Ya Rayi Our Rai

Press Release for Grains, Greens and Grated Coconuts: Recipes and Remembrances of a Vegetarian Legacy

For Immediate Release                         
Contact: Ammini Ramachandran                                     
Phone: (972) 612 2712             
Email: ammini@peppertrail.com

Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts
Recipes and Remembrances of a Vegetarian Legacy

In this passionate celebration of her ancestral cuisine, Ammini Ramachandran skillfully interweaves history, geography, religion, tradition, and especially, evocative personal anecdotes to bring a delectable story to life.

With Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts, Ramachandran has integrated her recipes into a Western-style menu and offers suggestions for home cooks to expand their repertoire without having to create an entire menu of dishes. A comprehensive glossary provides the origins and history of every grain and spice used in Ramachandran’s recipes, its importance in the cuisine, and the associated folklore.

But even more, Ramachandran explores in detail both the cuisine and its relation to Kerala’s history and lifestyle, creating a cookbook distinctive in today’s market. Over the past seven years, Ramachandran has researched the ancient Indian Ocean spice trade and its influences on the cuisine and culture of her home state Kerala, India. In a richly detailed chapter, Our History and Heritage, she traces the development spice trade that began long before the birth of Christ, and lasted over many centuries; gradual colonization by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British; and the indelible imprint of spice trade on Kerala’s culture and cuisine.

Delving into the lifestyle and traditions of Kerala’s matrilineal society, she sheds light on this often-mystifying culture while simultaneously presenting recipes in their historical framework. Born in Kerala, India, to a Nayar joint family, Ramachandran’s grandfather and father-in-law were members of the royal family of Kochi. This heritage permitted her personal access to the authentic vegetarian recipes Kerala. With Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts, Ramachandran creates a surprisingly approachable cuisine in its cultural context.

Visit www.peppertrail.com

Available from Ingram Book Group, Baker & Taylor, iUniverse, Inc.

Amazon.com

BarnesandNoble.com

booksamillion.com

ISBN: 0-595-40976-8  6 x 9  Trade Book  $23.95

ISBN: 0-595-85332-3  6 x 9  Adobe E-Book    $6.00

Advance Praise for the Book

“Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts is a wonderful book: a moving glance into a world that I would never otherwise have encountered. Recipes that make me want to rush to the kitchen, intriguing techniques that could be used with other cuisines, fascinating personal stories about growing up in a big Kerala household, all embedded in a deep understanding of Kerala as a pivot of Asian history. It’s a wonderful tribute to Kerala and a stunning gift for the rest of us.”     

—Rachel Laudan, culinary historian and       
Author of The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii’s Culinary Heritage

“Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts is a jewel of a cookbook---from its authentic recipes (many published here for the first time) to Ammini Ramachandran's evocative personal anecdotes of Kerala's culinary traditions. It is at once scholarly, yet accessible, and especially charming for its delicious recipes and intriguing stories from the royal kitchens of Kochi".       
—Grace Young       
Author of The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen & The Breath of a Wok

"In this passionate celebration of her ancestral cuisine, Ammini Ramachandran deftly interweaves history, religion, tradition, geography, and especially, intimate family memories to bring the delicious Keralan story to life. Her recipes were savored not just at home but at temples too, where priests doled out scrumptious spicy brown chickpeas or sweet rice pudding treats. Foods that have been blessed, she says, "had a very special taste". A lush area of diverse vegetation on the southwest coast of India, Kerala is unique not only for its age-old interaction with foreigners, but also for its matrilineal society. Ammini makes it all very accessible, beginning with thorough explanations of the fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables emphasized in the Keralan kitchen. She demystifies all the various kinds and types of grains, flours, and legumes I had always stared longingly at in Indian groceries. And she shares her discoveries: sensible substitutions, invaluable trucs, and suggestions for integrating these traditional recipes into non-traditional menus. The world that Ammini chronicles may have vanished, but her food, enriched with memory and love, offers a very special taste for us all".    
   
—Jayne Cohen       
Author of Gefilte Variations

Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts by Ammini Ramachandran

An Excerpt from Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts: Recipes and Remembrances of a Vegetarian Legacy

By Ammini Ramachandran

Chapter One Our History and Heritage

Along the coastline of tropical southwestern India, where the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea converge, set among picturesque lagoons and backwaters and separated from the rest of the Indian subcontinent by the rugged Sahyadri mountain range (also called the Western Ghats), lies a land of spectacular beauty and proud heritage: Kerala, the land of coconut palms and spices.

The story of our spices is an ever-changing history of lands discovered or destroyed, favors sought or offered, treaties signed or broken, wars won or lost, and kingdoms built or brought down. Ever since ancient times, the monsoon-soaked rain forests of Kerala, home to several spices: including the world's most widely used spice, black pepper (piper nigrum) were a prime destination for many explorers. The abundant black pepper attracted Arabs, Greeks, Romans, Portuguese, Dutch, and British from the west and Southeast Asians and Chinese from the east.

The spice trade not only brought prosperity to our region, but it also left an indelible imprint on Kerala's culture and cuisine. From the pre-Christian era onward, trade between the kingdoms of south India and ancient Israel and Arabia resulted in the formation of the earliest Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities of Kerala. When foreign traders arrived at the port of Muziris, near the capital of the Chera kings (ancient rulers of Kerala), the reigning kings treated them with respect, extending facilities for their settlement and the establishment of their faiths in the land. Foreign traders brought with them numerous new plants and trees, which thrived in our tropical weather. Several fruits, nuts, spices, and vegetables we associate today with Kerala cuisine were unknown in ancient times. All these were slowly but surely integrated into our cuisine.

Arab Trade

Despite the fame of overland trade along the Silk Road, much of the significant trade between Europe and Asia was carried out in specific sailing seasons along the Indian Ocean. The Arabian Peninsula was home to Arabs, Hebrews, Ethiopians, and Syrians. These pre-Islamic tribes of central Asia, along with Indian and Southeast Asian merchants, were active traders and intermediaries in early Indian Ocean trade. The port of Muziris became one of the main trans-shipment ports for goods from the east. Spice traders took native spices and other commodities that had arrived at the port across the great expanse of the Indian Ocean to Africa and Arabia, and from there, to points farther west.

From Peasant Cuisine to Palace Cuisine By Ammini Ramachandran

        From Peasant Cuisine to Palace Cuisine
   An Introduction to the culinary history of India

From ingenious vegetarian offerings with a wide range of flavors to the elegant meat-centered feasts of Mogul emperors, India’s culinary traditions are rich, and as varied as her land and people. The country’s geography and climate ranges from landlocked high altitude mountains, to fertile river valleys, to arid plateaus, to verdant tropical coasts. In times past food production was totally dependent on geographic and climatic conditions, from which evolved the various peasant cuisines of India. Until the British conquest at the end of the eighteenth century, each region of India was ruled by its own royal family and each had its own provincial language, local customs, culture, and unique cuisine. The proficient palace chefs of these small independent kingdoms perfected the many elegant palace cuisines of India.

India’s population is very diverse and they follow many different religions. Food related taboos differentiating the sacred from the disrespectful are taken very seriously. Hindus and Sikhs won’t eat the sacred cow. Strictly vegetarians, mostly Brahmins, and Jains refuse even the spices associated with the preparation of meat, such as onions and garlic. The descendants of the Moguls of Delhi and Punjab, being Muslim, refuse pork, but are great experts in the preparation of meat dishes. Christians of India have some excellent beef and seafood dishes.

Mappila Cuisine of Kerala

         

Mappila Cuisine of Kerala by Ammini Ramachandran

The Muslim influenced Tandoori dishes of Mughal cuisine with its unique technique of marinating meats and vegetables with a careful blend of choicest spices and aromatic herbs have been a gourmet's delight the world over. With the migration of Indian workers to the west during 18th and 19th centuries, the tandoori preparations of Mogul cuisine and the hardy food of the Punjab region were the first to reach the western world. Even today this is the type of food that is served in most Indian restaurants abroad.

Mahmud of Ghazni (modern Afghanistan and northeastern modern Iran), lured by tales of the fertile plains of the Punjab and the fabulous wealth of Hindu temples first attacked northern India in 1000 AD. The Mogul emperor Baber conquered India in 1526 AD and this Muslim dynasty ruled in an unbroken succession for nearly 200 years. North Indian food went through a profound transformation during this period. Meats and breads grilled in clay ovens called tandoors and elaborate dishes – Kababs, pulavs and biriyanis - and sweets garnished with thin sheets of real gold and silver became the mainstay of Mogul banquets.

Many years before the advent of central Asian Muslim invaders to the northern frontiers, coastal region of the Indian Ocean between India, the Persian Gulf, East Africa and the China Sea was an area of active commercial exchange. People along these coasts, blessed with wide open waters and natural harbors, excelled in maritime trade with distant lands. Indian merchants and the inhabitants of the Persian Gulf regions were active traders and intermediaries long before the birth of Prophet Muhammad.

For Europe and central Asia, spices were the envoys from enchanted orient. From ancient times, the monsoon soaked rain forests, home to several spices, especially black pepper, became a prime destination for many explorers. Ancient southern Indian kingdoms enjoyed a flourishing spice trade with the Arabs of coastal Yemen and Oman. By the early Christian period south India was transformed into a commercial hub linked to the West and the East through emporiums located along the coastal and inland routes. Spice trade was as profitable an undertaking as it was complex.

When the maritime trade routes spread beyond the Nile and Euphrates, Greeks, Romans and later the Portuguese ventured to trace new routes to the source of spices and exotic things. However, the old Arab channels of trade continued to flourish thanks to the age-old alliances and agreements between the original Arab and Indian traders. Interestingly cinnamon, the spice that made fortunes for the Arab traders in earlier times still remained an Arab monopoly. The Romans could find it only at Arab ports; the source of cinnamon in India was scrupulously guarded from them. Throughout the Malabar Coast the Romans were offered only malabathrum, the leaves of the same tree that produced the fragrant bark.  Such was the loyalty between the ancient traders of the Indian Ocean.