After Singapore it was turn for my first trip to India. As an India novice I thought I’d begin my travels in the little less hectic south flying into Cochin, Kerala. Leaving the airport to travel to where I was staying in Fort Cochin was my first taste of the Indian road systems. I’m not sure the word ‘system’ really applies – it’s pretty much a free for all with the largest size vehicle taking precedent and everyone else honking their horns to indicate any move they might be making including overtaking, undertaking, turning left and passing a vehicle on the opposite side of the road. Pretty hairy scary but also quite fun, sort of like being on a roller coaster at a theme park but without the rigorous safety testing!

 
Cochin Fishing Net ; Saffron Margarita

Fort Cochin is a lovely place to start, if a little on the touristy side. Old Cochin where I was staying is small enough to get round on foot (or you can cheaply get transported in a rickshaw if you’re feeling ultra-lazy) – it’s fairly well maintained and awash with impressive colonial style buildings and the picture perfect Chinese fishing nets. One of the most impressive buildings is a hotel called Bruntons Boatyard, which as the name suggests is a pretty grand. In Rick Stein's latest BBC series India it was where he was taught to cook their speciality dish railway lamb curry. The budget didn't quite stretch to staying there but I could just about afford a saffron margarita on the veranda!

In the past Cochin was an incredibly important trading port, in particular green cardamom, black pepper, cloves, chilli and cinnamon are grown and were therefore traded in the region. Unfortunately there’s not much to see of the spice trade in old Cochin these days, there are shops labelled ‘spice merchants’ but they’re really just for show and sell pre-packaged bags of fairly sad and dried up looking spices.

Sacks of chillies ready for transportation at the train station in Mangalore - proof that there are spices growing in the region (perhaps they're on the way to the world's largest chilli market in Andhra Pradesh!)

Anyway onto the important stuff…..the food.

‘Indian’ restaurants in the UK are (or were) largely run by Pakistani and Bangladeshi families so the food served in them has a tendency to be from these regions, or it’s north Indian or a bit of a mixture that’s made to suit the British palette. The curries we know tend to be heavy in meat, butter (or ghee), yogurt, sometimes cream, oil and they also tend to spiced quite heavily with lots of cumin, coriander, chilli and cinnamon.

Recently there seem to be more and more South Indian restaurants popping up which makes sense as the food is generally a bit lighter and fresher suiting more health conscious times. Lots of South Indian food is vegetarian and if eating ‘non-veg’ it’s normally fish rather than meat. The common breakfast, snack and light lunches of the region include dosas, vada, idli(steamed rice cakes) almost always served with a thin lentil and vegetable soup known as sambar and a fresh coconut chutney. For a more formal and celebratory meal Keralans eat what is known as Sadya. This meal is eaten from a banana leaf and will involve numerous vegetarian dishes served in a specific order.

 
Masala Dosa (a large crispy pancake made from rice and lentil flour stuffed with potato curry) served with Sambarand Coconut Curry ; Homemade Dosaand Vada(doughnut shaped fried snacks made from chickpea flour) with Sambarand Coconut Chutney

Homemade Fish Fry, Fish Curry, Sambar(of course), Cabbage Thoranand Dahl

Fort Cochin was the perfect place to do a cookery course. There are plenty to choose from ranging from the incredibly reasonable to the same as you’d pay for a cookery course in England. I learnt with a lady called Maria who I had a couple of hours with privately beforehand to try and establish the basics of Keralan cooking.

Unfortunately having been working at the Spicery for a year and having done lots of research on South Indian cooking I didn’t real feel I’d learnt a lot more than I could’ve got from a decent book. That said the course was lots of fun and the food was delicious! Sadly, I think despite the area being rich in growing spices most of the best stuff gets exported – I was genuinely quite surprised to find that Maria’s tin of spices certainly wasn’t a patch on the quality stuff we’ve got access to at the Spicery.

 

Maria's Spices - a fairly basic range including green cardamon, cumin seeds, black pepper, cloves, turmeric chilli powder, chilli flakes, ground coriander and mustard seeds ; Food ready prepared for the cooking class

Maria stirring the chicken curry!

The dishes I cooked with Maria (and ones which may come up in future curry boxes!) were a fairly simple tomato chicken flavoured interestingly with fresh mint and coriander leaves, cabbage thoran, beetroot patchedi(my favourite dish of beetroot in a coconut and yogurt sauce), pumpkin curry, sambarand mint and coriander chutney. Recipes to follow at some point but in the meantime here are a few wise words from Maria:

• Turmeric is used in nearly all dishes for colour except for when cooking something like cauliflower where you want the dish to remain white
• As well as being used to flavour, ground coriander is used to thicken sauces in the way that we'd use cornflour
• Crushed chilli is milder than powder and therefore should be used in veggie dishes with ground being used for meat and fish
• Mustard seeds and curry leaves are the all important flavouring in South Indian veggie dishes
• South Indian cookery uses sunflower and coconut oil whereas North Indian uses ghee and mustard oil

The all important South Indian coconut

• To prevent coconut milk from curdling. Add the water part of the milk first and allow to boil then add the cream
• Fennel is used to sweeten and is good for digestion
• Crushed black pepper can be used to bring down the sweetness of dishes
• Kashmiri chilli doesn't give heartburn!