Kerala recipes, cooked the easy way
Five dishes from India's coconut coast, written for an ordinary American kitchen: short ingredient lists, supermarket substitutions and step-by-step methods you can follow the first time. Porotta and beef fry, pazham pori, egg puffs, payasam and fish curry.
Kerala Porotta with Beef Fry
The most ordered plate in Kerala: flaky layered porotta torn up and eaten with dark, dry-roasted beef. Buy the porotta from an Indian store and the beef fry takes about an hour.
Pazham Pori (Kerala Banana Fritters)
The four o'clock tea-shop snack of Kerala. Ripe banana slices in a light turmeric batter, fried until the edges go crisp.
Kerala Egg Puffs
Every bakery in Kerala sells these: puff pastry filled with onion masala and half a boiled egg. One sheet of store-bought pastry does six.
Semiya Payasam
The dessert that ends every Kerala feast. Vermicelli simmered in milk with cardamom, then finished with cashews and raisins fried in ghee.
Kerala Fish Curry (Meen Curry)
The red coconut fish curry cooked in a clay pot along the Kerala coast. Sharper and tangier than most Indian curries, and ready in half an hour.
Cooking these from scratch?
An Indian grocery covers everything here: coconut oil, curry leaves, Kashmiri chilli powder, kudampuli and frozen porotta. Buy the porotta and pastry ready-made and each recipe drops to about half an hour.
Rather eat out?
Indian and Kerala restaurants across the US are listed in our Food hub, each with its address and a map link for the branch nearest you.
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