A Kerala Breakfast in Singapore: Puttu, Appam, Idiyappam & Kadala

Ask a Malayali what a real breakfast looks like and you'll get a diagram of textures rather than a list of dishes. There'll be something steamed, something fermented, something lacy, something crunchy, and always — always — a bowl of curry on the side. What you won't hear is 'toast' or 'cereal'. In Kerala, wheat plays almost no role at breakfast. Rice, in every form imaginable, does the heavy lifting.

The four staples show up on nearly every Kerala breakfast table. Puttu is a soft cylinder of coarsely ground rice flour, layered with grated coconut and steamed inside a bamboo or metal tube until it slides out in a perfect column. Appam is a lacy, bowl-shaped pancake made from fermented rice-and-coconut batter — crisp lace at the edge, spongy custard at the centre. Idiyappam (also called string hoppers) is rice flour extruded through a press into a nest of fine noodles and steamed on small palm-leaf discs. And on the side of any of them: kadala, a dark curry of black chickpeas cooked with roasted coconut, curry leaves and Kerala's characteristic 'roasted coconut masala'.

The pairings aren't arbitrary. Puttu is almost always eaten with kadala or a mashed banana with sugar — the dry, crumbly cylinder needs a wet, gravy-heavy companion. Appam takes to coconut-milk stews: an egg curry, a mild chicken stew (ishtu), or vegetable kurma. Idiyappam is the most versatile — pair it with the same stews, with sweetened coconut milk for children, or with mutton curry when you want something serious.

There is a fermentation step in most of these dishes that gives the Kerala breakfast its lightness. Appam batter rests overnight with a spoon of toddy or coconut water, and the wild yeasts do the work. Idiyappam dough is steamed briefly before pressing, which cooks out the raw starch. Puttu is the exception — no fermentation, just steam — which is why it's often the first thing a Kerala child learns to make.

The tea that goes with all of this is not chai as most of India understands it. Breakfast tea in Kerala is often a small tumbler of strong milky tea with a pinch of cardamom, pulled a few times between two jugs to cool it. In Muslim-majority Malabar households a glass of Sulaimani — black tea with lime and clove — sometimes ends the meal instead.

At Café Malabar we serve the Kerala Breakfast Set every morning: two pieces of puttu with kadala, two appams with vegetable stew, and one nest of idiyappam with your choice of curry. It's the meal we ourselves eat before opening for the day, and it's the meal that most reminds us of our own kitchens back home.

If you've never eaten a Kerala breakfast before, come hungry and come slowly. The whole point of this food is that it fills you up gently, in layers, with textures your palate hasn't quite met before. And if you're not sure what to order first, we'll happily send out a tasting plate — a little of each — with a pot of tea to start.