Beachside Bowl · Palmyrah Seafood Stew
Odiyal Kool
Photo: Sivam29 / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
It's thickened not with wheat or rice flour but with odiyal — flour ground from boiled, sun-dried palmyrah palm root, a starch found almost nowhere outside Jaffna's palmyrah country.
Prawns, crab, cuttlefish and fish are simmered with drumstick pods and tamarind into a thick, dark stew, bound with odiyal (palmyrah root flour) instead of ordinary starch. Roadside stalls and seaside carts around Jaffna ladle it out hot, especially in the evenings.
Why it's made this way: Odiyal has long been a practical dry-season starch on the palmyrah-covered Jaffna peninsula, and Tamil cooks folded it into the day's seafood catch to create a stew found almost nowhere else on the island.
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