A Down-To-Earth Delicacy
Text by Kalpana Sunder
Tapioca in its raw, unprocessed form.
Large piles of earthy tapioca, the dark brown, cylindrical root of the cassava plant, are a common sight in the markets of Kerala, on India’s southern coast. Tapioca is a staple food of the masses, and an important source of carbohydrates. From tapioca and fish curry and tapioca stew to tapioca chips, tapioca (which is called kappa locally) is a starchy tuber. It is daily fare served in homes, thattukadas (or street shops), houseboats on the backwaters, small toddy shops, restaurants and home kitchens. Tapioca, the starch that is derived from the root of the cassava plant — a tuber that is called maracheeni or maravalli kizhangu in Malayalam — is traditionally eaten for breakfast by labourers and farmers. The complex carbohydrate provides them instant energy.
Most Malayalis have a nostalgic connection to kappa in all its iterations. Preetha Mukundan, a Malayali who works for a multinational software company in Chennai, lights up when I ask her about kappa or tapioca. “It’s a staple at home in Kerala and it’s my absolute favourite as a 4 PM snack — steamed kappa with a simple ulli chammanthi, a tangy chutney made of shallots and green chillies. My mouth is watering just thinking about it,” she says with a smile
Chef Regi Mathew, co-owner and director of the popular Kerala restaurant Kappa Chakka Kandhari based in Chennai, says that as a Syrian Christian from Kerala, he grew up eating kappa in a variety of preparations. “Tapioca grows all over Kerala and almost every Malayali family has a small kitchen garden in the backyard, with a tapioca plant growing.” According to Mathew, the taste and flavour of tapioca differs from region to region depending on the nature of the soil and water. The tapioca that comes from terrain where water does not stagnate is used for chips as it has lower water content. “The tastiest tapioca, according to me, comes from a belt near Kottayam,” Mathew says.
Kappa with spicy fish curry served at Kappa Chakka Kandhari. Photograph by Vinayak Grover
The most common home style dish made with the tuber is boiled and mashed kappa with a buttery texture, called kappa vevichathu, seasoned with shallots, turmeric, curry leaves and grated coconut. This is often paired with kudampuli fish curry, a spicy fish curry made with shallots , ginger and seasoned with coconut oil, with kudampuli or Malabar tamarind adding sourness. “Kappa goes very well with spicy food. The blandness is a great counterpoint to the fiery taste of chillies. Kappa is generally boiled and the extra fat is drained off before using it in any dish,” says Mathew.
As a vegetarian, I remember having kappa vevichathu for the first time at a small restaurant in the backwaters of Kerala, with just a tangy red chilli chutney as accompaniment. It tasted fresh and earthy — the neutral taste of kappa offset with the spicy chutney. Another simple way to have it is chenda kappa, where the tapioca pieces are just boiled in water with salt for some time. The water is drained and the dish is ready to be had either with a curry or with a chutney. In the ‘90s, kappa biryani became popular. This dish features boiled tapioca, mashed and tossed with a beef masala mixture.
Malayalis also preserve raw kappa in different ways, as there is usually a glut in the harvest season. They make dried tapioca known as unakka kappa or vaattu kappa. This is used in the winter months to make kappa puzhukku or tapioca seasoned with a spice mixture and ground coconut. In yesteryears, the women of the community would gather together in one house, to make use of the large quantities of kappa that could not be consumed after the harvest. They would parboil the kappa and sun-dry it to use it throughout the year.
“By whatever name tapioca is known, it’s at the heart and soul of Kerala cuisine today. Everybody eats kappa, from labourers and farmers toiling in the fields to the rich and famous in upmarket restaurants. Most poor people just have chunks of kappa boiled with salt and turmeric, with crushed curry leaves and Kandhari or bird’s eye chillies,” says Mathew.
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How did tapioca or cassava, native to Brazil, become a staple in Kerala? Cassava is believed to have been brought to Africa by the Portuguese, as its high calorific value helped to keep slaves alive when they were transported all over their colonies. Cassava first sailed to India from Brazil with Portuguese ships in the 17th century.
It is said that ‘kappa’ got its name when it landed in the ports of Kerala, on kappals or ships from Europe. It was in the late 19th century that kappa became one of Kerala’s most cherished foods. According to K T Achaya’s Indian Food- A Historical Companion, a devastating famine in the 1860s forced the king of Travancore to look for alternative foods, to make good for the loss of paddy and also act as an insurance in the future. He decided to import cassava from Brazil to encourage mass cultivation throughout the kingdom, as a substitute for rice which had become scarce and expensive. He had heard that tapioca was a hardy crop that grew easily in any kind of soil, and needed little attention and water. “The plant could be grown in every backyard and kept in the ground until required,” writes Achaya.
It is said that Sree Visakham Thirunal Rama Varma, the king's brother and an amateur botanist, set up a space next to the palace in Trivandrum for cultivating kappa and put up a warning sign prohibiting anyone from uprooting the plant. The king’s subjects secretly uprooted the strange plant at night, and found that this new tuber could resolve all their food woes. After he ascended the throne, Thirunal Rama Verma is also said to have asked his cooks to cook the tapioca and serve it to him, so that people were convinced that it was safe to be eaten. Soon, the mass cultivation of cassava spread to other parts of Kerala from Travancore.
During World War II, a famine struck Kerala again. Rice imports from Burma stopped because of Japanese invasion, and people were starving. And once again, versatile and cheap kappa came to the rescue, as it could be boiled, steamed or cooked in a dozen different ways. The nutritious tuber was also used as fodder for cattle, after skinning and drying it in the sun to eliminate toxins. (Raw cassava cannot be eaten as it contains natural forms of cyanide (in the form of a chemical compound called linamarin) which is toxic, as well as pollutants absorbed from the soil. Peeling, soaking it in water and boiling it is important before eating it.)
“The selection of the species of kappa to be grown is important,” explains Ravi Sudheendran, a farmer in the Idukki district of Kerala. “Some of them have more toxic cyanides and others are of the sweet variety. The concentration of these toxic elements varies with soils and climatic conditions. The toxic varieties have to be carefully prepared and treated before use, whereas the sweeter varieties just need to be boiled.”
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Kappa cutlets and kappa vadas served at Kappa Chakka Kandhari. Photograph by Vinayak Grover
Because of its historical association with food shortage, many considered kappa a symbol of poverty. Rakesh Raghunathan, food curator and TV show host, says that kappa used to have a solid working class image, as it has always been the mid-morning meal for those who need day- long sustenance, such as farmers or manual labourers. “It has always been the fare of the common man in Kerala, and it is only in recent times that upmarket restaurants have popularised kappa as something fit to be on their fancy menus,” says Raghunathan.
The fact is that from thattukadas to high-end restaurants, kappa finds multiple imaginative uses in Kerala’s cuisine. For instance, one of the typical dishes sold in thattukadas is kolli mutta — an egg and tapioca dish, with green chilli, curry leaves, pepper and a drizzle of coconut oil. Mathew also serves kappa vadas in his restaurant. Kappa is ground and mixed with chopped onion, green chilli and rice flour to create a dough and deep fried and served with a chutney. Kappa pappadum is another home-style favourite, made of cooked tapioca spiced with red chili, pepper, salt, cumin and asafoetida,flattened and sun dried on straw mats and stored, to be deep fried when needed.
Tapioca is also popular because it’s a gluten free alternative to wheat. But because it is a calorific food, pairing it with the right accompaniments is important to benefit from its nutritive properties. As Dr. Dharini Krishnan, a Chennai-based dietician says, “Tapioca is a source of both calcium and iron. Since tapioca does not contain saturated fats, it can help in preventing heart disease. Because it has a high glycemic index, it is not a great food for people with diabetes, unless it is combined with foods high in protein. It is nutritious and full of fibre and when paired with a protein like fish, it is a perfectly balanced food.”
Prima Kurien, a home chef from Kerala who lives in New Delhi, tells us about how she features kappa on her menu and her memories of eating it when she was growing up. “Kappa is pure nostalgia. My favourite way to eat it is to pair it with a simple rice broth ( or kanji), and you don’t need curry or pickle [to accompany it]. But kappa has to be eaten piping hot, straight off the fire, as it does not travel well. If I had a restaurant, I would serve it in all its forms. But in my catering business, I only serve it as a starter — steamed kappa as cubes served with a spicy shallot chutney,” she says.
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In the past few years, kappa has been re-invented in several ways by innovative research. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is tapping into the potential of the tuber to be converted into high end products. They run training programmes teaching local women how to convert tapioca into value-added products - from tapioca pasta and noodles to deep fried snacks, with attractive packaging.
Another award-winning initiative is the Thrissur based start-up Brahma Indic Nutriments Pvt Ltd, started by Rajesh Menon. Initiated in 2018, the company makes a variety of tapioca products, from millet-enriched noodles to gluten-free pasta that are retailed online on Amazon and also exported to the Middle East. “We aim to make junk-free, healthy snacks from tapioca. There is a glut of tapioca in the state and it has to be used creatively,” says Menon.
In the 1940s, cassava became an important raw material for sago industries established in Salem and Dharmapuri districts of Tamil Nadu. Sago pearls are made by passing the moist starch through a sieve under pressure. Though these tapioca pearls are famous in other parts of India as a fasting food (as they enhance satiety), in Kerala, kappa is still consumed in its traditional form. Prem Menon,a media professional from Kerala who now lives in Chennai, says, “Kappa, which was once considered poor man’s food, is now ironically a rich man’s delicacy. As a Malayali, we have to have our fix of the sweet variety of kappa wherever we live,at least once a week. The best thing about kappa is that it’s a blank canvas. It also defies class and social status, and almost everyone in Kerala grows a small kappa plant in their backyard.”
