Breakfast
Steamed rice-string nests — noolappam — eaten with curry or sweet coconut milk.
About
Idiyappam (Malayalam: ഇടിയപ്പം; also noolappam, noolputtu) is rice flour pressed into fine strings, coiled into nests, and steamed. The Tamil root nool means thread; the Malayalam kitchen calls the same breakfast നൂലപ്പം. English Wikipedia places it in ancient Tamil country by the first century, beside appam, idli, and dosa, and in the Kannada cookbook Lokopakara of 1025 CE. It is breakfast and dinner food in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Sri Lanka — not usually lunch — served with egg curry, stew, fish curry, or lightly sweetened coconut milk.
The dough is rice flour, salt, and hot water. Malayalam Wikipedia specifies rice that has been soaked, ground, and dry-roasted before it is mixed. A little grated coconut is often worked in or sprinkled on the nests. Wheat flour makes a brownish hopper; shops also sell a fine “instant” idiyappam flour. The press — wooden in older kitchens, steel in most houses now — forces the dough through a plate of small holes.
In most of Kerala and Tamil Nadu the dough is pressed into strings first, then steamed. The Kongu region of Tamil Nadu reverses that: a steamed rice-flour ball is pressed, closer to Karnataka’s ottu shavige. Nests are laid on a perforated plate and steamed in an idli cooker until they hold. Santhagai, a related Tamil dish, is the reverse method given a separate name: steamed balls pressed into noodles, not pressed noodles steamed.
Tear a nest and dip it in curry. English Wikipedia lists potato, egg, fish, or meat curry, rasam, and coconut chutney; vegetable stew and avial sit beside it as often. Malayalam Wikipedia shows kadala curry as a morning plate. Homes also pour thin coconut milk with a little sugar — the sweet breakfast Wikipedia records in northern Kerala. It is not usually a lunch dish.
Ragi (finger millet) and wheat flours darken the strings. Putu mayam, the Malaysian and Singapore street form, is steamed with pandan and eaten cold with grated coconut and palm sugar; Indonesian putu mayang takes the same sweet coconut milk. Those are cousins, not the Kerala curry plate. Commercial idiyappam flour shortens the roast-and-grind step.
Gallery
How it is steamed, served, and varied — open any image for a larger view.
7 photos
More dishes
Other famous plates from Kerala’s kitchen.