Market Stall Icon · Tamarind Crab Curry
Jaffna Crab Curry (Nandu Kari)
📷 Closely related photo — Photo: Sanjinaga / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
The same lagoon crabs go into odiyal kool, a fiery Jaffna seafood broth thickened with flour ground from dried palmyrah root sprouts.
Whole lagoon crabs are broken into shell-on pieces and cooked down in a thick, deep-red gravy of roasted Jaffna curry powder, coconut milk, tamarind and curry leaves. It's a signature of Jaffna's eateries and home kitchens, eaten by hand with rice or string hoppers.
Why it's made this way: Jaffna's Tamil kitchens draw directly on South Indian technique carried across the narrow Palk Strait, applied here to crab hauled daily from the peninsula's lagoons.
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