This Octogenarian Surgeon Turned Chef Gives Us Major Second Innings Goals

These traditional South Indian recipes with a twist by a surgeon turned chef are a must-try at home and may fuel your second innings passion. 

Austrian chef, Wolfgang Puck said – “Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors—it’s how you combine them that sets you apart.”

Dr. M Mohan Rao, 83, lives by that belief. The doctor turned self-taught chef took up cooking as a hobby post-retirement out of sheer love and passion for the art of cooking.

While his career as a surgeon made him play with scalpels and scissors, his love for spatulas, graters, and knives since childhood remained intact and did not dampen his love for cooking. Flashback to 1999 when Dr. Rao lost his wife and decided to begin his cooking adventure.

“When my wife Uma passed away, I was living in Chennai, busy with my surgery consultations, conducting multiple surgeries a week, and attending some emergencies too. My children and their spouses were still studying medicine then. I was 61 then. Since my needs were simple and I always had a knack for cooking, I started cooking my own meals and trying out various dishes,” says Dr. Rao.

The first few dishes were a disaster but Dr. Rao improved on them with the help and advice of his chef guru Prabhakar Bhat who ran the canteen in his hospital. Dr. Rao mentions Mr. Bhat’s contribution in his book ‘Glimpses of Surgery and a Surgeon’. For the next two years, he managed cooking all by himself until his son and daughter-in-law moved in with him. He was a pro by then.

After retirement, Dr. Rao shifted to Mysore in 2003 and eventually to Bangalore in 2013. “ I started living in a fantastic senior citizens colony and used the canteen facilities on and off. Since the beginning of 2020, once the pandemic started, I do all my cooking myself because I enjoy cooking. It is a great hobby and a remarkable way to spend time. We, the residents of this colony, often exchange healthy dishes and share with each other their benefits, and that gives us a great opportunity to socialize,” he says.

  Dr. Rao is now an expert home chef, specializing in traditional South Indian cuisine, especially Mangalorean. He has started a cooking blog for healthy and tasty dishes with a twist. You can visit his Facebook page too to get some of his favorite self-cooked dishes. Dr. Rao believes cooking is a great stress buster and is equal to a stint of meditation. Apart from cooking, he has dedicated his second innings to spiritual pursuits and has authored another book ‘One Step To Moksha’.  

Here’s Dr. Rao sharing his top recipes with us, including some useful kitchen tips:

Bitter Gourd Menaskai

This is a signature Udupi dish.

Ingredients:

Mustard seeds, urad dal, chana dal, jeera, coriander seeds – all these about 1 tsp

Red chilies – Byadgi or Ghattada Menasu 2-3

Coconut gratings or pieces of about 1 tablespoon

¼ tsp Turmeric powder

½ tsp asafoetida powder

White til (black ones can be used as well)/or Sesame seeds – one tsp

Tamarind about the size of 1 large lime

Jaggery – about 1 ½ times amount as tamarind

For seasoning – mustard, red chili, curry leaves

Bitter gourd -chopped, about ¾ cup

Spray the bitter gourds with a solution containing diluted vinegar and cooking salt, rub them after 10 minutes and thoroughly wash under tap water. This is to get rid of all pesticides. Deseed only if seeds are firm and ripe, cut into suitable sizes. In a bowl, add turmeric powder and table salt to the vegetable pieces and mix well. After about 15-20 minutes or longer, squeeze out and discard the bitter liquid from the vegetable and keep it stored in a plastic box. This can be kept in the freezer for a long time. Before finally using part of it, take and keep it out and remove the portion of it needed for the day. Rest of it can be put back in the freezer.

Salt to taste

Coconut oil or other cooking oil 3-4 tsp for cooking and seasoning

Green chilies - 2

Method:

Roast Sesame seeds in a small container in medium flame for about a minute or less till it starts spluttering and aroma comes and keep them aside to cool. Don’t over-roast.

In a Tawa using about 1 ½ tsp of oil, roast all masalas including coconut. Cool this. Both these two items including sesame seeds are to be ground into a fine paste in a mixie, adding some water as needed.

Soak the tamarind in water for about 10 minutes, squeeze out and strain the tamarind juice repeatedly into a Tawa to about a cup of dilute tamarind juice. Add jaggery also to it and dissolve it. Boil this liquid for about a minute till the raw smell goes.

Then add the bitter gourd pieces and salt as needed and cook for a few minutes covering with a lid, till cooked and soft, about 5 minutes. Now add the masala paste, and obliquely cut green chilies. Mix well and boil in low flame for 2-3 minutes. Taste and add more salt and/or jaggery as per your preference. It should be slightly sweetish.

Generally, obliquely cut green chilies are a better option than slitting. It exposes the spiciness of the chilli better and the user can squeeze it further or even eat the pieces if one desires the dish to be spicier or discard the pieces if one chooses.

Transfer it to a serving dish, sprinkle some asafoetida powder and put seasoning with mustard, red chilies, and curry leaves in coconut oil.

The Menaskai is now ready to serve. This can be eaten with hot white rice, curd rice, Rice Idli, Udupi kadubu, Rice Semiya, Bread, any Roti or just lick it up and enjoy! The total time to prepare is 30 minutes.

Thakka Thokku Biryani

The name Thakka Thokku Biryani is a twist of the Thakkali Thokku Biryani, a Tamilian dish.

Ingredients:

  Rice – one cup

Ghee – 2 to 3 tsp

Dry Chillies – 5 to 6

Cinnamon– 2 pieces

Clove/Lavanga – 2

Cardamom/Yelakki – 2

Bay leaves – 2

Cashew nuts, full or half – a few

Tomatoes- 2 to 3

Red Chilli powder- 1 to 1 ½ tsp

Coriander leaves – few sprigs

Salt as needed  

Method:

Wash rice and cook it in an electric rice cooker or pressure cooker. It takes about 15 minutes. At the same time, in a Kadai, heat 2-3 tsp of ghee and add cut dry chilies, patte, lavanga, yelakki – just split open bay leaves, and cashew nuts full or split. Fry on a medium flame for about 3 minutes. Now add long thin slices of tomato and saute for about 3-4 minutes till the tomato becomes soft and mushy. Add 1 to 1 ½ tsp of red chili powder and the required quantity of salt and mix well. By this time cooked rice would be ready. Add rice little by little, mix well and cook for 2 minutes on low flame. Finally, transfer to a serving dish and sprinkle coriander leaves. Serve hot and eat with cucumber and onion raita and papad.

The total time taken to prepare is about 20 to 25 minutes.

Mango Voggarane

You can try this if you bring home sour ripe mangoes.

Ingredients:

One or two sour ripe mangoes

Green chilies – one for each medium-sized mango

Jaggery – 1 ½ teaspoon powdered for each mango

Salt – ¼ to ½ tsps

Items for seasoning – coconut oil, mustard, one mor molaga (Curd chilly), and curry leaves

Asafoetida – ½ tsp, optional, to give it a zing.

Method:

Peel the mangoes and cut the flesh into pieces. Add 1 or 2 green chilies, powdered jaggery, and a little salt, and just puree it in a mixie. Transfer it to a serving dish and add tempering/tadka/voggarane. Adding some Asafoetida powder is your choice.

You will need 5 minutes to make it.

Food Image Courtesy: Dr Rao’s blog