A little about the food habits of yore
Early Malabar was quite cosmopolitan, especially around Cannanore,
Calicut and Cochin, but we see hardly any permeation of foreign food habits into
the Hindu food scene. While Moplah cooking was influenced by the Arabs, the Jews
are all gone leaving behind just a few culinary memories. Portuguese and Syrian
cooking styles permeated into the Christian community and still dominate their
kitchens and we can see clearly the impact the Portuguese had in Malabar
cooking. They influenced the recipes, utensils and implements, and a large
variety of vegetables and meats entered the cooking scene. As time went by, the
austere Malabar kitchen started getting spiced up, not only during festivities,
but also in day to day life, as affluence and mobility increased. Let’s take a
look.
Well into the past, Ayurvedic concepts ruled strong in upper
caste Hindu food habits, and while certain foods were considered hot for the body
to be consumed only during monsoon periods, food consumed during the hot
summers was of the cooler variety. Vyasa described the food habits of three groups
of people, the Rajassic, the Tamassic and the Satvic. The Satvic fellow liked
bland food, with little spice and no oil, and it seemingly increased his
lifespan, his health, strength, happiness, luster and kept him contended. The
Rajassic preferred bitter, sour, medium spicy foods with less oil, but they
also increased his thirst, made him sad, prone to diseases, and sickness. The
lazy Tamassic tended to eat stale food (more than 1 yama or 6 hours old), those
left overs which had lost all its taste and smelled bad!!
Malabar Hindu Culinary history
I will start with the more familiar (to me) Hindu culinary
habits in this article and branch into the Christian and Muslim habits later on.
As far as the Hindu’s of Malabar were concerned, the various castes handled
food habits differently. While the Brahmins were vegetarian, others especially
the Nairs, Tiyyas and some lower castes did eat non vegetarian food occasionally,
especially fish, but meat was eaten only when available. The vegetarian groups
were actually not really influenced by the intensely flavored Tamil cooking
from across the border eaten by the settlers who came through the Palghat pass,
and those Tamil Brahmins and Chettiars continued with their unique cuisines.
Looking back into my own childhood, I can only recall a
limited number of items cooked at home, rice, very light curries such as olan
(without coconut milk), mulagushiyam, erissery, mezhukku pirattis and a few
other specials during feasts and weddings. Fried Pappadum was a must and so
also the lime and tender mango pickles. Until the famine years we had never
used wheat at home and it was always rice, with gruel and dryroasted pappadum,
if one was sick. Idli, dosa (all eaten with white chutney) occasionally
substituted by upma with baked or steamed bananas were eaten for breakfast, and
small plantains were eaten as deserts, so also mangoes. That was about it,
though I may have missed a few items such as arrowroot pudding and koorka. Unniappam
and neyappams were made during festivities sharing the leaf with various
payasams, and relished.
Items like Puttu, Appam, Pathiri, Porotta, baked bread,
idiappam were never cooked at our home, and as I wrote many years ago, the home
I grew up at had a sawdust hearth. Once in a blue moon, we would visit the Imperial
restaurant or the Ananda Bhavan in Calicut and feast on items like ghee roast,
vadas or Jilebi and mysore pak. Even more rare was Halwa which though staple to
Calicut was hardly consumed at home, but banana chips were always stored in the
glass jars. Kochoppa (my aunt) kept on the upper rack of the kitchen cabinet.
Varathupperi and sharkara upperi were also stored in bharanis, to be eaten
while feasting on Sadyas. During vacations at Palghat, the food routine was
pretty much the same though we had more fried snacks, prepared by the neighbor
Chettiar lady for us.
Now, let us try and find out what the early medieval food habits were, in Malabar by looking at the journals of visitors like Barbosa and others. While most of the books concentrate on the spices provided by Calicut to the rest of the world, there is very little detail on what Malabar natives ate. From what we do know, we see the following. We note from the Chinese scribe Mahuan’s notes about Cochin and Calicut that rice and ghee were eaten in the 15th century and he also mentions people consuming jackfruit, melons, gourds, turnips. Following him, we see mention of rice and butter(ghee) as well as boiled fish being eaten by natives in Vasco da Gama’s chronicles, circa late 15th. Barboza mentions that our victuals were milk, butter, sugar, rice, preserves of many kinds, many fruits, bread, vegetables, and field herbs; and that Malabar people had gardens and orchards (thodis) wherever they lived.
The Samkhya triguna system which was the basis behind
the Nambudiri and Nair food culture did change over time as the Osellas found
and recorded in their studies during a long sojourn in Malabar. They found that
it had distilled itself into two broad types of food, the body heaters and the
coolers. They conclude - Here, sattvik is associated with ideas of
whiteness, brightness, purity, coolness and so on; rajasik is associated with
heat, vitality, energy, and the colour red; tamasik is associated with the
colour black and with darkness, sluggishness, stupidity and impurity. Social
hierarchies are neatly mapped onto this tripartite division over and over, and
resistant discourses are few and weak, because the tri gunas system is so
all-encompassing, complex and deeply-rooted in Hindu society (of central
importance, for example, in Ayurvedic medicine). In that broad
classification, Brahmins claim to occupy the sattvic category, stating that
typically Christians, Nairs and Izhavas/Tiyyas occupy the Rajasik. The rest who
eat without discipline are a confused lot and are Tamasic. The counter argument
by the other groups is that vegetarian satvik food provides hardly any
nourishment and is useless.
Camöens the Portuguese bard noted so about the Nambudiri’s -
To crown their meal no meanest life expires. Pulse, fruit, and herb alone
their food requires. Thurston studying the Nambuthiri’s provides some detail
–The Nambuthiri staple is rice and curry. Upperi is a curry of chopped
vegetables fried in ghee (clarified butter), cocoanut, seasoned with gingelly
mustard, salt, and jaggery (crude sugar). Aviyal is another, composed of jackfruit
mixed with some vegetables. Sweets are sometimes eaten. Candied cakes of wheat
or rice, and rice boiled in milk with sugar and spices, are delicacies.
Papadams (wafer-like cakes) are eaten at almost every meal.
The Nambutiri householder is said to be allowed by the Shastras,
which rule his life in every detail, to eat but one meal of rice a day, at
midday. He should not, strictly speaking, eat rice in the evening, but he may
do so without sinning heinously, and usually does. Fruit only should be eaten
in the evening. Women and children eat two or three times in a day. A widow,
however, is supposed to lead the life of a Sanyasi, and eats only once a day.
Tea and coffee are objected to as the Shastras do not permit their use. At the
same time, they do not prohibit them, and some Nambutiris drink both, but not
openly. The gourd called churakhai, palmyra fruit, and palmyra jaggery are
taboo to the Nambutiri at all times.
Water-melons are eaten regularly and Gingelly oil never
enters the kitchen. Milk is not taken except as porridge, which goes by the
name of prathaman. A bolus-like preparation of boiled rice-flour with cocoanut
scrapings, called kozhakkatta, is in great favor, and is known as Parasu Rama’s
palaharam, or the light refreshment originally prescribed by Parasu Rama.
Conji, or rice gruel, served up with the usual accessories, is the Nambutiri’s favorite
luncheon. Cold drinks are rarely taken. The drinking water is boiled, and flavored
with coriander, cumin seeds, etc., to form a pleasant beverage. During diksha,
as well as during the Brahmachari period, certain articles of food, such as the
drumstick vegetable, milk, chilies, gram, dhal, papadams, etc., are prohibited.
Garlic and onion are hot and hence avoided.
A number of Namboothiri anacharams had many food related aspects
figuring prominently – You must not cook your food before you bathe, You
must avoid cold rice, etc. (food cooked on the previous day), You must not eat
anything that has been offered to Siva, You must not serve out food with your
hands, You must not use the ghee of buffalo cows for burnt offerings, You must
not use buffalo milk or ghee for funeral offerings, A particular mode of taking
food (not to put too much in the mouth, because none must be taken back) is
followed, You must not chew betel while you are polluted, You must not fast in order to obtain
fulfilment of your desires….
LAK Iyer the anthropologist adds - No food should be taken
with wet clothing or when quite naked, or sitting at the window and not on the
floor, or on a broken plank, or on tiptoe, or lying down, or sitting in the lap
of another or from a broken vessel or the bare floor or holding the food in the
bare hand without a leaf or a vessel. No salt ought to be served at meals
before prayers are over. While sitting at meals children should not be abused.
No one should sit by himself for meals, but an enemy, a wife, or one who by
caste rules is not allowed to sit in the same line should, on any account, be
allowed to sit together for meals. Rice prepared with gingelly seeds as well as
curds should not be taken at night, nor milk during day-time. Food ought not to
be taken before performing homam (sacrifice) or before one’s parents have taken
theirs. Remains and refuse of victuals ought not to be taken. Food should be
taken with ghee, it should not be taken outside a house or in view of a great
multitude or in an uninhabited house. The stomach should at no time be
over-filled. If the food and the acharams are pure, the heart will be pure.
Nairs in general followed the Namboothiri food habits though
most the strict compulsions were done away with or relaxed. There are mentions
of meat and fowl consumption, albeit rarely and when eating away from home. For
a Tiyyan, the staple food is rice with fish curry. The common beverage is
conjee, but this is being supplanted by tea, coffee. The lower classes ate rice
or rice gruel - konji with a green chilli or some leftover curry from the
previous day. Very rarely did they get anything more by way of nutrition in the
medieval days. Strangely, the lower castes were not permitted to address the
food items in its actual name, and karikadi, was the term used to denote their
food.
Tamil or Pardesi Brahmins were also strict vegetarians and teetotalers.
Rice is the chief article of food, and other grains such as pulse, black, gram,
Bengal gram, and dhal were used in their daily meals. Milk, ghee, curds and
butter milk are part of their cuisine. All kinds of vegetables with the
exception of potatoes are freely used. Orthodox Brahmans have their dinner
between eleven and twelve o’ clock in the morning and supper at eight PM. They
too avoided onions and garlic.
That we used the leaves of various vegetables to make
‘upperi’ or stir-fried vegetables is clear from the Puthari event (harvest’s
first meal) when the leaves of Chunda, Thakara, Payar, Vazhuthina, Kumbalam etc
are used. Similar vegetables are used to usher the event connected with the
Karkitakam rains, and you hear of a dish with 8 leaves from Thalu, thakara,
payaru, Cheera, mathan, kumbalanga, chena and muringa. They also made a thavidu
(kanakapodi) appam. In between meals, one heard of Aval or beaten rice
consumption, plain or with some coconut to provide flavor.
Interestingly even in the old days they polished rice to
make it white and it was usually called Choru (Bartholomew), and of course matta
brown unpolished par-boiled rice was prepared and stored by farmers and landed
households. Sweet dishes, especially the dry ones were typically made with beaten
rice (aval) and puffed rice (malar). Typically, salaries or work compensation were
made with rice and in certain cases, koppu (vegetables and oil required to make
side dishes/curries) was also provided, sometimes complete with some cloth.
I will not get into the various caste related issues with
respect to eating like who could cook for whom, what defiles a person etc, it
is a vast topic and has be treated separately, though it had some impact on
what was prepared as food and how it was prepared. The dining hall was a place
where pride and power were exhibited, based on caste. In fact, the rules were
so strict that even the size of the papadam was regulated based on caste, big
papadams could not be fried by lower castes.
Back to food – It is very important to note that in Malabar,
food was eaten twice a day, one in the morning (pakal bakshanam) and one at
dusk (Athazham). It was not a given that good rice was always eaten in the
past, for even in middle class Nair households, low grade rice like Chama, theni,
mula nellu, kuvaraku, muthira, payaru based kanjis and puzhukku were the
mainstay. On many occasions rice imports were resorted to, rice coming from the
SE Asia (Cambodia, Burma) or from the Orissa & Bengal regions.
A look into some Nambuthiri illam records show what food
items were required in a kitchen, not really different from a vegetarian home
today. Nendra pazham, Chena, Vazhuthinanga, Elavan, Mathan, Vellarikka, chembu,
chundanga, achinga, cheera, cheru pazham, thuvar dhal, coconut, muthira,
chukka, mulaku, jeerakam, kadugu, turmeric, uluva, uzhunnuparippu, elam, sugar,
coconut oil, butter, ghee, chukka, curds and of course pappadam. Often you
heard of the exotic vazhapoo thoran or the rarely mader parippu kari and kitchadi.
Aviyal is missing in old Malabar chronicles, maybe it was more
from Travancore and as legends put it, an invention by Ramayyan. So also, items
like the idli, appam, dosa, rasam all look quite new and don’t figure in the
old times. Koova and padachoru are mentioned.
For breakfast it was kanji or water with rice and Puzhukku
made from muthira, or chembu, sometimes a kalan with kumbalanga and vazhakka. Not
much of oil was used in any cooking, as you can see, even athazham had only rice,
a curry and probably an upperi at best. Most people used banana leaves to eat
on, but the affluent homes had copper or bronze plates. A traditional feast
would comprise usually buttermilk, kalan, upperi – at least two types of
mezhukku piratti, chammandi with tamarind & red chilli), injipuli, payasam
and water boiled with jeeerakam and muthira to drink. But nowhere in any chronicle does one item
figure, it was totally alien to Kerala cooking – the venerable Samabar (an
invention of the Madurai Mahrattas)!!
A very grand sadya had 11 kootukaris, a rich man’s kanji may
be boiled in milk, coconut milk was sometimes added, special payasams were made
and exotic items such as valsan (ela ada) figured, of course with other fried
items such as varthupperi, sharkara upperi, kondattam, uppilittathu, elisseri,
olan, pulisseri and so on. Curiously, Palada was abhorred by Nambuthiris, they
connected it to animal flesh as it appears, based on texture!! Vermicelli or
semiya was a new entrant.
The Tamil brahmin kitchen, or the Nair kitchen had many more
Tamil influenced items, using additionally tamarind, jaggery and sometimes
honey. Their kitchens had many varieties, such as sambar, kulambu’s, thuvals,
perattis, mashiyal, podimas, kootu, sambar and rasam (of course), milagootals,
perukku, adai and so on. Not to forget the many fried items like vada, bonda,
cheeda etc. They also had the fabulous vepillakatti (made from Kaffir lime or
vadukapuli leaves).
I should not forget that all homesteads chewed betel with
arecanut and lime, of course. Temple nivediyams is another vast subject, but to
quickly summarize, it was not just sweets which were made in temple kitchens, but
also regular food for the god, later eaten by the ambalavasis or distributed to
others. What did people do after a feast, especially in Namboothiri illams?
They chewed betel and narrated poems or boasted and bluffed – vedi parachil as
it is called.
As a non-vegetarian item in Tiyya and other Hindu households,
we come across only mentions of fish on a day to day basis. Other animal meats
were eaten only on special occasions, when a hunter made it available. Other
than for some kootu curries, I have hardly seen the use of black pepper and it
is unlikely that anybody used spices like cloves, cinnamon, cardamom etc in
vegetarian cooking. One dish which proved to be the most popular in today’s
Kerala was the 19th century introduction of the Kuzhal puttu made of
rice flour and coconut shreds. Puttu in those days was actually known as
Kandiappam or Kambham thuri!
Non-Hindu cooking
Syrian Christians and Portuguese Christians had more elaborate recipes influenced by their geographic origins. Kappa which is a mainstay in Travancore today, supposedly came to Kerala in the 19th century during famine years. Potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, cabbage were all introduced by the Portuguese and quickly found their way to the Hindu kitchens, except those of the Nambuthiris. Prawns are also fairly recent.
Moplah food started as simple fish-based items eaten
together with rice on a daily basis. On festive occasions a large multitude of
side items made their entry, again mostly influenced by food from the middle
east, typically Yemen and the Emirates, as well as by Mughal and Hyderabadi
brethren. Alisa the wheat and meat porridge, tharikanji, samosa and biryanis.
Mutta mala, pinhanathappam, pathiri, adukku roti, and what not. Sweet dishes
served on festive days are the vazhakari or pidikari made of rice and sugar. Breads
such as the pathiris made their way in, neypathiri, vattapathiri, palaroti
(with coconut milk), adukku pathiri (layered) erachi pathiri (fried with meat),
meenpathiri (stuffed with fish, through Arab traders. Unnakaya (stuffed banana rolls),
kozhinirachatu (stuffed chicken), mutta pola, kinnathappam are other noteworthy
food items. A favorite drink was the
tari kanji (gruel of rava or sooji) jeeraka kanji (cumin gruel) during festival
occasions. The ammayi pattu provides a great list of many such items.
Just go to Calicut and you can find most of them during
their festive occasions, though the old fare is quickly giving way to new foods
from the middle east like broasted chicken, shawarmas and so on, to satisfy the
much travelled or gulf returned Malayali. The Malabar flaky Porotta a staple of
today’s Malayali, based on Yemeni origins is relatively recent. However, it is
hard not to notice that Moplahs shunned Sambar, idli and Dosa for a very long
time and only recently have their taste changed to include these fermented rice
dishes.
The Parangis of Cochin inherited a lot, graduating from
Canji to canja da galinha (kanji with Chicken), the bole (boli), vindhaloo,
stew (a most popular Kerala dish – istew), bachalhou (fish curry), arroz e
caril (rice and curry). Many dishes used vinegar instead of tamarind, Barbecued
espetada de leitao, bolo de sura (a sweet bun), many of the bakery breads (pao)
and biscuits we know today, sowlinge (payasam), all came from Lisbon. Stews
were made of pork or beef, and prawn and other sea foods made their entry into
the Cochin cuisine through the Portuguese.
The Jewish community had similar fare like vellaappams, kubba
(meat and rice balls), pastel ( like a puff), ellegal, chuttulli meen, motta
salada (like the mutta mala of the Moplah), adas, churulappams, achappams, ural
or halwa, unniyappam, neyappam, Chukunda (like cheeda) and so on, plus the drink mooli (like
panakam)…
The Syrian Catholics too brought in new ideas and some of
the snacks and savories such as achappam and kuzhalappam stand tall. The
introduced the mappas, or chicken stew, so also Appams (kallappam,
vellayappam), Noolpittu or idiappam and many curries to go with it, vegetarian
or mostly non vegetarian made with fiery spices and using a good amount of fat.
Such curry dishes include piralen (chicken stir-fries), meat thoran (dry curry
with shredded coconut), sardine and duck curries, and meen molee (spicy stewed
fish). Meen Mulakittathu or Meen vevichathu (fish in fiery red chilly sauce) is
another favorite item, Pidi a type of rice dumplings in thick gravy, is a
delicacy, so also irachi ularthiyathu.
Many types of alcoholic kallu drinks were available, normal
fresh tapped toddy, Poringallu (made from pori and palayamthodan pazham),
Madhura Kallu, Nengallu, and of course charayam and arrak, completed alocoholic
trysts.
How about grocery shops? They sold rice, pulses, some of the
Tamil imports like kappal mulagu, uluva and some of the spices like jerrakam
and oil. But one thing had to be purchased, always, that was salt and that is
why the British tried to control its sale and use in order to control masses.
We will talk about this and the difficulties lower castes had in just buying a
paisa worth of salt, another day.
So, what is hot and cold in culinary arguments? The Osella’s
explain - Among Hindus, cold foods may be acknowledged as purer and
productive of qualities such as calmness and intelligence, while hot foods may
be ambivalent: good for some people, such as men who must labor, post-delivery
women who are dangerously cool and in need of heating, newlyweds who must raise
their thermostat and be ‘hot’, desirous; and bad for others, such as widows,
who must not inflame their sexual appetites, or violent people—who should be
seeking to calm themselves.
Cooking styles and vessels changed, hearths made way to gas
stoves, stone, clay and copper vessels were replaced by iron pots, steel and
aluminum. Tastes too started to change in tune with the mobile population, the
concept of 3 meals came about, more after office routines set in, perhaps
matching the European three meal and teatime habit.
The Malayali girth started
to increase, gone was the bony lithe frame and the pregnant look set in as the
consumption of oily food, maida porottas and a lot of meat increased,
coupled with a lack of any type of exercise.
And then came the gym’s and the ‘back to the roots’ organic food wave…
References
Castes and tribes of Southern India – Thurston
The Cochin tribes and castes – LA Krishna Iyer
19 am Nootandile Keralam – P Bhaskaran Unny
Ruby of Cochin – Ruby Daniel
Ente Smaranakal – Kanippayur Sankaran Namboothiripad
Portuguese in Malabar, a social history – Charles Diaz
Food, Memory, Community: Kerala as both ‘Indian Ocean’ Zone
and as Agricultural Homeland - Caroline Osella, Filippo Osella (South Asia:
Journal of South Asian Studies, n.s., Vol.XXXI, no.1, April 2008)
Maddy's Ramblings - The story of Aviyal
This article was inspired after listening to Manjusha's recent Kootam Koodal session. Manjusha takes us back to those days through her blog Samagni.com
