Akash Muralidharan’s quest to find forgotten South Indian vegetables began when he cleaned out his bedroom. It was January 2020, and he had just returned to his home city of Chennai after finishing his master’s degree in Food Design and Innovation in Milan. Like many students returning home after graduation, Muralidharan found that his childhood bedroom had become a storeroom. Muralidharan was clearing space for himself when he spotted it: his grandmother Kamala Natarajan’s copy of Samaithu Par. Published in 1951, Samaithu Par, translated to English as Cook and See,…
