Manthi in Malayalam is monkey and when restaurants are named or have dish called kuzhimanthi, it never attracted my fascination due to the monkey attached to it and I never want to eat a monkey who are closest to us in most parts.

Now I learn that it’s a Yemeni dish ‘Mandi’ which is made in charcoal pits underground called in Malayalam ‘Kuzhi’.

But Cypriots have a better story to tell us when we were there. Some thieves stole lamb and were cooking them in a hideout which was raided. They dumped the half cooked lamb with the burning firewood in a pit and covered with mud and escaped.

The police later saw the smoke, opened up to see the lamb cooked over charcoal underground for several hours. And for them nothing tasted close before.

Either way kuzhimanthi is here in Kerala and one was to open across the road from our place for Eid. But the lockdown has put a stop to it.

I have to now decide whether to wait for lockdown to be over or make my own kuzhimanthi, of course above ground.