The week before last, I published a post about the stand-out meals I ate during a recent trip to Mangalore. This is a sequel to that, since our trip to Mangalore took us (I, my husband, and our daughter) further: to Coorg and then to Nagarhole. Gastronomically speaking, our sojourn in Nagarhole was nothing to write home about; but the approximately three days we spent in Madikeri (the district headquarters of Coorg) were straight out of food heaven.
While we were at Madikeri, a naturalist guiding us through a local coffee plantation pointed out an allspice tree to us, as also a kochampuli tree. Both, he informed us, have great significance in the food of the local Kodavas: they are added in most pork preparations. And pork, he told us, is more or less the centre of the Coorgi kitchen. Some 10-15,000 tonnes of pork are consumed across Coorg annually, and a wedding feast (with a commonly-invited 2,000 guests) may call for up to a tonne of pork being cooked.
Pork, therefore, was definitely on the menu while we were in Madikeri. And there were other dishes, too. Here are the stand-outs:
1. Pandhi Curry with Akki Roti and Kummu Barthad at Ghats Cafe. Ghats Cafe is the coffee shop at Gateway Coorg, where we were staying. They have (besides all the usual suspects) an all-too-brief 'local menu', from which this was one of our favourite combinations. The spicy, tangy almost-black pandhi curry goes fabulously well with the akki roti (which looks like regular roti, but is made from rice flour). The kummu barthad is a mushroom stir-fry, all crispy and spicy, with curry leaves and chopped onions, a squeeze of lime over it. Bliss.
2. Nuuputtu with Fish Curry and Thoppu Palya at Ghats Cafe. Ghats Cafe again. The nuuputtu or rice noodle cakes - also known as idiyappams, and in Sri Lanka as string hoppers - were a nice contrast to the coconut-and-spice of the fish curry. The thoppu palya, wild spinach stir-fried with grated coconut, curry leaves and chillies, was a favourite of mine, something I'm going to try replicating at home with more easily available greens.
3. Pork Pepper Fry and Koot Curry at The Fort Mercara. The Fort Mercara is a hotel in Madikeri town, which is also home to a restaurant of the same name. This came recommended to us as a place to eat local food, and we did go here for lunch one day. The pork pepper fry was swoonworthy (the Coorgis really know how to combine pork and spice in superlative ways) but what caught my attention here was the koot curry we ordered along with it: a mix of various vegetables in a spicy, coconutty gravy with red kidney beans (rajma) added into it. Not something I'd encountered before, but very good.
That, then, were the dishes I especially enjoyed - dishes, too, which I am likely to try making at home. If you have more suggestions (and can point me to recipes online), do share!