Today, with swimming pools of ripening rice paddy ready for harvest, we celebrate the month of Onam in India, a harvest festival during which Kaduvet bungalow’s Thrissur based patisserie, The Lilly’s has introduced the idea of a ‘Pastry Sadya’. It is for people who like desserts and even more than that.
While such custom is taken into consideration, the sadya pattu with its palada and pazham payasam, pappadam or chips and even sharkara peratti (sweet banana chips) remains true to the very potpourri. The difference comes in the on the strawberries-dates compote, saffron milk cake, carrot halwa thoran – over all, the centrepiece – Thai sticky rice with mampazham sauce – all in banana leaf.
The menu features Onam Dream Cakes, creative additions to the Swiss vegetarians’ Wonderful Lunch, which include palada payasam and naranga mittayi tiramisu, thenga mittayi cheesecake.
Chef Bijosh, sous chef, comments that even if the thought was there to do something different for Onam, “I want to bring out the dishes of Kerala. These things are the fruits of about six months of work.” He relates the sharpness of strawberry to puli inji, which is a sweet-sour ginger-tamarind paste served with sadya, and saffron palkova cake to kalan and carrot halwa to thoran. “The pastry sadya is served and not for take away since it is heavy and would be difficult to carry around without spoiling its beauty.”
Nonetheless, he did not neglect to take into easy regard the aesthetic factor with respect to the pastry sadya, this is unlike some other desserts whereby instead of attempting something new foundationalstyles of coconut, jaggery, cardamom and buttermilk have come to the fore. “For instance, we make use of jaggery sauce on The Lilly’s wattalappam cake which is a Sri Lankan dessert taken with a twist. The blend of coconut and cardamom on the macaron adds that flavour twist, doesn’t it?”
Plum cake brownie is another thing he really look great pride in, “For the malayali it is what dreams are made of and well who doesn’t like brownies.”
With the stuffing of the brownie mix, instead of walnuts, we roasted the plum cake fruits and raisins and we added chocolate. The end result? Brownie meets plum cake, in a good way!”
Not all is sugary sweet, for buttermilk sorbet is Bijosh’s version of sambharam (buttermilk), a classic summer drink for Malayalis, and adds heat with ginger and chillies.
This isn’t the accommodation for the first time The Lilly’s has come out with Kerala inspired sweets. In the last Onam, besides palada cake, there was tender coconut cake, banana payasam ‘pazham pradhaman’ which is jaggery base, coconut jaggery cake and unniyappam tiramisu.
After completing a culinary course from Food Craft Institute in Kalamassery Bijosh joined The Lilly’s in 2021. He had earlier spent a decade in the US focusing on Italian food. He even stayed in Saudi Arabia working in R&D, and also French cuisine. ‘I primarily concentrated on pastry and gelato making,’ he says. Bijosh also spent some months studying the best fusion techniques and flavours.
The pastry sadya is obtainable at a price of ₹1000. The Onam dream cakes are available in two different weights same as described above — 200 g and 500 g palada payasam cake (priced ₹490 &1310), naranga mittayi tiramisu (priced ₹590 &1380), thenga mittayi cheesecake (priced ₹610 &1480) they are. All available in and around services of Thrissur, Kunnumkulam and Chavakkad.
