fried karimeen is one of
the simple but sublime
Keralan dishes served by
chef Jude Allen Stephens
delicacy. The waiters, young men with easy
grins who’ve been with Stephens through
a career that spans nearly 30 years, are
already turning people away.
Stephens was once bound for the top
tier of India’s culinary ranks. He served
as executive chef of the restaurant
Southern Spice at the famed Taj Coromandel
hotel in Chennai, but le when he
felt unable to fully pursue his passions.
“Opening my own restaurant was a dream,
and no accolades can ever replace your
dream,” he says.
So he opened a fish shack where he
could focus on his specialty: Porichathu
cuisine, a seafood-heavy amalgam of
Keralan and Portuguese flavors that
includes dishes like fi sh chu u, a creamy
stew of seer fi sh and cardamom, and the
ubiquitous karimeen fry, in which the
fish is served with head and tail intact
and with nothing but a few sliced veggies
as accompaniment. While neither is as
elaborate in presentation as the dishes he
created as a fi ve-star chef, the payoff is just
as rewarding. All that remains of the lunch
rush is a heap of impeccably clean-picked
fi sh bones.
Asked if he ever regrets giving up the
promise of international acclaim, Stephens
wipes the sweat off his forehead with a yellowed
rag. “Simple food and happy faces,”
he says. “It is enough.” —A.M.
plate. Wincingly bitter (though made
tastier with a dash of salt), it is the
one dish every Keralan will fi nish
before moving on to dessert. That’s
because the fruit contains a polypeptide
called gurmarin that suppresses
the body’s neural response
to sweet stimuli, which means
satisfaction comes from only a few
spoonfuls of payasam—as opposed
to a second helping. —A.M.
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