A culinary journey through Chettinad and Kerala

Yahoo Editor Anisha Oommen and photographer Saina Jayapal travel through Chettinad, Madurai, Thekkady and Cochin in South India, on a culinary tour hosted by Easy Tours of India, a travel company that designs custom tours of India. Follow the story of two women who hate to travel, but journey 1300 kilometres over 8 days together, holding strong only by a shared love of food.

Auspicious Beginnings

All travels must begin with prayer, like your grandmother insisted. We paid obeisance to the Food Gods with a bucket of button idlis soaked in pumpkin sambar. A steaming hot meal at 5 am, with a spicy portion of carbs and veggies (pumpkins count as veggies) has the added benefit of being healthy to boot. If you’re flying through the Bangalore airport, definitely make a pit stop at Malgudi for a dish that most of South India considers holy.

In the home of the Chettiars
Eight hours later, we were welcomed into an old Chettiyar mansion with a glass of restorative nannari sarbath. Made from the woody and aromatic roots of the Indian sarsaparilla, this is a traditional beverage found in refreshment shops across smaller towns in South India, most popular in the summer months for its natural cooling properties and healing prowess, as documented in Ayurvedic texts.

Visalam was to be our home in Chettinad for the first leg of our journey, originally a *small* wedding gift from a father to his daughter on her wedding day. Not so small. It is now a restored heritage hotel with 15 sprawling bedrooms and 3 restaurants. Open central courtyards flanked by tall pillars of wood, intricately carved thresholds and heavy doorways, black and white marble floors, all speak of an era of wealth and prosperity.

Chettinad was home to the Nattukottai Chettiars, spice traders and merchants whose cuisine reflects influences from their travels to Ceylon, Burma, Africa and the Far East. Originally a coastal people, they were forced to move inland after a tsunami in the 8th century, so their ingredients and cooking techniques include both seafood and wild game, pickled, salted and sundried to preserve longer. The flavours and aromas of hand-ground spices and wood-fired stoves have created a cuisine known for its distinct flavours and layered complexity.

Lunch was an elaborate affair – a sign of things to come. Ela Sadya with white rice, sambar and ghee, tangy tamarind rice, lemon pickle, raw banana pirattal, cheera (spinach), pepper chicken and moist, fresh snapper. Traditionally, meals are served on a banana leaf, where the narrow part of the leaf points left; each dish on the menu has a designated spot, to be served in a specific order. Just remember, when you are done with your meal, fold the leaf toward yourself and not away, the traditional gesture that conveys compliments to the chef.

4pm. We wake from heat-induced slumber with a tumbler of frothy filter coffee. Poured in proper South Indian tradition along a jaw-dropping gradient, the frothy coffee stops just short of spilling over. Deep, dark and delicious, the aroma and full-bodied flavours of shade-grown South Indian coffee, we agreed, stand peerless.

Dinner by candlelight. Dosa with a sweet-and-spicy chutney and mutton head curry. Proud of a food culture that minimizes waste, the chef points out an ear and half an eyeball in the gravy that my dinner companion happily slurps up. Gamy and rich, like the notes on a bass guitar, mutton thala curry needs special attention, and an appreciation course for the faint-hearted. Seeing our enthusiasm the chef offers us another specialty – blood poriyal, a delicacy in these parts. Heated till thick and glutinous, goat blood is diced fine and served much like the common vegetable poriyals that accompany main course. Perhaps next time. We end with kavani payasam, a black sticky rice pudding of Burmese origin, thick and coarse, sweetened with jaggery and bits of coconut.

Breakfast is light and delicious. Seated outdoors, the air is cool for a few short hours, before the sweltering Tamil Nadu sun reaches its peak. We share a meal of ada, made of rice flour and urad dal, blended with onion, chillies, curry leaves and coconut, cooked on a cast iron stove, with three kinds of fresh, spicy chutney. What looks like upma is actually idli poriyal – idlis mashed and cooked with a quick tadka. Such excitement and the day hasn’t even begun. One last filter coffee for the road.

Driving through the deserted streets of Chettinad, it feels like a bit like a ghost town forgotten by a careless world. Sprawling Chettiar mansions behind locked gates, a few in the hands of caretakers who cook palaharams, or snacks, in the courtyard or dry fiery red chillies under the blistering sun. Shards of sunlight filter through wooden kitchens in aged sepia tones.

We make the mandatory pitstop at Chettinad’s famous Athangudi tile makers, watch their astonishing speed and skill as they hand-make several hundred tiles using both stencil and freehand; the bright colours of their tiles in cheery contrast to the arid colours of Chettinad’s geography. In a handloom-weaving centre, women work the loom in a rhythmic click-clack, threading the yarn in rooms with tall, pointy roofs that draw out the hot air, keeping it cool despite the heat outside.

Back at Visalam, a Chettinad wedding feast awaits. Fluffy white idlis, sweet pongal, vella puniyaram, delicate vadais, uthappams with masala seeyam (a tangy tomato chutney), crab and idiyappams with mutton curry, and thick badam milk to seal the deal. After a meal like this, there’s no looking back. We are only good to climb into those big high beds and fall asleep on full bellies.

Pleasures of the Flesh, Madurai

Back on the road, we stop at the Meenakshi Madurai temple, en route to Kerala.

Set in the ancient city of Madurai, the temple houses an estimated 33,000 sculptures over 45 acres of temple property. Dedicated to goddess Parvati, named Meenakshi for her legendary fish-eyed beauty, and her lover Shiva, known here as Sundareswarar, this temple in her hometown is unlike most temples in South India, for it is the shrine of the goddess that is visited first, and only following which, is obeisance paid to the male god.

Near the central tank of the temple is a stall selling meals wrapped in newspaper and secured with twine. We find a spot in the shade of the temple walls and unwrap our 'parcel': back dal vadais, tamarind rice and laddoo. In the presence of such an ancient beauty, eating becomes a transformative experience and we share our meal in silence, soaking in the exquisite splendor, thankful to be here.

We can’t leave without sampling Bell’s Dindigul Biriyani. Made with Seeraga Samba rice and flavoured with cardamom and cloves, lemon and curd, this light and delicious biriyani is best had with a plate of varutha kozhi or fried chicken, and finished with Jigarthanda. An old, traditional summer drink, made with reduced milk, nannari sherbet, kalpasi, sago, Boost (!) and ice cream, this ‘Cool Heart’ is a must-try in its hometown of Madurai.

Spice tours in Thekkady
Our first morning in Kerala and we wake to spice-scented air in the chill of the Thekkady hills, home to spice plantations and the Periyar Wildlife Sancturay.

A spice plantation tour is a great way to experience farm-to-fork quite literally. Learn the painstaking art of hand-pollinating vanilla, the role of bees in pollinating cardamom and the stages of growing pepper. Spot coffee, cinnamon, bay leaves, kodumpulli and the beautiful kanthari mollagu, standing upright on its stem, a forewarning of its lethal heat. Taste passion fruit, guava and avocado fresh off the trees, suck the nectar out of a hibiscus flower and explore the lemony, velvet flavours of the cocoa fruit. And of course, stop at a spice shop to carry home some goodies. And if you're lucky, like we were, you might spot a small shop, usually an old garage converted into a makeshift store, selling cold-pressed, homemade coconut oil. Thick and fragrant, it puts commercial deep conditioning to shame and will have your skin glistening like the morning dew.

Fort Kochi, a feast for the senses

The Shaap
The toddy shop is ubiquitous to Kerala, and therefore the ‘shaap’ experience, complete with ‘touchings,’ is quintessential to a thorough understanding of the state’s culinary landscape. While the Mullapanthal Toddy Shop is famous for its assortment of meats, it was the Mandirithop Toddy Shop on the road from Ponkunnam to Palai that stayed with us, despite its minimal menu. Kappa or tapioca, steamed and gently salted, with a dangerously red meen curry, and a glass of sweet toddy was the perfect balance of temperature and flavour – explosive heat and spice, together with a glass of fizzy, cool toddy, strikes exactly the right balance to satiate the South Indian palate. All in a room put together with shaky blue benches that look like they were discarded from an old government office.

The Mullapanthal Toddy Shop in Tripunithura, unlike most other toddy shops that are the domain of male cooks, is run entirely by women. Here we eat a decadent meal: kappa with seer fish, beef, pork, duck and crab, spiced and curried to fiery perfection. Puttu and a mulaku chammanthi had our ears ringing. Inside the kitchens, Radha, the oldest of the five cooks, dressed in a ‘nightie’ and sipping on black tea, gives us a rundown of the bubbling urlis atop each wood-fired stove: karimeen pollichathu, their speciality, mussels, prawn, squid and a whole assortment of shellfish.

Dinner with Nimmy Paul
Dinner is a home-cooked meal at Nimmy Paul's residence. Nimmy has been conducting cooking demos, and hosting travellers for traditional Syrian Catholic meals at her home for more than twenty years. She has hosted hundreds of gourmands, historians, authors (including Robin Cook and Paul Theroux), and restaurateurs, taking them through the fascinating history of Cochin's cuisine and culture.

Explaining the medicinal use of spices, and her belief in kaii punyam (the gift of a great cook likes in her hand – either you have it, or you don't), she effortlessly whips up a gourd thoran, swivels beautiful lace appams, and a puts together a delicate fish molee. In her black cast-iron chatti, she prepares prawn with curry leaves and kodumpulli and then invites us to a beautifully laid table, to begin our meal with a cup of mutton broth. After our toddy shop experience, this is a beautifully restrained meal, with delicate and subtle flavours.

A slice of History at Brunton Boatyard
If you're staying in Jew Town, the Brunton Boatyard is lovely heritage hotel with old world charm.

It's restaurant, History, attempts to document how a small port like Fort Cochin contributed to the culture of Kerala's cuisine by recreating dishes that map the influences of Cochin's colonial past. Every item on the menu comes with a story, placing it in historical context, tracing its influences and origins. The Portuguese are believed to have introduced coconut milk into Kerala cuisine, and the Jewish community the appam.

Chef Ajeeth Janardhanan gave us a first hand demo of two signature dishes on the menu. Chuttuli Meen, a dish made with mullet or salmon, both common to the brackish waters of Cochin, is a recipe shared with the first chefs of Brunton by a Jewish family living in Cochin. Fillets of fish are wrapped in shallot paste and grilled, then layered with potato and served with aubergine and okra, with a generous serving of saffron sauce.

The second dish, Mooriyearchi Roast, was cooked in Syrian Christian homes in the early 20th century, with the beginning of aerial spraying of rubber crops by the "saipu pilot." The sensitive palate of the foreigner demanded a subtle use of spices, and so beef was roasted with potatoes and carrots, very mildly spiced and served with thick slices of bread, or in this case, hot puttu.

Fort Kochi is a full of small alleys that hide exciting treasures. In the spice market, we peeked into warehouses heaped high with ginger and pepper, their aromas filling the streets outside. Papadoms, made by hand, pile up at astonishing speed in small shops. We spent our last afternoon thumbing through old bookstores and antique shops, sampling tender pink ginger juice and treating ourselves to fresh seafood from one of the many heritage hotels in the area.

And before we said our final goodbyes, we squeezed every last corner of available baggage space with hot, crisp banana chips – carried back home for family and friends to ease the guilt of a week’s worth of unrestrained gluttony.

Anisha Oommen writes about travel, food culture and cuisine. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.