Gourmand World Cookbook Award winner

"My copy of The Kerala Kitchen has notes scribbled in it and has turmeric stains on certain pages. Now it's your turn to enjoy. So line up your spices, ready your grated coconut and go to it. You are in for both a literary and gastronomic treat."

-Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water

Now in an expanded edition with new recipes and photographs, this unique cookbook-memoir transports readers to Kerala, a verdant, tropical state on the Malabar Coast of South India.

Since ancient times, seafarers and traders have been drawn by the lure of spices to Kerala. Saint Thomas also traveled this spice route, converting several Brahmin families who later intermarried with Syrians who had settled here; thus was born the vibrant Syrian Christian community of Kerala. Today, ayurvedic massage resorts and backwater cruises make this scenic land a top tourist destination, and spices still draw both travelers and gourmands to its rich culinary heritage. It is this legacy that The Kerala Kitchen brings us, through more than 170 recipes and the stories that accompany them.

Authentic and easy to prepare, these recipes are adapted for the North American kitchen, and accompanied by a guide to spices, herbs, and equipment, as well as a glossary of food terms. Interwoven between these recipes, in the best tradition of the cookbook memoir, are tales of talking doves, toddy shops, traveling chefs and killer coconuts, evoking the beauty of a bygone era as well as the compelling pull of the present one.

Sample recipes:

• Meen Vevichathu (Fish Curry Cooked in a Clay Pot)
• Parippu (Lentils with Coconut Milk)
• Thiyal (Shallots with Tamarind and Roasted Coconut)
• Pesaha Appam (Steamed Rice Bread)
• Paalappam (Lace-Rimmed Pancakes)
• Karikku Pudding (Tender Coconut Pudding)

About the Author
Lathika George is a Bombay-born Syrian Christian who moved to Kerala during her teens. A culinary enthusiast and organic gardener, she writes about food, farming and environmental issues. Lathika is also the author of Mother Earth, Sister Seed: Travels through India's Farmlands. She lives in Kodaikanal in South India. Abraham Verghese is a physician and writer and holds the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professorship at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA. He is the author of the bestselling novel, Cutting for Stone and The Covenant of Water.

Reviews

"A delightful, evocative, sumptuous menu, redolent of fresh green paddy fields, coconut palms swaying in the breeze, and the pungent spices of the Malabar coast . . . mouth-watering and heart-warming!"

-Shashi Tharoor

Former UN Undersecretary General and author of The Great Indian Novel

"I have never read a cookbook from cover to cover in one sitting, but then The Kerala Kitchen is so much more than a cookbook: It is travelogue, memoir and food diary. What better way to understand the community of Syrian Christians of Kerala-my community-than through our appetites. I was transported back to my grandmother's kitchen and I could hear the mustard seeds bursting and smell the delicious curries brewing in the clay pots she heated on a stove that was no more than a tripod of bricks with coconut husks as fuel. The Kerala Kitchen is a must . . . the easy and elegantly described recipes, the primer on spices and their uses, make these dishes accessible to all. Enjoy!"

-Abraham Verghese

author of The Covenant of Water

"Here you will find clear recipes for the best of Kerala's fine foods, written with great love by someone who has been a part of that culinary tradition since birth."

--Madhur Jaffrey

"The Kerala Kitchen is that most marvelous of cookbooks-where the stories are as good as the recipes. It makes me hungry, and it makes me want to travel to the Kerala that Lathika George conjures so evocatively. This is a book that is for anyone who's interested in India, or in eating well."

-Suketu Mehta,

author of Maximum City

Awards
Winner of Gourmand World Cookbook Award 2017 (Spain).



Book Information
ISBN 9780781814447
Author Lathika George
Format Paperback
Page Count 262
Imprint Hippocrene Books Inc.,U.S.
Publisher Hippocrene Books Inc.,U.S.