Cuisine of Kerala
¤ 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
 After
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 |
