From Gatwick to Goa: Getting curried away : South Indian cuisine

If there is one thing that I love the most about India, it's the food. Being a vegetarian in Europe was hard enough (come on France, eat your vegetables !), but it did get easier as we were going east. Now, in India, I'm in heaven. Finding "veg" restaurants is much easier than finding a "non-veg" restaurant. Street food is all veg, so I don't even have to ask ! Menues have a huge list of veg dishes and a tiny selection of meat dishes (if they have any at all. Bliss.

Food manners include eating with your right hand only!! The left is for dirty things such as wiping your behind. You will get looks if you eat with your left hand (and it's insulting to offer your left hand in a handshake). Of course, before and after eating a meal, it's good manners to wash your hands. EVERY eating establishment will have a place to wash your hands. Even the littlest hole-in-the-wall street vendor. Once your meal is served, you mix the food with your fingers, make little balls with the rice or chapati and scoop into your mouth. Fun.

We've been in the south and we really got a mouthful of Indian cuisine. Here are a few samples of what you'll find the the south: think coconut and spice spice spice. Here are a few of our favorite things:

Breakfest

Curry? For breakfast? Yessir (head wobble). No matter what time of day, how old you are...curry is always good for you (and it's a natural mosquitoes repellent too. Mosquitoes HATE the smell of curry coming out of your pores).

This is Pongal, It's got rice,. cashews, coconut and cumin. Serve it with chutneys and sambhar

This is an oothappam.which is like a superstuffed pancake. It is served with sambar (lentil dish with cubed veggies) and coconut chutney.

This is Puri, which is thin, fried, puffed bread. It's delicious and what most indians eat on street stalls. It's the fast food breakfest. It's their version of and Egg McMuffin. Served, again, with sambar,

And then there's this dish, Puttu, my favorite south Indian (Keralan) breakfast.. It's made of rice, coconut, cardamom and you can add spices and other little specialties if you want. You need a puttukutty to make it. It's a special cooker.

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And of course, the famous dosas. A large savory crepe like breakfest. It's thin and crispy and inside you'll fin different fillings, depending on what kind you ordered. Masala dosa, tomato dosa, ghee dosa....the list goes on. The funnest thing to eat with your hands. Served with chutney and sambar.

Dinner

It always takes me a super-long time to order as every menu has dozens of curries on offer. But by far, my favorite (and rest assured that most restaurants will offer it) is the Thali. Most thalis are all-you-can-eat so if you run out of something they quickly come and feel your meal up. We've often had the fortune (or misfortune) of constantly getting refills due to a language barrier. And then we eat, and eat, and eat, until we can't bear looking at another grain of rice. Whenever we run into a street stall and don't really know what they serve, we either look at what the locals are having, point to that or say "thali" and they'll know what we're talking about. Many places only serve one thing : the veg thali.


You get to try many different kinds of curries as well as a butter dish to add richness to your curry or curd (yogurt) in case it's too spicy. They'll come with ice, chapathi (thin naan-like bread). And, a papadom (that crispy bread on top).

Preparing a day's worth of chapatis.

Fruit

We're also a big fan of the fresh fruit that you can find at the markets and fruit stands. Bananas, coconuts, pineapples..they'll even put them in a blender to make you a fruit juice smoothie !


Friendly vendor giving me some of his coconuts !

Desserts
Sweet shops are a plenty here and although they may look odd at first sight, all wrapped up in edible aluminum, they're pretty delicious.

This little ball frightened us a little bit as we both thought "oh crap, it's got the curry color". It was DELICIOUS. It's called ladoos and are sweet balls made of gram flour and semolina.

I got this thing from a street vendor. It's got jelly candies and mint and syrups and a mixture of I don't know what on a leaf. You fold the leaf over and gulp. I did not like it so much.

We decided to take a south Indian cooking course. The food is loaded with coconut: ground coconut, coconut oil and coconut water. Our teacher was fantastic and showed us the many tricks of cooking with Indian spices and making the perfect masala spice. We made 5 different curries, including parrathas, papadoms and masala tea. This course was one of my favorite things that I did in India (so far).

Are you ready to cook?

Prep work

Chris, getting all the goods out of a coconut with a special device that made it real easy. We'll have to figure out how to make a concoction like that.