Banana

“The feast. At Onam, Kerala's harvest festival, the whole family sits on the floor or at long tables before a banana leaf, and twenty-odd dishes are served onto it, each in its place: rice, parippu (dal) with ghee, sambar, avial, thoran, olan, kaalan, pulissery, the inji curry, pickles, pappadam, banana chips, payasam, rasam, moru. The bananas on the leaf, in her house, njalipoovan or palayankodan.”

“The order. As many Kerala families eat it: rice with parippu and a little ghee first, then sambar, then the yoghurt curries like kaalan and pulissery, then payasam, sometimes with a little banana, with pickle coming back to cut the sweetness, and at the end rasam and moru, with dry ginger water close to the end. The inji curry sits at the start of the leaf and is eaten towards the end, ginger for the belly after a heavy meal. Other families order it slightly differently, and the order of serving is not the order of eating.”