Cafe de' Kottayam

Nostalgia is a nice word. Everyone treasures their set of memories of those lost days.
But here I am, with nostalgia of food! Of all the things from my childhood, I know one thing I would miss the most would be the delicious cuisine...Its not jsut about the taste, but the tiny little memories that hang along with them.
A list of all of them would be endless, but to start with a few of them...

Appam
Paallappam, Vellayappam, Kallappam - Call it by any name and be it of any shape, Appam still holds the first place when I talk about memories. Its not about the superior taste, but the prestige it holds . An Easter or Christmas without Appam would be like a sky without stars.
The prize for getting up early and being a good girl in church -soft fluffy Appam with beef or chicken curry. The women, after church talk not about lipstick or dog show, but what to do about the extra salt or sour taste in the Appam. The breakfast table would be busy always with Pappa sharing his nostalgic memories of Easter or Christmas during his childhood.

Idiyappam

The varieties of Appam is endless and considered most prestigious, but personally my favourite would be Idiyappam. Again soft fluffy noodles cake( Thats what we would reply when someone asked what we had for lunch, since we were supposed to speak only English in school :)) Idiyappam with egg roast -Mamma knows thats what I like the most. And thats what adorned the breakfast whenever I returned home from hostel after a long break. Countless idiayappams to counter the no-taste hostel food. Memories are still fresh.

Kappa and Fish curry.

Every time we have Kappa with fish curry, Pappa says, its the Portugese who brought Kappa and Puttu to Kerala. If I ever support that the invasion of India by foreign nations have benefited us, the first argument would be these delicious dishes that they have added to the average Malayalee dining table.
There are two ways to serve Kappa. You can either boil in simply (called thundan kappa) and serve with mashed onion and green chillies or you can cook it with grated coconut and other ingredients and serve with red hot fish curry. I loved them both ways.Kappa is considered the poor man's food and may be thats why kappa used to be the special food on ordinary Sundays, sundays when Mamma felt we need a special treat...And everytime the kappa was served Pappa would start singing
"Pande oru baalan
kappem meenum kondu
karthavinarukil poyathorkuno"
Its a parody of some church song, the original of which I don't know, but everytime I see hot kappa served, I can't resist humming this song, at least silently.

Puttu Kadala

As mentioned above, another reason to thank Portugese. The most common puttu kadala. Ok, this is not a special dish but what serves the right breakfast for Malayalee almost everyday. Whenever I talk about breakfast at home, the first thing to come to my mind would be puttu kadala. Something that I have had the most, still not bored of. Again, it used to be a shame to tke puttu kadala to lunch because there was nothing special about it, and if we did we called it steam cake! :)

Indiriyappam

Indiriyappam a.k.a pesaha appam holds a special place in my memories. Made only once in a year, on Maundy Thursday(Pesaha), I never liked it in my childhood. It was the sacred appam, to be cut after the prayer and distributed according to seniority. I always used to be last in line to get that, and always tried to hide , so that I dont have to take a big piece. But as of now, if someone gave me a whole of it too, I would gulp it down and ask for more. Pesaha appam reminds me of unity, a time when all members of the family and extended family get together. It is a chain that continues. All people living close by get together in each house one by one, and cut the pesaha appam.Those memories of moving from one house to the next in the night holds a special place in all the treasured memories. When men talked about politics and farming. Women talked about the pesaha appam. Old women remembered how Christ gave his life for us. And we children had lots of school stories and plans for the summer vacation ahead.

Kanji
Something, the taste of which I don't miss even now, but th memories of which I do. Those raining nights of the monsoons, when the rain gets heavier and heavier as we take each spoonful of kanji . Hot steaming kanji with payar, pappadam, pickle and thenga chammandi(coconut chutney). The joy of slurping down the kanji, trying to rhythm it with the cold rains outside. Those were the days!


I could talk and talk about many more of those mouth watering cuisines with mesmerizing memories, but I rather stop here and go on to cook the 2 minute Maggi noodles. Dinner menu reads Maggi noodles and Lays potato chips! :(