An Arabian night with a Moplah Genie

Fifty-year-old Abida Rasheed is unlike any chef you are likely to meet. Draped in a rich silk sari and decked in tasteful jewellery, she mockingly tut tuts hospitality colleges that teach chefs to make “white gravy and red gravy”, laughs over how she was given a Parachute oil bottle at a hotel when she requested for coconut oil for cooking and bemoans the fact that women today no longer cook. All this, while she continuously fills our plates with authentic Moplah food and displays some of that hospitality that Calicut is famous for. 

Over the past three years, ever since she ventured into the food business, Rasheed’s name has become synonymous with Moplah cuisine from the Malabar region in Kerala. When not busy with her textile business, Abida works as a consultant for the Taj hotel in Calicut.

Tracing Moplahs’ roots
Moplahs form the largest Muslim community of Kerala. When Arab traders came to Malabar in the 7th century, enamoured by the idea of conducting business with the spice-rich region, they married into families there. As the Arab influence spread in the region, many Hindu families converted to Islam and embraced Arab culture, tradition and, most notably, their food.

Food recipes thus became a Moplah family’s best kept secret. Age old recipes were handed down from one generation to another. These were so treasured that each tharavad (ancestral home) was known for a particular dish they had mastered over decades of cooking. At the Taj Lands End, Mumbai, Rasheed remembers the time everyone used to look forward to wedding feasts. “We used to say, this tharavad’s chakkare choru (jaggery rice) is better, that tharavad’s manga (mango) curry is better,” says Rasheed. That ‘special’ dish would be served at the wedding, alongside the famous Calicut chicken biryani.

Moplah cuisine has heavy Arab and Portuguese influences. Take for instance the motta maala (literally meaning ‘chain of eggs’), originally from Mahe, a union territory about 85kms away from Calicut. “The motta maala and most of our curries like the ‘eshtew’ (not stew, she firmly corrects us) are by the Portuguese,” explains Rasheed. The food is flavour-based, healthy and needs minimal ingredients to cook. “We also have a lot of Kanji, which is from China,” she adds.

Moplahs follow the matriarchal system which sees the groom moving into the bride’s home post marriage. This, in no way, undermines the importance of the son-in-law — in fact every Moplah household cooks their best food in his honour. “We serve whole goat stuffed with nuts and a whole chicken stuffed with egg and cooked in masala,” says Rasheed. “We then stitch the goat and the whole goat is cooked in an urali (big vessel) for hours.” This Arab-influenced dish is made only to welcome ‘VVVIPs’. After a heavy meal, Kava — a Middle East-influenced drink which is a mixture of tea or coffee, jaggery and spices — is taken to ease the digestive system.

Digging into Moplah food
While Rasheed fills us in on the intricacies of Moplah cusine, our food arrives. “I really pity the vegetarians who come for our weddings,” laughs Rasheed, as the waiter serves vendakkai milagu curry, adda (rice cake stuffed with mushroom or meat) green mango chutney, nei choru (ghee rice) and ghee kanji (rice soup). “They end up eating these chutneys,” she says, pointing to the small bowls of chutney on the table.

In the nei chooru, the ghee does not overpower the rice and in the adda, the distinct taste of mushroom masala and rice works together magically. The fish appetiser is cooked in coconut oil and served on a verdant coconut leaf. The fish is very lightly seasoned with spices, which lets the natural taste of the fish come through unhindered. The fish biryani is not as spicy and flavourful as one would hope. The small-grained rice is extremely fragrant and light on the stomach. The fish fillets — once deboned carefully with a fork and knife — are lemony and provide an unexpectedly tasty accompaniment to the rice. “We never eat fish that eat humans or other fish,” explains Rasheed, in between bites. We venture a guess. Like shark? “Yes. We eat a lot of mussels and shell fish.” The mutton chops in the mutton biryani are cooked in ghee and tenderised just the right amount. With an almost milky consistency, the lamb curry is a great accompaniment to the tenderised chunks of lamb.

Moplah cuisine also includes what Rasheed believes to be the only known non-vegetarian dessert. Aleesa is a porridge mixed with wheat, coconut milk, fried onion, ghee, meat, served with sugar, she explains, while the desserts make their way to our table.

The first dessert is a banana sliced in half and stuffed with scrambled eggs and glazed with sugar syrup. The stuffed banana is a treat with the scrambled eggs — which are cooked in sugar — providing a strange combination of textures not many desserts have to offer. The cube of egg white has a jelly-like consistency and taste, with the sweetened yolk shavings adding a crunchy edge. The second, motta maala, is a cube of egg white, sprinkled with yolk shavings.

Rasheed, who has travelled to Delhi and Kolkata for food festivals, remembers being surprised by the lack of awareness about Moplah cuisine as against other Muslim cuisines like Hyderabadi and Mughlai. “But now, things are changing,” she says. “People know that Kerala isn’t only about shopping and massages!”

(With inputs from Apoorva Dutt)