Joseph Mathew

I write about the differences. South Indian food gets treated online as one cuisine with one sambar and one way of doing things, and that is a flattening of four states, dozens of districts and a great many communities who would each tell you the others are doing it wrong.

I grew up in Kottayam cooking festival menus with family, and the first thing you learn doing that is how much variation there is within a few kilometres. The avial in one house has curd in it; in the next it does not, and both households are certain theirs is correct. That disagreement is the interesting part, and writing that erases it is worse than useless.

For twelve years I have written about Indian regional food for print and online publications. On Aryaas I cover Kerala cooking, the sadya and festival menus, and the history behind dishes, and I edit and fact-check every guide before it is published, including Lakshmi's.

My rule when editing is that if a guide says "traditional" or "authentic" without naming whose tradition, it goes back for a rewrite. Naming the version is more honest and it is more useful, because a reader who knows they are getting the Kottayam version can go looking for the Thrissur one.

I research the background to every dish we publish, and where the history is contested or simply unknown, we say so rather than repeating a tidy origin story that nobody can source.

Credentials and experience

• Twelve years writing about Indian regional food for print and online publications
• Grew up cooking Kerala Syrian Christian and Hindu festival menus in Kottayam
• Researches the regional and historical background behind every dish we publish
• Edits and fact-checks each guide on Aryaas before publication
• Documents sadya menus and their serving order from family and community cooks