Rice Main Course of Food
The essential ingredient
of the daily diet is rice. Breakfast, lunch
or dinner, it is some rice preparation or
the other, served along with a variety of
fish. Fish is consumed in a variety of ways
– it is preserved after being dried
and salted or cooked in a delicious coconut
gravy. Prawns, shrimps and crustaceans constitute
some of the other famous delicacies.
Morning Meals
Cuisine of KeralaAfter
the morning dose of coffee, a typical malayali
household serves breakfast that may either
consist of soft idlis, prepared out of a
paste of fermented rice and black pulses,
or dosa, an oval spread of the same ingredients.
Well-seasoned appams or periappams, made
by mixing this paste with tomatoes, onions
and other handy vegetables, are some of
the other morning culinary delights.
Midday Meals
Midday meals consist of
boiled rice that may be mixed with moru
(curd or bitter milk) or rasam (thin clear
pepper water or soup) and a range of vegetables.
Pachadi is a delicious dish, cooked out
of tiny pieces of mango, mixed with hot
spices. Sambar, pulses prepared with vegetables
is a standard daily fare. Thoran, a coconut-based
dry fish dish that is mixed with minutely
chopped vegetables, herbs and curry leaves,
and similar to avial, which is cooked in
a sauce, is another delectable dish.Pappaddakams,
or crunchy round flakes made of rice flour,chutneys
(a kind of sauce) and pickles, are scrumptious
additions without which a meal is incomplete.
Wheat preparations are
more popular in Muslim establishments. Well-prepared
spirals called barottas and pathiris are
made from refined flour, fried in oil and
served with vegetables and curries.Chappathi,
poori (a sort of baked or deep fried equivalent
of bread)may be cooked optionally.
Diverse Use of
Ingredients
A melange of aromas resulting
from the free use of pepper, cardamom, cloves,
turmeric, ginger, chillies, and mustard,
used in most curries, fill the kitchens
of the well-to-do, but generally the poorer
folks content themselves with kanji (rice
with water) and take fish with tapioca.
Most dishes in Kerala are cooked in coconut
oil and are incomplete without a mandatory
use of coconut in some form or the other.
Kerala Snacks
Kerala is equally famous
for traditionally homemade snacks a variety
of banana chips, and rice flour cookies,
are served with evening coffee |
