Chembu Mezhukkupuratti

Kerala's taro boiled, then smeared with coconut oil and tossed with shallots, turmeric and curry leaves until the edges catch

Origin: Kochi, Kerala & the Malabar Coast

From the journey of Taro.

Mezhukkupuratti is a technique before it is a dish, and the word says so: it means smeared with oil, and it names an entire class of Kerala dry vegetable preparations in which something starchy is boiled first, then turned in coconut oil with shallots, turmeric, chilli, and curry leaves until the outsides colour. Raw banana, yam, and beans all take the treatment. Chembu, the taro corm, takes it best, because its floury surface catches and crisps in a way a wetter vegetable will not. Taro is an everyday vegetable in Kerala rather than an occasional one, and the language reflects how carefully the state distinguishes its tubers. Chembu is Colocasia esculenta. Chena is elephant foot yam, Amorphophallus paeoniifolius, a different genus with a different texture. Kaachil is a true yam, a Dioscorea. English flattens all three into yam and loses the distinctions that Malayalam keeps, and a Kerala cook asked to substitute one for another will explain at some length why that is not possible. The plant suits the place. Kerala's paddy bunds, backwater margins, and homestead corners are wet, shaded, and useless for most crops, and taro grows on them without attention. It is planted where nothing else will go, dug when it is wanted rather than at a harvest, and it appears in the weekly rotation of almost every household kitchen. The one discipline the dish requires is the one every taro cuisine arrives at independently. The corm is boiled thoroughly before it goes near the pan, and a little tamarind or a piece of kudampuli, the Malabar gambooge, frequently goes into that water. Undercooked taro will scratch the throat sharply, and the acid finishes what the boiling begins.

Ingredients

Boiling

  • 600 g taro (chembu), scrubbed but unpeeled
  • 1 tsp salt, for the boiling water
  • 1 small piece kudampuli or 1 tsp tamarind pulp, for the boiling water

Mezhukkupuratti

  • 3 tbsp coconut oil
  • 12 small shallots, sliced
  • 0.5 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1 tsp red chilli powder
  • 0.25 tsp freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 sprigs curry leaves
  • 2 dried red chillies, broken
  • 0.75 tsp salt, or to taste

Method

  1. Boil the taro whole and unpeeled, in salted water with the kudampuli or tamarind, for twenty to twenty-five minutes until a skewer passes through with no resistance.
  2. Cooking them in their skins keeps them from going waterlogged, and peeling a cooked corm is far easier and far less irritating than peeling a raw one.
  3. Drain and cool them enough to handle, then slip off the skins and cut the corms into thick rounds or halves.
  4. Heat the coconut oil in a wide pan or a kadai until it shimmers. Coconut oil is not interchangeable here; it is half of what the dish tastes of.
  5. Add the dried chillies and curry leaves and let them crackle for a few seconds.
  6. Add the shallots and fry over a medium heat for five or six minutes until soft and beginning to brown at the edges.
  7. Stir in the turmeric, chilli powder, pepper, and salt and cook for thirty seconds, no longer, or the spices will burn.
  8. Add the taro and turn it gently through the oil and spices until every piece is coated. Use a flat spatula and fold rather than stir, since the corms break easily.
  9. Now leave it alone. Spread the pieces out and let them sit over a medium heat for four or five minutes without moving them, so a crust forms on the underside.
  10. Turn once, and give the other side the same treatment. The finished dish should be dry, deep yellow, and crisp at the edges rather than soft throughout.
  11. Serve hot as a side with rice and sambar, or with rice and moru curry.

Notes

Boil the taro until it is entirely soft: the calcium oxalate crystals in an undercooked corm will burn the mouth and throat for hours, and the acid in the boiling water helps but does not replace the cooking time. Peel after boiling, not before, both for safety and because raw taro sap causes fierce itching on the hands. Use small round taro rather than the very large corms sold for slicing, and use coconut oil, since a neutral oil produces something recognisably not this dish. Kudampuli, the Malabar gambooge, is sold by Kerala grocers; tamarind is the usual substitute and works well.

The Gastrographer

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