Lakshmi Venkatesan

I grew up in Madurai in a house where the wet grinder ran every second evening, and where the question of whether a batter had risen enough was settled by an aunt putting her hand into the vessel rather than by looking at a clock. Most of what I know about this food I learned by standing next to someone doing it.

For the last fifteen years I have been writing it down properly. That turned out to be harder than cooking it. A recipe passed down in a kitchen assumes you can see the grinder, feel the batter, and smell when the fenugreek has roasted far enough. Turning that into words that work for someone in a cold flat with a mixer-grinder and no frame of reference is the actual job.

So I test everything twice, and I test batters on both a wet grinder and an ordinary mixer, because most people reading this do not own a wet grinder and it is not much use pretending otherwise. When a traditional step can be dropped without harming the dish, I say so. When it cannot, I explain why, because "my grandmother did it this way" is not a reason anyone can act on.

I develop and photograph most of the recipes on Aryaas. The guides on Kerala cooking and festival menus are Joseph's, and he edits mine before they go out, which has saved me from publishing several confident errors.

The thing I would most like readers to take from these guides is that fermentation is a temperature problem, not a clock problem. Almost every batter failure I get asked about comes down to a kitchen being colder than the recipe assumed.

Credentials and experience

• Fifteen years developing and documenting South Indian vegetarian home recipes
• Learned tiffin cooking and batter work in a Madurai household kitchen
• Tests every batter recipe across both wet grinder and mixer-grinder methods
• Has cooked full sadya menus for family festivals for over a decade
• Writes and photographs the majority of recipes published on Aryaas