Kerala Part I : Cuisine, beware the ‘puttu’

Ever had the baffling dish emerging out of a steel utensil, so small in size that you can hardly imagine how dangerous and how potentially embarrassing it can be? Well, if you go to a Kerala home and get fed , you could be served a steamed rice ball called ‘puttu’, it only sounds innocuous but it is not. I mean you would think that how can something named ‘puttu’ can be lethal but sometimes names can be misleading.

 There is a mythological story about Krishna reaching Draupadi’s home and asking for food when the pandavas had nothing, Drauapadi was very nervous but when she went to the kitchen she found unlimited supply of food there emerging out of one left over grain of food. It was the lord’s doing, they say. My thoughts on this story after the ‘puttu’ experience are that it must have been this rice ball hiding somewhere which Draupadi must have saved for a day like this and the rice ball must have been served to the lord- both to feed him and also to teach him not ever to ask for food while the pandavas were still in banvas( forest exile). I am sure the North Indian that he was- relishing milk products like ghee and makkhan(butter) that he would be shocked first at the concept of a steamed rice ball for food. For the North Indians (the cow belt dwellers)wheat flour based chappati  with daal, butter milk, gur etc is the staple diet.

While trying to eat the ‘puttu’ I was trying to imagine my grandmother who would have had a heart attack if she was told that what she had to eat for breakfast that morning was a rice ball with chana subzi and a boiled banana plus coffee. If she was alive and she heard about my experience she would probably ban me from ever going down south. I think she would ask me – what did you get to eat this morning for breakfast? I would say- a rice ball…she would say – milk? I would say- no milk, coffee. She would ask – okay , so a rice ball was additional to chappati and daal or paraantha and subzi …I would say- no there was a boiled banana served with it. She would say- get back here now I am getting a heart attack.

Now that I have built the puttu story a lot, let me also tell you that it was served with a lot of heart by my friend Pramod’s mother in law and his lovely wife- Sunitha. They could just not imagine that I would not relish it because my wife is from the rice eating belt in India and she devoured the rice ball with relative ease.

A ‘puttu’ as I figured out later and after quite a few laughs is almost a full meal. So the lesson learnt , everything in the south is not idli and dosa, they eat other things too and they are made quite differently. Interestingly the South Indians eat a lot of steamed food which seems to keep them healthier than the cow belt people. The ‘puttu’ gets served on the plate, you think it is such a small thing, will finish it in minutes but soon it becomes a battle between you and the puttu because it is not something that it seems to be…as you begin to eat, it begins to unfold and grows on the plate, much like the mythical story and soon you discover that it is heavy, filling and almost impossible to finish.

Unlike that idli and idliappam …again steamed dishes are easy to eat…In a kerala home you find these small steel containers in which all these dishes are prepared. Later I also encountered something called ‘podi dosa’ for breakfast at the restaurant in Ernakulam’s MG road that Pramod had introduced us to ( I think Gokul ). It was delicious but even at this restaurant I was undone earlier by ordering a paper dosa, thinking my tummy is not behaving well so let me eat this simple thing without any masala but the size, to my surprise, was mammoth…so the scene was that when I saw the dosa being put in the plate at the kitchen shelf, I told shalini, my wife, who was facing the other side, eating her poori subzi that this is the second googly the mallus had thrown at the unsuspecting north Indian in me and the next time I would have to be more careful. After seeing the surprise on my face there was, I imagine a vicious smile on the face of the waiter and the sound was provided to his thoughts by kids from a north Indian touring party sitting on the adjoining table as they began to tease each other ( in character, which means, noisily)over the size of the paper dosa- ‘Now go and order a paper dosa?’ , ‘You are an elephant , you eat the elephant size dosa’ etc. What was going on in my mind at that point of time is not polite enough to find a mention here.

A little more on the south Indian cuisine- when we were at JNU in Delhi we would regularly go to the Andhra Bhavan and eat the low priced delicious thali at the canteen. We were not the only ones doing so, the canteen was almost always full when we visited. The day before we left Ernakulam for Mumbai, another friend Dimpi and his wife had joined us and we were taken to a place where they served the Andhra thali. The food was hot and spicy and tasty. Apparently the Andhra food is the spiciest in the South and they relish their non vegetarian food.

We did not do too much of sea food eating. Primary reason , I am not a great non vegetarian eater and I find it difficult to eat sea food. However, the prawn dish that was served to us at the Grand Hotel, again at MG road Ernakulam as a starter was simply delicious. By the way my grandmother would have another heart attack if she was travelling with us on another day when we went to the ‘paaneliporru’ forest where three streams come together at one place and seem to be fighting with one another. (downstream are malyatoor hills)After coming out of the forest, we were hungry and wanted something to eat, the next settlement had a small dhabha…we asked them what did they have to serve …the answer was …kerala parantha with beef…Imagine a cow worshipper’s plight at that …and then they say…culturally the country is one.