Summer fruit is coming in and berry season is here. Our friends had told us about a young man who is growing and selling the most superb organic raspberries, and so it is to his farm in Abbotsford that we’re headed.

Collin Regehr, who is twenty six, decided to follow his father into farming about six years ago. While his father has experimented with growing raspberries, they’re currently the main focus of Collin’s ventures. With two acres planted with two varieties of raspberries, the crop can vary from 5,000 to 15,000 lbs in a season.

Our first visit is on a grey, overcast day in mid-July.

The plants are laden with ripe fruit, the air cool and delicately scented with rose and honeysuckle. The soil between the rows of plants is dark and very soft from the excess rain.

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The monsoon is making its way across India, and I’ve made my way back to summer in Vancouver, Canada.

Okay, let’s try that again. It’s summer, and we’re headed for one of Vancouver’s farmers markets, this one at Trout Lake.

Farmers and vendors from all over the region including the Lower Mainland, the Okanagan and Vancouver Island show up with some of the best that the province of British Columbia has to offer.

Unfortunately, it’s been a cold and wet spring. That, on top of  last Fall’s heavy rains, has made  it the worst growing season in decades and it has hit farmers hard.

Although it’s been rough, you wouldn’t know it from the smiles and friendly exchanges here, as always.

Browsing at the stalls and planning  the next meal along the way, I join the line-up at Rise for the best bread around. They’re usually sold out by noon, so you need to get in early.

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I’m very pleased to present this blog’s first interview, recorded over the course of several visits to the home of Mr. and Mrs. B. P. Appanna in Kodagu.

Mr. Appanna is a retired professor of History, former president of the Karnataka Kodava Sahithya Academy, and a collector and custodian of  some very unique cultural treasures of Kodagu. Having spent a lifetime teaching in schools and colleges across Coorg,  Bacharaniyanda P. Appanna shows no signs of being anywhere near ready to sit back and enjoy a sedate retirement.

We’re seated in his office, and in the background,  I can hear Mrs. Appanna, (also a retired teacher but currently the very active president of the Kodava Mahila Sangha),  fielding phone calls, fixing appointments for various cultural and social engagements she and her husband are to attend. “There is never enough time to do everything!” laughs Mr. Appanna.

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Bamboo shoot is a much loved delicacy of the monsoon season. Though most varieties of bamboo have edible shoots, the two most commonly eaten in Coorg are the newly emergent culms of the Spiny or Thorny Bamboo (Bambusa bambos/ B. arundinacea) and the slender, asparagus like Ochlandra scriptoria/O.rheedii, known locally as watté baimbalé.

This season’s supply of the mullu baimbalé (thorny bamboo) has been badly hit, thanks to the flowering that happened earlier this year*.

Beginning in late May, emerging culms are harvested and the sliced shoots are processed by soaking in plenty of fresh water for 24 hours. This serves to leach out much of the hydrocyanic acid present in some varieties of bamboo. The rest is probably dissipated in the cooking process. In the picture below, you’ll see some bubbles in the water the sliced bamboo has just gone into. This frothing is instantaneous and, by the following day, you’ll see a lot more of it. There’s also a very distinctive fragrance to it – the scent of danger, perhaps?!

The water is changed and the shoots are once again soaked for 24 hours in just enough fresh water to cover them. The long soaking begins a process of light fermentation that gives the bamboo a slight but very appealing tang. The water from the second soaking can be used to cook the bamboo shoot. Prepared shoots are eaten in curries and stir-fries, turned into spicy pickles or preserved in brine for later use. Nowadays freezing is an easy and effective option. My mother usually has a stash of parboiled, frozen bamboo shoot to last her until the next monsoon!

* For me, the only good thing to come of this,was finding out firsthand about some of the “also rans” in the bamboo hierarchy- not too bad, some of them! Oh, and also some bamboo rice.

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The Southwest monsoon announces itself in Coorg with a spectacular sound and light show. Thunder rolls over the hills, lightning crackles across darkened skies and the land prepares for close to three months of heavy rains.

This is a fierce season, one whose beauty it’s easier to appreciate with the comforts of modern living. I’m not so sure that I’d be as quick to profess my love for the monsoon if I had to live through it with no electricity, damp and mould waiting to strike at every stage and a long period of semi hibernation. Wait, I believe I have done something very much like that!

Still, this is the season that throws up some of the most exciting foods in the Coorg repertoire. Whether from necessity, curiosity or the enforced confinement to home and hearth (or a combination of all three) the monsoon menu is a testament to some very creative culinary ventures.

I’ve been very lucky with mangoes this year!

There have been (not in any order of preference) Alphonsos, Banganpallis, Mallikas and more. And a windfall in the form of a generous gift from a friend – a  parcel containing several kilos of a little mango known as “Doodh Peda”, whose antecedents I am unsure of but whose buttery deliciousness I can vouch for ! Also in the parcel was a quantity of the Imam Pasand (written about here by Vikram Doctor). What a lovely mango! Pale yellow flesh, incredibly juicy, sweet, and yes, definitely citrusy. I don’t recall ever before eating a mango quite so, for want of a better word, “refreshing”. With each fruit weighing close to a kilo and with a small seed, that’s a lot of refreshment!

And then there’s the wild mango or Kaad Maangé in Coorg. These small mangoes (typically 3-4″ long) are sour-sweet, with a unique peppery, resinous flavour concentrated in the skin. The large, fibrous seeds provide quite an engaging dining experience! The whole mangoes are sometimes preserved in brine for use throughout the year.

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