Cooked with Heart and Wrapped in Love, All the Way from Addu

Wednesday 3rd of February 2021

As little children, the best news we received was always about ‘dhoni’ (traditional boats) coming from islands bringing ‘dabiya’s (tin containers) filled with island delicacies. These goodies are aromatic and flavor-packed, reminding us about the island lifestyle we rarely get to experience in the capital city of Male’.

If you explore a bit into the olden-days Maldivian lifestyle, you will find out that a major part of it revolved around cooking. In the southern-most atoll of Maldives, this was an even more significant way of staying true to local tastes when it was a part of the British Base. Here’s a compilation of must try Addu dishes that will surely gather enthusiastic foodies around the table for more.

Addu Bendi

This sweet treat is so famed nationally that it has made to the duty-free shops in Velana International Airport as a souvenir! It’s no wonder that Addu is often synonymous with Addu Bendi. Made from young coconut shavings mixed with a toddy-based sugar, fine skills are required to master the craft of making this dish to perfection. Over time, it has evolved to many different variants ranging from sweet to spicy.

Addu Havadha Curry

Maldivian cuisine is very much curry based and a number of spice mixes are incorporated into bringing out various different flavours in the varieties that make it to the dining table not surprisingly at every meal. Such one mixture is the famous Addu Havadha that combines a wide array of spices from dried red chilli, pepper, coconut shavings and so forth tropical ingredients. Just mixing spices can never get you the unique taste unless methodically balances out the portions. In addition to curries and gravies, this spice can be added to basically any dish in order to give a savory kick of equatorial tastes.

Faabatha Fen

You can hardly find a local Maldivian household where the sick is not served with ‘dhivehi beys’. Faabatha Fen is a sweet drink mildly spiced with medicinal ingredients and dough balls that make it a refreshing brew at any time of the day. Adduans love this drink and commonly serves it to visitors.

Fuppibaih

Yes, yes and always yes to this much loved snack of all time! Passed down from generations, this snack can be modified to be either a sweet or spicy mixture according to your preference. Puffed rice is mixed with either a ‘mashuni’ mixture and served for evening tea or thrown into toddy-based sugar syrup with a hint of spices and made into a sticky ball. The sweet version comes wrapped in dried banana leaves.

Whichever part of the world you come from; you must get your hands on these authentic Addu treats because they are a great gift to take home. Why not even try to remake it in your own way?

This is a remake of the Article by Aminath Manal in Volume 2, Maldives Tourism Bulletin.