Kozhikodan Halwa

Kozhikodan Halwa

Drooling

Delicacy

Every city has at least one sweet named after it and for which it is gastronomically renowned in Kozhikkode . In Kozhikkode it is the thick black, glutinous Kozhikkode Halwa. Every sweet shop, every bakery, every major store selling food items and packaged foods, sells this Halwa. You will find the halwa stacked behind a glass counter, a big fat, balck mass, glistening with oil and with a sweet smell about it.

Kozhikodan halwa is a specialty of Kozhikkode, it is a sweat brown red delicacy made there. The foreigners gave it the name, the sweet meat, this can be brought from the busy street named SM street, a long street serving this specialty.

Kozhikodan halwa is a speciality of

Kozhikkode. It is a sweat brown red

delicacy made there. The foreigners

gave it the name , the sweet meat.

this can be brought from the busy

street named SM street, a long street

serving this speciality.

The visitors inthe city are initiated into developing a calicut halwa fix by crafty salespersons in these stores who cut a thin slice of the sweet meat and offer it for

sampling. Once tasted, the visitor gets hooked onto halwa.

Eventhough the shops are located close to one another and all sell the same halwa, the business these stalls do amazing. The pilgrims spill out of cars, buses and auto rickshaws fressed in black lungis and shirts, looking unkempt from the ridges of their pilgrimage, and flock to the halwa stalls in great excitement. Although most of them have probably been doing this for years, it is a great ritual for them to sample the black halwa. Halwas in different colours are also available there. Of these the Black Halwa is most popular in Kozhikkode .

The kozhikkodan black halwa is madevery simply out of maida, sugar, palm jaggery and it is cooked in coconut oil. The halwa is soaking in oil. You buy a small portion and take it home and the halwa sweats the oil out every day. Depending on the quantity of coconut oil used, this halwa can be stored upto three months if not exposed to moisture . If the coconut oil is of an inferior quality, the halwa tends to get rancid early. But there is no chance of that in most Keralite households, as they consume it quickly.

The halwas may be of in different colours. The halwa sellers , veterans of the business , recognise a good sale when they see one they don’t mind the pilgrims sampling the halwa, eventhough everybody knows it all tastes the same. But modern sweet sellers of Kozhikkode are producing halwa in almost all colors’, red, green and yellow colored halwa plates decorate their showcases. Anyway the opinion of the Common about the Black Halwa, the kozhikodan speciality is that Black is Best!