Sutta Panampazha Payasam

My parents took a trip in early 2021 to my mother’s once-upon-a-time village home. As they were leaving and buying the famous Kallidaikurichi applams and inji thokkus and the like, I phoned: Appa, appa pleaaaase, kummiti aduppu. Because he’d be the one to convince to turn the car around and oblige my impulsive request. I imagined my aunt hobbling over to the ramshackle building next to Tilak Mahal (yes, named after Lokamanya Tilak) as my grandfather had called his once-palatial home. The building had for long been the local post office, but stood solitary sentry now to my youngest aunt’s small goshala. I pictured her fumbling endlessly with bunches of keys for all the old, heavy locked doors to retrieve this small charcoal stove from one of the inner rooms, and everyone getting terribly annoyed at the delay I’d caused.

But I was insistent and unapologetic. This was my grandmother’s, likely used to prepare afternoon beverages and tiffins (mud stoves were for bigger meals)—and one of very few connective threads I have to a woman I never myself knew and a world large enough, to me as a child and to my memory of that child’s mind, to get lost in.

“It’s not been used for long,” said Amma, “boil milk first.” I did.

And then I roasted a panampazham.

Of all the toddy palm/palmyrah/Borassus flabellifer trees in India, mostly on the Eastern coast and down into Kerala, about half are in Tamil Nadu where the tree is worshipped as a karpaga tharu–a kalpavriksha, a wish-fulfilling tree, which emerged along with so much else during the samudra manthan or churning of the ocean of milk. Palmyrah is one of five trees or panchatharu that went to Indra’s garden: Mantharai [Hong Kong orchid/Bauhinia Variegata], Parijata [Coral Jasmine/Bauhinia Variegata], Harichandana [Sandal/Santalum album], Samtanaka [no verifiable identification with modern species], and Karpaga [Palmyrah–though some identify it also with coconut].

Palmyra trees seed themselves, but have been strategically cultivated to mark boundaries between pieces of land. Boundary disputes or provocations can start by cutting the palm trees. Male and female trees are distinct, and there’s often a preference for the latter, leading to a sort of gender discrimination in the plant world [my thanks to Nina Sengupta for these insights]. The leaves were used famously for writing, giving us palm leaf manuscript bundles that are preserved in places like the French Institute in Pondicherry to this day. They are also used to weave roof thatch, mats, and so much more [called cadjans]. Padaneer is tapped from the toddy palm in season and from it comes panavellam or palmyrah jaggery. The immature fruits are harvested in the hottest weeks of the summer for the “ice apples” or nungu within.

And then of course there is the panampazham itself–to this day not sold in shops, likely because of high-fast spoilage rates and the complexity of processing. Thaati thandra or the palmyrah equivalent of the “aaam paapad”/mango leather is common in Telugu-speaking regions though.

For all the toddy palm stories on the blog [processing, rice cakes, fruit leather], this really should have been the first—the sutta panampazham or roasted toddy palm fruit is the classic, rustic, village delight. Many will still remember the joys of pulling the hot fruit segments apart, straight from a wood fire, prising the pulp from fibres with fingers, lips, teeth. Anyhow, really. Sri Lankan Tamils, cut off from food supplies during the war, may also recall this fruit coming to their aid as a source of sustenance (and even hair care, in the unroasted form). Roasting arrests fruit fermentation, thickens the pulp and imparts an inimitable smoky flavor.

Then to sit and comb orange pulp out of the fruit’s hairy body, thinking of the panampazham as a metaphor for where we were as a family so many months after that Kallidaikurichi trip: bodies failing and falling like these once-infallible fruits from soaring treetops; set on coals to roast, a visiri (palm leaf fan) tantalizingly promising cool but indeed bringing more blistering heat. Then the fruit pressed of all pulp as though the roasting wasn’t ascetic trial enough. In the end, I was left with those wiry panampazham fibres.

It pained me then as much as it does now, anticipating the coming panampazham season, to relive those times–to think of that trip my parents took “home” as the last they would have together, our links to that world fraying. I saved those stubbornly tough fibres, the panampazha-naar, and burnt them as we must burn all things, as wicks in prayer lamps. Why not?

The pulp itself? Became payasam and was gone in a minute, not unlike the lives we lead.

Note: Panampazham pulp ferments and sours in a blink, which is why it is so wonderful to use in making small steamed rice cakes. The roasted pulp keeps, refrigerated, well near up to a year, but it will still break the milk you use to make payasam if it’s not used freshly roasted, so add it last and after the thickened milk-rice-sugar kheer has cooled a little.

Sutta Panampazha Payasam

The roasted panampazham or fruit of the toddy palm tree is a village delight in Tamil Nadu, Odisha, and West Bengal and the payasam is a delicacy. Here we roast the fruit on an open fire and make the classic payasam with the smoky-sweet fruit pulp. It is an extraordinary, and extraordinarily special dessert.

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Equipment

• A kummiti aduppu (charcoal stove), man-aduppu (mud stove) or other outdoor, wood-fired stove. A barbecue grill works, as does a roti-grill for an indoor gas stove, though that may make a mess with the drippings.

Ingredients

  

• 2 large, ripe toddy palm fruits
• 1 liter whole or full-fat milk
• ¼ cup of aromatic rice [jeeraga samba, gobindo bhog, ambe mohar work well]
• 1 cup sugar
• ½ cup freshly grated coconut
• 3-4 cardamom pods, peeled and powdered
• A generous pinch of grated nutmeg

Instructions

 

Roast the panampazham, extract the pulp

• If you have a kumitti aduppu or man aduppu or other small wood-fired stove, light it up, and place the whole panampazhams on top. If you don’t have an outdoor wood stove, you can do this on a large burner of a regular cooking stove indoors, preferably with a roti grill, but it’s messy—beware.
• Turn the panampazham periodically until the outer layers are charring just slightly, and evenly all over the body of the fruit. Remove and set aside.
• Use the blunt edge of a kitchen knife to extract the pulp. This is a long process, so make yourself comfortable, put on some music, and roll up your sleeves as you comb the pulp out of the fibres of the panampazham until the individual seeds look like troll dolls.
• Each panampazham has 3 seeds, and together they will give you maybe a ½ cup of pulp. With two roasted fruits you should have about a cup of roasted pulp.

Make the payasam

• Soak the rice in water for at least a half hour.
• Bring the milk to a boil on the stovetop. Slowly add the soaked (and drained) rice. Mix well and keep a wooden ladle in the milk as it continues to boil, to prevent it from boiling over.
• Stir frequently until the rice is well cooked, breaking apart, and the milk has reduced in volume by about half.
• Add the sugar, and boil again, stirring frequently to prevent any catching and burning at the bottom of the vessel.
• When the boil changes from a watery one to a bit of a “mud pot” boil, turn off the flame. Allow to cool.
• After the payasam has cooled to just warmer than room temperature, add 1 cup of the panampazham pulp, the fresh coconut, powdered cardamom and freshly grated nutmeg. Whisk together well.
• If your milk splits even after all this care—don’t worry, whisk well, and enjoy the slightly different texture of the resulting payasam.
• Serve at room temperature or chilled. Be sure not to re-heat or the milk in the payasam will split for sure or split more!