Non-Vegetarian Feast

After reading this blog entry – Worshipping Ghatothgaja – I got nostalgic about wedding feasts and hence this post.

While vegetarians drool about kalyana sappadu (wedding meal) as the ultimate feast, where i come from (a village near Madurai in South Tamil Nadu, India), it is the kari sappadu (meat meal) that is the king of feasts.

For the uninitiated, inspired by the 'self respect movement' of Periyar, the community leaders of our village at that time (yes, we had forward thinking leaders and no, we didn’t have bare-chested nattamais who start every sentence they speak with a screaming ‘aieee’) advocated ‘self-respect weddings’ wherein the wedding ceremony is not officiated by a Brahmin priest and no conventional Hindu rituals are performed. Somehow the leaders missed to spell out that we can do away with the Brahmin meal as well. They were probably busy plotting other social reforms. So, we still serve vegetarian food on the day of the wedding. But, a full fledged non-vegetarian feast aka kari sappadu is served for guests the following day. While we invite everyone in the village and every Pandian (Tom, Dick and Harry) that we have ever encountered in life to the wedding, the guest list for the kari sappadu is limited to just friends/family that we actually care about. And, friends/family who we don't care about, but who we have to invite because they had previously invited us for a kari sappadu in their family.

The morning of the feast starts off with a light breakfast of pooris with minced goat meat curry and idlis with ezhumbu sambhar (sambhar made with lentils and pieces of goat bones). My favorite is the marrow inside the bones in the sambhar. Now, there are a couple of different ways to get the marrow out. Irrespective of technique, the first step is to suck all the sambhar off the bone. This is to make sure that the bone is dry and cannot slip out of the hand during the marrow extraction process. Next, you hold the bone and flick your wrist with just the right force to get the marrow out – too light a flick, the marrow stays inside the bone; too strong a flick, the marrow might fly out and land on someone else’s plate! Or, if you have exceptionally strong teeth, you can chew through the bone and get to the marrow. Growing up, I usually outsourced the extraction work to grandma or dad.

For lunch, the feast is served on a banana leaf starting with the kola urundai (kola ball). Now, I don't know the origin or meaning of the 'kola' but this is essentially a spicy fried meatball made with finely minced goat meat. Crisp on the outside and soft on the inside, this is usually gulped down before the next item can even be served. Next comes the boiled egg. The other side dishes include chicken 65, chicken curry and goat fry. The main course includes chicken and/or mutton biryani (not the dry version made with long grain rice elsewhere in India, but the the soft cooked Madurai version made with the short grain jeeraga samba rice), followed by white rice with rasam and curd. For dessert, the traditional payasam is served. The chief guest (the groom) and a selected few would get the special dishes – goat liver fry, thala curry (curried goat head) and moola curry (curried goat brain). The special items are served to a few only because the goat has a small brain (obviously).

No, I did not forget to mention the vegetarian dishes. Kari sappadu is all about 100% pure non-vegetarian food. Sometimes a small batch of potato or cauliflower curry is made and set aside for any unexpected vegetarian guests. This is served to a guest only after he/she convinces the host that he/she absolutely cannot have meat due to health reasons.

The number of items in the menu may be small, but believe me you will be overwhelmed by the hospitality of the hosts who would make sure that you have eaten enough for a week. As soon as you down a kola urundai, another two would magically appear on your leaf. When you are half way working on the biryani another serving would be heaped on. Your cries of 'Please no, I have had enough' would be heard but interpreted as 'Oh yes, please serve me some more'! Finally, after you have convinced the host that you are done for sure, you would be served a malai vazhaipalam (bananas grown in the nearby hills. These are puny in size compared to the regular bananas but are much more tastier). The meal is ended by gulping down a glass of ice cold sweet lime nannari sherbet (sweetened lime juice with flavoring made from the nannari plant) followed by a loud belch.

After the feast, everyone relaxes on spread out jamukaalams (hand woven bright colored carpets) by chewing betel leaves & nuts and playing rummy (the card game) all through the afternoon.

Kari sappadu day officially ends with a simple dinner of veechu parota (thin parota)/virudhunagar paroto (layered, fried parota)/kothu parota (minced parota with eggs) with chicken chalna (gravy).