Dishes · Malabar food glossary
Kozhi Ada
Also known as: Kozhi Ila Ada, Chicken Ada
A Malabar tea-time snack: a soft rice-flour pocket filled with spiced shredded chicken, steamed and pan-finished in coconut oil.
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.
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.