The Eenthu Panna tree’s seeds contain the tale of a delicacies, lifestyle and its custodians

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Overlooked Food items: The Eenthu Panna tree’s seeds have the tale of a cuisine, culture and its custodians

This is the 1st in a a few-element collection that chronicles the record of lesser-recognized regional Indian ingredients and dishes, and highlights their significance in micro cuisines — #ForgottenFood.

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“Back in the working day we never ever had devices to pulverise or powder issues, so when we did make eenthu pidi, it was a perevaadi.” Ummi Abdulla utilizes the Malayalam phrase — ‘perevaadi’ — this means elaborate programme to describe the act of producing a dish that teeters on the brink of an pretty much-overlooked culinary landscape. “My maternal grandfather utilized to carry the eenthu house during some aarattu or festival…” In an abrupt, stream-of-conscious fashion, she shifts emphasis to her sister, whose marital household was in Nandi. “She experienced an eenthu tree there — she is no more, but the tree continues to be. Her daughter, however, even now can make eenthu powder for me.”

The ensuing narrative, of the 84-calendar year-previous gatekeeping matriarch of Kerala’s Mappila delicacies and creator of many pioneering cookbooks, is replete with vivid imagery. Abdulla adopts a reverential tone when outlining the system that converts the seeds of the eenthu tree into a versatile flour, giving a burst of lifetime to an elusive component of legendary proportions.

“Ëenthu is like areca nut. It can not be prepared unless of course it’s entirely dry and this is tricky as it is ordinarily plucked in the wet season. We usually slice it into two parts and dry it in excess of a hearth adippe. It is then soaked in h2o and ground to a great powder with a standard stone or cement uralu and olakka.”

Stout but stately, the eenthu panna tree is just as dramatic in overall look as the heirloom preparing that elicits infinite paeans and expressions of distaste alike, because of to its pronounced style, in the north Malabar location. Typically referred to as the Queen Sago Palm or Sago Palm, the Cycas circinalis is an evergreen palm-like tree that grows up to 25 ft. in height and is endemic to the Indian subcontinent.

Its thick, corky trunk erupts into a flamboyant crown development of extended, vivid inexperienced, feathery leaves that are up to 270 cm prolonged. Etymologically, the name circinalis is a by-product of the Latin phrase for coiled, suggestive of the leaf unfurling as it grows.

Of the 9 species of cycads recognised within India, six are endemic and the species Cycas circinalis — endemic to south India — is a nutraceutical plant for various indigenous communities in the Western Ghats. In his article for the Cycad Newsletter, R Singh refers to it as “the range limited to the Western Ghats and hills of the southern peninsula, as considerably north-east as Madras, in the states of Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.”  The vernacular names by which it is referred to, these as Mund isalu (Kannada), eenthu panna (Malayalam), madana kama raja (Tamil) and Malabari supari (Marathi) are testimony to its pervasive presence in these locations.

In accordance to John Donaldson in Cycads: Standing Suvey and Conservation Action Approach, “The cycads (household Cycadaceae) are one of the world’s most threatened plant teams. Originating 300 million many years back throughout the Carboniferous interval, cycads are the oldest extant team of seed plants.”

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The palm-like eenthu panna tree grows up to 25 ft. in height and is endemic to the Indian subcontinent. All photographs courtesy the writer

Illustrations of the “Todda Panna or Mouta Panna” were being recorded in the groundbreaking Dutch botanical text Hortus Indicus Malabaricus, Continents Regni Malabarici apud Indos celeberrimi omnis generis Plantas rariores, 1678-16 (usually referred to as the Hortus Malabaricus).Commissioned by Hendrik van Rheede, the Governor of Dutch Malabar at the time, it outlined the flora in the states of Kerala, Karnataka and Goa and provided the very first definitive perception into South Asia’s tropical botany. These went on to serve as the foundation of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus’ descriptions of the Cycas circinalis L.

The eenthu panna’s unique seeds lend their sort to a wide variety of recipes that are vanishing from the tables of communities this kind of as the Mappilas. Homemaker Nurul Hidaya remembers how her marital department of the Arinhal Karuvantevalappil family, originally from the smaller village of Punaad in the Kannur district, would grind powdered eenthu podi with a pinch of turmeric and salt about the ammi kalle slab.

The resultant combination would be fashioned into pellet-sized pidi or dumplings and steamed in banana leaves or immersed in boiling h2o and cooked like pasta. “We would wait around to get a major fish like aikoora (seer fish) and marinate it with chilli, turmeric and coriander powder, alongside with ginger, garlic and onions. This would be boiled and we’d then add a individually floor paste of coconut and fennel together with the pidis.” The outlined recipe is issued with a caveat. “You never really see eenthu considerably in stores these times.”

When the eenthakka podi or eenthu flour may perhaps not take pleasure in the widespread occurrence it did about 30 decades back, it carries on to be enlisted in far more humble staple preparations throughout the point out. The coarse flour can be steamed with floor coconut in a metallic or bamboo cylindrical mould to make puttu soaked and left to ferment right away with yeast and salt and specified the idli treatment method and even produced into a little one porridge when the leached, good flour is flavoured with salt, sugar or coconut.

The eenthu, however, is not just to be published off as a different passionate meals that elicits nostalgia. It serves as a reminder of the age-previous dependence of communities on wild food items and highlights how a renewed reliance on these is a way of assuring individuals of dietary stability. Ethno-botanical research in Kerala’s Wayanadu district, highlights 165 edible plants made use of by the Kattunaikka, Paniya and Kuruma tribes. Of these, the Paniya tribe possesses expertise regarding 136 taxa of wild edible plants, the Kattunaikkas of 97 taxa and the Kurumas of 42 taxa. Use and conservation patterns of these wild edible crops are upheld by these communities in a manner that is congruent with their social values.

Many of these species are not only viewed as a implies of diet and survival to tide these communities more than all through periods of drought and foods scarcity but also comprise a element of their standard nutritional consumption. Each species is acknowledged as participating in a purpose in sustaining the biodiversity within its ecosystem, and the approaches of assortment are linked to its biology.

Managing and processing techniques as well are typically unrecorded and handed down generations orally. Leaching of the eenthu seeds, for example, is a prerequisite for usage. Seeds are gathered in the months of June via August in Kerala and need to have to attain a greenish yellow colour right before they are pronounced as ripe and prepared for harvesting.

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The processing commences with the seeds getting halved and positioned on elevated bamboo platforms for smoking cigarettes. Dried and smoked seeds can be saved for more than 3 decades, but nonetheless will need to be leached  — either by signifies of being positioned in a bamboo basket or jute sack in jogging water or to be boiled far more than three situations in drinking water — in advance of getting produced into a high-quality or coarse flour. Some villagers in Tamil Nadu take pleasure in preparations showcasing the younger leaves and steamed seed.

Dr P Sujanapal, a scientist at the Kerala Forest Investigation Institute in Kerala, reminds us that the earlier manner in which foods ended up standardised “was by means of a demo-and-mistake process”. This, he adds, is, “the wisdom of our historic folks who went about having wild foodstuff in the system of trying to recognize their houses. Some are toxic and some others have to have processing.”

The eenthu panna also serves as an crucial prototype when it arrives to observing the interesting assignment of gender roles in indigenous assortment procedures and the subsequent management of produce. Kattunaikka gals, for example, thoughtfully depart the upper branches of fruit trees unharvested or selectively harvested for birds and other animals.

The eenthu pidi’s “edible heirloom” standing can be attributed to the Cycas circinalis’ endemic nature. It is listed as endangered on the IUCN Crimson Checklist critically endangered in the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and vulnerable in Kerala by the Basis for Revitalisation of Nearby Health and fitness Traditions (Ravikumar & Ved 2000). Dr Sujanapal reminds us that its regeneration price is very poor and the progress of new seedlings is declining. He adds, “In demography, it’s known as a declining populace. Habitat reduction and degradation can be an additional factor.”

Dr Sujanapal also factors out that the Cycas circinalis’ location as a nutraceutical are unable to be neglected. The exploitation of its leaves transpires for a variety of explanations ranging from remaining about harvested to embellish “pandals” — producing the trees to grow to be stunted and unable to reproduce in range — to aged specimens becoming hacked for the extraction of pith that is thought to have medicinal houses.

The legacy of the eenthu is just as considerably about the feeling of ceremony that prevails “at least once a year” for custodians these as Abdulla, who deal with the preparing of eenthu pidi as a “function”, as it is about acknowledging the methods of the outdated that assured several food stability in the sort of wild edibles. As mentioned by Dr Sujanapal, the eenthu requirements to be seen in the gentle of a must have “ethnobotanical data that is handed down from technology to generation”.

Jehan Nizar is an impartial features writer and foods blogger based in Chennai, India. Her perform most frequently explores food items as a position of convergence for historical past and anthropology and has appeared in countrywide and worldwide publications which includes The Wire, Firstpost, Whetstone Journal, PEN The united states, The Spruce Eats, and Gulf News. She previously wrote a foodstuff column for Asiaville.