No Blight on this Potato

The hint of smoky sweetness wafts over the dusty smog of the city

As I carry my Monday morning hangover face to work.

It carries with it a portent

Of a benevolent sun warming up my patch of checked gingham

Amid yowling dogs and bawling kids in my neighborhood park

This sweet potato on a stand beguiles you into believing

That there might be a cherry blossom

That will break out of the concrete jungle

This winter.

The misshapen body cased in brown

Yields a tender kernel of surprise.

Worn hands with a single perfectly manicured fingernail painted fire-engine red

Cajole the creamy whiteness out of its charred skin

They flick some magic powder out of an old plastic tin,

That had enjoyed its moment of glory under the spotlights at a department store

Many summers ago.

A fine dust

Covers the naked tuber in new clothes.

A drizzle of a young lemon’s fresh juices

Makes up my potato’s sweet face.

A single spoonful makes its way down my gullet

Creating a map

With cockle-warming grids in my belly

This spud of joy

Is my herald

To the first nip of winter.

Searching for Amritsar's Soul in a Pan of Hot Oil

While Da Vinci might argue that in simplicity lies the ultimate sophistication, I a mere, humble nobody choose to disagree. There is something perfectly vulgar in simple things. And this rough, un-pretty edge to simple things is what makes them so earthy and wholesome.

If Fish Amritsari was a girl, she would be a simple, earthy and wholesome country lass doing an item number!

Pile the virulent orange pieces of freshly fried fish high on a stainless steel thali, slap some raw onions and lemon quarters on the side, pour a few (large) shots of good ol' Old Monk rum into glass tumblers and serve it on a cold winter night around a raging bonfire...and there will be merriment, songs and perhaps an occasional brawl.
Fish Amritsari belongs to a world populated by weather-beaten faces, dusty cowboy boots/blue-and-white Bata Hawai  chappals, unshaven faces, dirt beneath the fingernails, large trucks with neon signs, camp cots and dusty highways. Take it out of this world, dress it up with vinaigrette reductions and vegetable art, pair it with a vintage French wine, serve it in expensive china, dismember it with your carefully placed fish knife and fork and you would have just destroyed the soul of Fish Amritsari, which lies in street stalls in crowded markets that fumigate your olfactory canals with their charred meat smells. It is perhaps the name "Amritsari" which gives the dish its charm rather than the actual bland looking white meat tacked on to it. It truly is the gloriously evocative name which conjures up old markets, the spires of the Golden Temple and centuries of history with a mere utterance.

My experiences with the dish itself have been wildly disparate. On the one hand Fish Amritsari is the stuff of my childhood memories. Dinners to the Army Officer's Institute located inside the impressive Fort William in Calcutta, were a weekly tradition. This grand British citadel used to be the pivot of the empire's defences at some point in history, however as a frivolous youngling oblivious to even the most obvious historicity of things, to me it was a mere cluster of walls, tunnels and buildings. The only highlight was the nice family club (the aforementioned Army Officer's Institute or AOI) which was a space for weekly entertainment, movies, May Queen balls, New Year parties and bingo nights. The point of the flashback is the connection with Fish Amritsari - a regular feature on the weekly dinner menu which maintained its spot on our preferred menu with each changing season due to my particular affinity for the dish. As a hybrid Bengali-Punjabi child who hated all the maach and maccher jhol she was fed every day (and today misses dearly), this orange fried fish preparation was something from another planet. Having none of the characteristics of the fish she knew, this dish was her own way of rebelling...by loving a fish dish that was disrespectful and considered a non fish dish according to every Bengali piscine norm because you couldn't taste the damn fish inside the orange Amritsari skin.
The second experience with Fish Amritsari was in the Deluxe Suite of Best Western Merrion Hotel, Amritsar where the weekend romantic/cultural getaway with the husband had transformed into a medical nightmare with the selfsame husband contracting dengue upon arrival. As I sat taking in the city skyline through the large picture windows of our incredibly plush room (the only bit of Amritsar I would see on this trip), I gnawed my way through a gigantic plate full of Fish Amritsari, I wondered at the popularity of this dish. The fish gleamed white inside its slightly soggy orange case which had separated from its body as it cooled. I tried to like it as much as I tried to be a good nursemaid and not have selfish thoughts about a ruined holiday...and in both cases I half succeeded...and half didn't.
This is one of my first posts where I will put up a recipe. I take no credit for it. It is in fact the much feted celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor's recipe. And like all his recipes, it is darned simple (am beginning to like the connotations of the word) and gives you a "no frills" dish swimming in authenticity and flavour.
Also I am putting up this recipe as I have strangely mixed feelings about this dish. I am not convinced it is a winner. I am not convinced it is a loser. In the midst of a crisis of indecision, I am hoping this recipe will be like a beacon of light drawing a lost sailor home or like a team mascot convincing me to believe in my losing home team.

Sanjeev Kapoor's Recipe for Fish Amritsari

Preparation Time: 15 mins
Cooking Time: 10 mins
Serves 4

Ingredients:
King Fish/Sole/Singhara fillets cut into fingers - 600 gms
Red Chilli Powder - 1 Tbs
Salt to taste
Carom Seeds (Ajwain) - 1 Tsp
Ginger Paste - 2 Tbsp
Garlic Paste - 2 Tbsp
Lemon juice - 1 Tbsp
Gram Flour - 1 cup
Oil to deep fry
Egg - 1
Chaat Masala - 1 Tsp
Lemon wedges - 2

Method:
Take the fish fingers in a bowl. Add red chilli powder, salt, carom seeds, ginger paste, garlic paste, lemon juice, gram flour and mix well. Set aside for a bit. Heat sufficient oil in a kadhai. Break an egg into the fish mixture and mix. Put the fingers, a few at a time, into the hot oil and deep fry till done. Drain and place on an absorbent paper. Serve hot sprinkled with chaat masala and lemon wedges.

The Accompanying Image for Sanjeev Kapoor's Fish Amritsari

Dear reader while you go through it, do take a minute to deliberate why fish in all its multicolored states and deboned avatars is still by and large an alien creature in the land of five rivers. The average Punjabi  makes fillets out of the most characterless fish, bludgeons any inherent flavour with spices and food colour into a kind of rubbery acquiescence and then usually deep fries them till even a seasoned gourmand wouldn't be able to distinguish between a piece of  wild, fresh river sole or a clump off the bottom of your shoe's sole.

I think it is quite apt to end with this piece I read in Punjab Newsline, an Internet news portal called the "Secret of Amritsari Fish". Its weird humour and surreal implications had me going from the word "fish". And I quote...

"The best fish for the dish are the verities caught from the Harike Pattan and Beas rivers."

So dear reader if you do land up on the strange shores where verities are fished out of a lake, fried and served to you with a sprinkling of good humour, you will know you have arrived in Amritsar...

Box of Rain

Raj Kapoor and Nargis in an iconic still from the film Shree 420 (1955)

"Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain."

- Billie Holiday

 

When I was younger, I saw life around me in its myriad hues. I saw it through a rose-tinted eyeglass I had crafted carefully through the years of my youth. And I believed in the romance of the rain. 

Calcutta is a city of bespoke romance. An oft-repeated event is customized to the individual skin. Like walking in the rain.

This fading, gloriously old-fashioned city is frozen in time. Fairy dust spewed by a mischievous imp floats around on some rare, wet, summer nights brewing trouble, drawing people together and spreading love. 

On such nights with a last magical stroke of the clock, time stops. Somewhere in the city, a woman big with child rests her tired muscles on a hard metal bed in between pregnant contractions. Her waters break in a frenzied gush. Almost in unison, the sky which has been still, breathless and silent till now, erupts in thunder, lightening and rain. The rains, they come. The lovers, they rejoice. They jostle for space under a single, slightly bent umbrella. their shoulders graze each other lightly, occasionally. It sends twin frissons of an awkward desire through two shy young lovers. They move away in embarrassment, only to be cajoled back into the space under the umbrella by the persistent pressure of Lady Rain, Patron Saint of Romance. 

 

An image from the newspaper of the wet streets of Delhi

Now I am older. I wear the bottoms of my trouser rolled. My days lie enveloped in a grey shroud. My deep slumber is interrupted by the ceaseless patter on candy striped window awnings. I wake up to a world pooled with slush, mildewed bread and green life crawling up my once-white walls.
I walk through flooded stretches of crater-sized potholes, markers of streets that once were. I collide with abandoned cows, cars with "Gujjar Boys" emblazoned on the back glass, bits of flotsam, bits of jetsam. I come home empathizing with drowned crows and bedraggled cats. I bring with me a trail of slime.
Romance just doesn't cut it anymore. My head crawls with hypochondriac nightmares. I can almost feel clumps of mould sprouting out from under my chin.
I crave for comfort food. I crave my mother's monsoon meals that cure everything from a case of blues to a cloudy cold. I crave the smells emanating from her magical kitchen that pierce through the grey blanket with the brilliance of a drop of sunshine trapped  in a multi-faceted crystal.
Every evening, I come back home and collapse on a rubber mat in a sodden tangle of rubber slippers, oversize umbrella and wet plastic bags and go over my wishlist before I can summon up the courage to let the damp out of my body and soul.

Wishlist

Khichudi:

Variously adapted and adopted as khichri, kedgeree, khicharee.
Food for the Gods. Simmered in gigantic cauldrons, it is the kind of yellow that feeds the masses and spreads festive joy.
Food for the body: A hearty and wholesome brew of the sort that is a cure for every ailment in its varying degrees of mildness and severity.
Food for the soul: the piping hot, bright yellow and glutinous mass is sunshine on a plate. Top it with Alu Bhaja (thin strips of turmeric and chilli coated potato deep fried in boiling oil), Beguni (batter-fried slices of brinjal) or Begun Bhaja (thick slices of brinjal fried in the same way as the potatoes), thick slices of fried aromatic Hilsa (the goddess of all that is fishy in Bengal) and/or a fluffy omelette stuffed with onions and green chillies. For this meal I would enter into a Faustian pact. This meal on a rainy day and my cup runneth over for now and evermore.

Onion Pakoras:

The crisp outer layers melt in your mouth to reveal the sweet onion bulbs inside. It is like popping a liqueur chocolate in your mouth and waiting for the surprise of alcohol melting all over your tongue. A delicate underpinning of green chilli and cilantro, a fine dust of the mysterious chaat masala and three bowls of tomato, mint and green chilli sauce form the  trusty sidekicks for the pakoras which launch an unabashed attack on the wet gloom. These golden fritters shaped like the tentacles of some alien octopi emerge onto the gray horizon like half a score visiting stars from a  neighboring galaxy.

Chicken Soup:

The strangely titled books such as Chicken Soup for the Latter-day Saint Soul have done little to take away from the ubiquitous comfort of inhaling the aroma of a large bowl of steaming old-fashioned chicken soup. The hunks of meat, the chunks of onion and carrot and the brown broth oozing with fresh flavours come together in a perfect opera. They sing to me of sunny days and warmer climes. This soup regulates the temperature around the cockles of your heart.

  

Coffee:

Not the kind that comes with smiling faces and elaborate maple leaves etched into its foam. Not the kind that makes you giddy with its decaf, low fat, mocha, caramelized, hazel nutted options. Just a (normal sized) cup of my mum's hand-beaten frothy and light coffee made out of Nescafe,  granulated and refined sugar and Mother Dairy's double toned milk and served in my favourite cup which is slightly chipped around the edges. Hot enough to sear the tender flesh at the edge of tongue. Hot enough to burn a chink into the gray armour clothing my heart.

Jalebi:

If a pretzel was born in India, it would be called a jalebi. However, it would be sweeter on the palate and more pleasing to the eye. This light and airy counterpart of the clunky European baked confection is a treat for every season. The hot molten jalebi breaks into a thousand delicate drops of sweet sugar syrup in your mouth. Hot jalebis fresh off the griddle served with a chilled kheer (a concoction made by boiling rice,milk and sugar) or a thick slab of vanilla ice cream are the stuff of a rainmaker's nightmare. They foretell days of endless sunshine without a drop of rain.

 

Gene Kelly singin' away in the rain

Checking things off my wishlist will mark a return to romance. The romance in simple things. The joy in a simple life. It will make me want to walk in the rain without a care. It will make me want to sing...in the rain.

In God's Own Kitchen (Part III)

A picture is worth a thousand words 

And there is a story always peeking around a corner.

It stands behind the curtains waiting for an audience

It hides in dark rooms waiting to be rescued

And it creeps through long corridors on stormy nights 

To ambush me and you. 

My stories have pictures

My pictures tell stories

Of a God that resides in coconut trees

And is sometimes benevolent and sometimes not.

Of a fisherman's songs

That match the ebb and flow of the tides

Of men with red and green faces whose dance

Chases away the hobgoblins of my nightmares.

Of food that makes you weep

With its aroma of love, loss and longing.

Of food that makes you love

And the memories that it evokes

Of a thousand tinkling laughs in a thousand glass bottles.

And so begins my story often meandering and often tall

Dear reader, do not judge me, for I might just trip and fall.

They twirled in a frenzy of skirts and swords
They bickered, they twittered, they growled, they jousted
They loved, they hated
They were men who played with dolls
They were men who fenced with papier mache sabres
They were the gods and demons from dusty old books
Brought to life by your grandmother's rusty voice
On hot summer afternoons
Cooled by bamboo curtains sprayed with scented water.
Stabbed, bruised and burnt, he collapses into a colourful heap of red, white and gold.
He dies with his eyebrows puckered in surprise.

The Chinese went in two by two...hunting for the fish that had vanished from their own seas.
They built giant creaking contraptions like the machines of Mordor. Sprinkled with fairy dust, the eye of a newt and the ancient songs of the sea, these nets were the scourge of the sea as well as the boon for starving fisherman.

In Fort Kochi, every time you see the sign which says Catch of the Day, its probably found its way to your plate through the Chinese Fishing Net. Every time you feast on the perfectly grilled fresh red snapper, think about how many hours ago it flopped to the floor with a last dying sigh after being caught in a Chinese Fishing Net? Every little crab that you ever ate around these parts walked sideways into a Chinese Fishing Net before appearing on your plate in a healthy shade of tomato red.

I always wondered why we never had gingerbread men in our country.I also wondered about the nomenclature of certain foods and why the only 'bread' in the little gingerbread man was in its name. I was more fascinated by the confection than the fairytale itself where the ginger bread man came to life. Through my travails, in the kitchen, I have peeled endless sticks of ginger. I have smelled ginger powder, eaten ginger candy, gorged on ginger biscuits, julienned ginger into elegant strips and consumed nearly a ton of ginger paste.

However, I have never ever seen a ginger bread man. And as the smells of this dried ginger factory percolated through my olfactory nerves, my heart filled with this unrequited desire to meet and eat a gingerbread man.

All Spice Market was home to the wonderful allspice, a miniature globe containing the whole world within its circumference. the Gods decreed that all the spices would drop their essence into this tiny, innocuous, mud-coloured ball and rolled it off the heavenly plates into the dense forests of kerala. With a plop it fell into the Brahmin's bowl of morning milk
And the rest as they say is all history

Thousands of years later I haggle, I shed tears and I swore like a fishwife to get my precious share of the queen of exotic spices - Mistress Allspice.

Avial, a simple, steamed vegetable dish transformed with freshly ground coconut and tempered with just a hint of mustard seeds and curry leaves. It is highly recommended that you eat avial while listening to Avial's (the Malayalee rock band) earthy rendition of Nada Nada complete with clanging guitars and metal tinged grunts and screams.

Uruli, the light of my kitchen, the fire of my stove, my faithful sidekick, my cauldron of delight. Oo-ru-Lee...the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Oo. Ru. Lee.

Hidden away in a freezer far from prying eyes and known only to a select group of die hard carnivores, beef is a rare (excuse the pun) commodity in Delhi. "beef" is also a dirty word in Delhi. Gau Mata would be a more appropriate title for this half goddess-half beast of burden. Our Gau Mata however, spends a large part of her time negotiating city traffic, scavenging rubbish heaps and languishing on the narrow dividers on arterial roads.

It is a strange journey from drinking cow urine to increase one's longevity (a practice made popular by Hindu nationalists) to eating the most succulent chunks of roast beef cooked in a mild coconut gravy and topped with a layer of crispy potato slices and fried onions. A strange journey indeed!

The red fire burned in his belly.  He clutched his sides in pain. It was an hour too late. He keeled over and collapsed in a heap.
The red, hot curry was always a dangerous idea. It had the seductive charm of a praying mantis attracting her mate. It would pull both skeptics and believers into its fiery pot of deceit.

"I told you not to mess with me," she said.
"I told you not to make me angry when I cook," she continued and patted him gently on his head.
"And I told you that you'd burn in hell, my love," she concluded with a sweet smile.

Postscript:
Just for a moment, I shall stop playing the fool
Only to say that the red fish curry is all about dreams of drool

Rub a dub dub,
Three men in a tub,
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick maker.
Turn them out, knaves all three.

The nursery rhyme that always came to mind, the song that fluttered on my lips and the image that floated before my eyes, like black spots appearing before a perforated retina every time I saw a bakery.

A strange three-headed monster or divine avatar
A freakish mutant or a lesser God
Gave birth to a hundred coconuts
That went forth and conquered the world.

A hundred coconuts sunning themselves in the sun by the sea.
A hundred coconuts oozing their sweet milk over the land.
A hundred coconuts nourishing the soil with its succulent flesh.
A hundred coconuts dropped out of nowhere.
Just like a hundred fallen moons from some distant galaxy.
A hundred coconuts were reborn as the quintessence of fish curries, pot roasts and custards.

A hundred coconuts cracked open to reveal a glimpse of a colonized world of the future 
Of kitchens in thrall of this alien fruit
Of cooks offering deep obeisance to this grand oval of green
Of mothers using the hard brown nut
As a charm against all evil.
Of little children sucking the last drop sweet coconut water through cheap plastic pipes.
Of big corporations marketing the coconut and its byproducts as new age organic mumbo-jumbo

A strange three-headed monster or divine avatar
A freakish mutant or a lesser God
Gave birth to a hundred coconuts
That went forth and conquered the world.

Priestesses of this temple and storytellers beyond compare, Anu and Aniamma are the keepers of this patch of paradise. There is a bit of magic in their lives as the simple raw vegetable turn to gourmet creations beneath their deft fingers. A sprinkle of this and a dash of that yields a spectacular symphony of flavours and textures. Grand conductors of the kitchen, they cajole you into taking a ride into their world. Love pours out of their kitchens, heat exudes from the food. The land screams its history and the river sings a song through their food. One of the last frontiers of a harmonious world, eating in their kitchen is a peaceful homecoming.

finis

In God's Own Kitchen (Part II)

Bananas

"Too thin for jelly and too thick for jam. An ambiguous, unclassifiable consistency, they said."

Arundhati Roy, God of Small Things (1997)

The classification of jam-jelly was not a dilemma to be pondered over on a holiday. Yet, as the dark red banana jam-jelly spread itself over my toast like luxuriant silk and exploded in a thousand microscopic shrapnels of  honeyed sweetness inside my mouth, I wondered about the often autocratic nature of classifications.

Surrounded by the swaying fronds of young banana tree and lulled into catlike contentment after gorging on  flaky and tender banana fritters and uncountable cups of fragrant filter coffee, I thought what better place or time to ponder than a holiday, and what better subject than the one nearest at hand, namely the banana.

Before I came to Kerala, I used to think Bengalis were the only race who had perfected culinary experimentation with the banana.  Not only did the average non-intrepid Bengali eat everything from the stem to the flower, he also ate his meal on the ample, freshly washed leaves of the selfsame plant.
Food and religion mingle imperceptibly in our country and this ubiquitous culinary staple is swathed in a nine-and-a-half yard yellow cotton sari and transformed into a blushing young bride, the kola bou. She carries the spirit that is to infuse the Goddess Durga with life on the dawn of Maha Saptami and is also Ganesha's wife.

The intrepid Bengali cooks his fish coated with mustard in a banana leaf packet. He makes his creamy cottage cheese confections in little banana leaf moulds. He minces the raw banana and combines it with spices and chillies to simulate a dish of spicy meatballs redolent with all the aromas and textures of a rich gourmet meat. The banana is Bengal’s edible gold. It is the dream of every Bengali domestic goddess to perfect the mochar ghonto (a spicy vegetable preparation with the banana flower and pieces of coconut) or the crisp and tantalizing mochar chop (spiced cutlet made with banana flowers) to complete the rite of passage necessary for kitchen queendom.

I thought this love for the banana plant was singularly unmatched. That was before I came to Kerala.
Here, the fruit is is the stuff of lore. Grown in every backyard, big or small, eaten in nearly every form sweet or savoury, the banana is an omniscient presence.
The wide leaves of the banana plant seem to enfold the whole land in a protective swathe offering solace from any storm.
Right through its lifespan from a firm green youth to an overripe yellow maturity, the banana grows from food staple to cultural icon. it provides economic and emotional succour.

The banana fruit carries memories...of grandmothers in warm kitchens peeling piles of sweet, ripe bananas to make delicious puttu (a combination of rice flour, coconut and steamed bananas) for breakfast. It carries with it the smell of woodfire that permeates the narrow backwaters where rural country boats laden high with freshly plucked bananas, make their way to the local markets. It is a harbinger of good fortune and a good crop, a familiar green stain along the whole coastline.

There are chips and chops, jams and jellies, cakes and candies. Violently chopped, cruelly minced, brutally beaten and mercilessly whipped, the banana fruit is tortured till it yields new culinary fantasies.

In Kerala, God cooks with a long ladle. The banana steeped in the smells and juices of the indigenous spices is simmered and stirred into delightful bite-size pieces of heavenly manna.

Gluttony is one of the deadly seven and needless to say I am a sinner.
I stole one banana from a perfect pile of the tiny golden-yellow fruits.
I licked my fingers clean after nearly inhaling an exceptionally crisp and succulent pazham pori (fried bananas in a sweet batter) in a single bite.
I swallowed the tenth slice of toast slathered in banana jam lost in Arundhati Roy's exquisite metaphors on the selfsame jam.

"Come, Mister tally man, tally me banana
Daylight come and me wan' go home."

While the sometimes heart wrenching, sometimes heart warming and always foot tapping Banana Boat Song was not quite my theme, I did sing the song sometimes. As I travelled around Kerala, sometimes I tired of my own romantic notions. Sometimes I tired of the picture perfect landscape. Sometimes, I longed for the searing heat rather than the mellow rain. Sometimes I wanted a rotten banana to fall in a wet sploosh at my feet as an indication that even Gods could have feet of clay.
And almost on cue I would collide with the most beautiful stretch of backwater, eat the most perfect karimeen polichathu (fried spicy pearlspot) or chance upon the friendliest local full of stories. Like a chastised child I would hang my head in shame, for I had attempted to hunt for imperfection in God's own country.
More importantly, I realized that this land was stacked with the sights, smells and tastes redolent of my own hometown. All I had to do was scratch beneath the firm fibrous skin...
And the sweet hint of banana formed the perfect bookend for these discoveries.

In God's Own Kitchen (Part I)

"Long before the time of Christ , the lure of spices took traders and seafarers to the verdant coast of Kerala on the Southern tip of India. The port of Cranganore was bustling with Greeks, Arabs, Syrians, Jews and Chinese merchants who lived in harmony with the people of the region."

from The Suriani Kitchen by Lathika George

I was merely following the century-old footsteps of a million or more travellers from across the world who had come to the Malabar Coast in search of its rich spices, in search of trade routes and in search of new lands. Vasco da Gama arrived here in 1498 carrying with him a new history for the land and opening up the hidden heart of Kerala for the world to see.
It was a humbling thought to arrive into this context. I was not even a punctuation mark for a footnote in the pages of history. Yet there I was watching the different shades of green materialize under me, as the aircraft bounced its way through patches of rain clouds with all the wonder of an old sailor spotting a new continent after months at sea. There I was to write my personal history, to stock my personal larder with spices and to eat my way through the land.

I had all the trepidations of a first-time solo traveller in an alien land, yet Kerala opened herself to me and enveloped me in her musky, spice-laden bosom. The lush wetness of the land, the smell of freshly ground coconut and the frenzied beats of a Kathakali drummer followed me as each day faded into a still evening pregnant with her devilish brood of thunder, lightening and rain. 

The days meandered through museums, churches or rides in a vallom (country boat), yet, all the history and diverse culture of the place with its Dutch, Portuguese, Hindu, Muslim and Syrian Christian influences came together like perfectly joined jigsaw pieces. At meal times. Every meal was a discovery. Every bite was like flipping through pages of history and charting the journey of the myriad settlers from their countries of origin to the Kerala backwaters. The little oasis they would build in a new land comprised a handful of traditions, a few articles of clothing and the food. They would eat their way back home through channels of memory and dust.

Meanwhile I attempted to travel to the same countries through the self same food. The food I ate was a far cry from my own initiation into Kerala cuisine which was at a hole in the wall called 'mallu dhaba' tucked away in a dirty refugee colony in Delhi's North Campus. The Sunday biryanis and the spicy beef fry used to be a much-awaited Sunday treat, adding regional flavour to our drab Indian aka generic north Indian meals.
However, the real thing was another story altogether. Upon entering the Kerala kitchen, I  was like a child unwrapping the surprise of a gift within a gift or opening up a Russian nesting doll in wondrous joy.

People believe travelling alone opens up some window into your soul and lets you poke around and examine the weather in there. My soul searching yielded a primeval bond with my dinner plate. I created grand culinary rituals for myself. I wrote my grand culinary masterpiece with an imaginary quill as I walked through the quaint cobblestoned paths of Jew Town in Fort Kochi or wandered through a spice market in Mattancherry or examined a nutmeg fruit up close in a farm in the backwaters.

My earliest foray into the kitchens of Kerala was through Lathika George's gem of a book, The Suriani Kitchen: Recipes and Recollections from the Syrian Christians of Kerala. My own creations  drawn from this book were crafted with supermarket produce - packaged low-cholesterol coconut milk, dessicated-beyond-recognition coconut powder and frozen steroid-injected chicken and beef. The dishes that I served in my clear Borosil dishes and fancy china were a pale shadow, much like a disappointing adaptation of  a favourite novel.

How could I, a city bred cook even begin to attempt the Fish Moilee with beautiful fresh fish caught that very morning from the surrounding lake and delivered by the local fisherman himself? How could my fat chicken legs gleaming dully with a sprinkle of olive oil compare to the leaner and infinitely flavourful country chicken cooked in the milk from tender coconuts picked from trees growing in the backyard of every traditional Kerala household?

Cooking lessons and female camaraderie went hand in hand around these parts. Diana Jerry from Noah's Ark Homestay and Aniamma and Anu Mathew from Phillip Kutty's Farm were my wonderful hosts who welcomed me into their kitchens and their lovely homes. They shared recipes handed down through generations of mothers and grandmothers in the great oral tradition of all epics.

As I stood in their kitchens where everything was freshly plucked, freshly ground, freshly creamed using old fashioned methods and with old fashioned tools, I felt like a paltry pretender surrounded by my robotic gadgets measuring everything down to last precise pinch of salt.  Truly, they belong to the generation where 'andaaz' is almost a genetic gift and me with my imperial and metric scales felt like a flawed creature.



I discovered the delights of Kerala in these cavernous  kitchens where the women of the household often cook up a storm indoors, which is in perfect harmony with the thunder and lightening outside. Their cauldrons or urulis (the fantastically spacious aluminum cooking vessel) yielded meals fit for the gods themselves...at least the Gods of Small Things who live around these parts.

Green Mango Delusions

Little droplets of sweet chutney

Dribble down my chin.

Thin slices encrusted with red chilli 

Burn their fiery way down my gullet

Chunks of fruit in a chicken and coconut curry

Do a little pirouette across my dinner plate. 

Roasted with a dash of spice, water and ice

It makes me swoon in sheer delirium.

You lie scattered all over my backyard on little squares of yesterday’s news

The jars of golden oil remind me of magical Arabian nights and forty broiled thieves

The process of pickling has begun.

I trap your memory in muslin-covered bottles.

Chase your shadow in candy bars, essences and fruit leathers.

Invoke your spirit with soaps, perfumes and aerated drinks. 

When the summer has receded into the innermost whorls of the last autumn flower.

I take that last bit of pickle from the jar

And close my eyes to share the delusions

Of mad dogs and Englishmen who go out in the midday sun. 

Ode to a Sun-Dried Tomato

Gently kissed by the sun,

You are like the light sprinkling of fairy dust

That creates a midsummer night’s mayhem.

You are the harbinger of that perfect wine-drenched afternoon

Redolent of the aromas of a Neapolitan kitchen.

You add a certain je nais sais quoi

To plates across the world.

Bottled to preserve the sunshine,

Your Midas touch

Transforms a modest slice of bread

Into an expensive dish with an unpronounceable name.

Like an artist’s palette,

You infuse colour and life

Into the smoked and dried winter meats.

Bringing a hint of summer artistry

Into the empty, grey canvas of December.

A little brown paper bag full of joy,

You, my lovelies,

Are the esoteric fifth element;

Of fragile terrines,

Of fragrant swirls of handcrafted pastas,

Of rich and mysterious sauces,

Of crisp garden salads,

Of beautiful meaty casseroles

And of dainty hors d’oeuvres

A delicate creature of whimsy,

You are crushed by men with deft fingers.

This little act of violence

Leaves little slivers of red trim in its wake.

You vanish without a trace

Down the serpentine belly of the city

All that remains is 

A dark red seed, a bit of pink skin

Along with crusty ends of   

Wood-fired pizzas

And drippings of cheese

On smooth wooden table tops

In warm attic cafes

Along cobbled alleys

In the markets of my city.

a pinch of salt

This was written a long time ago. Its back on this blog because it is perhaps the life blood of the kitchen and hence a pivot for my tales...


This salt

in the saltcellar
I once saw in the salt mines.
I know
you won't
believe me,
but
it sings,
salt sings, the skin
of the salt mines
sings
with a mouth smothered
by the earth.

from Ode to Salt by Pablo Neruda

These humble, modest grains rose from the sea and went forth and multiplied. Sedimented, mined, dried and boiled, the earth yielded its salt painfully, grain by grain. This "white gold" marked the beginnings of our culinary history and rescued our meats from decline and decay. 

Salt has been referred to precisely 35 times in the Bible. Eating habits in Islam recommend salt before and after every meal.

Wars have been fought over salt. Slaves have been bought and sold for salt. Salt has been taxed. Man over many centuries has levied the tax and has revolted against the tax in turns. Roman soldiers were paid in salt and well, the modern word salary has its convoluted roots somewhere at the bottom of a salt cellar.


I could put little piles of the different types of salt aside for every day of the week for the next whole year and I would still have some left over.

There are salts for every reason,
Salts that cause treason and 
Salts that there are rubbed into a lesion.


They come from every country. Seeping out of the cracks of the earth, these Celtic salts, French sea salts, Hawaiian sea salts, glittery African salts, Italian salts pour themselves out over the maps of the world.
There are coarse salts that cling to the tongue after the meal has long wound its way down your food pipe. 
There are flake salts that sprinkle themselves over delicate gourmet dishes like light snowfall on a crisp and bright winter day.
There are table salts which like marching bands gather together in symmetrical crystals in their mass produced jars and do a little functional jig over the daily bread.
There are sea salts and smoked salts. These are creatures of romance that walk with your perfect cut of meat or richly exotic farm fresh salad leaves and vegetables like lovers in the rain sharing a single umbrella, revelling in the moment of complete togetherness.  
Just like a brilliant auteur crafting the work of his lifetime out of seeming nothingness, man in a flash of genius excavated the the pink Peruvian salt from a nearly inaccessible spring deep in the mountains of Peru, which is then carried down the slopes as bricks on the backs of furry llamas.
There are sociologically accurate salts, which, by its very presence defines what is kosher what isn't.
Then there is the wildly exotic caviar of salts – fleur de sel which is hand-harvested in special ponds and scraped off before it can float down to the bottom, a feat as arduous as the quest for the Holy Grail. 
There are the esoteric dead sea salts – salts that share space with blood red hibiscus flowers and vanilla scented candles lining the edges of cavernous marble baths. An exercise in luxury.

(wood-engraved illustration by Gustave Dore)

And there are ofcourse the legends of  sea water, shipwrecked sailors, thirst and hallucinations. Most of it made famous by salt. And some of it by Samuel T. Coleridge whose lines echo through my mind every time I'm on a boat.

Water, water, everywhere, 

And all the boards did shrink; 

Water, water, everywhere, 

Nor any drop to drink.

The fact that two thirds of our planet is covered with this salty undrinkable sea water is not a very cheerful thought. 

Salt and a Blonde called Honey

1. Honey is a pretty blonde with a delicate temperament. She wilts in the heat and swoons at any kind of excitement. She is revived from her fainting spell with the help of smelling salts. 
2. Honey is a pretty blonde who is sensitive and highly emotional. She often dissolves in large lachrymal puddles composed of water, mineral salts, antibodies and lysozyme.



Salt is an experiment in lexicology – from the lively wit of a notable Athenian to an indicator of class dynamics.

Salt is a salve for the digestive glands – from the old fashioned salt water potions to the modern day flavoured fruit salts. 

Salt is a powerful magical charm – from basic protection against the evil eye to extensive use in african hoodoo practices.

there is the salt that delights when it is rubbed on small pieces of raw mango and secretly gorged on during hot summer afternoons

there is the salty ham and chorizo which complements every sandwich, salad and gourmet meal.

there is the salt that is applied on loitta or bombil fish which is dried on lines as the wind carries its powerful smell to the corners of the city. This rather acquired taste favoured by Bombaywallahs and East Bengalis and presented as pickles or curries for the colonizer and Anglophile.

There is the salt I have carried with me in packets as my personal talisman against vampiric leeches. 
There is the salt in my tin that I have every once in a while mistaken for snow white castor sugar. And thus, I have had a salty chocolate pudding, a lovely vanilla cake dusted with fine salt, a salty chocolate and peanut butter milkshake and many cups of perfectly brewed fine Darjeeling tea with a teaspoon of salt.    
There is the salt that sits innocuously in a battered china salt cellar on my table which inspired me to write this piece. This salt changes its consistency almost daily with the weather. Nearly every morning there ensues a herculean struggle at the breakfast table.  Me on one side trying to get a few grains out through the five evenly spaced holes and the salt cellar on the other, a hardened and formidable opponent resisting at every step. 
I have never been successful at getting a perfect uniform sprinkle out of my salt cellar. I always stared enviously at the waiters in restaurants who would sprinkle salt over my fresh salad with a deft flick of their wrist. The chefs on TV would dust their beautifully crafted concoctions with salt, ever so elegantly while I sat across the television set working myself into a nervous frenzy in trying to extract even a few grains of salt from the dratted shaker. 
This old china salt container has some great nostalgic value for my mum and thus it was never discarded and thus, my travails continued. 
I subjected the salt container to much violence and yet, it stood intact and unyielding.
I applied home remedies to it by putting in a few grains of uncooked rice to keep it dry and powdery. And yet, the salt stayed inside never to see the light of day.   
I tried wrestling. Brute force achieves little and the beheaded salt cellar vomited all its contents on my perfectly fried egg.
I tried being gentle and tapped it lightly while poaching my egg. And all I got was a bland egg for my efforts. The salt itself had become a wet and soggy lump that was clogging every single opening of the shaker.
The only reason I saved this salt cellar from the dustbin was because I realized it had character. It taught me the values of patience and it made me appreciate the small things in life. 

Every once in a blue moon, there was the perfect egg with the right amount of salt, the perfect cucumber sandwiches with the perfect amount of salt and the perfect crispy Aloo Bhaja (fried potato strips) lightly dusted with salt. These rare moments made precious because of their scarcity, tinted the world in shades of rose. It was a perfect moment when me, my eggs, my cucumbers, my Aloo Bhaja, my salt and my salt cellar existed in complete and beauteous harmony with the larger motions of the planet. 

My little homage to salt is dedicated to such occasional moments of truth. 

Pig-Tales III: Trial by Fire

Many tales have been told,
Now before you go to cook, eat and make love
Here is a tale of caution
For all intrepid cooks.

The first time was as tension fraught as a primeval hunt. I felt like primitive man crashing his way through a hot and steaming jungle in hot pursuit of his prey – in this case – a wild boar.

Armed with my shiny meat cleaver, it was me on one side and the pile of raw pork belly on the other. The dead pig looked as if it was going to jump out of my colander at any moment and all the chunky pieces would piece themselves together into a ghastly reconstruction of its former self. Terrified by my own flights of fancy, I could imagine this monster pig suspended five feet above the ground, at eye level with me, carrying with it the memory of its recent murder as well as a millenia of stored vengeance.

At that particular moment, I felt as if the burden of the worlds' crimes against this animal rested squarely on my frail shoulders. I stopped short in my tracks. I turned and fled from the kitchen. That, was the first attempt.

Five minutes later, I calmed myself down sufficiently, uttered a little war cry and entered the kitchen again, waving the cleaver in front of me like a holy talisman.

The pork belly lay washed, pink and gleaming in the humidity of the summer evening.

My blueprint for the meal lay spread out in uneven piles of recipes.  A vindaloo and a pork roast with gooseberry sauce jostled for space on my tiny table. I walked towards the sink in slow motion. The whirring blades of the fan blew scraps of paper all around me with pork emblazoned on them in different fonts.

I chose to be ambitious. It was gooseberry season and the vendors had appeared at street corners with baskets of the succulent golden yellow fruit screaming "rasbarry rasbarry" . Hailing from a tropical climate I had never really seen a fresh raspberry. My younger and naiver self actually thought that these orange fruits might metamorphose into the beautiful pinkish red drupelets that were the stuff of English tea parties and European cupcakes.
When I finally discovered that these were an entirely different species, I just scoffed at the vendors for getting the taxonomy of berries completely wrong. I thought that they were just using the more exotic name to trick people into buying the raspberry's relatively plainer country cousin. That was before I had ever tasted a gooseberry.

Many summers later when I finally tried this fruit, I was in love. One bite caused a whole explosion of flavours in my mouth. There was a sharp tartness mixed with a sweet undertone and a lovely musky smell. It was around this time that I also realized that what the fruit seller was screaming was not a vernacular variant of raspberry but the perfectly correct "rasbhari", an apt and evocative term for this juicy fruit that remains quite underrated.
My memories of this fruit had stayed in storage till I decided to cook my first pork dish. In a flash of what I thought was sheer genius, I imagined delicious chunks of well cooked meat with a tangy and spicy gooseberry sauce. I imagined fame and accolades at the prospect of this award winning combination, only to come back to earth after Google informed me about dozens of roast pork recipes with myriad gooseberry sauces, relish, preserves, toppings, and jellies.

A Recipe for Disaster.

Step One:
I was on my knees scraping off a fragrant gooseberry paste infused with an especially piquant, freshly ground red chilly powder from South India, fresh basil and some lovely balsamic vinegar from my cream coloured walls. I had shifted the mixer to my dining table in the living room and somewhere in transit the cap had come loose and well, you know the rest. There was an explosion of gooseberries over my table, my walls, my lamp and my pretty summer dress (it was supposed to be a romantic dinner with the husband).
I managed to rescue 45 percent of my gooseberry sauce.

Step Two:
90 minutes later the top layer of the fat pieces of pork had turned a strange dark brown while the bottom remained a pasty raw pink. My oven was emitting strange sounds as the metal expanded and contracted but the pork refused to cook.  The husband was home by now. Hungry and harassed. The pork was light years away from edibility.
Fried pork could somewhat mimic a roast. Assuming that it could at least finish up the job, I quickly transferred the meat to the frying pan.
I was inspired by an unforgettable pork dinner at this quaint Korean restaurant called Gung.
The pretty girls serving us were from the Northeast, dressed up to look like Korean belles. No knowledge of English and fantastic sign language abilities helped perpetuate the illusion.
One of them came to our table with a portable gas stove, a few pieces of garlic, a handful of mushrooms, and some lovely pork belly which she then proceeded to cook with such skill and speed, that in precisely 7 minutes, we were consuming the softest and most delicious pieces of meat wrapped in tender lettuce and dunked in sauces of our choices.
While that was a dream meal, my own pork looked increasingly like a distant mirage.
My memories of the Gung pork assumed mythical proportions and my tired self began to envision the pretty fake Korean girl gliding through a vast, arid plain carrying a samurai weapon in one hand and a huge dish of the pork belly in the other, conquering all the lands she walked through.

Frying pork in a non stick pan in lukewarm oil is a dangerous idea.
I dropped the pork in and the oil jumped out of the pan and attacked me with the sharp sting of a desert scorpion.
I bounded out of the kitchen like a whipped whelp and made my way into a dark corner to nurse my wounds. However, time and frying pork wait for none and soon I could smell, the terrible smell of scorched meat.
I ran back in to see the pan smoking.
At the speed of lightening, I flipped the pieces that were still unstuck to the pan on to a plate.
I managed to rescue 60 percent of the roast/fried pork.


Step Three:
The twice-cooked pork still remained inedible. I was a second away from taking the half-done meat, tearing it apart with my bare hands and throwing it to the neighborhood dogs.
The meat sat in the pan raw, rubbery and stubbornly refusing to yield to my prodding fork.
Some false hope bubbled through me as I spotted the pressure cooker from the corner of my eye.
I dunked the pork into the water in the cooker, added some fresh herbs, a dash of salt and pepper and fixed the lid.
Hunger often makes you do terrible things. My hunger usually yielded a vindictive self torture mechanism. I was thinking up the best pork curry, I had eaten, Lightly seasoned, flavoured with typically local herbs, shoots, leaves and the fieriest chilli in the world, the Naga Pork Curry with Raja mirchi simmered on the fire till the all the different ingredients diffused into each other and then opened up in your mouth clearing the last clogged sinus in your body.

My eyes glazed over and I had teleported myself into the colourful food stalls of Delhi Haat, when my nose began to twitch. The by now familiar smell of scorched meat filled my kitchen. Cooking in a pressure cooker with inadequate water and the flame on high, is always a bad idea. Today, it was the final nail in the coffin. I yanked the lid open to find ashes.
I managed to rescue 10 percent of the roast/fried/boiled pork.

Time: 1:00 am.
Background score: The constant ticking of the clock gradually growing louder and ominous electronic music by the Flaming Lips.
The scene: The candle had nearly burnt to the wick and the bottle of red wine was empty. The crockery and cutlery lay untouched. The kitchen looked like it had been hit by a tornado. There was an exhausted, greasy and drunk cook standing over the stove. A ravenous and drunk husband was standing behind her somehow managing to be supportive and egging her on to the finish line. The cook's hands moved furiously. Then the two of them stood hunched over what looked like a single plate emitting some kind of an unearthly glow.


There were precisely three pieces of pork, drizzled with a dark orange gooseberry sauce and nestled in a bed of crisp iceberg lettuce. Four herbed baby potatoes lightly roasted along with a slice of mandarin orange and a sprig of mint tried to cover up the empty spaces in the pristine white plate. The sheen of tender fat around the meat truly glowed with an otherworldly light.


I had started cooking at 9 pm. Four hours later 1 kg of pork had whittled down to fifty grams. The intended indulgence in gluttony ended up being an exercise in molecular gastronomy.


Four hours later, we settled down to our dinner tired, weary, drunk and miserable.


We sat with the plate between us and took our first mouthful almost simultaneously with our forks. A strange goofy smile spread across the husband's face and I looked up to see the same expression mirrored in his spectacles.
Roasted, fried and boiled, the pork melted away in our mouths with a slightly charred top. The gooseberry sauce was perfect and everything was as fresh, tiny and perfect as a newly unfurled leaf.


We went to bed wondering why some of the best things in the world came in extra small sizes. 

Postscript:
I still struggle with pork. Maybe I shall write a fourth pig-tale when I win this battle.