इस क्षेत्र का अनुवाद अभी इस भाषा में नहीं हुआ है, इसलिए यह अंग्रेज़ी में दिखाया जा रहा है।
Travancore & Kuttanad · Western Coastal Strip
Rice in some form at every meal, the lagoon's freshwater catch in place of the sea's, and a firm split between the sadya and the shappu. The sadya is fixed — a set order of items on a banana leaf, all vegetarian, ending in payasam — while the toddy shop has no menu at all and cooks what the boat brought in. Both are Travancore, and most families eat both.
Duck cut on the bone and cooked down with shallot, a great deal of crushed black pepper, coconut slivers and curry leaf until the masala clings and the pan goes dry. The local Chara and Chemballi birds are herded on harvested paddy, so the meat is lean and dark and takes far more pepper than chicken would.
कहाँ चखें: Toddy shops and small kitchens around Alappuzha, Kumarakom and Nedumudi.
The gentler treatment of the same bird — duck simmered in thin coconut milk with whole spices, potato and shallot, thickened at the end with the first extract, and served with appam or kallappam. Mappas is the Nasrani side of the Kuttanad kitchen, roast the toddy-shop side.
कहाँ चखें: Syrian Christian households across Kottayam and Champakulam; Christmas and Easter tables.
Pearl spot, the Kerala state fish and a lagoon species rather than a sea one, scored to the bone, packed with a shallot and chilli masala, wrapped in a passed-over-the-flame banana leaf and pan-roasted until the leaf blackens. The leaf is the cooking vessel and the seasoning at once.
कहाँ चखें: Anywhere on the Vembanad shore where the fish is landed the same morning.
Fish simmered in a thin, fiercely red gravy of chilli, shallot and kudampuli in an unglazed manchatti that is never washed with soap. It is deliberately cooked a day ahead — the gravy is considered right on the second day, and the clay holds the acid that would strip a metal pan.
कहाँ चखें: Every household; the toddy shops serve it with rice at midday.
Small fish — netholi, mathi or the lagoon's tiny kozhuva — cooked dry with grated coconut and kudampuli in a shaken pot. Eaten with kanji rather than rice, and the cheapest good thing in the region.
Backwater prawn cooked with green mango and coconut, so the sourness comes from fruit rather than kudampuli. Made when the mango is in and the prawn is running, which is a narrow window in April and May.
Tapioca boiled with turmeric and salt, then mashed in the same pot with grated coconut, shallot, cumin and green chilli. Eaten on its own with a paste of bird's-eye chilli and shallot, or with fish curry. The crop arrived through the Portuguese and became the food that carried the region through the shortages of the 1940s.
Rice batter raised overnight with palm toddy instead of lentils, which is why the rim comes out lacy and the centre spongy. Kallappam is thicker and eaten with duck or beef stew; vellayappam is the thinner, whiter version.
कहाँ चखें: Tea shops from Kottayam to Kollam before nine in the morning.
Ash gourd and red cowpea simmered in thin coconut milk with two green chillies and nothing else, then finished with raw coconut oil and curry leaf. There is no tempering, no mustard and no masala. It is the sadya item that shows whether a cook can leave things out.
Ginger and green chilli fried down in tamarind and jaggery to a dark, sweet-sour-hot paste, served in a teaspoon quantity at the top-left of the leaf. It keeps for weeks, which is why it is also the travelling condiment of the region.
A thin milk-and-rice payasam offered at the Ambalappuzha Sree Krishna temple and served warm in a steel tumbler. It carries no jaggery, no coconut and almost no spice, and is famous precisely for how little is in it.
कहाँ चखें: The Ambalappuzha temple counter, daily.
Steamed rice-flake ada reduced in milk and sugar for hours until it turns pink. The onam sadya's closing item wherever a household can afford the milk and the time.
Small dark spheres of rice, jaggery, banana and coconut fried in ghee in a dimpled appakkara. Offered at temples and made at home for Vishu; the good ones are crisp at the equator and soft through the middle.
The boatmen's feast at the Aranmula Parthasarathy temple, running to sixty and more items, in which each dish must be asked for in sung verse before it is served. It is sponsored by devotees as an offering, and the singing is the ordering system rather than an entertainment laid on after the meal.
कहाँ चखें: Aranmula, through the Malayalam months of Karkidakam and Chingam.
Fish poached pale in coconut milk with whole green chilli, ginger and a little vinegar — no chilli powder, no browning. The dish sits at the meeting point of the Nasrani kitchen and the European table, and it is the one Kerala fish preparation designed not to be red.
Rice gruel drunk with its own starch water, eaten with green gram cooked with coconut, a roasted pappadam and a spoon of pickle. The standard evening meal across the region and the one served free at temples during Karkidakam.
मुख्य आहार
मिठाइयाँ
स्ट्रीट फ़ूड
पेय
Travancore & Kuttanad का खानपान — ख़ास व्यंजन, मुख्य आहार, मिठाइयाँ, स्ट्रीट फ़ूड और उन्हें कहाँ चखें। (16)