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| KERALA DANCE & CUISINE | ||||
| KERALA DANCE | ||||
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KATHAKALI Indian classical music and traditional dance bring an extra dimension of colour to Kerala's festivals. The state's most ancient and revered dance-drama form is Kathakali. In it elaborately costumed dancers wearing vivid make-up, masks and head-dresses, enact tales of gods and demons from epic Indian mythology. Performances (some of which can stretch from late evening to dawn!) take place outside temples are dramatically illuminated by the flickering light of a brass oil lamp. You can experience a memorable all-night performance at the Shri Purnatraysia temple in Thripunitra in October/November - or at Cheruthuruthy near Thrissur, where there's a performing arts festival in December. |
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KURATHIYATAM This is the harvest dance of the fisher-folk, visually similar to Kathakali, and an archaic dance form that draws on sign language, symbolic movements and ancient Vedic chants. |
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MOHINIYATTAM Meaning the 'dance of the enchantress', this is the domain of the female devadasis attached to temples and takes its name from from the goddess who could steal the hearts of onlookers. |
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| Other traditional dances include the MUKVATI (the mythical fisherwoman's dance of destiny) and in Northern Kerala the ritualistic THEYYAM with painted dancers representing deities. Not to be missed is a performance of the almost balletic KALARIPPAYATTU, Kerala's traditional martial art form. |  |
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| KERALA CUISINE | ||||
| Kerala's highly palatable cuisine is just as distinctive as its colourful cultural life and religious traditions. It's a cuisine influenced by the long coastline - and flavoured by the ubiquitous coconut. One enriched with exotic tropical fruits, vegetables, cereals, fresh seafood and herbs. Garnished with the unmistakable aroma of pepper, cardamom, chillies and cloves. A holistic and natural cuisine that follows the tenets of Ayurveda, mildly flavoured, gently cooked and with a certain genteel delicacy on the stomach. In short, it's a cuisine that's truly in harmony with the divine! | ||||
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Generally served on a banana leaf to enhance its subtle flavours, Kerala food is more feast than fast. In the morning you can give toast and marmalade the elbow and wake up to a typical Keralan breakfast of appams (rice flour pancakes) followed by pootu - with rice and grated coconut steamed in a hollow bamboo, eaten sprinkled with sugar or tiny sweet-sour bananas. Fish is always an excellent choice for lunch. Perhaps prawns coated with chillies, ginger, poppy seeds, coconut milk and lime juice - and layered with cardamom and cinnamon-flavoured biriyani rice, scattered with crisply fried onions and cashews. |
These are all steamed together for a taste of heaven on earth! And in the evening why not try Kozhi stew-chicken, with chicken and potatoes simmered gently in a creamy white sauce flavoured with cinnamon, black pepper, cloves, cardamom, ginger, shallots, lime juice and coconut milk. Or meen molee fish in a creamy coconut sauce? Or sambar, a cross between a sauce and a broth, and containing mashed lentils, cooked vegetables and spices that include asafoetida, an exotic edible resin. Apart from a wealth of tropical fruit, you can round off the meal with mouth-watering desserts like thick |
yoghurt with panni, a rich golden syrup made from toddy, and prathaman-mung dal boiled with coconut milk laced with raw palm sugar, cardamom and ginger, and encrusted with fried cashews, raisins and chips of coconut. Bananas are especially popular in Kerala cuisine. Try them as a dessert, sliced finely and deep fried with curry leaves as chips, cut into bits, fried and dipped in jaggery (sugar syrup). Or cooked in yoghurt and seasoned with chilly, tumeric, cumin seed and curry leaves, they become kaalen - an accompaniment to the main meal. |
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