A FLAVOURFUL EXPRESSION OF KERALA’S SPICE POWER
FOR Prima Kurien, one of the country’s foremost exponents of Kerala’s deliciously diverse cuisine, the Moplah biryani she makes brings back memories of wedding lunches in her Syrian Christian community. The piece de resistance of these celebratory meals is this flavourful biryani served by Moplah caterers.
There are as many biryanis as there are people making it. The Moplahs (or the Mappila, which translates as ‘son-in-law’) are descendants of Arab spice traders who settled down after marrying local women in northern Kerala (the Malabar district of the British Raj) in the seventh century C.E. They literally transported the flavours of Kerala around the world. Their biryani, in fact, packs in the flavours of the spices that Kerala is famous for – and which they traded for centuries.
Prima’s biryani spice box includes mainly pepper, green cardamom (elaichi), clove (laung), nutmeg (jaiphal), mace (javitri) and star anise with a liberal sprinkling of cashew and raisins (kishmish). She first boils the mutton or chicken with the whole spices and then she cooks the rice in the stock that results from it. What happens as a result is that the spices do not overpower the rice. To the not-yet-fully cooked rice is then added the mutton or chicken korma, which is tender, juicy and, again, subtly flavoured, and the assembled ingredients are dum-cooked. It is a paki (cooked) biryani, where the meat is cooked separately and then layered into the rice.
The Mappilas use the short-grained aromatic rice variety known as Kaima or Jeerakasala, but Prima prefers Basmati because of the ease with which it expands and absorbs all the flavours. Her cooking medium, in the Mappila tradition, is ghee and the accompaniments are a tangy coconut-yoghurt pachadi, four to six appalams (the ‘Madras papad’) and mango pickle. The biryani is a meal in itself, with the gently spiced rice and mutton or chicken chunks complementing each other, and the cashew and raisins providing a welcome variety of tastes and textures.