There are few things more American than grilling. And as it happens, there are few inventions more American (and ingenious) than the cocktail. So it’s only fitting that we, as headstrong and curious citizens of this great country, would think to marry the two. When juiced or muddled into the base of a drink, grilled fruits and vegetables weave in a layer of rich, smoky, summery flavor, not unlike the comforting scent of an early evening campfire.

How does one grill a cocktail, you ask? Situate anything and everything that isn’t booze, right onto the grill: whole citrus halves, sweet pineapple rounds, slices of serrano pepper, grapefruit wedges, and fat slices of stone fruit. And keep these tips in mind while grilling:

• Make sure your grill is hot, but the coals are lightly layered and not flaming, so ingredients don’t become too charred. If using a gas grill, turn the burners down to low. Check ingredients every 30 seconds or so, until they have distinct grill marks but are not ashy.
• Use long tongs and a heavy-duty grill glove to pick up and take off ingredients, which are smaller and trickier to handle than meat or fish.
• Instead of muddling fruit directly into a drink, you can use it to infuse simple syrups for a more subtle flavor.
• Using a mini-smoke box like this one from Weber, you can smoke herbs, berries, and even a cocktail glass by setting the woodchip-filled box atop your grill and letting your ingredients hang out while you flip burgers.

Grilled Pineapple Margarita

The margarita is essential to America’s canon of summertime drinks, and adding a grilled element makes it that much more festive. Burnished pineapple adds a rich layer of fruitiness while mezcal lends a veil of smoke and spice. Get the recipe >

Seared Apricot-Ginger Cooler

Unlike other stone fruit, apricots stay resilient when ripe and stand up to a quick sear on the grill with aplomb. Once the flesh warms through and its juices bake a bit, the apricot takes on deeper flavors that pair nicely with a spicy bourbon or rye and an equally spicy ginger beer. Get the recipe >

Smoked Lemon-Lime-Ade

This lemonade is rendered smoky-sweet with the juice of grilled lemons and limes and toasted simple syrup, which has a mild caramel flavor that does a lot to complement the grilled fruit. Get the recipe >

Charred Chile Daiquiri

The daiquiri is an adaptable creature, and it welcomes new companions in the form of bitters, infused simple syrups, or salty-sweet rims. This version keeps the classic’s sour formula, but adds a veil of smoky spice lent from charred serrano- and jalapeño-infused sugar syrup. Get the recipe >

Smoky Grapefruit Gin and Tonic

Meant for long afternoons overlooking lakes, porches, and thick novels, gin and tonics are the balm of summer. Add a slice of salt-sprinkled grilled grapefruit, and cut the tonic with soda, and the highball grows not only more aromatically complex, but even more refreshing. Get the recipe >

The post The Case for Grilling Your Cocktails appeared first on Saveur.

I haven’t been home for a weekend since July. Such is the life of a curious eater.

One weekend in mid-August was spent wandering around Austria’s Bregenzerwald region hiking to see Tyrolean cows that produce pristine milk for Alpine cheese. A little farther west in Innsbruck, I met the distiller of Rochelt, a schnaps maker who crafts spirits from perfectly ripe fruit he sources from the best orchards and farms in Europe (stay tuned for the full story in our December/January issue).

Another weekend, I explored Minneapolis, a beautiful, vibrant city with, hands down, the best and biggest farmers market I’ve ever seen. A native Midwesterner, I grew up in a part of Ohio where farmers markets were scarce, much of the land given over to growing soybeans and corn for ethanol. To see a cousin state using America’s rich soil for diverse agriculture gave me a surge of pride, and a hint of homesickness for a region I haven’t called lived in in a decade.

In September, at another market in Bogotà, Colombia, I was led around by a small band of chefs who are supporting farms that are returning to growing food (instead of coca) after the signing of the FARC peace agreement this month. There, they introduced me to so many strange and wonderful fruits I’d never seen: tomate de arbol, feijoa, curuba, and probably a dozen others. After eating for a living for a few years, to encounter an entirely new flavor is a very welcome surprise. The surprises and new flavors only continued with a meal at El Ciervo y El Oso cooked by Marcela Arango. It was so filled with beauty and passion (and fried Amazonian ants), I left feeling a little weepy and vowing to return soon.

Having eaten blue crabs in Maryland, fried chicken in Minnesota, weisswurst in Austria, and lechona in Colombia, I’m ready for a weekend of cooking at home. There will be nachos, chicken with chanterelles, this beautiful, goopy crab dip, and a few bottles of wine. There will also be much catching up on sleeping, playing of backgammon, and reading the pile of newspapers that has accumulated in my absence. But there will also be planning for the next round of travel—Charleston, India, and maybe Japan, who knows? I’m just following my stomach.

The post What to Cook This Weekend: Eating (and Eating) on the Road appeared first on Saveur.

So vanilla.

Poor vanilla. Somewhere along the way, this incredibly exotic, wildly expensive, difficult-to-cultivate plant became America’s analogy for boring. Which is strange, because historically vanilla has been revered as exceedingly rare and highly covetable. Did you know that vanilla blossoms can only be pollinated for a few hours a season? (In most places, they’re now hand-pollinated.) And that real, true vanilla—not the derivative called vanillin—costs $115 a pound? (It’s the second most expensive spice in the world, behind saffron.) The stuff is unusual and beautiful and delicate—the inverse of boring.

In the spirit of the most un-basic flavor and ice cream season, we selected a smattering of vanilla ice creams—15 to be exact—ranging from fancy to store-brand, single-origin to generic. Then we lined them up next to one another, covered up their labels, and tasted our way through (in individually randomized order, to keep palate fatigue at bay.

We based our blind tasting on three major criteria on a scale of 1 to 7: flavor (natural or faux, intense or weak); texture (creamy or icy, rich or thin); and melt (clean or gummy, silky or sticky). And while we saw some general trends from the scores, we also quickly realized just how personal our vanilla preferences are. One person’s beloved vanilla is another’s last favorite. And, in some cases, ardent fans were surprised to learn how their supposed picks ranked against the competition when tasting blind.

The widest range in ratings was in the flavor category; people know what they like and don’t like on the spectrum of vanilla. Conversely, texture and melt ratings were much more consistent. In tasting through the very beige rainbow of vanilla, we discovered a lot about ourselves (e.g. one should not be ashamed to love Häagen-Dazs) and even more about vanilla (intensity is good, too much sugar is not). Find the full ranking below.

1. Van Leeuwen Vanilla Bean: By a small margin, Van Leeuwen came in first. Most people were surprised by an unexpected hint of marshmallow. Tasting notes: “Toasty marshmallow.”; “Eerily reminiscent of Lucky Charms.”
2. Jeni’s Ndali Estate Vanilla: In second place, Jeni’s vanilla was liked for its pleasantly dense texture and clean taste. Tasting notes: “A+ texture.”; “Sweet and clean.”
3. Tie High Road Vanilla Fleur de Sel and Smitten Classic Vanilla: Testers enjoyed High Road’s density (“You could cut this ice cream with a knife”) and Smitten’s “pure orchid taste” and “dreamy texture.”
4. Tie Talenti Tahitian Vanilla Bean and McConnell’s Vanilla Bean: Most tasters recognized Talenti as a gelato noting its “smooth texture” over any distinct flavor. McConnell’s level of vanilla was described as “fake,” but also “delicious”; we generally appreciate its rich, dense texture.
5. Häagen-Dazs Vanilla Bean: Overall, tasters liked the standard classic. Tasting notes: “Warm flavor, lovely texture.”; “Perfect thickness that softens to a gentle milk.”
6. Tie Ice & Vice Basic B and Graeter’s Madagascar Vanilla Bean: Split between lovers and haters, Ice & Vice was called “delish” but also “sticky.” Testers found Graeter’s to be icy, bland, and “fake, in a good way.”
7. Tie Breyer’s Vanilla Bean and Capannari Madagascar Vanilla: Breyer’s is, well, Breyer’s. Most people noted its fluffiness, but said little about its flavor. Almost across the board, Capannari was noted to taste “fake,” “neutral,” and like “plastic.”
8. Herrell’s Vanilla: An underdog, we had tasters rooting for Herrell’s, but it didn’t perform as expected. Tasting notes: “Scoops nicely, but loses texture.”; “Tastes like DQ.”
9. Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla: A bodega classic, Ben & Jerry’s may be good when in a pinch, but most testers noted it to be “fake” and “icy.”
10. Tillamook Old-Fashioned Vanilla: Though some testers liked this ice cream’s texture, many thought it was too sweet. Tasting notes: “Too sweet, not enough vanilla.”
11. Molly Moon’s Vanilla Bean: With the exception of one lover, Molly Moon’s was not well liked, owing to blandness and an odd, fluffy texture. Tasting notes: “Stiff and dry like whipped cream.”

The post We Blind Taste-Tested 15 Vanilla Ice Creams appeared first on Saveur.

Along the winding streets of La Paz, through a hidden alleyway and down a dim market corridor, a butcher wields a cleaver, bringing it swiftly down upon a glistening slab of scarlet beef. Another butcher lifts a swollen aubergine heart, nestling it carefully atop a heap of other hearts. Yet another lays medallions of blushing pink pork along a stall window as if arranging gemstones at a jeweler’s counter. A fourth smiles warmly through a curtain of mottled sausages, her teeth enrobed in gold, a bowler hat tilted back upon the crown of her head. These carnicerías are part of the patchwork of vendors who run the stalls at Mercado Rodriguez, La Paz’s central food market. A city of dizzying altitude (12,000 feet, more than twice as high as Denver) carved into the base of Bolivia’s Altiplano, La Paz and its neighboring city El Alto were settled by the Spanish but remain densely populated with indigenous people of Aymara, Quechua, and other Amerindian descent. As of 2018, 60 percent of Bolivia’s population identifies as indigenous. The Mercado Rodriguez’s vendors, including the carnicerías, consist mainly of cholitas, an affectionate name for Bolivia’s indigenous women, who dress in swishing layered skirts, Technicolor shawls, and jaunty hats. From pre-dawn sometimes until early evening, these produce purveyors, food-cart doñas, and cheesemakers sit awaiting their regular clients or curious passersby. Potatoes and tubers in a spectrum of colors and sizes, bouquets of herbs, and cabbages as plump as toddlers’ cheeks overflow from each stand. On Sundays, the stalls spill into the hilly streets surrounding the indoor market, and even more cholitas sell their wares in the brisk, wintry-feeling air.

Perhaps, at first, this Sunday-morning tableau does not seem distinct from any other market scene in the world: vendors arranging lettuces, frying chicken parts, stacking wheels of dense white criollo cheese, passing the time with a cup of maté. But the key detail is that all of the vendors are women. They are cooking. They are selling. They are setting and negotiating prices for items they may have also farmed. They are keeping the city’s kitchens and restaurants stocked and running.

Lorenza Chuquimia, a ruddy woman in a blue beanie, sits on a pallet among her vegetables as if upon an altar. She’s been working at the market for 15 years. “I have a lot of relationships here,” she says. Her customers know her by name and seek her out each week. “Men don’t know how to sell,” she says candidly. “Here, the women are humble. Everyone is a friend.” Nearby, another woman with a heart-shaped face and a cloudy left eye, Juliana Mamani, explains the minutiae of lettuce transport; it must be packed in grass to keep from bruising. “We can feed the grass to the animals afterward,” she says, pulling away a limp leaf to reveal a pale green head, handling it as gently as if it were a newborn.

Through the maze of carnicerías and up along a mezzanine, an imposing woman with voluminous braids calls out orders to an aproned girl who dishes up bowls of sopa de mani (peanut soup) and tin plates full of potatoes, fried cheese, fava beans, tender ingots of beef, and corn—all together called plato paceño—for a crowd of men in work clothes. A lone male employee, a boy of perhaps 7 or 8 years, stands over a tub of soapy water, attending to a growing stack of dishes.

In Bolivia, traditional gender conditioning has long intertwined sustenance together with the domestic and the feminine. But while women’s roles as farmers, sellers, and cooks award them a remarkable level of visibility and economic power, throughout the country they are still struggling for social equality and basic personal safety, especially among indigenous populations. As recently as a decade or two ago, cholitas were barred from public transport and could be refused entry to private businesses, such as hotels and restaurants. For many years, Bolivia has struggled with Latin America’s highest rates of femicide and violence, with more than half of women experiencing domestic abuse. And yet women of all socioeconomic backgrounds, from farmers to restaurant owners, continue to hold the keys to the country’s food system—increasingly wielding this knowledge and power for greater independence and equality. Among groups like Eco Tambo (the country’s first independently run organic farmers market) and MIGA (a food sustainability organization that holds women’s symposiums), and individual women forging businesses, the engine of Bolivia’s food economy is fueled by females.

The Teacher

Dina Mamani watches her students from a corner of Manq’a’s steamy kitchen. About two dozen people in chef whites survey bowls of chopped onions, mote (Andean corn), a smattering of green herbs, and a list of instructions. This branch of Manq’a (which means “food” in the Aymara language) is in a quiet neighborhood of El Alto. Lording atop the Altiplano at 13,600 feet, El Alto is a 20-minute vertiginous cable-car ride up the mountain from La Paz.

Manq’a is a culinary-education program with 12 schools (10 in Bolivia, two in Colombia), and Mamani is one of its lead instructors. She’s teaching a five-month certificate program to low-income and underprivileged students seeking the skills to work in restaurants or the food industry. She’s been involved in the project for four years, since its introduction by Melting Pot—a nonprofit founded by Claus Meyer, the Danish chef who also opened Gustu, an upscale restaurant, to make elevated use of the region’s bountiful and unique produce. Manq’a is free to those who are accepted, and provides courses in culinary and leadership training, business and entrepreneurship skills, and gender issues. Part of Mamani’s job is to empower her students with a knowledge and awareness of Bolivia’s incredible agricultural diversity (it’s one of the most biodiverse countries in the world), and help them create new and inspiring jobs within agriculture and the culinary arts.

Formerly a chef at a reputable Indian restaurant in La Paz, Mamani has taught hundreds of men and women who sometimes travel upwards of two hours each way to attend. Thus far, 3,500 students have graduated from Manq’a, 70 percent of whom have been women. About 150 students have gone on to start their own businesses, 60 percent of these opened by women. Soon, Mamani will be opening Manq’a’s first school in Sucre, Bolivia’s second capital city. “This place always feels like family,” Mamani says. “I’m grateful that Manq’a has trusted me from the beginning.”

The Entrepreneur

Remedios Ramirez—out of breath after a lunch rush—wears a newsboy hat over her dark hair and a red sweater, nearly the same color as the freshly painted cinder-block walls in her bustling restaurant, Sabrosito. After graduating from the Manq’a culinary school, Ramirez returned to her mother’s lunch stall to help invigorate the business. Seven years before, her mother, Fortunata, a cholita with long braids and a flowered apron, had begun cooking for the public when her husband abandoned her, Ramirez, and her two brothers. Now, she shuffles out to serve customers in the sunlight.

Ramirez, who is now 30, discovered at Manq’a that she has a knack for business, which she used to brand her mother’s previously unnamed space, making it a more permanent establishment. She developed a new breakfast clientele from passengers traveling through the nearby bus station. “At school I learned how to re-evaluate Bolivian food, to have a new vision,” she says. “I felt I could be creative.” Creativity is not a given in a place where food and culture are as deeply codified as they are in the Altiplano, and where ingredients—corn, potatoes, meat—have been farmed and cooked mostly for subsistence. Dishes are protected from outside influence thanks to Bolivia’s impenetrable terrain and lack of coastline. But Ramirez’s sense of empowerment is a feeling several students of Manq’a mention experiencing.

Before retiring for the day, she delivers to a customer a bowl, sloshing full of sopa de arroz (rice soup), and a plate of falso conejo (“false rabbit,” actually a pile of sautéed beef over rice) with chuño (a freeze-dried Andean potato), ají chile sauce, and salsa. “This is my mother’s recipe,” Ramirez explains. “It’s cooked all over Bolivia. But what changes is the hands.” She gestures toward the door, referencing the hundreds of unnamed lunch stalls and street carts run by women that dapple the streets of El Alto and La Paz—but also her budding legacy within it.

The Farmer

In the middle of a park in the Sopocachi neighborhood of La Paz, Norah Ramos Santavita Villalobos presides over a vegetable stand. Her offerings—carrots, potatoes, greens—are arranged in neat rows, and she takes a break on a nearby bench to chat. Villalobos is one of the founders of Eco Tambo, the first self-managed organic farmers market in Bolivia.

“We started Eco Tambo three years ago in a house nearby,” Villalobos says. She explains that she and some other women from El Alto wanted to bring their vegetables to a market that might appreciate responsibly grown produce. At first, because the vendors had little visibility—they were sequestered indoors, rather than selling in a public space—the market struggled. Eventually, organizers who had previous experience in agricultural systems came on board, as did the neighborhood’s president, securing a nearby square for a weekly market. Today, Eco Tambo is a vibrant community center.

“I can depend on myself,” Villalobos says before rising from her break. She recounts how her husband told her to leave her farm, but she resisted. Traditionally, farming is a responsibility shared by the entire family. It’s an art that was taught to Villalobos by her grandfather, and one she has passed on to her six children. A quiet girl sitting next to her listens closely, swinging her legs along the bench. “She’s my best helper,” Villalobos says, and the little girl glances up proudly but is also a bit shy of the attention. “Women need to feel empowered,” Villalobos says. “They need to stop pretending that their husbands or men have all the say.”

The Chef

Tall and lithe, her face glowing beneath industrial lights, Marsia Taha strides to the pass with anticuchos—in this case, thinly sliced beef heart skewered to tiny potatoes—that have been seared atop a sizzling pink salt rock. A native Bolivian, Taha is the head chef at Gustu, the unlikely World’s 50 Best–nominated restaurant that opened in 2013. In many ways, Gustu put Bolivia on the map as a rising food destination, illuminating the country’s untapped culinary potential and biodiversity. Taha has been there from its beginning. After working at both Studio and Geist, two lauded restaurants in Copenhagen, she returned home to La Paz to work as a sous chef.

“I come here to forage a lot,” she says the next afternoon while navigating the dirt roads east of La Paz that overlook a valley of potato fields. The Valle de las Animas (Valley of Souls) is a bowl-shaped pasture surrounded by needlelike crags. Winter has faded the otherwise vibrant chaparral, but Taha finds several varieties of koa, a shrubby aromatic herb, and muña, another herb used to aid digestion. From a distance, Illimani—a massive Andean peak—is shrouded, a hint of snow trickling below the cloud line. “You know Pachamama, right?” Taha asks. “Mother Earth. She’s not just nature, though. She’s the trees and the rocks. Everything you see here.” Even the land—in particular, the agricultural aspect—is considered to be in the feminine domain.

Taha is one woman among a growing crop for whom running an elevated kitchen or owning a high-end food business is entirely possible. Moreover, that these women now have the ability to circulate among and be recognized by chefs’ circles globally is a major step not only for women in the country, but for Bolivian food. As its women flourish, so does La Paz. It’s easy to overlook, but La Paz’s full name is Nuestra Señora de La Paz: Our Lady of Peace. And she has always been here, feeding her city.

Faces of La Paz

Cholitas

A name for indigenous Bolivian women (altered from the Spanish chola, which carries a derogatory connotation), cholitas are today highly visible on the streets of El Alto and La Paz. Many wear bowler hats (whose style, brand, and adornment with jewelry or brooches often indicate economic status), tiered skirts, long braids, and many-colored shawls, which they use to carry children or packages. Some women opt to have their teeth enrobed in or replaced with gold, a trend that denotes wealth. Cholitas, who were once considered lower-class citizens and not even allowed to occupy some squares and gathering places, now hold public office, own businesses, perform in their own wrestling league, and host radio and television shows. Though his clench on power has drawn criticism and concern, President Evo Morales—the first indigenous person elected to office—is often credited with renewing pride in Bolivia’s indigenous people and traditions.

The post These Powerful Women Run Bolivia’s Food System appeared first on Saveur.

When Paolo Calcagno, a third-generation farmer in Celle Ligure, walks through the center of the sunset-colored village west of Genoa, old men on benches greet him with a symphony of ciaos. Young men manning café tables shake his hand as he passes. He is called “the mayor” around here.

Only in Italy could a basil farmer gain such status. And despite the much-cited opinion about the dominance of Pra’ in the art of basil raising, Calcagno’s crop is also highly sought after. It’s even packaged with a gauzy lavender wrapper to match the color of the wild bougainvillea dripping from every ledge and trellis of his property.

Inside his greenhouses in the hills that overlook the marine fog and terraced gardens particular to this alluring stretch of the coast, Calcagno runs his hands along the tops of his basil plants, gently pulling one here and there. “I do not say it is the Ferrari of basil,” says Calcagno over a lunch of trennete and swordfish ravioli with pesto, “but chefs say this.”

Tan, with a gold chain dangling beneath a soft cotton button-down shirt, he appears part pirate, part poet, part man of the earth. Calcagno chose to grow basil (his father and grandfather cultivated strawberries and tomatoes) and treats each new planting as if it were a newborn. “I cannot trust anyone else to look after it.”

In Liguria, basil is grown year-round in greenhouses, though it’s generally agreed that late spring is prime harvesting season. During the warm months, basil is grown for 28 to 30 days until it reaches a delicate maturity. In winter, the grow time stretches to nearly 60 days. When plucked, the leaves are still soft and light green, the stems thin and wispy. For it to be called Basilico Genovese, farmers must follow DOP rules, which do not allow pesticides or chemicals and require greenhouse shelter.

Many basil farmers pick the same crop in waves, four to six times—younger basil is better—and send these harvests off to restaurants and markets. After these waves, the basil is allowed to grow large and leggy, so it’s strong enough to transport to factories that will use it to make pesto and other sauces. Farmers here call this industrial basil, though it appears nothing of the sort.

Pesto Genovese

When it comes to ingredients for pesto, you can never be too particular. Taste your basil. You don’t want it to be minty or too spicy; it should be sweet and delicate and brightly green. Different varieties and growing conditions yield different flavors, so the only way to know for sure is to sneak a taste. Also pay attention to the size and thickness of the leaves: if they’re thick with pronounced veins and brown spots, your pesto will turn dark and stringy. To avoid stringiness with extra-sturdy basil, remove the leaves from any tough stems or veins.

Mild garlic from young heads (such as spring garlic) is best. If yours is really strong, hold back on the amount.

Lastly, spring for Italian pine nuts. They’re more expensive, but are noticeably different, with a sweeter taste (and none of the metallic flavor that other types sometimes have), and they break down into a creamier base for pesto than any others. For the cream of the crop, splurge on these beauties from Gustiamo.

Pesto and Trofie Pasta

The post The Ferrari of Basil: How to Pick the Best Ingredients for Pesto appeared first on Saveur.

Carrara appears a city dominated by icy mountains. They loom above, menacing and craggy, and somewhere a drill is buzzing, a constant crash of metal against rock. Everything—the trees, the asphalt, the windshield—is covered in a fine, white chalk.

Up close, it becomes clear that the mountain faces are not actually blanketed in snow. This is raw marble veined with white and cream, dark gray, and blue, neat and jagged as slate shingles. Harvested just over the Ligurian border in northern Tuscany for thousands of years, marble has been the basis of the economy in this obscure corner of Italy since Roman times.

For centuries, it’s been sculpted into putti, carved into columns, and chiseled into the shape of mortars, the bowls of which have been perpetually filled and refilled with basil, salt, oil, cheese, garlic, and nuts, then pounded with a wooden pestle (marble would be too heavy and violent against the basil).

WATCH: How To Make The Perfect Pesto

Somewhere on its path to global ubiquity, pesto became a catchall name for any random herby sauce thrown in a blender. Now Ligurians want it back

When our test kitchen was refining a recipe for Ligurian pesto, we kept noticing how much we preferred batches made with a marble mortar and a wooden pestle compared to stoneware or a molcajete . (A food processor doesn’t even come close.) The sauce was gently muddled and smooth, but also perfectly inconsistent, pasta-coating but not quite pasty.

We are mortar and pestle evangelists generally, and have a growing collection of styles for different uses. As a more budget-friendly option, this porcelain model is the next best thing to a real (and expensive) marble version. But if you want to make pesto as they do in Liguria, spring for the marble as a new kitchen essential. It will pay you back with better pasta forever.

The post The Italian Tool We Rely on to Make Perfect Pesto appeared first on Saveur.

If you are in Pra’ and you don’t grow basil, you are nobody,” declares the basil farmer Roggerio Rossi. The sky above his sprawling greenhouses is gray, the air heavy, a climatic state called macaja in the Genoese dialect. Inside, the atmosphere is static, still, electric green. The scent is peppery, briny, more delicate than freshly clipped grass, but intoxicating and pungent. A carpet of Basilico Genovese runs full-bleed from wall to wall. It’s fluffy—almost awake—and appears to be reaching up, exploding with small, teardrop-shaped leaves. Five workers recline on their sides across wooden planks suspended over the fragrant flora. Like a pack of Titian’s Venuses, they pick individual stems, roots intact, and fashion them into bouquets.Liguria is Italy’s most famous basil-growing region. The herb is lifeblood here. It floods the stands of Genoa’s Mercato Orientale, a dizzying, circular market hidden on the interior of a city block. It’s sold in pots in tiny town squares and arranged in vases on restaurant tables. Everyone agrees that the best basil in Liguria is grown in the village of Pra’. Proximity to the shore is said to give a bright, oceanic quality to the crops. Much of the Italian Riviera is beautiful—coral- and butter-colored beach towns, slightly decayed but shimmering with low-key wealth and domestic tourism. Pra’ is not beautiful. The waterfront is a gray mass of industrial docks and slips. Older, broken-down greenhouses disintegrate along a highway skirting the ocean. Newer basil farms are tucked into terraced hillsides high above.

Rossi’s team of recumbent pickers pull the stems before they grow too thick, too strongly flavored, or minty. These are qualities undesirable in Ligurian basil, prized for its mild, elegant flavor and delicate leaves. During the warm months, it’s grown for 28 to 30 days. In winter, grow time stretches to nearly 60 days. Rossi grows his basil according to DOP (denominazione d’origine protetta) standards, which protect the integrity of the product and emphasize its specific terroir like that of Gorgonzola from Piedmont or balsamico of Modena. Italian pop plays from a portable radio, and the workers chat, occasionally shifting on their sides to reach another patch. The nosegays are wrapped in paper and piled into a green mountain.

Basil is a cornerstone of the region’s cucina profumata (aromatic cuisine). In summer, marjoram, thyme, and borage redolent with earth and pepper explode from craggy hillsides. Ripe, golden-fleshed peaches and fuzzy, swollen apricots are heaped at fruit stands and roadside markets. Brilliant silver anchovies smelling of Mediterranean salt are soaked in agrodolce and golden olive oil to be served at the start of many meals. But the perfume that truly defines and unifies Liguria is pesto.

If you live here, you eat pesto. At least once a week a bundle of basil is picked or purchased. The mortar and pestle are pulled from their shelf. Pine nuts are muddled with garlic and salt; basil is drizzled with olive oil and vigorously worked into a smooth paste. (Both pestle and pesto derive from the verb pestare, meaning to crush or clobber.) Cheese from Parma and Sardinia is stirred in at the end. Each ingredient is part of a Ligurian code—a language that is made up of ocean, mountains, and the old trade routes imprinted upon them.

Every menu of every trattoria and osteria here contains at least one kind of pasta with pesto. Linguine-like trennete or short, twisted trofie are dressed, not drowned, with pesto genovese. Trofie are said to have been invented in the nearby seaside town of Recco, when a pasta maker rubbed her hands together after kneading a batch of dough. The curled pieces that fell away became trofie.

Sometimes green beans and potatoes are tossed in. There’s gnocchi with pesto, and ravioli with pesto, and pesto spooned over swordfish. Pesto gets dropped into the local minestrone as a seasoning. There’s also green lasagna, slippery layers of fresh pasta known romantically as mandilli di seta, or “silk handkerchiefs,” folded with pesto.

“We are Italian, so pasta is always here,” says the basil farmer Rossi, pointing to his forehead. “We are always trying to solve the problem, ‘What can I put on my pasta today?’ Here, we solve it with pesto.”

Judging by its universal popularity, pesto solves the world’s problems too. Except somewhere along the path to global pasta-sauce ubiquity, Liguria’s best-known export lost its distinctive character. Sailing forth from the great trading port of Genoa, pesto conquered the world—but as it settled in foreign places, it acclimated and assimilated. Its success rendered it indistinct, nationless.

Now pesto can be anything we want it to be. It’s become a catchall term for anything vaguely herbaceous and thrown into a blender. But the Genoese will tell you this isn’t true. They will tell you that pesto is an alchemy that can exist only in its birthplace. “The basil must see the sea,” says Rossi. “If it doesn’t see the sea, it is not Genoese.”

Like Emilia Mussini at Ö Magazín, a small restaurant in Portofino, they’ll inform you: “The first thing we give to a baby, after milk, is pesto.” They’ll tell you that pesto belongs to this place. And they’ll tell you that they’re taking it back.

Pesto Genovese

Osteria Baccicin dü Carü looks like a home. Gianni Bruzzone and his sister, Rosella, are known for the pesto they make in this small cottage of a restaurant in the hills just west of Genoa. Unfortunately, on this particular afternoon they’re closed. “A prince from Qatar wanted to come today,” Gianni says when he opens the door. “We said no.”Luckily Roberto Panizza has accompanied me. Genoa native, restaurateur, and self-styled ambassador of pesto, Panizza holds sway in the universe of serious pesto makers. In 2007, he created the Genoa Pesto World Championship. Held every two years, it’s a competition to promote the product and teach the world how to make it properly in a mortar with a pestle. (According to the championship website: “Behind pesto is history, and art, and a quality of life.… The contest can be won by Italians or by foreigners. But above all, the winner is Pesto, a healthy, natural and democratic sauce.”)Gianni lets us in and insists that we stay for lunch.

First, there are anchovies, both fried and marinated in sweet vinegar and oil. Then comes the pesto. Gianni brings out plates piled with gnocchi, each little dumpling coated in vibrant green sauce. Next, thin strings of taglialini with borage and marjoram tossed together in a mortar slicked with pesto. It’s served twirled into chewy, shining piles, the color of mossy lagoons. The pesto is perfect in its imperfection. It’s a consistency that could be achieved only by hand muddling, and each ingredient—the garlic, Parmigiano-Reggiano and Pecorino Sardo, pine nuts, and basil—is visible, a fine, juicy silt of gold and green suspended in oil. The basil, though thoroughly, finely clobbered, tastes alive, as if still reaching toward the sun.

One and then two bottles of pigato—a local wine whose salty, mineral quality makes it ideal to be drunk with large quantities of seafood and pesto—appear and disappear quickly.

RELATED: The Most Garlic-Intensive Dishes We’ve Ever Made

Over glasses of fizzy moscato, anise-spiked espresso, and flower-shaped shortbread cookies called canastrelli, Gianni, Roberto, and Rosella talk about the bad luck of naming anything after Christopher Columbus (the Genoese are ambivalent about their native explorer), the region’s financial influence (far-reaching and long-standing), and pesto. Someone mentions the G8 Summit that Genoa hosted in 2001. Silvio Berlusconi, then the prime minister, decreed that garlic be left out of the pesto served at the official lunch. Worse, he stipulated it be called “basil sauce” rather than pesto genovese. Citizens were horrified, and protested by throwing garlic at him. After other unrelated atrocities occurred, including the death of a protester, Beppe Grillo, the comedian and activist, declared that neither Genoa nor pesto were the same anymore. “You have a Berlusconi now too,” notes Panizza. I tell him ours prefers his steak very well done, a similar sort of travesty in America.

In a move to reclaim pesto and mark it with the Ligurian identity, in 2005, DOP regulations for growing basil were defined. In 2006, the Pra’ basil park, a formal property centered on the promotion and cultivation of the herb, was established. This summer, the Genoa airport created an exception to its no-liquids rule: Travelers carrying pesto made with DOP basil are permitted to fly with the purchase of a special stamp.

Does it ever become monotonous, all this pesto? “I think about pesto like chess,” says Panizza. “You have a limited framework, but within those limits, you have many possibilities. Every week, the basil changes, the cheese changes. But it’s also the same.” As he explains it, pesto is always a reflection of the present moment. It’s impossible to reproduce the same pesto on another day. It also depends on where you’re making it and eating it, who you’re eating it with, how you feel at that particular moment. “It depends on the stato d’animo,” he says. In other words, pesto is a state of mind.

Following the pesto trail, I arrive at the Arroscia valley in the foothills of the Alps. The garlic harvest, which runs from June to October, has just begun. Bunches of the small-headed allium are drying on open-air wooden shelves at the edge of a garlic field. Alberto Marini, a farmer, gestures to the garlic’s crepey necks and scraggly roots. “It keeps them alive,” he says. Several caramel-colored kittens doze in between the wispy piles, and Roberto Marini, another farmer, sits down with a handful of the dried bulbs, demonstrating how to braid them together. Roberto Panizza manufactures a pesto called Rossi, using this farm’s crop. “Other garlic is too spicy, not as delicate,” says Alberto, explaining why the local variety works well in pesto. “Also, garlic is good for your digestion.” (Italians have a minor obsession with how to achieve ideal digestion.)

Fresh Pasta Sheets with Pesto

Named for the miniature hill town of Vessalico, one of 11 pocket-size garlic-producing municipalities in the valley, the garlic has for centuries been planted, harvested, and intricately braided into reste. Each clove is sheathed in a deep purple-red husk and prized for its gentle aroma and subtle spice. In the 18th century, Vessalico was famous for its garlic festival, which, Alberto says, the garlic cooperative is attempting to renew and promote as a reason to visit this hidden corner of the Ponente, a word the Genoese use to describe the western part of the region. It means “coast of the setting sun.”

The Ponente is also olive oil territory. Mountain towns that trickle down from and climb up around Taggia are filled with wooden presses worn smooth from years of crushing juicy, spicy olive flesh into submission. Babbling brooks drift beneath bridges, villagers linger over coffee along piazzas, and everyone’s life revolves around the business of making some of the world’s most prized extra-virgin olive oil—the only kind acceptable for making pesto. Here, it’s commonly agreed that oil from neighboring Tuscany is too strong and spicy. As is the stuff from farther south. Like the local villages, Ligurian oil production is minuscule, especially the portion made from taggiasca olives, which yield a high oil-to-fruit ratio. Mild enough to allow basil to remain at the front of the formula, but distinct enough to add flavor, taggiasca oil is meant for good pesto.

Each community here maintains its own dialect as well as an olive oil–based economy. Paolo Boeri’s family has run the Roi olive oil mills in Badalucco since 1900. “The old men come here to unload their olives and drink. They sing, play cards, and take their focaccia like this,” he says, motioning to a tap from which warm, fresh-pressed oil is released during harvest season.

Taggiasca trees were first cultivated by Saint Columban monks in the 17th and 18th centuries, and when the wind blows the right way, it exposes the leaves’ silvery undersides, giving the landscape a constant, flickering sheen and earning the area the nickname Valle Argentina, meaning “silver valley.”

Pesto and Trofie Pasta

Bottles of very local oil adorn the tables of every restaurant table down the coast. San Giorgio is an elegant 1950s-era restaurant lodged in the side of a cliff overlooking the ocean near San Bartolomeo. Inside, shelves are trimmed with gilded china, tables cloaked with starched tablecloths, and outside on the terrace, a raucous group of Italians plows through a five-course meal and what looks like a dozen bottles of vermentino. When Alessandro Barla, co-owner and grandson of San Giorgio’s founder, drops off a plate of daffodil yellow mandilli di seta, gathered in a neat pile and crowned in emerald green pesto, he points to the olive oil bottle. “Maybe add a little bit more,” he says. It’s good advice and applies equally to the focaccia, pane fritto (fried bread), and crusty wedges of a country loaf. The pesto here, made by Alessandro’s mother, Caterina Barla, is puréed to a velvety consistency, the elements smoothly emulsified. It’s golf-course green—bright, manicured, clean, and dotted with pine nuts. A Genoese would not eat this at home; it is much too polished. Still, it’s good. The sea is just a stone’s throw away and the sun is setting. The alchemy of place is at work.

Just on the other side of the Ligurian border, sunflower fields flank the road into Tuscany’s Migliarino regional park. The sky is heavy with rain clouds and thunder trembles somewhere in the distance. The hulking pines are gothic, Gorey-esque. Their trunks—clean of branches and the circumference of two arm spans—are topped with a canopy of needled pom-poms spraying in every direction, throwing gloomy shadows across the road. This park is the territory of pinoli gatherers, and these stone pine trees bear some of the world’s most expensive nuts. Like mushrooms or truffles, pine nuts are gathered or foraged; cultivation is rare. In late summer or autumn, unopened cones are pulled from the trees, steamed, and stripped of their seedpods, which are then cracked to reveal their slender white nuts.Pinoli have been harvested since prehistoric times, and the trees’ crackled, amber bark—fused together in places with drippy, fossilized sap blisters—makes them look as if they’ve been around for several thousand years. In late June, the cones haven’t yet dropped, but a few, the size of mangoes and faded from the sun, loll around beneath their trees. Between thick, carved-looking petals a few seedpods are still intact. With a bit of prying along a seam on one side, the pods can be broken open to bare the now dusty, dried seed. But when the seeds are fresh, they’re fleshy and creamy, with less bite than their Asian counterparts—excellent for creating a velvety base for pesto.

Pine nuts weren’t always a part of the pesto doctrine. The earliest recipe, which appeared in Giovanni Battista Ratto’s 19th-century text La Cuciniera Genovese, includes them, but many early Genoese references overlook the ingredient (and even allow that basil can be substituted with parsley or marjoram). Sometimes walnuts, a more abundant Italian crop, are noted as a worthy stand-in, but today, the recipe has become more canonical, almost always specifying Italian or Mediterranean-harvested pinoli.

Back in Liguria, on the Levante side of the region—”coast of the rising sun”—towns are set like a chain of battered estate jewels every few miles along the rocky seaside: Rapallo, Santa Margherita, Portofino, La Spezia, and Portovenere. Each is edged with striped beach huts and old men in very small swimwear. Graying couples sip martinis on terraces, and monstrous crumbling mansions are overrun with wisteria and bougainvillea that creeps up and over chipped louvers. Here, Mary Shelley dreamed up Frankenstein (and her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, drowned in what is now called the Bay of Poets). Charles Dickens wandered the seashore. D.H. Lawrence wrote about a fantastical octopus, and Lord Byron stirred up the curiosity of the more conventional locals. And it looks as if no one has bothered to paint a shutter or patch a wall since.

There is a walk along the ocean that weaves in and out of abraded resort towns, from Rapallo to Portofino. It terminates at San Fruttuoso where a Benedictine abbey casts shade across a rocky beach lapped by turquoise water. (You can take a boat, but a hike helps to renew an appetite.) Through the abbey’s base and up a short hill is Da Laura. Beneath a vined trellis and a handful of lemon trees, a shirtless old man sits grumpily in a folding wooden chair. This is Renzo Bruno, the owner, and the arrival of midday diners sends him into the kitchen. Laura was his mother. His wife, Mariangela, now works in the tiny slice of a kitchen. There are only a dozen or so tables, all outdoors, looked after by the couple’s children and Davide, a friend of the family. Wine is served from large icy bottles without labels.

In the 1950s, Laura Devoto made mussels and pesto at a beach shack on the cove (in Liguria, pesto is appropriate beach food, naturally), and eventually she opened a restaurant beneath the shadow of the abbey. It recently moved into a nook just adjacent to the medieval structure. Throughout the afternoon, people from all over the world arrive for the unearthly pesto, yet Da Laura’s satisfying inaccessibility provides protection from feeling overrun or discovered.

When a humble platter of mandilli di seta arrives, it appears as a topographical chart of some verdant hilltop terrain. Light green sauce is layered with pale pasta sheets draped like a bolt of silk into a gauzy heap all dusted in Parmigiano. It’s easy to imagine what it would feel like to be tucked in between the folds of pasta. The sauce is salty, fresh, and delicate, luminous in its balance. Pots clang from the kitchen doorway. Waves can be heard and the air is briny. A beachgoer lopes below, beneath the abbey’s soaring archways. Here, in a courtyard of lemon trees, knotted vines, and wobbly patio furniture in the beating sun, pesto feels at home.

How to Make Real-Deal Pesto Genovese

Where to Eat Pesto at the Source

Il Genovese In a humble trattoria in the center of Genoa, pesto master and ambassador Roberto Pa­nizza serves his famous recipe every which way.

Baccicin dü Carü This little cottage in the hills west of Genoa is known for its mortar-and-pestle pesto served over gnocchi and tag-liatelle with marjoram.

Ö Magazín On a slice of Portofino’s harbor, the Mussini family serves homey, sophisticated food made from generations-old recipes, including pesto.

Da Laura Above the San Fruttuoso abbey, this tiny restaurant is known for its green lasagne and mussels marinara. Hike or take a ferry from nearby Portofino.

San Giorgio Arguably one of the region’s best fine-dining options—with a view—San Giorgio serves pesto with homemade mandilli di seta.

The post Journey to the Place Where Pesto Was Born appeared first on Saveur.

Along one of the most verdant stretches of India’s spice route, Kerala is known for its excellent black pepper and cardamom plantations. Both spices along with chiles, curry leaves, and coconut, create the basic profile for the region’s food. But so bountiful and verdant is this section of coast and jungle, that the cuisine varies widely from simple Ayurvedic porridges to elaborate banana leaf spreads of pickles, masalas, flatbreads, and curries. Here’s a guide to get you started cooking your way to Kerala. Make sure to stock up on these essential cooking tools as well.

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Resembling giant raisins, these pods are entirely different from the more common green cardamom. They’re smoky and earthy—a flavor lent by drying by fire—and best used in dry rubs for meat or mixed into marinades with chile powder or peppers.

Anna Stockwell

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Black Pepper: Cultivated all along the Malabar Coast, black pepper from this region has been prized and traded around the world for centuries. Tellicherry pepper is named for a small growing region within Malabar and should be labeled by estate. Malabar pepper is a blend of black peppercorns from around the entire region. Both can be used for everyday seasoning.

Matt Taylor-Gross

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Fresh, aromatic, and soapy (in a good way), cardamom is grown in the forests in the central part of Kerala. It’s ubiquitous in Keralan cooking—infused in rice, soaked in coconut milk, and made into tea. Perfume rice dishes, infuse sugar, or steep coffee with this complex spice.

Peyman Zehtab Fard

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Cinnamon of the Ceylon variety is from South India and Sri Lanka. Its “quills” (pieces of inner bark) are so fine they can be crumbled and integrated as a finishing spice while thicker pieces can be grated fresh.

In Malayalam, the local language of Kerala, “kera” means coconut. The region has always been prime for coconut cultivation, though today, much of the production has moved east to Tamil Nadu. Still, the ingredient is used in every day cooking here. From curries to thin, crepe-like breakfast pancakes, shaved coconut is a building block in the South Indian kitchen. Most people own small stools outfitted with a curved metal hook at one end, over which coconut halves are grated. Likewise, coconut oil is the most common cooking fat in this region, well matched to the region’s spice and vegetarian diet.

Max Falkowitz

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Piquant and peppy, these small ovular leaves are fried in oil and used as a base flavoring for fish, rice, and lentils. When fresh, they’re bright green and highly fragrant. Try to find them freeze-dried for fresher flavor.

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There are countless variations on garam masala, depending on the region from which it hails. In Kerala it almost always has green cardamom, star anise, black pepper, and cloves. The spice mix is ground and used to flavor masalas, biryani, and curries, and can be sprinkled over any dish as a finishing spice.

Michelle Heimerman

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Fresh, zingy ginger is often pummeled together with garlic to make a paste that forms the base flavor for many fish and curry dishes. All over the region, dried ginger can be found in chukku kappi (ginger coffee), which is thought to aid digestion.

This unrefined sugar turns cane into gold

Raw, unrefined sugar from coconut palms, jaggery is Kerala’s primary sweetener. It comes in lumps in varying shades—dark and molassesy to light and toasty—and can be shaved over porridge or folded into pastries in place of dark brown sugar.

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Called “green gram” in Kerala, mung bean flour is used as binder in pastries, like mandaputtu, cheru payaru (spiced green chile curry), and savory pancakes.

Michelle Heimerman

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Not to be confused with Thai red rice, matta is grown in Kerala. The rosy color is lent by a layer beneath the rice’s husk, which is maintained rather than polished or stripped away. Its flavor is slightly more earthy and requires nearly double the cook time that regular rice does.

Rice Flour

Super fine and powdery white, rice flour is ideal for making pastries or kalakki chutta appam, soft, silky pancakes.

The post How to Stock a Keralan Pantry: Black Cardamom, Red Rice, and Lots and Lots of Coconut appeared first on Saveur.

While reporting on India’s Attukal Pongala festival for our summer issue, photo editor Michelle Heimerman and I spent an extra few days exploring Kerala. A mix of coast and jungle, Kerala is a long strip of land along the southwest coast of India. It’s known for its placement along the spice route where cardamom and black pepper are grown in abundance. Tropical, with a climate similar to South American jungle or Florida’s Everglades, the region has historically been a cultivation center for coconuts and other heat-loving crops. (“Kera” means coconut tree.)

Here, coconut palms grow wild, soaring in grand arcs over canals, along highways, alongside airport runways. Every family has at least one in its yard, and every single part of the tree is used. The coconuts are halved and shaved on small stools outfitted with hooks against which the flesh is rubbed to produce finely zested meat. Leftover shells are turned into spoons and cooking utensils. The leaves are woven into baskets, mats, and roofing material. Dried bark becomes firewood and, in one case, we observed children in a small village who’d cleverly transformed them into cricket mallets.

One early evening, while cruising around the backwaters outside of Kochi near Alleppey (also called Alappuzha), our guide pointed out a small cinderblock building dimly lit from within. “Toddy” was carved into a sign above the door, and the guide explained that “toddy” is the sap of coconut flowers. It’s also called palm wine.

Every morning and every evening, toddy collectors scale the trees to tap the flowers, under which clay pots are attached to catch the sap. They cart the resulting milky liquid back to the shops where they’re left to lightly ferment and gain strength. The longer it ferments, the more alcohol accumulates, but it must be drunk before turning to vinegar—usually within a few days. (The sap is also evaporated and turned into jaggery, a rich, brown palm sugar.)

Inside, a small television blinked with a static-addled game show. Small straw cubicles were populated with a plastic chairs and tables, and bottles of toddy littered the surfaces alongside tin plates scraped clean. Essentially bars with tiny, pop-up canteens hidden in the back, toddy shops are most often found in rural areas, and are gathering place along the region’s backwaters or at village perimeters.

They’re mostly the domain of men. A dozen of them played cards at the front, occasionally glancing up at the screen. A pot-bellied cook felt his way around ten or so pots filled with some of the spiciest food in Kerala. The hotter the food, the more you need to drink, so toddy shops are known for fiery dishes like meen, a red fish curry, and dry rice dishes laced with chiles and vegetables.

The toddy itself is vaguely sweet, a bit tart as if spiked with apple cider vinegar, and entirely refreshing after a large bite of tingly, red curry. The heat spreads and then the toddy douses, and so each evening passes this way in the quiet Keralan countryside.

Once a year, millions of women leave their homes around Kerala to give a sweet offering of rice for their goddess, Attukal Amma

The post In Kerala, Coconut Sap Gets a Boozy Kick appeared first on Saveur.

4:30 A.M. East Fort Neighborhood, Thiruvananthapuram

A railway platform, filling. Men at a fluorescent- lit window, yelling for coffee. A chai wallah dashing toward an idle train, his silver pail a tin moon floating across the tracks. Sleeping bodies lined up, linens swaddling heads, tiffins stacked next to shoes. A woman’s voice, lilting and constant, announcing arrivals and departures in Malayalam, Hindi, and English.

The air is dense, a tropical film slicked across faces and windshields. The banyan trees are heavy with chatty birds.

Down the platform, the women gather. First in twos, then fours, and soon by the dozens. The bags piled by their feet are stuffed with weathered coconut tree bark, banana leaves, rice, and lumps of jaggery, every ingredient neatly wrapped in sheets of Hindi newspaper.

More women. More bags. More coconut bark. A sea of saris, purple, blue, green, and yellow bunching and overlapping against the darkness of early morning.

From down the tracks, a wailing horn, announcing the arrival of the 5:20 train to Trivandrum. The women shuffle toward the platform’s edge, hovering so closely that the train brushes their garments as it slides into the station. Now a crush through the narrow door, a puzzle of bodies slipping past one another and into seats. Faces gaze out of second-class car windows, still and patient, some nodding with sleep. A straggler hurries across the cement, hitching up the hem of her skirt, and hops aboard. As the train lurches forward, another woman stretches an arm out a car door to receive a handful of coins from a man who skips alongside.

The train pulls out into the twilight, carrying the women closer to their goddess.

One day each summer, millions of women from all over Kerala pile into trains, cars, and buses and make their way to Thiruvananthapuram (or Trivandrum, as it was previously named by the British and is still commonly known) near the southern tip of India. They travel for Attukal Pongala, a 10-day festival devoted to the goddess Attukal Amma. On the pen­ultimate day, these women—at the very same moment—place millions of clay pots over millions of makeshift hearths, light millions of fires, and cook pongala, a sweet coconut rice porridge. This dish is a prasadam—an offering of food to the gods, consumed by the devout after worship—and it’s one of the most ancient alms in Hinduism. Pongala, here, is sacred, and made only once a year.

It’s said that Hinduism is a religion of 330 million gods, many of whom are worshipped regionally or called upon for specific needs. Bhadrakali (as Amma is also known) is a ferocious incarnation of Devi, a supreme goddess with many names and forms. Amma’s followers, particular to Kerala, are so devout that they annually travel to offer their prayers and pongala in a massive ceremony that requires a wealth of resources, a city of organizers, and an implicit agreement among millions to maintain order. Though men follow her too, Amma’s pilgrims are almost exclusively women, their daily duties and routines blissfully abandoned, ritually shed.

The result is a crowd with a population as large as Los Angeles, unspooled across the city, patiently awaiting the auspicious moment when each member will take up her matches, light a fire, and cook.

Kerala is called the Land of Parasurama—its existence mythically attributed to an avatar of Vishnu who cast his ax into the sea, from which fertile land rose. Since global sea travel has existed, Kerala has been an agriculturally vibrant port between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats, situated just along the spice route. For centuries, Babylonians, Egyptians, Romans, and Chinese all came through Kerala, followed in turn by the Portuguese, Dutch, and English. Over time, this little strip of Malabar Coast has absorbed far-reaching influences, keeping what it desired and discarding what it didn’t.

Thus, Kerala has always been different. The language is different (Malayalam); the government is different (socialist, though Congress, a nationalist party, is currently in power); the food is different (spicier, lots of coconut). For centuries, the region’s social structure was different: Until the early 20th century, many families—including the ruling class—practiced matrilineage, meaning heritage and bloodlines were passed through women. Until the British arrived, taboos of polyandry, divorce, and widowhood, effectively, did not exist. Today, women retain a level of visibility (though not equality) uncommon in most of India. Attukal Pongala is an annual manifestation of the unusual power they wield.

9 A.M. National Highway 66, Heading South Toward Thiruvananthapuram

A tea shack on the side of a two-lane highway. Dusty plastic tables. Black, black crows pecking crumbs. A blue tarp stretched across corrugated metal. An old man with ravaged toes selling lottery tickets. Another, reading the paper, smoking, glancing up at the dense passing traffic. Morning prayers drift from speakers, verses curve-pitched to the gods, trilling through the golden countryside.

Behind a row of steel pots, a man mixes chai, spindly arms moving in arcs, pouring long streams from pitcher to pitcher. He dumps the steaming tea into a row of glasses and hands them across, 10 rupees apiece. On the highway, cars weave around trundling tuk-tuks; a dozen horns mix with the prayers and the birds and the lottery-ticket-hawking men. Every bit of land that isn’t colonized with a temple, a chai lean-to, or a fruit stand is lined with low brick walls hand-painted with advertisements and the Communist Party scythe and hammer. (Kerala was the first place in the world to freely embrace communism, in 1957.) Thousands of bananas—green and red and bruised mustard—hang like surrealist wind chimes from the eaves of every open-air shop.

A line of boxy vans and white Ambassadors—Indian cars that resemble 1950s-era American sedans—parades by the chai stand. They’re filled with women. Coconut bark and crumpled newspapers are crushed against the hatch glass.

A man reclining beneath the café’s sagging roof raises a finger to point. “Pongala,” he says.

Farther up the highway, in front of a roadside shop, a flatbed truck is piled high with hundreds of unglazed clay pots resembling earthen fruits nestled in straw. A mound of hundreds more is spread across the road’s dusty shoulder. A man in a purple shirt, head wrapped in white linen, hooks the pots up with his fingers, six at a time. His lined face perspires in the raw morning sun.

These pots, ready for market, are omnipresent and necessary at Attukal Pongala. Each woman will purchase a new one and give the bottom a flick, listening for a clear, solid chime that indicates sound structure and good rice to come. Made in Tamil Nadu, a state to the east where much of South India’s agricultural production is based, the pots are a mainstay in every kitchen—a new one added to the stack every year. Some women will carry them along with their rice and jaggery to the festival; others will purchase one upon arrival in Trivandrum.

At a bus station farther south, braceleted arms, slender fingers, and gauzy scarves wave from each window of every bus—a fleet of many-armed creatures. More women pile into the pastel blue vehicles whose grilles are hung with chrysanthemums, flowers beloved by Vishnu, the protector god.

A woman hops off her son’s scooter in the station lot carrying a shopping bag. She opens it to reveal small newspaper packages filled with rice and coconut bark, then slings it over her shoulder and boards a waiting bus.

4 P.M. East Fort Neighborhood, Thiruvananthapuram

The hardship these women endure is not a little,” says M.S. Hema, looking out over her porch on the eve of the Pongala ceremony. “But they do it happily because they know it’s for the goddess.” A former English literature professor at the Maha­raja’s Government College for Women, Hema—like most citizens here—sometimes hosts upwards of 30 pilgrims.

In 1997, 1.5 million women came. In 2009, 2.5 million came, and a Guinness record was awarded for the world’s largest gathering of women. This year, the Attukal Bhagavathy Trust anticipates 4 million. According to Dianne Jenett, a teacher and researcher in Palo Alto, California, who came to study the phenomenon in 1995 and has been back almost every year since as a participant, Attukal Pongala is a tradition that spontaneously arose during an era when lower-caste citizens were not permitted to worship in or near temples. In rural areas, these “untouchable” or “unseeable” women, as they were called in Kerala, would perform ritual prayer—often culminating with pongala—in kavus, sacred places dedicated to local protector goddesses. Eventually, lower castes began to offer pongala for the higher castes, but today Keralan women of all social and economic backgrounds make the same offering to Amma in the same dusty streets, side by side.

The sun is setting over a neighborhood temple lake, and a dozen or so women gather beneath Hema’s portico, quietly setting up individual hearths, which consist of three red bricks, ends pointed toward one another like campfire logs, ready to cradle a pot. Hema’s guests travel from Mavelikara, a municipality 75 miles north. Christian churches and mosques also welcome the devotees, often providing water, bathrooms, and free lodging.

Some women arrive days before the ceremony to claim highly coveted spaces near or at the Attukal Bhagavathy Temple, but most arrive 24 hours or so before, colonizing whatever public space is available—in streets, over rail-station platforms, in parking lots. They cover the entirety of Trivandrum, dressed in crisp new outfits, calmly organizing their temporary altars. And then they wait. Finally, at 10:30 a.m. on the festival’s ninth morning, a voice from the temple—broadcast over speakers spread across the city—will signal the auspicious moment. And all at once, millions of women will light their hearths and cook pongala for Amma.

They’ll have carried with them a single bag filled to the top with all they need to make the offering. Dried coconut bark, red rice (rice whose husk is only partially removed, giving it a reddish hue), jaggery (unrefined coconut palm sugar, deeply sweet and the color of rich, wet dirt), grated coconut, banana leaves, and spices—cardamom, ginger, cinnamon.

And despite the camplike atmosphere, unrelenting heat, tired eyes, hungry bodies (fasting is common in the week leading up to Pongala), and massive clouds of smoke that will eventually billow from millions of small fires, the devout arrive year after year.

At Hema’s house, one woman, herding a bright-eyed little girl, says she’s been coming for 15 years. Renu Henry, a Christian from the Western Ghats, has attended for at least 18 years, evidence of Pongala as a phenomenon more complex than a religious ceremony. It’s a celebration of “secular and human values,” as Lekshmy Rajeev says in her book Āttukāl Amma. (Attendance is forbidden only to those women who are menstruating or who have had a close family member die in the past year.) In many south­ern districts of Kerala, the occasion has been declared a national holiday. Train fares are suspended for pilgrims. Men recede into the background, either remaining at home with the boys or quietly cooking for and chauffeuring their wives, mothers, and sisters. It’s understood that everyone aids participants with whatever they might need—water, transportation, shelter—and that in providing it, they’ll also be providing for the goddess.

5 P.M. Chalai Neighborhood, Thiruvananthapuram

A city overtaken. Stacks of orange bricks, a sea of clay pots, carts doing swift business selling red rice, jaggery, camphor tablets for fuel, banana leaves, and cardamom. A remix of “Beat It” glides above a snarl of tuk-tuks. Everywhere, everywhere the eye rests, women are summoning order to the streets. Hearths emerge along a pattern of sidewalks, courtyards, medians—a ghost camp unfurling.

Each trio of bricks has become its own small universe. Some are unattended, chalked with a name; others are orbited by burbling children tiptoeing over sleeping bodies, placid and dreaming amid the din of traffic. On one street corner, a blue-skinned Vishnu reclines. On another, a ferocious, iridescent Bhadrakali fans her arms. Technicolor spices and fruits are laid out at their feet, and speakers boom above with bhajan, devotional Hindu songs.

Along a commercial lane, a thin man in an orange mundu stirs a brass pot the size of a kiddie pool, his sinewy brown muscles straining with the effort. Inside, a small mountain of semolina rice—upma—steams, punctuated with carrots and green chiles. The thin man stops, smiles, and hands a palmful over on a banana leaf. In a plaza near the train station, more men sit cross-legged on straw mats peeling and seeding peppers, shelling beans, stirring pots. Their energy is distinct, slightly raucous against the throngs of solemn women.

All night, these men will cook, anticipating the moment when—pongala offered—women will break fast and line up for their first full meal in days, a provision given free of charge in temporary canteens all over the city. It’s a simple reversal of roles, a submission to the millions of women who feed them daily.

7:30 P.M. Attukal Bhagavathy Temple

A line of thousands of women snakes across a grassy plain and up a dusty road, a human thread winding toward the temple. Hundreds of dusty, forlorn shoes are piled near a turnstile packed with thousands more bodies. Humidity clings to warm skin made warmer by anticipation and nerves.

Nearly 2.5 million pilgrims have waited for hours in the climbing and descending sun to enter the temple. Some cool themselves with makeshift fans; others shoulder drowsy little girls. None, though, appear impatient or disquieted. They simply wait to be in the presence of Amma.

At the temple doors a frenetic tingle ripples forward. As the women advance to the entrance—perhaps a hundred at once—hearts leap into throats and eyes become alert. Ushered through a massive set of doors flanked by pastel-colored deities carved into columns, their bodies become knitted together in one big wave of soft flesh, warm breath, and low, urgent murmuring. Guards gently guide the tide. The crowd pushes through the doors, into the inner sanctum, suddenly releasing into a loose delta. A cloud of cool air licks a hundred faces. A wave of inertia pushes forward toward the shrine.

And there, finally, in the candlelit dark is the goddess. Her hair is golden, filled with serpents. Her four arms are raised and clutching a trident, sword, shield, and chalice. She is nearly veiled with a curtain of flowers.

There’s a sharp collective intake of breath. Her name passes from tongue to tongue. A jostle forward, and she is gone. The women amble out, dazed and ecstatic, smoothing hair and whispering to one another. Some purchase small paper bags of unniyappam, a prasadam of fried, sweet rice dough cakes, from temple vendors, and nibble dazedly.

The legend of the Attukal Bhagavathy Temple is told in various permutations, sometimes twisted up and conflated with other myths. The most common tale centers on a man bathing in the Killi River. One morning at dawn, during his regular puja (prayers), he sees a little girl alone on the bank. Concerned she’s been abandoned, he takes her home to feed her, but she disappears. When he tells his family and neighbors about this mysterious apparition, they refuse to believe him. In a dream, Bhagavathy (a name that can refer to any number of goddesses in Kerala) reveals to him that she and the little girl were one and the same. In thanks for his devotion, she grants him a sacred piece of land on which to build her a temple. It’s said that this is where the first shrine to Amma was erected.

From a simple wooden shelter, the temple has grown into an elaborate city-block-size complex of structures, one wrapped around another like a set of nesting dolls. It’s here, every year, that the ceremony starts: A flame is lit, and the entire city becomes a sanctified kitchen.

March 11, 10:30 A.M. Attukal Bhagavathy Temple

The sun moves over the temple. A drum beats steadily. The crowd chants in unison, hands to hearts, eyes closed. The air is thick with humidity, and breath comes slow and shallow. The chanting—a prostration mantra—grows more urgent, quickening. Stories of Bhadrakali’s vengeance are recited over loudspeakers across Trivandrum. The drums continue, steady and building. Firecrackers pop like a dozen Ambassadors backfiring.

Ululations rise in a single, pulsing thrum. Goose bumps spread over arms. One woman’s face is streaked with tears, her arms pushing against the sky. A small girl hides in the folds of her mother’s sari. Eyes turn upward toward a few puffy clouds. And then a shift.

Inside the temple, the flame has been lit.

The women stop chanting. They bend within their square foot of space and light crackling coconut bark. Men dodge between bricks to bring nearby devotees the flame. Matches spark, camphor melts, and the kindling catches. Smoke drifts in a silky sheet across the city. The women hover over their individual pots, watching for the water to boil. Once it does, a handful of rice is scattered carefully over top; care is taken not to let a grain touch the ground. Three more handfuls are added quickly in succession. Eyes watch pots, and when they boil, they boil over, a white, creamy foam creeping down clay walls, across dirt, cobblestones, crabgrass, and asphalt. Four million pots boiling at once. As soon as a woman’s vessel bubbles over—a gesture necessary to satisfy the goddess—she stands, trills an ululation to the sky, and crouches back down to keep watch.

It’s said that on this day Amma physically manifests and performs her own pongala in the streets among the others. She could be any one of these women praying, stirring, waving smoke from her face. And behind every pot, every gaze is met with a warm, placid smile. In this way, Amma is everywhere.

Up and down neighborhood streets, in the shade of porches, spilling over curbsides, women stir. Ash-scented haze has settled, and still the women stir. Somehow, a breeze snakes its way through the tangled maze of humans.

On one sun-dappled lane, a woman has set up 101 pots (an auspicious number) and dashes between them. “I wanted to thank the goddess for everything she’s given me this year,” she says. Beneath the awning of an optical shop, another worshipper has set up an additional hearth to cook unniyappam in dimpled trays bubbling over with ghee. The batter forms into small cakes almost as soon as it touches the spitting oil. Other women steam therali, soft green cinnamon-scented leaves filled with pats of gingery rice flour and jaggery, flecked with cinnamon and cardamom.

This moment, this hour of prayer, this blissful expression of devotion is awaited all year. “It’s a loss of identity,” says Hema, who completes her pongala under the portico of her home along with her dozen guests. “We come together, so many of us, and we lose ourselves together.”

2:30 P.M. East Fort Neighborhood, Thiruvananthapuram

The afternoon dips into a sleepy lull. The streets are still, speakers finally unplugged and quiet. Stray dogs doze in ditches and sun puddles. After crowding around the open-air canteens, women slump on one another’s shoulders, catching sleep after hours standing vigil. Four million clay pots, hot and burnished, have been covered with 4 million banana leaves. Crushed flower petals, pink and marigold and violet, flick along in the breeze. Ashes smolder. The city smells like an extinguished flame.

And then, a shift.

People appear from behind walls and peek out from front doors. The priest is coming to bless their pongala.

Like a troop of sentries, the women station themselves behind their hearths once more. Quickly, they straighten altars, shuck leaves from their pots. A procession of men parades by, led by a bare-chested priest in a shimmering gold mundu and scarlet flower garland. He sweeps along the street. As he passes, he dips a whip of butter-colored flowers, the size and shape of a pale jellyfish, into a bucket of rosewater and splashes it across the open pots. Pink musk and sandalwood incense swirl through the corridor.

When they disappear around the corner, the afternoon’s hushed membrane is whisked away. Voices rise above a murmur and men appear in doorways. Hema offers her guests a taste of pongala from her fingertips. In turn, one of the women feeds her from a wooden spoon. Another unwraps a therali leaf, breaks off a piece of the steamy cake inside, and pops it into her neighbor’s mouth. Each pongala has its own quality—some thick with creamy bananas and milky coconut, others electrified with nubs of ginger and wild cardamom.

But just as soon as palmfuls of the sweet, sacred rice are tasted, the warm clay pots are quickly wrapped with banana leaves and stowed deep in bags padded with newspaper. And like that, Attukal Pongala is over. The women sail out of courtyards and lanes, into the streets, bags atop heads. A peaceful army marching toward home.

By car and train and pastel blue buses, they trek back toward cities and villages, back to families they will feed from these millions of sanctified clay pots. The lighting of fire, the scattering of rice, the return of the devout—this will sustain Amma and her people for the next 364 days.

Special thanks to Dilip Vasudevan of Evergreen Holidays in Kerala, India and Leica for providing the Leica SL for shooting video footage and photography.

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