Welcome!

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I am a Kodavathi from the land of coffee, honey and spices, called Kodagu/Coorg. Over the years, it's been called a million things and one description that stuck was : The Scotland of India. I have never lived in Coorg, so that doesn't make me hardcore Coorgi, but I am proud of it nonetheless!  We call ourselves Kodavas and Kodavathis and I can go on and on about the culture of Coorg, but let's reserve that for later.

Coorg is obviously famous for it's scenic beauty and the let's-go-to-Shimla-for-summer-holidays culture has fortunately not destroyed this yet. I hope it never does. But what Coorg is more famous for, is it's food. We love our food. From the top of my head, 8 of my 10 favorite Coorgi dishes are non-vegetarian. We love out meat. Of course, we belong to the warrior clan, so that makes our love for meat obvious. I've grown up eating coorgi food, and although I've lived in North India for a major part of my life, I haven't yet gotten used to this roti-daal business. I'm a girl who loves her rice, so no diet book in the world is going to make me give up my rice at dinner. If that means I need to spend an extra 60 minutes at Yoga, so be it.

Okay, getting back to food : My grandmother loves to cook, my mom loves to cook, my grandfather loves to cook. You get the drift we all love to cook. That is true for any true Coorgi you meet, men or women, we love the kitchen. Throughout my growing years, I have associated Sundays with my mom's chicken/mutton curry or paputtu. I've grown up listening to stories of my mom and her brothers collecting berries or oranges or whatnot for my grandmother to make jam. Or how some of the best cakes my mom has had are her mother's 'baked inside a fireplace' cakes. There are loads of such stories. This familial love for food, fortunately also passed onto me. Living away from home and being on a tight income meant I had to start cooking at home. I did it reluctantly at first and then I started enjoying it. I moved away from recipe books and created some of my own. I improvised on my moms and grandmothers recipes and  gave it a third generation twist! And thankfully, for me and my future husband,  the experiment paid off and I have evolved into a first-class cook. Yes, we Coorgi's are also not modest.

Jokes apart, I love to cook and I especially love making dishes that bring to life  memories from my childhood or that have stories from my grandmom attached to it. My love for the kitchen also made me tread into the baking territory and now I enjoy baking even more!

This blog, is less of a food blog ( no! don't shut the tab yet I'll post some recipes I promise) and more of a collection of memories from my childhood. Memories that I want to preserve for future generations and for myself. I may not bake cakes in a fireplace anymore, but I don't want to forget that the woman I love second only to my mom once did.

So, with that long introduction, welcome to Kodava Cuisine and my journey. 

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