Much like the food and wine tours of Tuscany and Provence, the Indian tropical shores are fast becoming the favoured cooking holiday destinations for foreigners.

Much like the food and wine tours of Tuscany and Provence, the Indian tropical shores are fast becoming the favoured cooking holiday destinations for foreigners.

    INDIAN telly viewers beamed with pride as the 35-year-old Dalvinder Dhami rustled up lipsmacking curries and paranthas on the world-renowned culinary show MasterChef Australia this season. Once thought to be hot and too spicy for the foreign palate, Indian spices and herbs like the garam masala are finding their way into kitchens across the world.
    Far-flung travellers from all over the world are planning ‘cooking expeditions’ to Indian backwaters and beaches, to soak in the scent of Indian spices and sweetmeats. Cooking holidays, a concept synonymous with gourmet destinations like Italy, Greece and France, are now catching up in our very own palm-fringed Goa, green and leafy Nilgiris and zesty Kerala!
    A custom-built kitchen on the banks of the Mandovi River in Central Goa has made chefs out of many amateur cooks and stood
witness to enjoyable cooking adventures. Run by Judy Cardozo, incharge, Goa operations of ‘Holiday on the Menu’ by On The Go Tours, this cooking getaway can be a 1/3/5-day affair, where you learn to cook famous Goan grub like Goan fish/prawn curry, chicken cafreal, allebelle (Goan coconut/jaggery pancakes) and popular South Indian dishes like meen kari (Kerala fish curry) and cheeman varathiyatu (Malabar prawns). “Apart from offering accommodation to our guests, the holiday also includes outdoor excursions to the local markets and a local spice farm to acquaint them with peppercorns, bay leaves, nutmeg and turmeric that are cultivated in the hinterland. This is followed by a typical Goan Hindu meal served on a banana leaf,” says Cardozo.
Art of laying a meal Similarly, The Pimenta Spice Garden Bungalows, situated in a 2.5 hectare-wide spice and coconut garden in Kerala, is another perfect getaway for aspiring chefs. The cooking course teaches holistic vegetarian cuisine that follows the tenets of Ayurveda. One also gets to learn the traditional art of laying a Keralite sadya (meal) and the importance of coconut in food. Says famous blogger Edinburgh Foody, who was a part of this group, “You might consider going all the way to Kerala to discover how to cook vegetarian food a trifle excessive, but I found it very enjoyable. It was inspirational even for a meat-eater like me and I am determined to include far more vegetarian dishes in my meals now,”she says. When not deconstructing recipes, the vacationers visit local curry powder-making units. Claire from Bristol, UK, recalls, “Jacob Mathew, who runs the venture, is a tutor, health counsellor and historian all rolled into one. Not only did I bring home
a book full of new recipes to cook, but was also taken on a culinary tour through the spice and tea plantations.”
International recognition While Pimenta is a full-fledged cooking tour, Nimmy Paul’s cookery sessions in nearby Kochi are a crisp introduction to traditional Kerala food as well as Syrian Christian cuisine that’s unique to the region. The late RW Apple Jr, a celebrated New York Times food and travel writer, who attended Paul’s classes, recommended her for the 2004 ‘Worlds of Flavor’, an international conference organised by the Culinary Institute of America. Her cooking school has since garnered international attention, and is considered a muststop for budding chefs passing through Kerala. “I like to stick to traditional recipes, but only those that can be cooked in any part of the world easily. It could be a stew, a fish molee, sambar or my favourite coconut mousse,” says Paul.

Judy Cardozo (in green kurta) and her offshore students at one of the ‘holiday on the menu’ sessions in Goa; (pic below) A tourist getting a hang of Kerala’s local vegetable market