Pepper from Kerala in India has been in demand since Roman times. Nikki Werner and Brandon de Kock travelled to the source and discovered a hilltop retreat and a lakeside sanctuary you’ll want all to yourself
SOMEWHERE between backwater and jungle our driver, Babu Vattathara, asked Brandon what he loves to cook in South Africa. Brandon took great pleasure in describing his ritual: source the best possible pasture-reared beef rump, season it with sea salt and cook it to perfection over coals. To which an incredulous Babu responded, “And this is delicious?”
To Babu, cooking without spice is inconceivable. It’s what Kerala, the tropical south Indian state we were travelling through, is built on. In an organic spice garden we learned that pepper is the king of spice, cardamom the queen, vanilla the prince and saffron the princess. This is the “royal family” that ties Kerala to Cape Town through the Dutch East India Company. The cardamom pods I purchased are plump and green, not ashy-beige, and serve as a benchmark for potency every time I open my pantry cupboard. It’s the difference between a blouse carrying the mere suggestion of your favourite scent and someone administering so much fragrance that it makes a statement on the public landscape of smell. In this case, that’s a positive.
The Cardamom Hills happened to be the direction we were heading in to reach Paradisa, a hilltop retreat where we would overnight. Kerala is the lush segment of land between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats and we were aiming for those mountains, where pepper vines once grew wild, and coffee and that cardamom flourish in the cool elevation.
When we arrived feeling slightly queasy – nothing more than the ever steepening incline and hairpin bends necessary to access such a remote property – the owner, Simon Paulose, fetched a spoonful of honey sprinkled with fenu greek to settle the stomach. His gesture reminded me of Kerala’s historical association with Ayurvedic medicine, which favours pepper.
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