Summer on a plate - Traditional Summer Vegetables

Summer on a plate - Traditional Summer Vegetables

Saturday, February 20, 2021

 Summer on a plate

Joanna Lobo

As a young child, Megha Deokule’s summers were all about visiting her grandparents’ home in Coorg and filling up on kulae puttu (steamed jackfruit cake). Her grandfather would bring in the ripest jackfruit, de-seed it and hand over the pulp to her grandmother. She would then prepare a batter of the pulp, ground rice, shredded coconut and jaggery and steam it in banana leaves. “We would eat the kulae puttu straight out of the steamer, with a dollop of ghee (clarified butter)," says Deokule, founder of the online organic store i2cook.

Most of us can remember eating certain vegetables and fruits only in the summer months, when spectacular dishes would be made with seemingly humble ingredients. Besides scoring on the freshness factor, they countered the blistering heat of Indian summers with their high water content, tantalized sleepy taste buds and added a welcome touch of variety to our plates.

While many of these fruits and vegetables are not readily available today beyond the hinterland, the intrepid urban consumer tracks them down for the pleasure of recreating remembered recipes, even tweaking some of them to suit current lifestyles.

Going green

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Colocasia leaves 

On a recent visit to the vegetable market at Matunga, Mumbai, Shetty was surprised to see a number of summer vegetables she had eaten back home: White bamboo shoots, the insides of which were cooked with coconut; lotus stems, usually stir-fried with chilli, cumin powder, salt and coconut slivers; and red cucumbers, which were turned into a curry.

Shetty recently started her own vegan outreach programme to document seasonal fruits and vegetables and convert traditional dishes into vegan preparations. For example, her family makes a mildly spicy gravy dish with green pumpkin, coconut milk and curd. Shetty replaces the curd with amchur (dry mango powder) for a not-dissimilar tartness.

At Ashima Borkakoty’s home in Mumbai, the onset of summer can be gauged by the different varieties of curries called tenga (literally, sour) that she prepares. “For us, tenga equals summer. It is a light dish, easily digestible and very healthy. We make it with whatever vegetables are available," says the founder of The Home Kitchen, a catering service. Some of the vegetables she uses are dhekia xaak, a green fern-like vegetable loaded with iron that is either baked with fish or steamed and made into a mash (pitika), and komora (white gourd or white melon), a sour vegetable valued for its high water content.

While Borkakoty sources the vegetables from her family in Assam, regular shoppers may find themselves at a loss when confronted with unfamiliar produce at the local market. That is where bloggers, with their disparate sources of reference, come in handy.

“Karam saag is a water plant with a hollow stem that makes tasty curries and stir-fries. But I barely see it in the markets," says Sangeeta Khanna, a New Delhi-based food and nutrition consultant. Khanna runs the blog HealthFood DesiVideshi, where she discusses fruits and vegetables she grew up eating in Varanasi: the buds and roots of the kachnar tree, which are blanched and then cooked to make a curry or pakoda; agasti flowers, also used in pakodas; and poi saag (Malabar spinach), rich in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, which is a summer replacement for spinach.

Fruity flavour

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“Quince (chhoth or bumchooth) is a fruit that grows in the Himalayan foothills and is used to make a curry with brinjals. Wild Indian figs (goolar) are tender green fruits used to make curries and kebabs. My grandmother loved goolar ki subzi or chokha (mash). Boiled and mashed goolar (with chilli, garlic, mustard oil and salt) is considered a tonic," says Khanna. Lasoda, a sticky berry also called gum berry, is used to treat arthritis and related joint problems. Nimboli or nimkouri, the ripe fruit of the neem tree, is slightly sweet but has a strong bitter aroma and is considered a good blood purifier.

One very popular summer fruit that is used in cooking all over the country is the jackfruit. “The raw jackfruit is used to make curries or kebabs and tastes just like chicken," says the Bangalore-based Deokule. The seeds of the jackfruit are cooked as a vegetable and, along the Konkan coast and Goa, jackfruit pulp is sun-dried and then used in curries.

The unripe fruit of a variety of jackfruit called badhal (monkey jack), usually found only in north India, is used to make pickle, while the ripe fruit is sometimes used as a substitute for tamarind. The fruit—aromatic, sweet and lightly tart—is a good source of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. “There is also the wild jack, a small fruit that resembles the jackfruit but with a different taste and texture. The ripe fruit is edible while raw ones are pickled in brine to make chutneys and curries," says Rajnikanth Shenoy Kudpi, who runs the blog Kudpiraj’s Garam Tawa, which details traditional recipes from Mangalore and Goa. One of Kudpi’s favourite summer dishes is a curry made using the bibbe (tender cashew nut). Bibbe is believed to be a very healthy seed and is a popular summer snack along the Konkan coast.

The North-Eastern states, too, love their fruits. Elephant apple is a fibrous, coconut-like fruit that the Assamese use to make ou tenga curry. At Borkakoty’s home, they also eat amora, a juicy fruit that looks like a mango; ramphal, a fleshy fruit similar to the custard apple; and leteku, a fleshy fruit resembling the lychee that is eaten raw, stewed or made into wine. Borkakoty’s favourite fruit, however, is the Assamese olive or jolphai. “They are big, green and sour and used in chutneys, pickles and dals. (There is) Nothing that tastes better than jolphai in summer," she says.

Borkakoty is lucky. If she needs some information or a recipe or even an ingredient, she can call home and have them send it to her.

This summer, if you want to eat healthy, go back to your childhood memories. Or call home.

Mutton pickle for the soul: How non-veg pickles elevate a simple meal

Sunday, June 21, 2020

Mutton pickle for the soul: How non-veg pickles elevate a simple meal

Families in different parts of the country have sworn by them for generations, and now share a taste with us

Akila Kannadasan

Prawn pickle at home. When in school, this would be the singular thought on Josephine Rajaratnam’s mind on days her mother placed that bottle on the dining table. She is 80 years old now, but still remembers how she ran home from school to place a dollop of the pickle on a slice of bread and eat it. “I wouldn’t touch any other snacks; not when there was prawn pickle,” she smiles. Once she was older, Josephine learned her mother’s pickle recipes, as well as her grandmother’s. She made and sold them as Aji’s Pickles, until a few years ago. She says that she closed the business down owing to various issues, among them being the fact that making non-vegetarian pickles involves a “lot of work”. But she still makes them for her son and grandchildren when they come visiting.

In most Indian homes, mango, gooseberry, mixed vegetable, garlic, and lemon pickles are a mainstay. Many of us have a tiny peck of them with curd rice to round off a three-course meal. And also with chapatis and dal rice when there is nothing else worth its while to be had as a side. To sum up, vegetarian pickles, are merely sidekicks.

More than just a sidekick Nothing like a bottle or two of fish, prawn, or mutton pickle made lovingly by a special one, to remind one of home  

And then there are some reserved for special occasions — like when a loved one comes home to visit after a long time or when the meat-loving granddaughter packs her bags to leave home for college. Nothing like a bottle or two of fish, prawn, mutton, chicken, or beef pickle made lovingly by the mother, grandmother, uncle or aunt, that will remind them of home. Non-vegetarian pickles are much more than that sad bottle of lemon pickle sitting on the dining table. The meat, soaked in all the masalagoodness, becomes nice and firm. 

Every person in the backwaters-pampered Kumarakom in Kerala has sampled Lily Joy’s home-made fish, clam, prawn, chicken, and beef pickles. No, she doesn’t sell them; Lily ‘Kutty’, as she is popularly known, happily gives away the pickles to friends and relatives. The 50-year-old has been making them ever since she was 16. “I learnt it from my ammachi,” she says, adding, “The main thing to be kept in mind while making pickles is that there should be no water in them, not even a drop.” Lily first marinates the meat in spices, including turmeric, chilli powder and ginger, and shallow-fries them in coconut oil. “I then cook them with more masalas in sesame oil and add vinegar to keep the freshness intact,” she says.

Common threads

Recipes for these pickles may vary from home to home, but all of them have a few common ingredients: sesame oil, ginger, garlic, turmeric, and chilli powder. “The process has three steps,” explains 57-year-old Tasneem Ayub, a Chennai-based home cook who runs Ammees Kitchen. She has been making pickles since 1984. “First is the marination, in which the meat or fish, after being washed well, is soaked in a masala mixture. It is then deep-fried. The final step, is cooking this with more masalas.” Tasneem adds that to make fish pickle, “any fish that is firm to touch” can be used. Seer works well, so does king fish or tuna. 

Chennai-based sound engineer Abraham Varghese found that he had just ₹500 in his pocket one day. He decided to make small quantities of pickles using it: he made prawn, beef, and bitter gourd and put them up on a Facebook group. “They were sold out in less than two hours,” he says. 

That’s when Abraham decided that he had a winning recipe at hand, and plunged into the cooking business. He is the man behind Ammini’s Pickles and the recipe is his mother Achamma’s. The 52-year-old is serious about his pickles. “A pickle is different from a thokku,” he says. “The former should have minimal gravy and should be made with only two types of oil. In the south, it is sesame oil, and in the north, it is mustard.”

His pickles, he says, are good for up to two years, without refrigeration. “I don’t add coriander powder and tomatoes; the garlic and ginger used should ideally be those that have aged, and not fresh.” Abraham prefers Kashmiri chilli powder, that he adds after the cooking is done. “This gives the bright red colour,” he explains. It takes him two days to prepare a batch of 100 kilograms of pickle — he makes fish, squid, green mussels, beef, mutton, and free-range chicken. According to him, “pickle is like wine. It tastes best as it ages.”

I always chose rose falooda, he always had chai - Food Article

I always chose rose falooda, he always had chai - Food Article

Monday, October 21, 2019

I always chose rose falooda, he always had chai

‘I was too young to question why a man would have chai in the afternoon at an ice cream shop’

Percy Bharucha

Growing up in Ahmedabad, it was an unwritten rule that summer vacations were to be spent with our maternal grandparents in Surat. Each year, once the final exams were done, my father would drop my mother, my sister and I at the railway station with large suitcases that were to see us through two months of unadulterated pampering.

Last-minute fights would break out at the A.H. Wheeler store over how many Tinkles and Archie’s Double Digests we could get for the four-hour train journey ahead. We almost always took the Karnavati Express or the Shatabdi Express, the ones where lunch would be served in plastic trays, including tetra packs of juice, which I would trade with my sister for her dessert.

Home in Surat was on the top floor of a cosy block of flats with a little balcony that overlooked the compound entrance, which is where grandfather could be seen fretting till our rickshaw pulled in. This was before mobile phones had taken over our lives. After the bag hauling, chai would be served for the grown-ups and my sister and I would catalogue the contents of the single-door fridge, divvying up the sweets and cheeses left behind by relatives visiting from abroad.

Throughout chai, grandfather would fret over the unpacking of suitcases, new slippers would magically appear from one of his numerous cupboards, and the woes of the daily help and cook would be unburdened into our fresh ears. After listening to his tales, we would help mother unpack and only after the empty suitcases were deposited on the top of more cupboards were we allowed time off.

From the cubbyhole where I usually store childhood memories, I pull out the one where he taught me to use his record player. But it wasn’t something done frequently. Overuse took its toll on machines.

There was a ritual to be followed: one had to fold away the three layers of clothing that protected it from dust, clean the pin before and after use, put the pin cap in its designated area, wipe the records before and after use, not play more than three records consecutively and always check the speed — 33 1/3 RPM for the big ones, 45 RPM for the small ones. While grandfather is no more, his instructions remain.

Gentle symmetry

Grandfather was a homebody, like an insecure despot, always worried his castle would be overrun in his absence. At any moment, it could be seized by rebel troops, and his fine order of things, the gentlest of symmetries and harmonies that he achieved through careful organisation, would be lost forever.

His usual haunts were the post office and the bank. Passbooks, cheque books and a ledger of investments were kept and meticulously updated every month. While the rest of us would be away dining at the many communal dinners, weddings and Navjote ceremonies, he would be at home happily humming as he prepared his to-do lists for the house.

Which is why it was so special when he broke routine and stepped out. He knew I had a sweet tooth, and twice a month on a random afternoon, we would both dress up and walk to Badri’s at Lalgate for a falooda.

They had only two variants — kesar and rose. I always chose rose. He always had the chai. I was too young to question why a man would have chai in the afternoon at an ice cream shop.

While I slurped up the sev at the bottom, crunched through the basil seeds, and pulled hard at the thick, sweetened milk, grandfather told me about his adventures. His job as a postman had been to sort the post and he would frequently travel in overnight mail trains.

Finishing up the falooda, I always froze my gums and grandfather always had a good laugh at this. We would walk back home and for those few hours, it seemed that even if the house burnt down, he wouldn’t care. I don’t order falooda too often now, scared of ruining this precious memory, and when I do, it never tastes as sweet as the ones I had at Badri.

Rose falooda

INGREDIENTS

2 tbsp rose syrup or Rooh Afza

2 tbsp sabja seeds (sweet basil seeds)

A handful vermicelli

1½ cups milk

2 scoops rose-flavoured ice cream

Dry fruits and nuts

Method

1. Soak the basil seeds in water for at least 30 minutes and then drain.

2. To thicken the milk, heat milk and sugar in a pan. Let it come to a boil on medium heat. Lower the heat and let it simmer for 5-7 minutes. Chill it in the refrigerator.

3. Add basil seeds to serving glass.

4. Add the vermicelli.

5. Add rose syrup.

6. Add chilled milk.

7. Add ice cream scoops.

8. Garnish with dry fruits and nuts.

The writer is a freelance author and illustrator.