Instructions: MUMBAI - Indias Konkan coast, stretching from Mumbai to Goa and Mangalore along the western edge of the country, is lush with rice fields and coconut palms. The Arabian Sea teems with creatures: pomfret and kingfish, shrimp, crab, clams, mussels and lobsters.

From street foods to trendy eateries, Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, is a gourmets paradise. The seaside shacks of Chowpatty Beach are renowned for their bhel-puri and chaat, spicy trail mixes of puffed rice and fine strands of crispy fried chickpea flour noodles tossed together with potatoes, yogurt and fiery chutneys. On the busy sidewalks of Mumbai, you can buy Chinese delicacies, tandoori kebabs, fresh sugar cane juice and the popular pau bhaji, a spicy mash of potatoes and vegetables heaped on a roll.

Then there are the expensive restaurants housed in five-star hotels. At the Oberoi Hotels Regal Room, I savored Mediterranean-style grilled red snapper; at the Taj President Hotel, an exceptional Thai dinner; and at the hip new Indigo restaurant, California-style cuisine.

But most of all, Mumbai prides itself on the style of cooking known as Konkan coastal cuisine, based on coconut, rice and the bounty of the sea.

Grated, roasted or in its milky form, coconut lends body to the curries.

Fine, unpolished and even red rice is not just boiled but served in the form of crepes like dosais (fine rice crepes) or spongy appams (thick pancakes), consumed at breakfast. Kanji (rice gruel) enhanced with coconut shavings and ghee (clarified butter) is another popular breakfast item.

There is heavy use of spices and fewer coconuts used during the rainy season.

It keeps you warm, and you cant climb coconut trees in the rains, says Ananda Solomon, executive chef of Konkan Cafe at the Taj President Hotel.

Solomon learned cooking the old-fashioned way, in his mothers kitchen. He later honed his skills by traveling the Konkan coastal belt.

Walking me through the expansive kitchen, glistening with shiny brass bowls, Solomon points out that in the Konkan style of cooking, only copper or earthenware pots are used. Specific vessels are reserved for rice and curries.

We dont mix the pots, he says.

Curries, what Westerners would call sauces, are usually prepared a day ahead of time, as the overnight infusion of spices enhances the dishes. The chef also believes in cooking dishes slowly. Thats where the aromas and flavors come out, he says.

Indian cooking is all about balance, Solomon says. And the regions secret lies in the subtle combination of the spices. Besides coconut and tamarind, essential to coastal cooking, Solomon reels off a list of spices used in this region - peppercorns, cardamom, cinnamon, star anise, coriander seeds and an assortment of chilies, among them, small red Goan, long dry Kashmiri and winter green chilies.

Exuding a tropical ambience, the tables at the Konkan Cafe are decorated with shiny brass platters lined with plantain leaves. Bowls cradling colorful chutneys - fiery red chili and a cool mint, both flavored with freshly grated coconut - serve as centerpieces. We start off with a spicy crab soup fragrant with curry leaves. Then come platters of clams masala, pomfret charcoal-grilled in plantain leaf and Mangalorean fish curry bursting with hot and sour taste of tamarind peppered with dry red chilies. The fiery flavors are cooled down by pineapple sassam, a dish sweetened with jaggery and spiked slightly with a sprinkling of Kashmiri chilies.

The rest of the menu reads like a poetic symphony in Konkan cuisine - prawns with raw mango curry, mutton in coconut milk, green spicy chicken curry, fried squid Goan-style, charcoal-grilled eggplant, stuffed green chilies with yogurt, white pumpkin with Bengal gram, seasoned potato cakes with raw mangoes, pickled roast chicken East Indian-style and the house specialty taleli bombil, fried Bombay Duck, as the special fish of the region is called.

The following day, at Ankur restaurant, I savor distinctive Mangalorean flavors in dishes such as Yetti Rava - jumbo prawns deep-fried in semolina batter and accompanied with spicy chili-coconut chutney. Prawns Karavali arrive floating in a coconut sauce spiced with red chilies, and Fish Thekady, the popular pomfret, comes dressed in a ginger-garlic marinade peppered with more red hot chilies. All this is of course cooled down with refreshing nimbu-pani

(fresh lime juice topped with chilled club soda). We deviate briefly from seafood for kori roti with chicken curry. Succulent chunks of chicken cradled in a thick coconut-based curry are spooned over bits of kori roti (crispy rice pancakes) that within minutes soak up the spicy, rich curry.

I returned with memories but also with a handful of recipes from chef Solomon. And I set to work creating a recipe inspired by my visit.

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