Ethnic food festival at Vellar tourist village

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Foodies are in for an ethnic treat at Vellar. A three-day ethnic food festival will kick off at Vellar tourist village, Kovalam, on Friday. The festival will dish out a wide variety of culinary delights made of jackfruit and mango. The festival has been arranged as part of the ongoing digital video production training programme for children jointly organised by the women self-help chain Kudumbashree and Kerala Tourism. The festival has been conceived and organised to open before the guests the best of Kerala’s traditional delicacies, including curries, chutneys, pickles, puddings and fritters and fries made of jackfruit and mango. Sweet, mouth-watering ‘chakka pradhaman’, ‘chakka ada’, ‘unniyappam’ made soft and sweet by mixing ripened jackfruit, jackfruit halwa and thick brown jackfruit-ghee-jaggery paste, which has a long shelf life, are some of the delicacies on offer. For those who prefer spicy dishes, there will be ‘chakka pulissery’, made of raw jackfruit cooked in buttermilk, ‘chakka thoran’, jackfruit sambar, vada, made of jackfruit stone, tender jackfruit ‘thoran’ and to cap the list, ‘chakka puzhukku’, the quintessential summer dish that goes well with rice porridge. For short-eat, there will be chakka chips, chakka ‘pappadam’ and ‘chakka vattal’. The mango delicacies to be featured in the festival are many, ranging from raw mango juice to various types of pickle to mango pudding.The event will also exhibit various varieties of jackfruit collected from various parts of Kerala. Sales counters have also been set up for the visitors to buy and take home the items of their choice.Digital Video Production Workshop A three-day digital video production workshop is also being organised jointly by the Kudumbashree and the Kerala Tourism at thesame venue. The workshop for children, which will also begin on Friday, is designed to equip children to learn the theoretical as well as practical aspects of digital video production and to create small videos by themselves. K G Jayan, cinematographer; Bina Paul, film editor; K R Mohanan, filmdirector; and C S Venkiteswaran, film critic, will lead various sessions related to film-making, including film scripting, cinematography, film editing and film direction. The valedictory session of the workshop will be held on May 29. Film director Lenin Rajendran will be the chief guest.