Kaaviya

Kaaviya is a grocery label focused on Tamil and Sri Lankan Tamil staples, with a range that reads like a traditional Jaffna or Madurai store cupboard. Next to the cooking basics it keeps the dried herbs and roots that older generations stored in a tin by the stove, the kind of ingredients that are hard to find outside a specialist shop.

The Kaaviya lines we carry span gingelly oil, barley, horse gram (kollu), appalam and palmyrah jaggery, with Maldive fish and Ceylon cinnamon. Under herbal spices sit dried ginger (sukku), long pepper (thippili) and liquorice root (athimathuram).

Gingelly oil starts a kuzhambu and loosens idli podi, while kollu becomes rasam, sundal or a thick horse gram thuvaiyal. Barley is simmered into a thin kanji, palmyrah jaggery sweetens pongal and kozhukattai with a darker, smokier taste than cane, and a pinch of Maldive fish deepens a Sri Lankan seeni sambol or pol sambol. Sukku and thippili are ground into sukku malli coffee and kashayam, and cinnamon quills go into biryani and Jaffna curries.

Dried roots and spices keep their aroma longest in airtight jars out of sunlight, and Maldive fish should be resealed tightly, as it draws moisture. Jaggery can harden in the cold, so store it at room temperature and grate it as needed. To compare Kaaviya with other makers, browse our palm and kithul jaggery and sukku malli coffee collections.