The Malabar coast is, literally, just up the road. Yet, until a while ago, for all we in the city knew about its rich and varied cuisine, it could well have been another country! Nowadays though, everywhere in the city you turn, there is a Thalassery ‘dum’ biriyani and a kozhi aanam (that’s curry to you and me), a Kallumakaya roast, an unnakai and a kilikoodu calling out to our taste buds. Malabari food, specifically the cuisine of the Moplah community, seems to be the flavour of the season in the city.
“It’s the distinct taste, rich in flavour and ingredients, which makes Malabar food so popular with foodies in the city. That and the fact that Malabar food is so varied, comprising main dishes, snacks, sarbaths and what not,” says Raj Kalesh, city-based gastronome and food travelogue host, who was one of the first to explore the cuisines of Kerala on the small screen. “Food is such an integral part of the lifestyle and culture of the Malabar coast that it’s very difficult for people like us who have grown up here in the city to understand. One can say the people of the Malabar live and breathe food, especially the members of the Moplah community, which has a long-standing tradition of whipping up the most delicious dishes to be served to their new sons-in-law, called the puthiyapilla . Eating is often a family affair; not only in Muslim homes but across religions. In fact, if you visit a home in the area, they pile the food on you and it’s almost an offense if you refuse to eat from there,” explains Kalesh, recalling an incident where he was served prized delicacy ‘Thala Mussman’. “It’s actually goat head curry, with mussman being the colloquial term for muzhuvan (in full). I was given the honour of eating the tongue of the goat. Such is their love for food that you feel like sharing the love even if you find the dish unpalatable!” adds the foodie.
Culinary queen Lakshmi Nair, who enjoys eating and making Malabari food, pegs the trend to our “natural curiosity” for something new. “The modern foodie in the city is well travelled and is open to exploring new cuisines. A fair majority of them are also not native to the city, especially the younger IT crowd. Many of them seem to be very taken by this cuisine with its quirky names, even though the food itself is very traditional and offers very little scope for experimentation or re-invention, and despite the fact that the cuisine is predominantly non-vegetarian. On a personal front, I find that Malabar food is as much a visual delight as it is a sensory experience and that’s what draws me to it. I, especially, love the many varieties of pathiris – crispy nei pathiri, lasagne-like chatti pathiri, stuffed erachi pathiri and the like and snacks such as pazham nirachathu,” says Lakshmi.
Both Shanavas Eetichery, one of the owners of Thakkaaram that specialises in Thalassery cuisine and Jose Thomas, executive chef, Vivanta by Taj, Thycaud, which regularly hosts Malabar food fetes, also believes the popularity has a lot to do with changing palates but adds that it’s the way spices are used in the cuisine that draw many to it. “Almost all the savoury dishes are made with fresh masalas, with spices either powdered, ground, crushed or in full – a nod to the Arabic influence on the cuisine. They rarely use red chilli powder and instead rely on green chillies, but the dishes are never overly spicy,” they say. “The beauty of Malabar food is that it has always been home-style cooking, made by hand by the women of the family with recipes handed down for generations. It is only now that people are starting to market the cuisine and its catching on like wildfire,” adds Jose.
In the city, the trend started with the advent of Thalassery biriyanis, made in mud pots with tiny jeerakashala rice (a.k.a. khaima). “The biriyanis are an acquired taste, very different in flavour and taste to the long-grained biriyanis of the Travancore style. Actually, it’s the same for much of the cuisine. For example, Malabar style pazhampori has bananas coated in a mixture of flour and egg, which may not find favour with everyone. Mutta mala, which is egg cooked in sugar syrup, can be overwhelmingly eggy. A lot of the dishes are heavy and ooze oil and ghee,” explains Kalesh.
While the biriyanis were on their way to being ubiquitous, Malabar food fetes started popping up in star hotels and traditional dishes such as attinkaal soup and nei pathiris found their way on menus across the city. It comes full circle with the establishment of a number of specialty restaurants serving Malabar cuisine. Now, even bakeries have got into the spirit of things stocking traditional Malabari short eats, read Iftar snacks. “The most popular Malabar snacks are unnakai (stuffed and fried plantain), kinnathappam (steamed sweet cake) and kalathapam (pancake). There’s also good demand for mutta mala and chattipathiri,” says Kannur-native Shamsudheen of Yum and Yummies, which supplies Malabari snacks to over 30 bakeries in the city. “The demand for Malabar snacks is growing exponentially; so much so that right now demand far exceeds what I can supply. Most of the short eats are very time consuming to prepare and thus slightly costlier than other snacks. As most of them are made of meat and fresh ingredients, their durability is also much less. Besides, these snacks are traditionally prepared by the women of the household and few workers here have the know-how. I actually brought down workers from Kannur prior to launching the business a few months ago. We have had to twist recipes slightly. For example, arikadukka is mussels stuffed with rice and spices. Here’s it’s very difficult to source kallumakaya (mussles) and therefore we’ve substituted it with tuna, which seems to have gone down well with our customers,” he adds.
That brings us to the question of authenticity. As Lakshmi said, it is not exactly a cuisine that welcomes experimentation and for that very reason, Shanavas claims that most of the food that we get here in the name of Malabar is authentic. “We go the extra mile to make it as authentic as possible, whether it’s bringing down cooks who are deft hands at making Malabar food, making sure that the masalas used are homemade or even in the sourcing of ingredients,” says Shanavas.
