Coorg: The Cookbook is a journey across the stunning landscape of Kodagu into its villages, rice fields, sacred groves, festivals, ancestral homes, and coffee plantations. It presents a vibrant and enduring culture through the lens of food. Kaveri Ponnapa has been immersed in exploring the culture and cuisine of Kodagu for almost three decades, and after her highly regarded work, The Vanishing Kodavas (Eminence 2013), she invites home cooks and readers to discover Kodava culinary traditions—many of which are shared by other groups of people who over time made Coorg their home—through more than one hundred recipes with easy-to-follow instructions. The foods and ingredients reflect the heart of a cuisine built around rice cultivation, foraging, and hunting, which has shaped the way people continue to cook and eat. Recipes are interspersed with vivid portraits of home cooks, producers, beekeepers and farmers, and descriptions of ways of cooking that have been passed down generations which, along with the gorgeous images, capture the essence of the people and the place.
The treasure trove of recipes includes the deep flavours of Rich, Dark Pork Curry, a range of steamed rice dumplings and rice cakes, Spicy Crab Curry, Pepper-Fried Mutton Chops, smoked and dried meats, foraged foods such as Wild Mushroom Curry, and Pan-Fried Tender Bamboo Shoots, a wide variety of vegetables including Pumpkin Curry with Coconut, appetising pickles, and sweets such as Miniature Jackfruit Pancakes and Deep-Fried Banana Fritters. The food reflects the appealing flavours and seasonal way of eating typical of the cuisine. Through pages of rich text and narrative, an extensive glossary, and insightful essays on heritage crops and foods, this is a book that brings alive the nuances of the Kodava culinary legacy.