Around a year ago I was at home perusing the home and garden section of the Guardian newspaper. There was an article by Allan Jenkins about an organic vegetable garden in Kerala. Slightly oddly, it didn’t say in the article precisely where it was. I did my own internet research to find that there was somewhere called Marari Beach Resort with a five acre organic vegetable garden, where it’s possible to tour the garden, pick vegetables and the chef would then cook a meal with the produce. So when I was planning our trip an opportunity to visit a vegetable farm and taste the produce was high on my wish list.

It was another one of those ‘pinch yourself’ moments – we actually did it. At 6pm last night we met Ajo, the chef in the farm kitchen garden and he took us on a tour to learn about and select the produce that he then turned into our dinner in a beautiful outdoor farm kitchen, What a delicious dinner it was too! I’m not generally one for posting pictures of my meals, but on this occasion I’ll make an exception.

The first course was a simple soup made from some onion, garlic, curry leaves picked from the garden and blended with coconut milk. They were simmered gently for about 30 minutes. Instead of using a pan lid, a banana leave had the duel effect of keeping a lid on the pan and also telling when it was cooked as the leaf changed as it cooked – ingenious!

Next it was a banana cooked in a sauce of onions, spices and coconut milk. This was served wrapped in a banana leaf. It was delicious and had a beautiful almost nutty flavour.

Next was a refreshing salad made using three types of spinach leaves. The dressing was made from passion fruit juice – it was so sweet. Pomegranate seeds were sprinkled over the salad with some small batons of what I think were a yam.

The main course consisted of two curries; a wet pumpkin curry with coconut cream, and a dry aubergine curry with chopped fresh coconut. It was interesting that Ajo prepared the aubergine by chopping it into very small pieces and cooking it directly, this is very different to how we generally cook aubergine at home (sliced, salted and baked to extract liquid before they are grilled or roasted). I’m certainly going to try his method. The curry was accompanied by a hot pickle and chapati.

Desert was a creamy coconut pudding infused with hibiscus flower and mixed with chopped cashew and dried fruit. It was the perfect end to a delicious meal – and our first desert in India (if you exclude fruit!).

It was a fantastic experience and meal. We wrote a great review for Ajo, we’d definitely recommend this experience.

Ajo our very talented chef