CAPTAIN KRISHNAN NAIR, chairman of the Leela Group of Hotels, must be the only gourmet in the world to have a caviar omelette for breakfast. This is his big indulgence on mornings when he wants to start the day off with a kick. The omelette is made of the whites of two eggs, stuffed with Black Sea caviar from Russia and some cheese. He was introduced to it by Pierre Cardin in Paris some 14, 15 years ago, then taught his Malayali chef at home how to make the omelette. Now, Capt. Nair happily polishes off a plate every other morning with bread rolls, attacking the food with his hands and making a mish-mash of the omelette like he is always eating it for the first time.

If you are lucky to be invited to breakfast with Capt. Nair like I am, then be prepared to share his indulgence. But, be warned, have only a tiny portion of the caviar omelette. It takes some getting used to. And Capt. Nair will try his best to also stuff you with Kerala lamb stew and appams, Malabar fried prawns and idlis, egg stew and idiappams, fish moilee and dosai and rice pootoo with coconut milk and sugar after you are through with the caviar omelette. The pootoo is very glutinous, very nourishing and very South Indian. It is steamed like a pudding in a bamboo shoot until thoroughly cooked. Sometimes the pootoo is had with scraped coconut and granulated sugar. Or, with a Bengal gram masala called Kadali Curry. Most Keralites make a breakfast out of the pootoo itself, but Capt. Nair is not one of them.

He is a big foodie. And if it is true that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, then his wife Leela has been going about this the right way for close to five decades. No wonder Capt. Nair has named his empire of luxury hotels and resorts after her. He tells me proudly that all the meals he has at home are made according to Leela’s recipes. This is authentic Kerala Malabar cooking. And he will eat only at home even though The Leela next door has some of the finest speciality restaurants in the country serving Chinese, Italian and Indian food. “There is nothing like home food,” Capt. Nair insists. “The food is cooked in lesser oil, lesser coconut milk and according to our individual tastes and cholesterol levels!” There is another compromise. The Nairs use olive oil at home for cooking and not the ubiquitous Kerala coconut oil. “Olive oil contains no saturated fats and is anti-cholesterol,” he says, “and it does not alter the taste of the food.

Leela Nair is as great a foodie as her husband is. In her library at home are the manuscripts of her own recipes that would make 12 to 15 cookery books. But Leela will not give publishing them any thought. Capt. Nair says that whenever they throw a party and Leela introduces some of her exotic dishes in the menu, guests call up the next day to ask for the recipes. “She does a semi-ripe mango dish in mustard, buttermilk and red chilli,” he says almost with awe in his voice. “This is her mother’s recipe and Leela will not share it with anyone.”

I have pushed aside my plate and am sitting back in my chair, a steaming mug of Mysore coffee in my grasp, watching the Southern breakfast show unfold before me on the Nairs’s groaning dining table. The coffee itself is a connoisseur’s delight. It is made by the decoction method, the Peaberry seeds mixed with Arabica and lightly fried in ghee before being roasted and crushed. I have mine with milk. I think Capt. Nair has his black, like most people from the South do. But he has not yet finished breakfast, and he indicates that the coffee he will have later, in his study. He is disappointed that I cannot keep up with his appetite for Leela’s food, but I cleverly point out that the breakfast hour has advanced, and for me, it wille be lunch time in a little while.

Later, in his study, where I accept a second mug of coffee, Capt. Nair talks about Leela. “She is a great cook, in the hotel she will guide our chefs by tasting what they have prepared, and by suggesting menus to them. She loves cooking and will make one fish curry every day for me in an old earthern vessel from Kerala. The fish might be pomfret, surmai, kane (lady fish) or even prawns. We get the fish from Sassoon Dock or Khar Danda. Leela can cook each of them in five, six ways, each one tasting and looking different. She also cooks the best chicken curry I have tasted. She uses so many different masalas, it’s amazing! Then she does a mutton korma with salt and pepper that is dry, like a fish fry. It is delicious. But we don’t eat so much mutton nowadays. Her recipes are all traditional Kerala Malabar recipes. The one she uses for the appam must be at least 150 years old. It comes from Sri Lanka. You know, in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese could never pronounce the word ‘aapam’, so they started saying ‘hoppers’. That name has stuck.

”The breakfast is over and he leads me into his garden. It is a big splash of greenery and a home to thousands of rare plants, lush creepers and exotic flowering trees. A real treat for tired and jaded city eyes. Capt. Nair’s green thumb has fetched him grateful thanks from several national and at least two international NGOs. He talks about his passion for gardening. “In Goa, I have the space for a spice garden, but here, I grow only chilli, red pepper, curry leaves, vegetables like bhindi, chauli, spinach, brinjals, green bananas and fruits like mango, jackfruit, jambul, guava, cashew, chikoo. Leela puts all this into her cooking at home. We also have coconut trees, 40, 50 of them. You must taste the coconut kheer Leela makes. It takes 100 coconuts to make kheer for ten people. She will use only the right type of coconut pulp, it must be soft and white, like egg white. And her jackfruit kheer and mango payasam! If you stay behind, I will ask her to make it for lunch. Meanwhile, ano-ther mug of coffee?”