Latha Holla brings home a taste of Karnataka via her website

Latha Holla brings a taste of Karnataka via her website

While browsing recipes online, the carrot holige recipe using wheat flour catches the eye. “Usually holige is made with maida to give the dough the required elasticity to roll it out, says Latha Holla, of vegrecipesofkarnataka.com. Repeated requests for a healthier option saw Latha create the wheat flour variant. “It was an instant hit.”

Latha has nearly a thousand traditional recipes from Karnataka on her website, most of which can also be viewed on her YouTube channel.

Born in Jayapura town near Shringeri (Chikkamagalur district) to Anandarama Aithal and Shantha Aithal, her family can trace their roots to Ujire (near Dharmastala) and Kundapura. Latha came to Bengaluru in 2001 to study Electronics and later worked in various firms. She quit her day job as a design engineer in an electronic equipment R&D company in 2011 to pursue her passion for culinary art.

“My husband Raghavendra Holla is a medical professional whose work took us to different cities including Cochin, Hyderabad and Pune,” says Latha. “With my family expanding I found it easier to resign my job and follow my passion, although it required some effort to understand gastronomy.”

The website was Latha’s way of chronicling all she had learnt about the dishes she had enjoyed over the years. “My interest in familiarising myself with the recipes of Karnataka ended being stowed away in books after I tried them out in the kitchen. A website to document those dishes seemed the logical next step.”

Her collection of recipes is a journey that goes back more than a hundred years of recipes shared by her grandmothers, mother and aunts, from various regions of Karnataka. “Documenting family recipes wasn’t just a responsibility, but something I loved. I wanted to expand this effort to include dishes from my home state Karnataka. During my years of study and work, I understood the nuances of region-specific tastes, courtesy of the many people I met,” says Latha.

“The more I saw people proudly documenting their own cuisine, the more I was convinced to put up a site for recipes from Karnataka,” says Latha, who began vegrecipesofkarnataka.com in 2015