Kodava Cuisine

If I could, I would transport the taste and the smells that I am experiencing right now as I write this post. Or if only I could be transported to my mom's kitchen sitting on the counter watching her cook and share stories and gossip, I'd be a little bit, a tiny bit happier. Parents and home do that to you. Instead, I am going to recreate that atmosphere here on this post writing this recipe of this coconut kumm curry that mom made for me. I clicked a few pictures here and there with my phone trying not to interrupt her process too much, hence the weird angles. Not that I am a great photographer anyway. So here goes, the recipe for a lovely kumm curry. Equipment Needed A medium-sized deep bottomed wok Ingredients Wild or button mushrooms - 1/2 kg [these shrink so don't balk at the quantity] Green chillies : 4-5 (less or more depending on spice levels) Coriander seeds : 1 teaspoon Cumin seeds : 1 teaspoon  Garlic, peeled: 5-6 medium cloves Turmeri...

Kumm, cleaned, cut and already in the pan!  Most Indian agricultural societies lead culinary lives based on the seasons. That can be said about agricultural societies world over I guess. And hence it is true for Coorg as well. One afternoon my maternal uncle walked in with a bunch of long stalks / leaves wrapped in a kannada newspaper - announcing the arrival of "kembu" and our estate manager or "writer" as they call them in Coorg, followed close behind also cupping in his hands a newspaper, wrapping "kumm" or wild mushrooms. Kembu or wild colocasia is this plant with a huge leaf and long stems, and is also called elephant-ear, because the leaves are HUGE. More about Kembu in another post, today I shall limit my words to the other treasure the writer was carrying in his hands. But before that I shall speak about the squeals of excitement these announcements brought forth fro my mom and grand-mom. And it's only then that I realised the word I use...

For those intrigued by the magic of the medicinal madh thoppu from my previous post , below is a recipe on how to make madh payasa, that is if you are lucky enough to get these leaves from kodagu. I would also like to use this post to make people aware of the widespread destruction that floods and landslides induced by heavy rainfall has caused in Kodagu over the last couple of weeks. Kodavas from world over and especially those based in Bangalore have used their time, money and other resources to serve the people of kodagu, stepping over caste, creed, religion & language. While the district no longer requires donations in terms of relief material, it will take a long long time to rebuilt everything that has been lost and any monetary donations are very welcome. A few avenues where you can do this are donating to the Chief Minister's Relief fund  directly or to the fund via Google Tez or PayTm . I've extolled the brilliance of monsoons in kodagu in my last post, but ...

[This is a very random picture of random flowers, nothing to do with madh thoppu :)] Most of my stories of Coorg on this blog will invariably be stories of my dear mother. Unless you count the two months of summer vacations we used to spend at my grandparents' place, i haven't ever really lived in coorg and hence most of my stories and tales are stuff that I've heard from my mother,  mostly also in the beautiful warm flavourful and fragrant surroundings of her kitchen. She regales me with stories from her childhood, from her teenage years, from when she was the belle of the village right up until when she married my father and had to leave the land she always called home.  I had to head back home to Bangalore a couple of weeks earlier to recover from an illness smack in the middle of the monsoon season. After I had spent time at home recouping lost energies, my parents and I went to a Food festival in the Kodava Samaj in Bangalore.   Every relatively bi...

I have made an art of starting blog posts and not completing them. The number of drafts on my blog is WAY higher than actual published posts. Sigh, you live and learn I guess. A couple of week back, I had started yet another draft about reviving this blog. On one of my other blogs, I was writing about entering my thirties and in one post I wrote about getting back to blogging about food and recipes and things about cuisines that excite me. The next morning, on my daily morning call with my mother, she mentioned how a friend of hers asked if the Nayana Cariappa that blogs about Kodava food is her daughter. And the sucker I am for signs, in my head I immediately thought "this is it, I need to restart that blog!" Quite frankly, I have only written three posts on this blog and I need write so much more about the beauty that is kodava cuisine and I have so much more to share now. In the last couple of year since I started and stopped writing on this blog, I have discovered o...