Three Ingredients That Define Everything
Almost every traditional Keralan dish — vegetarian or non-vegetarian, breakfast or feast, everyday or ceremonial — depends on a small constellation of ingredients that grow in profusion across the state: coconut (used as grated flesh, as freshly extracted milk, as oil for tempering, and as toddy for fermentation); rice (the staple grain, eaten boiled, as flour, as flakes, and fermented into batters); and a souring agent, generally tamarind, kokum, or unripe mango. Black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, clove, and turmeric — the famous spices of the Malabar Coast, all of which grow within a few hundred kilometres of the sea — provide the aromatic base. Curry leaves, mustard seeds, dried red chillies, and asafoetida define the characteristic tempering (thaalichathu) that begins almost every cooked dish.
This palette is remarkably consistent across the state, but it is layered differently in each region: heavier on coconut milk and chilli in the south; lighter and more aromatic in the spice-growing high ranges; oriented toward Arabian and Persian influences in the Malabar north; and shaped by Portuguese and Syrian Christian traditions in the centre.
Breakfast — The Most Distinctive Meal of the Day
Appam are lacy rice-flour pancakes with a soft, fluffy centre and a crisp outer rim. The batter is fermented overnight with a little coconut toddy or yeast, then ladled into a small wok-shaped appachatti and swirled to create the characteristic shape. Appam are eaten with vegetable stew (a coconut-milk-based broth of potato and carrot lightly spiced with cardamom and cinnamon), or with mutton stew, or with a fiery egg roast.
Puttu are steamed cylinders of coarsely ground rice flour layered with grated coconut and salt, prepared in a long bamboo or metal cylinder set over a kettle of boiling water. The cylinder is unmoulded onto a banana leaf at the table and the diner breaks it apart with a spoon. The classic accompaniment is kadala curry — black chickpeas in a coconut-and-roasted-spice gravy — but ripe banana mashed with sugar is the universal childhood version.
Idiyappam ("string hoppers") are delicate nests of pressed rice-flour noodles, steamed for a few minutes and served with vegetable kurma, egg roast, or a thin coconut-milk and palm-jaggery dessert.
Dosa and idli, although shared with the rest of South India, take Keralan forms here as well — particularly the small fluffy kallappam of central Travancore and the rice-and-coconut vellayappam of the Syrian Christian community.
The Onasadya — A Vegetarian Tradition Distilled
The Onasadya, served on a banana leaf at the climax of the Onam festival, is the most elaborate vegetarian feast in South India and the canonical expression of Keralan cooking. A full sadya runs to twenty-four to twenty-six dishes served in a strict spatial order on the leaf — pickles in the upper-left corner, salt and crisp accompaniments along the upper edge, vegetable preparations below, rice in the centre, and three sequential desserts at the end.
The signature dishes include avial (mixed vegetables in a coconut-and-cumin paste loosened with sour buttermilk), thoran (a dry stir-fry of vegetable and grated coconut), olan (ash gourd cooked in thin coconut milk with black-eyed peas), kalan (yam or raw banana in a thick coconut and turmeric gravy with curd), and erissery (pumpkin and red beans in roasted coconut). Three desserts — palada pradhaman (rice-flake and milk), ada pradhaman (coconut-milk and jaggery), and parippu pradhaman (lentil and jaggery) — close the meal.
Sambar is poured over the first course of rice, rasam over the second, and a thin spiced buttermilk curry over the third. Pappadam, banana, and salt accompany the entire meal. The diner eats with the right hand and folds the leaf away from themselves at the end as a sign of satisfaction; folding it toward oneself signals that something was unsatisfactory.
Coastal and Backwater Seafood
Kerala's coastline is among the most productive fisheries in the Indian Ocean, and seafood dominates the savoury cooking of the entire western strip. The freshwater pearl spot (karimeen) is the signature fish of the backwaters and is most famously prepared as karimeen pollichathu — the fish marinated in chilli, turmeric, and ginger paste, wrapped in a fresh banana leaf, and pan-roasted until the leaf chars and the fish absorbs both the spice and a faint smoky aroma from the wrapping.
Malabar fish curry (meen mulakittathu or meen vevichathu), in its northern form, uses sardines, mackerel, or seer fish in a thin red gravy of Kashmiri chilli, fenugreek, kokum, and a little coconut milk. Alleppey fish curry, made further south, replaces some of the chilli with raw mango and is therefore brighter and more citric. Meen moilee, the gentlest of the family, is a Syrian Christian preparation in which fish is poached in turmeric, ginger, and thick coconut milk; it is one of the dishes most often served at large gatherings precisely because its mildness suits all palates.
Other coastal staples include chemmeen ularthiyathu (prawns dry-roasted with curry leaves and small onions), kallummakkaya nirachathu (mussels stuffed with spiced rice batter and steamed inside the shell), and the various squid and octopus preparations of the Kollam and Kochi fishermen's communities.
Syrian Christian and Mappila Traditions
The Saint Thomas Christian community of central Kerala — concentrated around Kottayam, Pala, and Kanjirappally — has historically eaten meat more freely than its Hindu neighbours and has developed a distinctive non-vegetarian cuisine in which beef plays an unusually prominent role. Beef olathiyathu (slow-roasted beef with coconut slivers, curry leaves, and black pepper) and beef ularthiyathu (a drier, spice-crusted version) are the great communal dishes of weddings and church feasts. Duck roast, mutton stew with appam, and chicken thoran are everyday staples of the Christian household kitchen.
The Mappila Muslim communities of the northern Malabar region have developed an entirely separate cuisine influenced by centuries of trade with the Arab world. Thalassery biryani uses small-grained khaima rice (rather than basmati), is mildly spiced and aromatic rather than fiery, and is served with a side of date pickle. Pathiri (a rice-flour flatbread) accompanies fish curries; kallummakkaya nirachathu reaches its highest form in the Mappila kitchens of Kozhikode; and the traditional sweets — kalathappam, chatti pathiri, and the date-and-egg muttamala — are unlike anything else in Indian cooking.
Snacks, Sweets, and the Banana
Tea-time snacks across Kerala include banana chips (sliced thin from the unripe nendran banana and fried in coconut oil); sharkara varatti (the same banana chips coated in a glassy jaggery syrup with cardamom and dry ginger); parippu vada (a chana-dal fritter); uzhunnu vada (the savoury doughnut of urad dal); and the universal pazham pori (ripe banana fritters in a turmeric-tinted gram-flour batter).
The nendran banana itself is one of the great unsung ingredients of Keralan cooking: eaten ripe, fried unripe, mashed for puttu, layered into payasam, fed as a first solid food to infants, and exported in vast quantities to the Gulf countries. A traditional household will keep at least three different stages of ripeness on hand at any time.