Instructions: FORT COCHIN, India - The palm trees and beach just outside the small restaurant were merely scenery. The real proof of an exotic India was spread on a table inside.

Here was a meal that blew a refreshing tropical breeze through a first-time visitors notions of Indian food. Served from a long, green banana leaf were coconut-milk-drenched vegetable curries, fish fillets dark with spices, a mound of red-tipped rice, stuffed okra and a small pile of mango pickle.

A tourist expecting the same Indian food found in so many restaurants in the West is in for a surprise.

The food of southern India, especially here in the state of Kerala (the strip of land curving along Indias southwest coastline), delivers a more bountiful mix of fish and vegetables and more heat and intensity than most other Indian regions.

This is hot! Not what you are used to, is it? Kochi businessman Sibi Thomas said approvingly as he helped himself to spicy green beans. That is how we eat here.
A few meals in Kerala are enough to clear the air: One realizes there is no such thing as Indian food. The vastness of this country and the variety of its landscape make the idea of one definitive style of cooking impossible. Yet most American diners have been exposed mainly to the fare of northern India, with its buttery sauces, oven-puffed wheat breads and rich roasted meats that would have as much place in southern India as a bowl of beef stew on a Miami beach.

Kerala is too bright and tropical to handle such heaviness. It is a region of coconuts, chili peppers and spices, splashed with the vivid colors of fresh pineapple, mango and banana. Fish and vegetables, not red meat, are mainstays.

The result is a lightness that makes sense in a sultry tropical climate.

Wonderful meals can be found in tiny restaurants facing the Lakshadweep Sea to the west or in elegant dining rooms in the coastal cities of Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram. Plantation cooks in the western Cardamom Hills bring the same lightness to their tables, enhanced with the spices - pepper, cardamom, ginger - that grow on their property.

Rice forms the base for numerous griddle cakes and dumplings that take the place of oven-baked wheat breads eaten elsewhere. When the grain is served plain, Keralans prefer a reddish-brown parboiled rice with an earthy flavor, so different from the long-grain basmati used in the north.

The food across India is a reflection of the geography, said Maya Kaimal, author of Savoring the Spice Coast of India (HarperCollins, $30). The climate changes so dramatically, said the New York author, who frequently visits her extended family in Kerala.

In the south are lots of coconuts and black pepper and an unbelievable amount of fresh fruits and vegetables. They use a lot of these fresh chilies and fresh curry leaves and tamarind, so you get a spicy and sour cuisine that is quite different from the rest of India.

Even to Indians sometimes the foods are acquired tastes. The way spices are prepared can be different, too, Kaimal said. In the north, spices tend to be roasted, lending a toasty depth to the food, but southern cooks are more likely to fry their spices in oil before adding them to recipes.

Keralas cuisine has many influences. For centuries, its coastal cities drew Arabs and Europeans who came to trade spices, ivory and gems. Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Jewish settlers brought their cooking styles to the region. The long coastline and the many lakes guaranteed a place on the menu for seafood.

Kerala also became a center of Ayurvedic medicine, which carefully regiments foods depending on body type.

Very little about the practice of dining in southern India is simple, but balance and variety are essential at every meal, according to Vijayan Aravind, chef on a chartered houseboat that cruises the inland waterways of Kerala.

From his impossibly small kitchen, Aravind brought forth bowls of spiced okra; chopped cabbage with green chilies and onion topped with shredded coconut; a sizzling stew of curried tomatoes; green beans and peas tossed with tamarind; and a small platter of fried fish. Steamed rice helped cool the fiery flavors, as did the juicy slices of watermelon that followed.

Bowls of spicy chutney, pickles and dal (curried split peas or lentils) added more layers of flavor and heat.

You must eat all of these things, the chef insisted. There must be balance in the meal with vegetable and fruits and rice. You get strength from the fish.
Beyond such culinary bookkeeping is the simple truth of hospitality in southern Indian life, said Alamelu Vairavan, author (with Patricia Marquardt) of Art of South Indian Cooking (Hippocrene Books, out of print).

Any time you are visiting someone, if it is close to any meal time, they wont let you leave without eating something, she said.

Between bites of curried lentils, between sniffles from red chilies, between mops of the brow, the excitement of this kind of cooking becomes apparent.

It is a style that is firmly grounded in ancient tradition, but it appeals to modern tastes. This is the food of Indias famous Spice Coast: a taste of a whole other world.

If you would like to email yourself the recipe for later use, or share the recipe with your friends or family, enter the email addresses below and this recipe will be emailed to you and others as well.