Kozhi Kaal – Thalassery Special

Kozhi Kaal literally means Chicken leg piece. But actually it’s a pure vegetarian snack made using tapioca, a trademark dish from Thalassery of Kannur district. Locally it’s also pronounced as ‘Koyi Kaal’. Most of Thalassery dishes are purely traditional, carried forward through future generations. There are many distinct tastes owned by families, but could not be passed forward to others, at a time when social media was not so active. In the recent times too, only a few dishes have come into existence. Thalassery is famous for many non-vegetarian dishes, most popular being Thalassery Biryani. Here is the recipe for Kozhi Kaal, a 4 o’clock snack.

Ingredients for Kozhikaal:

1. Tapioca – ½ kg

2. Besan (Kadala Maav) – 100 gm

    Maida – 100 gm

    Chilli powder – 1 small spoon

    Turmeric powder – ½ small spoon

    Salt – For taste

    Curry leaves – 1 stalk

    Garlic – 6 cloves crushed

3. Cooking oil – To fry

How to prepare Kozhikaal?

1. Cut tapioca into lengthwise thin sticks, similar to French fries. You can soak the pieces in water for 15 minutes to remove the starch. Drain the water.

2. Mix ingredients no: 2 to the tapioca pieces and mix well.

3. Grab three or four pieces of tapioca using your right hand to form one simple bundle (pidi in Malayalam).

4. Fry each one in hot oil and serve with hot oil.

Tips for Kozhikaal:

1. You can bring variant taste to your kozhikaal by adding masala powder, ginger paste, pepper powder, asafetida powder etc, as per preferences.

2. Each bundle can be formed by a maximum of 10 tapioca pieces, not more than that.

3. You can also substitute maida with rice powder.

Courtesy: Vanitha Magazine, May 1-14, 2017

Click to read a few more delicious tapioca recipes here. Here is the page link. Click on the images in the gallery to read.