Set the table for a feast fit for gods

Christmas is just around the corner and the excitement is building — so is the shopping list to pick up ingredients for the elaborate festive feast. The cultures, traditions, people and their food are so diverse across South India that what one family prepares might not be the same in the other’s home. Four families, one each from Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, invite us into their homes to show us what’s cooking this Christmas.

The build-up to the festival is always more than the festival itself because so much of time goes in preparing for it, begins Dorothy Coyne from Chennai. “We learnt how to prepare some traditional Anglo-Indian Christmas recipes from our parents,” she says. For instance, on Christmas Eve, after coming back from midnight mass, some people like to have a meal. “It could be regular breakfast dishes like eggs, bacon and sausages or some people make a mixed meat stew called buffarth,” she adds. The preparation is normally eaten with bread. “Our grandparents used to cook on coal and wood so they used to leave the pot of buffarth on the firewood stove and go to church so the meats could slow-cook,” she recalls.

On Christmas morning, many families in the city prefer going out for lunch — “Otherwise it’s cooking all over again for the women of the house,” jokes one of them. “If we have a simple lunch, then on Christmas night, we have friends and family dropping in and make roast duck or chicken or turkey with mashed potatoes and sauces,” explains Dorothy. The drinking and merry-making will go on till the early hours of the following morning. To go with the drinks, a chunk of meat marinated with different salts that’s cooked, known as salted meat, is also served apart from meatball curry and coconut rice.

Over the years, a lot of traditions have been lost along the way and these days, be it in any state across South India, biriyani is served in almost every home for Christmas. Michael Mathews, a resident of Bengaluru, agrees. “When I was a child, we would make rave unde, murukku and kajjaya at home.

Apart from this, most Mangaloreans like us would make ghee rice with chicken curry or roast but biriyani is the latest trend,” he says. Sannas, which are spongy steamed savoury rice cakes, is another traditional dish served with stew or pork vindaloo. “Our family invariably makes spiced avlakki, which is a Hubli special,” says another Mangalorean native, now settled in Chennai.

Fr. Emmanuel, who hails from Andhra Pradesh but is currently in Tamil Nadu, shares based on his experience that nearly all Christian communities across South India have similar prayers, traditions and food on Christmas. He says, “When I was travelling through rural Andhra Pradesh, though I didn’t have much time to observe in detail, what stood out in the meals served on Christmas day was a sweet called ariselu made with jaggery, ghee and rice flour and garelu or medu vadas.” Among the non-vegetarian dishes, gongura mutton gravy, Hyderabadi biriyani and puliohara are other popular dishes.

Kerala comes alive during Christmas and the smell of delicious dishes being cooked in homes emerges. “Some of the staples we eat on the festival include avalose podi made with roasted rice and coconut, tharavu or duck curry, appam with chicken or mutton stew and vattayappams or sweet steamed rice cakes,” says Elsy George, a retired teacher. She finds that turkey roast is found in homes these days, but is a result of Western influence. “We wouldn’t have the full turkey or chicken roast as children. 

It mostly consisted of non-vegetarian preparations native to Kerala that included seafood, beef, mutton and chicken. Even today, apart from these dishes, we serve the usual curries to go with rice, and some vegetable preparations,” she states.