BharatSangraha

Nanjil Nadu · Eastern Coastal Plains

Foodways

The single most diagnostic fact about this kitchen is the fat. Tamil Nadu cooks in gingelly oil; Nanjil Nadu cooks in coconut oil, and the changeover happens at the Ghats gap rather than at any administrative line. Kodampuli sours the fish here as it does up the Malayalam coast, while tamarind does the vegetables and the mutton as it does across the Tamil plains. Both grammars run in the same household: appam and idiyappam are made on the same morning as idli and dosai, a wedding is fed a banana-leaf vegetarian feast in the Travancore order, and a Pongal is cooked in the Tamil one. Tapioca is the second staple, and this is the only district in Tamil Nadu where that is true.

Primary cooking medium

Coconut oil, for almost everythingGingelly oil, kept for pickles and for a few specifically Tamil preparationsGhee for temple offerings and the kodai feast

Dominant sour agents

Kodampuli — smoke-dried Garcinia rind, used for fish and only for fishTamarind, for vegetables, pulses and meatRaw mango, cut into prawn and clam curriesCurd and sour buttermilkLime, added off the heat

Spice register

Shallot, curry leaf, mustard and fresh green chilli over coconut, in the Malayalam manner — but with a dry-roasted ground masala behind it that the Kerala side would consider heavy, and a great deal more coriander seed. Black pepper is local, and so is clove and nutmeg from the hill gardens, which show up in the meat kuzhambu here far more than they do a hundred kilometres in any direction.

Staple grains and carbs

Parboiled rice from the nanjai plainKappa (tapioca), boiled, mashed and also dried for the yearRice flour for appam, idiyappam and puttuUrad-and-rice batter for idli and dosai, kept as a separate vessel in the same kitchenNendran and other plantainsPalmyra and coconut products on the dry eastern edge

Preservation methods

Kappa vattal — tapioca sliced, boiled and sun-dried on rock, then stored for the year and rehydrated in curryKaruvadu — anchovy, seer and sardine split, salted and dried on the coastKodampuli smoked black over the hearthClove buds picked before they open, blanched and sun-dried until they rattleRaw mango and lime under brine and gingelly oilJaggery from palmyra and coconut sap on the eastern edge

Signature techniques

Two batters, one morning

A Nanjil kitchen keeps a fermented rice-and-coconut batter for appam and a separate urad-and-rice batter for idli and dosai, and uses both in the same week. Neither displaced the other when the district changed hands, because they were never in competition — one belongs to the Malayalam breakfast and one to the Tamil, and the household eats both.

Also found in: Travancore & Kuttanad, Kochi & Central Kerala

Kodampuli clay-pot fish curry

Fish soured with smoked Garcinia rind and simmered in an unglazed pot that is never scoured, so the clay seasons and the acid does not pick up a metallic taste. The curry is made a day ahead on purpose and considered better on the second day.

Also found in: Travancore & Kuttanad, Kochi & Central Kerala

Kappa vattal sun-drying

Tapioca is lifted, peeled, sliced, part-boiled and spread on rock or on a swept yard through the dry months until it is bone-hard. Dried this way the crop keeps a year in a sack, which is what turned a perishable root into the region's insurance against a bad paddy season.

Also found in: Travancore & Kuttanad, Kongu Nadu

Idiyappam pressing

Hot rice dough is forced through a brass die into fine strands coiled straight onto a woven ring and steamed. The dough must be worked while it is too hot to hold comfortably, which is why the press is operated standing and with the whole body rather than the arm.

Also found in: Travancore & Kuttanad, Marava & Ramnad

Kodai leaf-feast service

The village temple festival meal is served on a plantain leaf in a fixed order and fixed positions — pickles and salt at the top left, the rice in the middle, payasam last — following the Travancore sadya sequence rather than the Tamil one, in villages whose administration has been Tamil for seventy years.

Also found in: Travancore & Kuttanad

Raw coconut-oil finishing

A spoon of unheated coconut oil and torn curry leaf stirred in after the pot leaves the fire. It is the step that most clearly separates a Nanjil aviyal from a Tamil kootu made of the same vegetables.

Also found in: Travancore & Kuttanad, Kochi & Central Kerala

The foodway signature of Nanjil Nadu — cooking medium, souring agents, spice register, staple grains and the techniques that define it. (6)