Friday, May 25, 2007

Indian Dinner at St. Mary's

On St. Patrick's day at the St. Mary's School dinner and auction, Sharon and her brothers won the bid for a traditional Indian dinner with the parish priests. All of the families plus Sharon's mom had dinner Friday night in the St. Mary's rectory.

It was a Traditional South Indian dinner prepared by one of the parish families. The priests at St. Mary are all from the Kerala state of India. Kerala is a state on the Malabar Coast of southwestern India.

The dinner included five courses. The first course was a soup made from sweet corn, onion, garlic, mustard, cashews, raisins, curry leaves, pudina leaves, carrots and green chiles.

The second course was appam with leshtu. Appam are bowl-shaped thin pancakes made from fermented rice flour. Leshtu is lamb cooked with potatoes, coconut and Indian spices.

The third course included Chicken curry, fried rice with prawns and thoran. Thoran is a dry Keralite dish made of vegetables like pea, unripe jackfruit, carrot or cabbage with grated coconut.

The fourth course included a fried pamplet, broiled brown rice, yogurt curry and papadam. Pamplet is the Indian term for the fish also known as pomfret or Pampus argenteus. The fish seemed like a perch. Papadum is a thin South Asian wafer, best described as a flatbread.

The fifth course was desert. It included payasam and fruit. Payasam is a rice pudding typically made by boiling rice with milk and sugar.

The meal was very different from the India dinners I have had in restaurants in the United States and England. By the end of evening, everyone was stuffed.


No comments:

Post a Comment