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A new recipe for tourism

Learning to cook is the new `to do'point in the agenda of a tourist visiting Kochi, finds PRIYADARSSINI SHARMA Many people are rising to the occasion, teaching the travellers the secret of traditional cooking, for a fee

SPICE ROUTE Travellers Keith Honeycombe with wife Caroline and Leelu Roy at her cookery class

Tourists add so much colour to Fort Kochi that from September to March, what has come to be called `the season', the place acquires a hue that's different from a scene anywhere else in the city. Dress codes are different, languages spoken are different, cuisines are varied, shopping is travel related, sight seeing is big time, home stays are comfort zones, hotels are plush and beautiful, snake charmers are hissing, hawkers are selling, lovers are kissing and amidst all this sizzle, cooking makes an entry. Cooking classes for the travellers are the latest value added flavour in their itinerary. And so we have tourists churning out chapatis, sambar, thoran, fish moilee and more. Their holiday platter now is literally full of beans!

Say David Lawrence and wife Flowery who run Delight Home Stay in Fort Kochi, the first home stay in Kerala, and who hold cooking classes regularly for their guests and other travellers, " We thought of this novel idea when we found people hunting for typical Keralan food. We thought we will give it a try and it has worked very well from day one."

So what began last season is now a new and nice holiday speciality with several other cooking classes springing up in the area. " I teach them simple recipes, which they can repeat back home. It is surprising but almost 70 to 80 per cent travellers are vegetarians or they only eat seafood. Cooking in coconut oil and using coconut milk is what's totally new to them. Today people use canned coconut but here we teach them the basics of grating, grinding and extracting the milk from coconut," says Flowery. "Use of fresh spices is another fascinating aspect for them. I teach them simple recipes like thoran and mezhukkupuratti. The tourists enjoy this. They all want to learn to make chapatis. I remember an Australian who made a chapati like the map of Australia. It's a very enjoyable experience for all." Embarrassed with the shower of praise from her guests learning to cook, Shirley Ashley of Bethlahem Home Stay says shyly, " Our guests enjoy this very much. They say it's an amazing experience from wonderful people. Such compliments are very new to us." She recalls how one of her guests was indeed surprised that with a knife and two small burners she could cook a big meal.

Says Keith Honeycombe, an antique dealer and a retired shipping executive, about the popularity of Indian cuisine in England, " It's so funny but three years ago when we came to Kochi somebody asked me in Cherai, about the most popular dish in England and I told him it was chicken tikka masala. He was surprised. But we love Indian food." And the reasons for him and his wife Caroline to join the classes, besides liking the cuisine and getting the authentic recipes are, " back home in England making a curry is all from prepared or semi prepared food. We enjoy these elaborate preparations that go in before making a curry. In big hotels they do demonstrations but it is very sanitised and not like working in a real kitchen." And Caroline, wishing to learn the correct way of grinding and cooking Indian cuisine is sad about the present day lifestyle that has made redundant the old methods of cooking. "The huge supermarkets have everything readily available. We have lost a lot of skills like drying and pounding spices and curry leaves. The pressure cooker is out and it's only the microwave. Cooking is a mere 20 minutes job," she laments about the loss of romance in cooking. Keith and Caroline joined Leelu Roy's `Cook + Eat' classes on Quiros street. Some of the other classes are at Travel Desk and at New York Café on Princess Street besides others in the several Home Stays in Fort Kochi. The fee for the classes depends on the menu chosen by the guests.

Meanwhile Johannes and Claudia, two Germans travellers, familiarise themselves with turmeric and tamarind and learn the stories behind these spices at Cook+ Eat. Claudia from Colombia too is in the class. She says, "Indian food is delicious and there are so many things about it that I don't know. This way I will learn correctly about everything used in Kerala cuisine." And so they go on making queries about grating coconut, coconut oil, spluttering mustard and adding asafoetida. Says Leelu Roy who runs, `Cook + Eat' classes and has been getting a stream of tourists cooking in her kitchen, " After the classes they all have a meal with us. It is a very happy and satisfying experience for everybody." It indeed must be as written, in verse, in Leelu Roy's visitors book, by Lea Goyden and Ivan Johnson, filmmakers visiting Kochi.

The magic of the mustard,

The temptation of the turmeric, the flirtation of the fenugreek,

And the magic of the masalas,

-An enchanting culinary enlightenment.'

Tourism, in Kochi, has indeed come up with a new dish.

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