Some tribes in northwestern India were using boiled grains, according to ancient Greek reports (circa 3rd century BC). Perhaps boiling grains was not a common practise back then, or perhaps not all communities engaged in such a practise at that time in history.

I was wondering if the’some Indian tribes’ mentioned in the reports are the tribes that migrated to southern India, such as the Tulu tribes. I believe that the Tulu tribes were familiar with the practise of boiling grains even before their migration to northwest India. It could have been the beginning of their invention of their pet food, boiled rice. They then boiled the sun-dried paddy that had been pounded to separate the husk/chaff and produce the boiled rice. The Tulu equivalent of’sambaar’ (vegetarian curry) is called ‘koddel,’ which is derived from the words kodi+el, which means boiled liquid dish.

They probably refined their experiments with boiling food items after they settled in Tulunad and invented the art of steam cooking. For steam cooking, they used ground mixtures (semi-solid batters) of rice and black grammes. They designed special vessels for steam cooking out of natural leaves that were abundant around them. They created small vessels out of four jack tree leaves knitted together with vegetal sticks. It was given the name ‘gunda,’ which means rounded space or rounded shape.

Or they took the prickly, thin, long ribbon-like leaves from the mundevu shrub, separated their thorns, and mended the leaves on light fire to make them more pliable, then fashioned tubular vessels out of those specially treated mundevu leaves. This leafy structure was known as the’moode,’ which was derived from mudetina (=knitted item).

The batter was poured into the tubular leafy vessels, which were then placed inside an earthen pot half-full of water. The closed earthen pot containing the leafy containers and water was set ablaze. When the water in the closed earthen pot boiled, it created steam, which cooked the ground rice batter in the vegetal tubes, adding a special vegetal aroma in the process.

Alternatively, they wrapped the finely ground semi-solid rice batter in various leaves such as banana, teak, turmeric, and so on and kept it inside the steam-cooking earthen pot. These dishes were known as ‘ireta-adde’ (= leafy food), gatti, kottige, and so on. They also combined chopped green tevu leaves (kesu in Kannada) with rice paste to make steam cooked patrade, which translates as patra (=leaf) + ade (=dish).

With the advancement of technology, metallic vessel manufacturers created special vessels for making steam-cooked rice dishes without the use of leaves. Such devices had a number of empty spaces into which the rice batter could be poured. As a result, the terms ideli and idali were coined. Ide refers to the interstitial space.

Tulunad residents still enjoy gunda, moode, kottige, gatti, patrade (patrode), and other steam-cooked leafy rice dishes.