Kerala is a fish loving community and we have created an incredible variety of dishes featuring fish. Of all these dishes, fish cutlet is by far my favorite. To make cutlets, firm fleshed fish such as tuna or mackerel is cooked along with spices, onion and herbs. The bones are then removed, and the
It was a glorious day. The morning mist had cleared and the sun shone brightly through the thick trees making the placid lake shimmer. Birds twittered melodiously, fawn skipped around and rabbits sniffed the scent laden air. The world was perfect just as god had intended it to be.
Inspite of being the ultimate masterpiece of god’s magnificent creation, Eve wasn’t happy. She studied her reflection closely in the lake and worried that some of her beauty was gone. Her face had lost its radiance and she spied some fine lines and wrinkles near her eyes, brown spots on her cheeks and even some sticky chip chip. Her hair had five problems and no solution. Her skin tone was uneven with her exposed parts a nutty brown and the rest of it a creamy golden. Eve liked uneven colors only on a zebra. Her underarms were dark and her cheeks burnt with embarrassment at the thought that Adam might have noticed them when she raised her hands to get an apple on a high branch the other day. She would have l
Meen Mappas is a mildly spiced fish (usually karimeen or pearl spot) stew from Kerala. It is a dish usually prepared for festivals and is paired with appams and bread rolls. The holiday season is over, but work hardly comes in, and when it does, it’s in a very slow trickle. The mind is about to pop
Summer vacation is about to end and Qya has successfully managed to empty his brain of the “A,B,C’s”, “1,2,3’s” and everything else he learnt in the past year. With Ben 10, followed by Tom Jerry, followed by Oggy and the Cockroaches, followed by numerous other aliens and creepy crawlies that walk and talk and jump and do the unimaginable, who had time for something as mundane as “A B C”? To save my home from being blown up, I sent him to “summer camp” during the vacation. I am not entirely sure what Qya did there, but seeing that he was very happy about it, I believe he was unleashed on the school grounds with his friends and allowed to perform gymnastics and somersaults, and perhaps allowed to fly around in an iron man suit (since that’s what he tries to do at home). In all fairness, the summer vacation was also a period of learning and discovery – of a different kind – which were the best hiding places in the house? How hard could you throw a ball at the window without actually brea
Had it not been for my love of “maa ke haathon ka bana ghana” (mom’s cooking), I would have always turned up unannounced at my parent’s door step just so that I could yell “Surprise” and see the delight on their faces. Alas, the joy I find in gluttony forces me to share my travel plans well in advance so that they can get a feast ready by the time I am home.
But my last trip was not planned, and my parents had to make use of some ordinary ingredients to come up with something that looked and tasted absolutely fabulous. It was the Meen Pollichathu – fish blanketed in spicy pearl onions and grilled to perfection. Banana leaves add to the flavour and aroma of the fish. Infact, many people pack warm rice and curries in banana leaves for journeys. (Once, during a train journey, someone sitting next to me opened such a parcel and the delicious aroma of rice and fish fry wafted around. By the time he finished his meal, I (and the entire bogie, I believe) was hungry and drooling, and my train
People from my state seem to be just about everywhere. Everytime I go on an outing and hear someone chatter away in malayalam, I think of the popular movie dialogue, “Wherever you go, I am there!” If you ever hear of a tea stall on the moon, be assured it belongs to a Mathai or a Kunjacchen! I would say that in every family in Kerala, there is someone working in some far flung region of the country, atleast one NRI (Non Residential Indian), and even people holding foreign citizenship. Why so? The malayali’s financial dreams can never be fulfilled by working in his own state, probably because we dream big (very big, mind you).
In the past, many of us have moved to the oil rich middle east or the gulf or Persia, as we refer to the arab world, to finance our large homes, numerous cars, posh foreign schools, diamonds and gold for the ladies etc. Being unselfish, we shared our good fortune with friends and relatives by finding (or creating!) job opportunities that they could fill in, and se
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