Home made stoves

I have a very interesting thing to show you.... . I always calling up an aunt of mine to find out about maldivian recipes and so she treated me a very visual one. Before I go to the recipe I decided to blog about the stove.

As you know or don't know, Maldives is made up of small islands. We travel to each island by boat, families and friends are living on other islands. My family lives in Male' which is the capital, a small but overpopulated place where everyone else comes to try and get a job, or to get their kids better schooling. But My dad is originally from an island known as Kulhudhufushi is which situated about 12 hour's boat ride or 45 minutes by plane distance roughly. It is at the northern end of Maldives. His 7 younger siblings live with their families and the rest of his relatives. I spent a few childhood holidays there and most recently lived there for 6 months. It's very peaceful and quite homey, everyone knows you and treats you like family sometimes a little too familiar and nosy but still it is quite peaceful.

Before you think I am going nowhere and why the long explanation this is why, the stoves that they use is quite interesting. Most kitchens are separate from the house, even my own when I was little but it changed to a more modern one later on. My aunt's kitchen back in Kulhudufushi is like a little house. She has got herself a brand new modern kitchen but had requested my cousin to build her a smaller, Maldivian style one at the back of her house. Her old kitchen is very interesting. It is like a little doll house, just enough to fit her in along with a stove and a few items. Now the stove is what I want to talk to you about. The old Maldivian stoves are built-in stoves. But the way it is built and made depends on the person and the island, i have seen only my aunt ones and they are quite the same. So this is what she said she did, she first burnt old branches and dried coconut shells and leaves and the white ash you get as the end result is made into a paste using water and is built on the floor of the kitchen or sometimes an elevated platform sort of thing. Then it is dried and used.

There is a hole on one side and another on top to put the pots for cooking. To build the fire they use dried twigs, dried coconut shells and husks, and dried coconut palm leaves. I actually enjoyed sitting at the doorway watching her build the fire and cook. When I was small, my mum had one at home, but ours was a huge fireplace sort of place, with iron tripod stands to hold the pots and the fire was built under it. There weren't ovens, so when it came to baking the fire is slowed and to cook the bottom and then to cook the bottom, burning hot coconut shells were placed over a metal lid over the pan. It gives a nice smokey flavour too. These old stoves are still around I think, cos I have seen them in Kulhudhufushi and judging from my aunt's picture they are still there.

Hope I haven't bored anyone hehe, Have a lovely weekend