The water and everything in it, as well as the paddy, grown in the Kuttanad belt — parts of Alappuzha, Kottayam and Pathanamthitta — makes the eponymous duck special. Not very meaty, the lean fowl is distinct from the fleshier hybrids and broiler ducks, some say it is an acquired taste but others swear by it. Come Christmas or Easter, it has the pride of place on most dining tables.
“What it feeds from the water —the smaller fishes, the insects, the leftover grain after threshing and harvesting— add up to making the meat special. And of course the most important factor is that it spends all its time in the water. Of course these can be fattened by feeding them other foods meant to boost growth, but it compromises the taste,” says Chef Saji P Alex, chef de cuisine, Marriott by Kochi, who heads the hotel’s Kerala speciality restaurant, Cassava.
A classic
There maybe a hundred ways of cooking this duck —curry, roast and mappas— but the hero, says Saji, is always the Kuttanadan tharavu (duck) owing to how it is farmed rather than how it is cooked.
For a palate used to soft, bone-less meats or as restaurateur/writer Oneal Sabu puts it, “spoilt by duck confits and the Peking duck”, the bony Kuttanadan duck takes some getting used to. The most common and typical preparation of the area is a curry, made with green chillies and coriander powder. The varatharacha roast —with red chilli, cinnamon, bay leaf, cardamom, cloves, pepper, star anise and fennel — is also popular, as is duck mappas , says Oneal. Mappas is mildly-spiced, gravy-based preparation which incorporates coconut milk. He says he prefers the ‘spiced up’ version, “I like the duck heavily spiced with pepper, with the hit of red chillies,” says Oneal.
Cherthala-based Roopa Tomy who cooks and ships Kuttanadan duck preparations to Kochi says her customers in the city prefer the spicy variety to which she adds potatoes. It goes well with appam, rice, parotta, chapathi and even bread.
Saji’s recipe, accessed from a family-based in Alappuzha, incorporates pepper and green chillies, “There is no standardisation when it comes to how Kuttanadan duck is cooked in Alappuzha or Kuttanad, each family and each kitchen —like everything else in Indian cuisine— has evolved its individual style of cooking, incorporating or doing away with certain spices.”
Since it is lean, this duck is always cooked with the skin. “The fat is the secret of the taste,” says Roopa, whose family runs a duck farm in Pallipuram (Cherthala). Keeping the skin tends to get tricky, especially when it leaves tiny feathers behind. At her family’s farm, the fowl are fed rice and wheat and the remnants from chapathi-making units.
Nutritional content aside, when it comes to these native varieties there are those who are partial to drakes (male) and others who prefer the ducks (female).
“The males are the ones with the green necks, I prefer those as I find the meat tastier,” says Oneal. But Roopa disagrees, “The females, since they lay eggs, tend to have more fat and hence are tastier. Some prefer drakes but duck meat is way better.”
The duck is reared in the backwaters, along Kuttanad’s paddy fields. Purists swear by indigenous breeds such as chara and chembally. These are not large, fully grown they weigh between 800gm - 1,250 gm, unlike the broiler ducks which can weigh up to two kilos. Among meats, duck has more flavour perhaps due to fat content and some peg it as being healthier than chicken. However keeping the skin tends to get tricky, especially when it leaves tiny feathers behind.
The ducks are transported to Kochi on trucks, and dressed and sold by wholesale and retail vendors. The festive season sees a spike in the sales, says George VR, a meat shop owner in Maradu. This year, however, the supply hasn’t matched up to the demand. “I had asked the supplier for 3000-odd ducks, but they have committed to only 1,500. The flood has affected the farmers too, they lost many ducks. After Christmas, I think, it will correct itself.”
His father and grandfather before him reared ducks in Kochi, “Those days Maradu had paddy fields, where they used to rear the birds.” He has hired five-six people to help him with the dressing, which is not easy like chicken as the skin has to stay intact. On weekends, he sells around 30 kilos of duck per day, on other days it is a modest 10-odd kilos, the meat is priced at ₹280 per kilo.
