In Malabar Flavors is a brief memoir cum cookbook in which Dr. Kuchinad takes us back in time to her childhood holidays at her ancestral homes in Kerala, India, and her immigrant experience moving to the United States with an emphasis on the traditional South Indian foods and recipes that sustained and comforted her during this transition. Through memories, and observations she reflects on how people, families and societies, old and current handle food. Malabar Flavors examines our relationship with food as modern humans and points to the wisdom of our ancestors that made this relationship nurturing, inspirational and served as the glue that held nuclear and extended families together. The stories in this book also takes us beyond the food to our emotional and spiritual ties to the plants and animals that provide the food and how it has been woefully severed in the modern era. This book celebrates what is wholesome and nourishing about the way we used to eat in the past and invites the reader to reflect upon their own relationship with food. In addition to offering authentic Kerala recipes her vignettes weaves, food, people, and friendships together whether it be around grandma’s hearth, or an aunt and uncle’s home back home in India, or a suburban Indian home or the numerous lonely kitchens across America.
This book also contains a chapter about the birth of Ahimsa Retreats which was born out of the desire to reconnect with the enduring wisdom, healing practices, customs, flora and fauna and recipes of her ancestors back in Kerala.
