Seaside villages in Thiruvananthapuram, especially in places like St. Andrews, have a distinctive cuisine for Christmas

Seaside villages in Thiruvananthapuram like St. Andrews have a special cuisine for Christmas

Come Christmas, home cook and culinary expert Marina Charles is busy baking her signature Orappam, a dessert that is must at homes in St. Andrews, a serene, beachside village, 14 kilometres from Thiruvananthapuram.

Rice flour is cooked in coconut milk with sugar and ghee till it achieves a thick paste-like consistency. A little fennel is added for flavour. Marina recalls that her grandmother and mother would then take the mixture, close it with a lid and keep it on the embers of a firewood stove. Burning bits of coconut shells were heaped on the lid. Different versions of Orappam are cooked on festive occasions in many households in Southern Kerala. But the ones made in coastal villages in Thiruvananthapuram have a different consistency and flavour. 

“The Orappam would have a nice crust on the top and bottom and a buttery soft heart. It is a laborious task. When I make it or teach my students, I bake the thick mixture in an oven. Moreover, it can be made with jaggery or sugar. I use sugar. It is my husband’s favourite dessert. Instead of cake, I usually make Orappam for his birthday as well,” says Marina.

It is the season when homes are filled with the aroma of rich plum cakes, heady wines, hot pies, cutlets and more. However, the dishes on the table at homes in St. Andrews and the coast in Thiruvananthapuram are slightly different. Once home to a sizeable settlement of Portuguese, the cuisine has integrated European cooking methods and flavours with the traditional cuisine of the coastal village. Over the years, the place acquired a distinctive cuisine of its own.

Writing about this unique culinary tradition, Lakshmi B writes in the literary journal, Samyuktha: St Andrews is bequeathed with a multicultural food heritage. …History attests to the fact that there was a sizeable Portuguese settlement in the southern coast near Thiruvananthapuram. The name St. Andrews itself is derived from the Portuguese Sandandarae or Santo Andarae which means Saint Andrew. 

Marina is keeping alive the culinary legacy that she inherited from her mother Thelma Gomez. Says Marina: “For my mother, Christmas would not be complete without Orappam, Thari dosi, a kind of local scone, Rissole, pork vindaloo and bol…”

She recalls that cooking Orappam and Thari dosi were laborious and time-taking and the preparations for vindaloo would begin months earlier. Instead of red wine used in cooking vindaloo in Goa, vinegar is used and “the garlic and red chilli used in the preparation were soaked in vinegar for at least two months,” says Marina.