Localizing the Exotic: Malabar Cuisine as the Ingredient for Cultural Concoction in Kerala

Food is unquestionably one of the major factors that unites human beings. With a variety of cuisines from across the world available within the perimeters of a corner of theworld, food becomes the international language of people. Such cuisines that help distinguishfood based on its ingredients invariably associate a particular culture with specific food items. It is common among the foreigners to associate spicy food with Indian food culture thoughthe Indian cuisine is not limited to spiciness alone. As a country diverse in every corner withrespect to linguistic and cultural aspects, it had to play second fiddle to external nationalforces which must have positively affected the food culture of various places in the country.In the light of such culinary abundance available here, it is interesting to note the playof oriental aspects in the area of gastronomy, with the oriental Arab culture merging into theculture of Kerala which is yet another orientally perceived, exotic part of the world. The foodthat came from across the oceans is now an inevitable portion of the much-celebratedMalabar cuisine of Kerala. The paper attempts to focus on the curious co-mingling of twodistinct food cultures into a unified whole, transcending borders, religions and other classifications.