At the Ayyanar temple
Ayyanar is a village god, loosely affiliated with Hinduism, but emerging from a folk tradition of protective deities that keep disease and misfortune away from small rural villages. In one area of…
The Blog — 34 posts
Culinary Adventure in India
Every teaching, story, and reflection filed under Culinary Adventure in India.
Fire ceremony at Pillayarpatti
Today we went to the small town of Pillayarpatti in the heartland of Chettinad to an ancient Ganesha temple. The priests in the temple come from the best priest training school in South India and the…
Learning Chettinad Cooking
Our spiritual and culinary adventure is coming to a conclusion and today we had our last cooking class. It was on two Chettinad style dishes. The first was "Mint Chutney" and the second "Kola Urundai…
Bathing the Elephant
Driving down the road to Thanjavur, we crossed a river where a temple elephant was about to get one of her two daily baths.
Inside the sanctum of Chidambaram
Through our close connections with the priests of Chidambaram, we were able to go into parts of the vast temple that are rarely seen by outsiders.
Lunch with a priest's family
The only way to taste true Tamil cuisine is to be fortunate enough to be invited for lunch with a family. We had that pleasure yesterday when we dined at the home of Kailas Deeksitar, a priest at the…
Eating with your hands
Eating with your hand is something that is common in Asia especially in India. The right hand is used and all meals are eaten with it. Today for lunch as part of our culinary journey we visited Sri…
Relaxed cows of Pondicherry
Pondicherry is a beautiful seaside French colonial town. Beautiful 19th century architecture and contented cows (although maybe not as Ben and Jerry envisioned them.)
No Plate Big Enough
After class we took an evening walk along the promenade in Pondicherry which always seems to be bustling with people. Then we headed into town walking past a lot of the colonial type structures that…
The sights of Mahabalipuram
Up early this morning with the morning mist still hanging over the swimming pool at our beautiful hotel. After a meditation class near the beach, we set off to see more of the sights of Mahabalipuram.
Avial
A classic preparation from Kerala, Avial is a light, easy-to-make dish of vegetables cooked with coconut and yogurt. It goes particularly well with Pallapam. Preparation should take no more than 15…
Palappam
South Indian cooks make breads from lots of different ingredients more or less unknown in the west. This unusual and delicious bread from Kerala uses a fermented batter of rice flour and coconut…
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