Indian food is often flavored with the no scaldingspices such as cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves, garlic, cumin, coriander and turmeric. Spices are used in India to tone up the system the way wines aid the digestion of Western Cuisine.

As for the Cuisine of Kerala, it is mildly flavored, gently cooked and has a certain genteel delicacy on the stomach. An example is the rich biriyanis of the northern parts of Kerala: The Malabar Biriyanis.

Pulaos, pilaffs and biriyanis are meats, spices and onions slowly steam cooked in boiled rice. Malabar biriyani was brought across the Indian Ocean by Arab Seafarers. It should be eaten hot with crispy, crunchy papads.

A favourite breakfast dish is puttu. Rice flour dough is larged with grated coconut and steamed in hollow bamboo cylinder. It is eaten spinkled with sugar or with mashed bananas or with a spicy curry made of channa or chic peas.

Iddlis or fluffy white steamed cakes and dosas which are thin golden are popular in Kerala. They are made up of yeastry rice and lentil batter. they are not strictly Malayali Cuisine. They came across from the vegetarian kitchens next door in the state of Tamil Nadu.

Kerala does have its own well developed vegetarian Cuisine. If you visit the State during post harvest Onam season, do opt for atypical vegetarian  Onam lunch with thoran or kalen or pachadi or olen.

Thorens are gravy-less dishes of finely chopped boiled vegetables and possibly meat and sea food. The mustard seed used thorens gives them a pleasantly assertive flavour, while the lighly fried grated coconut adds the crunch.

Avial, on the other hand, is a mixed vegetable gravy dish thickened with coconut and yoghurt. drumsticks, jack fruit seeds and slices of mango are often used.

Olen is also a very gravy dish made of ash gourd and dry beans where the predominant flavour is that of coconut milk. it is a fairly thick liquid squeezed out from the white flesh of afresh coconut.

Bananas are very popular in Kerala Cuisine. Sliced finely and deep fried as chips, they are chewy snacks. Cut into bits, fried and dipped in jaggery or sugar syrup, they are sweets. Cooked in thick yoghurt and seasoned with chilly, turmeric, cumin seed and curry leaves, they become kaalen-an accompaniment to the main meal.

Malayalee Pachadi is a fairly thick sause made of sugar, yoghurt, grated cocnut, mustard seed and a wide spectrum range of spices including green and red chillies.

Sambar is a cross between a sause and a broth. It contains smashed lentils, cooked vegetables and spices including the exotic and edible resin asafoetida. For desert, there is the Pradhaman or Payasam, porridge like sweets with a vermicelli of rice base, cooked in milk and sugar or jaggery.

A favourite dish of Syrian Christians residing at Kottayam is Stew. Chicken and potatoes are simmered gently in acreamy white sause flavoured with black pepper, cinnamon cloves, green chillies, lime juice, shallots and coconut milk.

The Stew is eaten with Appams. Appams-Kallappams or Vellayappams are rice flour pancakes which have soft, thick, white spongy centers and thingolden crisp lace-like edge. Meen vevichathu or fish in fiery red chilly sause is also another favourite item. Besides the chicken and fish, ther is also red meat, erachi olathiathu. Beef(or lamb) is boiled with with roasted corriander seeds, red chillies, cloves, onions, cumins, garlic, ginger, fried coconut chips and little vinegar. Then with the water reduced, the meat is almost fried dry in alittle oil that has been flavoured with sliced shallots and highly aromatic curry leaves.

No meal is complete without rice, and it is puffed up in a narrow-nacked urn. This is parboiled rice. Besides the stew and appams, meat, fish and rice, there are delicious little morsels-fried banana slices, crunchy yam crisps, prawns in cocnut milk and chestnut like seeds of jackfruit flavoured with chillies, garlic, cinnamon and fennel.

The meal ends with paani-thick, creamy yoghurt. It is the syrup of the South West, the honey made without any assistance from the bees, by boiling down tapped toddy till it is a thick golden syrup.