The next day, after breakfast, it's time to leave. Driving to Sultan's Battery, we see our ingredients growing — from turmeric plants to cardamom shrubs. Kerala is a lush land with abundant rainfall and paddy fields, spice plantations, coconuts and fresh waters.
We reach Tranquil, a guesthouse on a coffee plantation surrounded by rubber, fruit and spices. We sleep in a treehouse but cook on terra firma. Our hosts are former planters Victor and Jini Dey, newcomers at cookery courses but old hands at cooking.
Our classroom is a backroom with a corrugated ceiling and freestanding gas stoves. Here they teach old family recipes — a mouth-watering fusion of styles. Servants wander in and out, giving us lime sodas.
Our lesson is with chef Sashi, Jini and her daughter, Neesha — with Neesha translating the chef's Malayalam. We cook Naadan chicken curry — a Masala fish dish and spinach with onion flowers. Various kitchen hands and dogs join us at different times. At lunch afterwards at a communal table, we eat our produce as monkeys play nearby.
Then we go by train to near Kanam. Our final destination, Serenity, is a 1920s bungalow-style boutique hotel in Vazhoor, famed as much for great food as its pet elephant, Lakshmi.
On a hilltop with views over the Western Ghats, Serenity has colonial furniture and artefacts and an ayurvedic spa. The cookery demo room is equally elegant — a dining room with gas rings atop its antique table. Our teacher is Rineesh, a fresh-faced young man wearing a tall chef's hat, chef's whites and an apron. It's all very Swiss, like one of the hotel's owners.
Before he's finished teaching us to make local specialities of cashew nut paste and curried fish, we have an electrical blackout (not that uncommon in India) — but somehow he talks and cooks through the dark. Afterwards we devour lemon and lentil soup, curry and stuffed bananas.
But our food odyssey doesn't end here. Even flying home we eat delicious vegetable curry with warm nan bread. And when we get back, we manage to make our own delicious Indian feast.
There might not be any coconuts in our London garden but at least the children have learned to cook.
DETAILS KERALA
The tour: Scott Dunn has eight nights from £1,957pp full board staying at Ayesha Manzil, Tranquil Plantation and Serenity, including cookery courses, return flights with Kingfisher Airlines and private transfers. www.scottdunn.com www.keralatourism.org
