Also known as: Kozhi Ila Ada, Chicken Ada
A Malabar tea-time snack: spiced shredded chicken in a folded pocket. Made two ways - a soft steamed rice-flour wrapper at home, and a crisp fried wheat pastry at bakery counters.
Kozhi Ada is a savoury snack from the Mappila Muslim culinary tradition of north Kerala, particularly associated with Koilandy (Quilandy), a coastal town near Calicut. A pliable rice-flour dough is folded around a filling of shredded chicken cooked with onions, fennel, ginger, green chilli and garam masala, then steamed and briefly finished on a hot tawa with coconut oil.
The name is plain Malayalam - kozhi means chicken, and ada is a generic word for a steamed or folded preparation (the same word names sweet ela ada, a coconut-jaggery parcel steamed in banana leaf). The savoury Malabar version is what people usually mean by "Kozhi Ada" today.
Two forms are current, and both are genuine. The steamed rice-flour version described above is the older home style: soft, light, and a same-day food. Kozhikode bakeries more often sell a fried version, in which the same filling goes into a crimped wheat-flour pastry that is deep-fried until crisp. The fried form keeps for months sealed, which is why it is the one that travels and the one sold in packets.
It is eaten hot with strong, sweet, milky chaya as part of the afternoon tea-snack culture, and is a fixture on the Ramadan iftar table across the Malabar coast.