इस क्षेत्र का अनुवाद अभी इस भाषा में नहीं हुआ है, इसलिए यह अंग्रेज़ी में दिखाया जा रहा है।
Malabar · Western Coastal Strip
Three kitchens overlap here. The Mappila kitchen — biryani, pathiri, the fried and steamed snacks, the egg-and-sugar sweets — is the one that travelled. The Hindu household kitchen of the north runs on rice, coconut and fish and is closer to the rest of Kerala. The plateau kitchen is a third thing entirely, built on what grows above 800 metres and on Adivasi foraging.
Short-grained kaima rice, not basmati, fried in ghee and cooked separately from the meat, then layered and sealed with coals on the lid. Fennel and shallot dominate the masala, fried onion and cashew go on top, and the plate arrives with a date-and-chilli chutney and a thin salad rather than a gravy.
कहाँ चखें: Thalassery, and the older biryani kitchens of Kozhikode.
Ghee rice — kaima cooked in ghee with whole spice and no colour at all, served beside a dark chicken or mutton curry. The everyday cousin of biryani, and the wedding dish in most Mappila households.
A soft, pale, unleavened disc of scalded rice flour, rolled paper-thin and cooked dry, eaten with meat or fish curry and with coconut milk. Made in a dozen named variations, including one soaked in sweetened coconut milk and eaten as a sweet.
Thin sheets layered in a pan with a filling of spiced meat or of coconut, egg and sugar, sealed with beaten egg, and baked with fire below and coals on the lid. Structurally a layered pie assembled from crepes, and the centrepiece of iftar tables through Ramadan.
Laminated flatbread pulled apart at the table and eaten with a dry-fried meat masala. It is a late-night food by function: the parotta stall opens when the bus stand empties, and the pairing is the region's most exported plate.
Mussels prised open on the shell, packed with spiced rice batter, steamed shut and then dipped in masala and fried. Sold from evening stalls along the Kozhikode and Kannur coast in the months the mussels are good, and not at all in the rest.
The same mussel-and-rice preparation cut into rounds and shallow fried in a red masala crust — a Thalassery and Kannur speciality and the reason the mussel beds are worked at all.
Sardine, mackerel or seer simmered with smoke-dried kudampuli, chilli, shallot and coconut oil in an unglazed clay pot. Nothing is stirred with a spoon; the pot is swirled, because a spoon breaks the fish.
Ripe plantain steamed, mashed, flattened around a filling of grated coconut, sugar, cashew and egg, shaped into a spindle and fried. The shape is the name — it is meant to look like a cocoon.
Egg yolks strained into hot sugar syrup in fine threads and coiled into a garland, served with a steamed set custard made from the leftover whites. Nothing is wasted, and the two halves of the egg become two different sweets on the same plate.
Broken wheat cooked with coconut milk, jaggery or salt, shallot and spice, made in quantity at mosques through Ramadan and given away. The fasting month's staple, and the one dish an entire neighbourhood eats at the same minute.
A rice, jaggery and coconut cake baked in a covered vessel with embers above and below until the top caramelises and the base forms a crust — a north Malabar household sweet made without an oven.
Wheat or coconut starch cooked with sugar and coconut oil to a dense translucent slab, cut into blocks and stacked in a wall of colours. Karutha halwa, the dark one made with jaggery, is the one locals buy.
कहाँ चखें: Mithai Theruvu, off S.M. Street, Kozhikode.
The plateau's scented short rice, which is grown in small quantity and smells of the field before it is cooked, served with a black chicken curry heavy on pepper and coconut. Rice and coffee on the same holding.
Bamboo seed, gathered when a stand flowers and dies — an event that comes once in decades — cooked like rice or ground into flour. Along with wild honey, tubers and greens, part of a Wayanad Adivasi food repertoire that is measured in seasons rather than in weeks.
Wheat and meat cooked together for hours and then pounded to a smooth paste, finished with ghee and fried onion. Made for Ramadan and for weddings in the Thalassery and Kannur Mappila households, and closely related to versions of the same dish across the Arabian Sea.
मुख्य आहार
मिठाइयाँ
स्ट्रीट फ़ूड
पेय
Malabar का खानपान — ख़ास व्यंजन, मुख्य आहार, मिठाइयाँ, स्ट्रीट फ़ूड और उन्हें कहाँ चखें। (16)