THERE ISN'T A palate MORE DIVERSE THAN AN INDIAN ONE. AND YOU'D BE HARD PRESSED TO FIND THAT KIND OF VARIETY FROM JUST A SINGLE SECTION OF THE COUNTRY ANYWHERE ELSE.
One of the earnest ideas behind The Permit Room is to introduce people to the sheer variety of traditional South Indian cuisine, but with a modern-day take on it. Essentially it's recipes from your ajji's (Kannada for grandma) kitchen, but served in a rather modern, and also cocktail-friendly form. Your ajji may or may not approve.
Thindi Tales is an attempt to take you one step deeper, the equivalent of getting you to eat meals with your fingers, and hopefully help you appreciate south-indian cuisine in all its gastronomic glory.
The Dessert
If you’ve spent some time in a South-Indian household, then you’ve definitely, at some point, experienced the smell of ghee being cooked, gotten sort of giddy with the overpoweringly rich smell, and ended up enjoying the glorious result of it all—that golden brown glistening cake of Mysore Pak.
Nothing embodies ‘melt-in-the-mouth’ quite like a perfectly cooked batch of Mysore Pak.
A Little History
The Mysore Pak, as the name would suggest, originated in the city of Mysore, from namma Karnataka.
(Put your hands up!)
The story goes that the head cook of the royal family, Kakasura Madappa, made this little beauty out of a simple combination of besan, ghee and sugar, giving it the look of gleaming gold, on request by the Maharaja Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar.
The sweet was such a hit that it became the go-to ‘royal sweet’, and when the King asked Madappa for a name, he didn’t really have one, so he simply called it Mysore Pak.
(A little extra history: The cook used to be called nalapaka which translates to ‘he who makes the paka’, paka being sugar syrup. That’s where the Pak part of the dish’s name comes from.)
The great-grandsons of Madappa run a small shop called Guru Sweet Mart in Mysore, carrying on the 75 years old legacy. You can find that perfect piece of Mysore Pak here. Or if you’re looking for a slightly modern take on this classic, there’s one more place you can head to.
At The Permit Room
Our take on the Mysore Pak comes with a bit of a fruity flavour.
Anyone who knows anything about this sweet knows that Mysore Pak lovers fall into two categories—the wet, dripping-with-ghee gorgeousness or the powdery, crumbly cakes of deliciousness. You’re either one of the two, never both.
But what if we had a version that combines the best of both worlds? A little crunchy, crumbliness with some ghee infused goodness inside?
Yup. That’s how we serve it up here at The Permit Room, a perfect blend of some texture and taste, along with some Kiwi salad and some radical plating.
Kakasura would approve, we think.
Fun Fact (?)
The best way to eat Mysore Pak, we hear, is by doing a happy little jig, sharing it with a desired cutie,(because sharing = caring), and having your part of the piece in one go. That last part is critical for maximum enjoyment.