‘The overall concept was that forty-eight items should be cooked every day as Lord Krishna’s neivedyam. The main segments of this spread were to be five sweets, five payasams, five fried items, five unboiled items (such as salads), five rasa (such as sambar, rasam), five anna (rice), five vyanjana (pickles, papads) and five jeernakara (digestives such as herbal chutneys). These were not to be repeated each day, a stipulation that forced the chief cooks to become innovators and improvisers, constantly in search of new variations.’
