Who Needs Easter Eggs When You Can Have Appams?
Text by Simi George
Photographs by Donnie George and Nadackal family
The perfect appam presents a contrast of textures. The ishtoo, typically made of goat or chicken, is delicately flavoured.
Growing up in Delhi, chocolate eggs were all I wanted for Easter. Instead, my mother made appams. I’ve often seen appams categorised as pancakes. However, I consider this an unjust demotion. No pancake has ever called for the commitment needed to make a decent appam.
Beloved among the Nasrani Christians of India, appams require just a handful of ingredients — raw rice, grated coconut or coconut milk, yeast, sugar and salt. But they also demand qualities that are harder to muster, such as planning, patience, and practice. The rice is soaked in water for several hours, then ground with the other ingredients to a smooth batter which is fermented overnight. A ladleful of the frothy batter is poured into a wok-shaped appachatty (“chatty” means pan in Malayalam), which is gently twirled so that the batter thinly coats the sides of the pan, and pools in the centre. The appachatty is then covered and the appam cooked on low heat. The perfect appam presents a contrast of textures, between a crisp, golden-brown, lacy border, and a spongy dome-shaped centre, perfect for mopping up the curry served alongside.
In my quintessential Nasrani Christian family, when it comes to breakfast, appam and a meaty ishtoo (derived from “stew”) is the gold standard. An Easter breakfast of appam and ishtoo is considered just as sacred as Easter mass. What better metaphor for Jesus rising from the dead than risen appam batter?
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Perfectly frothy appam batter is crucial for achieving the right texture
The Nasranis, also known as St Thomas Christians or Syrian Christians, are an ancient Christian community from the state of Kerala on India’s southwestern coast. Some historians trace the community’s origins to the 1st century A.D. It is believed that St Thomas, one of Jesus’s 12 disciples, visited India in 52 A.D. and baptised a few native Hindu families. This laid the foundation for what would become a prominent Indian Christian community, considered one of the oldest in the Christian world. The word “Nasrani” comes from the town of Nazareth in Israel, which is revered by Christians as the childhood home of Jesus. Nasrani culture is a blend of Indian customs and Christian traditions and rituals.
Easter is a special time in the Christian calendar. It follows Lent, a period of penance and self-reflection, commemorating the days Jesus spent fasting in the desert before beginning his public ministry. Traditionally, Nasranis abstain from eating meat and fish for 50 days during the Lenten season — no small sacrifice for a passionately carnivorous community. On Good Friday, the community restricts itself to a single frugal meal – kanji (rice gruel) and payar (a simple green gram stir fry). Easter celebrations begin in church on Saturday night with Easter vigil, a celebratory mass that continues into the early hours of Easter morning. As kids, my brother and I would nod off from time to time, waking up with a start whenever the choir launched into a hymn. At the end of mass, we’d leave church filled with a fizzy mixture of joy and relief, knowing that we could now count on finding more than vegetables on our plates.
Easter Sunday begins with a feast of appam and ishtoo (typically made with chicken or goat), a meal of special significance marking the end of Lenten abstinence, and the beginning of a new season in the Christian calendar. Friends and extended family feast together later in the day, but breakfast is usually shared by close family.
While Nasranis across Kerala eat appam and ishtoo on Easter morning, the menu for lunch or dinner can vary by geography. A constellation of meat and fish dishes is served, including melt-in-the-mouth beef patties (called “cutlets”), and kappa puzhukku or spiced tapioca mash, served with fiery red fish curries. In Kuttanad, known as the rice bowl of Kerala for its vast green paddy fields, located in the southern part of the state, a spicy duck curry called tharavu mappas is central to the Easter menu, whereas pork ularthiyathu or pork fry is popular in Angamaly in central Kerala.
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The history of appam, also known as palappam, is open to speculation. (Pal, which means milk in Malayalam, refers to coconut milk in this context).
Some historians connect appams to the neighbouring south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. In Indian Food: A Historical Companion, K.T. Achaya, the doyen of Indian food history, notes that appams are mentioned in the Tamil work, Perumpanuru, dating back to the 5th century A.D. Today, however, the dish is considered integral to Kerala’s cuisine.
There are many theories surrounding the origins of appams. Regardless of their provenance, they are popular across South and Southeast Asia.
Some historians trace appams to Kerala’s ancient Jewish community. In his book Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, the eminent American food writer and historian Gil Marks writes that appams are part of the culinary repertoire of Indian Jewish communities. According to some accounts, merchants sent by King Solomon to bring ivory, sandalwood and other exotic supplies from Kerala to Israel in the 10th century B.C., were the first Jews to settle in India. While the precise era in which the first Jews arrived in Kerala is unclear, there is documented evidence of a Jewish community dating back to the 9th century A.D. Once flourishing, the Malabar Jews are now a dying community, with only a handful remaining in Kerala. Marks also theorises that the word appam is derived from the Sanskrit apupa (or rice cake) mentioned in the Rig Veda, an ancient Hindu text, or the Tamil word appa (which means father). .
A third theory is that appam owes its provenance to Dutch colonisers who controlled parts of the Indian subcontinent in the 17th and 18th centuries. Unquestionably, the Dutch left a deep imprint on Kerala’s architecture and cuisine. Kochi’s majestic Bolgatty Palace, the oldest Dutch palace outside Holland, is the most visible reflection of the Dutch presence in Kerala centuries ago. Achappams or rose cookies, a beloved snack among the Nasranis, are also attributed to the Dutch. However, the theory that the Dutch brought appams to India only a few centuries ago seems implausible considering documentary evidence cited by Achaya, suggesting that appams were consumed in South India thousands of years ago.
Over time, the appam has travelled beyond South India. Today, it is popular in Sri Lanka, Singapore, and other parts of Asia. In Singapore and Indonesia, street hawkers serve appams with a variety of accompaniments, including spicy chutneys and a mixture of sugar and grated coconut. In Sri Lanka, bowl-shaped aappa (anglicised to “hoppers”), are served with curries or sambols, fiery condiments made of coconut, chillies and spices.
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Ishtoo, the traditional accompaniment for appams, is a delicately flavoured dish. The triumvirate of spice powders — coriander, turmeric and chilli — that many regional Indian cuisines heavily lean on, is absent in the dish. In an ishtoo, goat or chicken is cooked with an array of aromatic whole spices (such as cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper and fennel seeds), ginger, garlic, onions, curry leaves, and coconut milk. Cubed potatoes, diced carrots and peas are also added. The use of these vegetables – none of which are used in traditional South Indian cuisine – reflects Kerala’s Portuguese colonial history.
Appams are also paired with a range of assertively spiced dishes. Vegetarian accompaniments include egg roast — hard boiled eggs nestled in a bed of spicy caramelised onions and tomatoes, and kadala curry — a hearty dish of black chickpeas with depths of flavour from roasted coconut, curry leaves, and an array of whole and ground spices. Non-vegetarian accompaniments include mellow fish molee, analogous to ishtoo in the minimalistic use of spices, and spicy fish or meat mappas, flavoured with coconut milk and generous quantities of ginger, garlic, and assorted spice powders. My grandmother would serve us kids appams with sweetened coconut milk, using coconuts from the sky-grazing trees that stood next to her home. She’d split the coconut open with a hatchet, scrape out the meat, give it a run in her mixer, and squeeze out the milk through a sieve. It was sweet, creamy and fragrant, nothing like the insipid canned variety I rely on.
Marks, the food historian, describes appam as “a rather bland, thin, bowl-shaped pastry, with a soft, puffy interior, and lacy, crisp edges.” An appam is many things, but bland it is not. The flavours speak in whispers but if you listen closely, you’ll hear a quiet symphony – the aroma and lingering sweetness of fresh coconut, a mild yeasty tang, and a hint of salt balancing it all out. It is this subtlety that makes it possible for the dish to be paired so harmoniously with a variety of dishes – mellow molee and spicy mappas, sweet coconut milk and piquant sambol. Appams are best fresh off the appachatty while the edges are crisp, and a cloud of steam is still hanging over their soft, supple centre. If I had to speculate, I’d venture to guess that Marks had the misfortune of being served an appam past its prime.
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Cooking appams is not a project for the novice. To borrow from Tolstoy, every leaden appam is a failure in its own way. Back when I was a beginner, I’d call my mother after every failed attempt in pursuit of answers. She’d recite a litany of possibilities. Maybe the rice was too starchy? Was the yeast not fresh enough? It’s possible the batter was too thick. Could it have been the temperature? Her expertise is hard-won. Temperatures dropped to single digits in the Delhi winter, rendering her kitchen somewhat inhospitable to yeast. She would leave the appam batter overnight in the oven, the warmest part of her kitchen. In the morning, she would leap out of bed to check on its health. As insurance against the risks inherent in appam making, we always had a loaf of pillowy white bread on hand as a potential substitute. It felt like a small miracle when the batter rose to frothy perfection just in time for breakfast. I have inherited my mother’s worry gene. When I leave appam batter to rise overnight, anxiety penetrates my sleep and manifests in nightmares of flat batter. I wake up slightly disoriented, not knowing if failure lies in the realm of sleep or reality.
Appam making has transformed over the generations. My grandmother’s appachatties were made of cast iron or clay. Often, the lid had a small cavity to hold embers of hot coal to ensure even heating. In my mother’s kitchen, appams slide off her non-stick appachatty like silk. Traditionally, appam batter was fermented with kallu, a sparkling, pleasantly sour, mildly sweet toddy made from the sap of palm trees. With kallu having a short shelf life and becoming increasingly difficult to procure as toddy tappers become a shrinking tribe, yeast is now the more common fermenting agent. Packaged appam powder or appapodi (podi is powder in Malayalam), now readily available, eliminates the need for soaking or grinding but the resulting appam, while serviceable, is not a patch on the real deal.
I now live on the other end of the world from Kerala. Tradition has taken on new meaning for me in the wake of the pandemic. Having been away from my family in India for longer than ever before, it has become an even more important tether to my roots. This year, my three-year-old daughter will celebrate Easter with her friends in preschool. There will be Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies. But like always, we’ll start the day with appam and ishtoo.
