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.

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 I: introduction

5000 years before Christ there was the pig.
The pig was domesticated before paper was invented.
And the Chinese have a hand in both.

8 porkers also travelled to the New World with Christopher Columbus. Whether they survived the great crossing is another question. They were on that ship. And that is important enough for me.

13 pigs came with Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto to America. The man with a taste for roast pork discovered the Mississippi river while looking for a route to China (the Sleeping Dragon does have a finger in every pie) and also eventually died of a fever on the banks of the selfsame Mississippi. His 13 pigs on the other hand went forth and multiplied under the hot sun, when the great American dream was still stewing somewhere under the swamps.

While the beginnings of the pork industry remain a mere footnote on the pages of America's brutal and bloody history of colonisation, war and genocide, the blood that was spilt in this case is perhaps no less in quantity.
The meat packers became millionaires. The pig became charcuterie. There was the year of the pig. There were the three little pigs. There was the one perfectly groomed Hollywood pig with a name.
And far far away across many seas I was discovering the pig unburdened by its historical and cultural connotations. A tad confused, but, mostly unburdened.

Deriving from the rather musical sound of Latin 'porcus' to the stylishly chic French 'porcus', English 'pork' entered my consciousness as a dirty word. The name represented a creature of dirt rather than the scatological or sexual expletives learnt through hushed whispers during lunch breaks in school.
Childhood is a confusing time. The thing that baffled me the most was the disconnect between the squeaky clean, baby pink, hairless, and rather cute creatures out of the picture books and cartoons on Doordarshan (yes, i grew up in a pre cable-tv era) to a nomadic population of ugly, hairy, black garbage-eating monsters that were seen rummaging around the large piles of rubbish with their miniature ugly, hairy, black, garbage-eating family in tow.
I understood why it was a dirty word.
I often wondered if the black hairy exterior was a body wig waiting to be discarded in a moment of swan-like surprise.

My earliest memories of the pig apart from the two that got eaten by a wolf was the pig I ate myself.
The distinct aroma of the perfectly fried, succulent and spicy pork sausage still sets up a veritable orchestra on my taste buds. It was a grown ups party, far back in time and space and most of the other specific details grow brittle and fall away around the edges like the brown edges of burnt paper.
What remains... is a memory of a smell and the corresponding flavour.
It entered my nostrils as an alien creature. A rich, warm, and incredibly appetizing smell wafting all the way from under the closed doors of the kitchen, riding on the air-conditioned draft of air and finally colliding with my olfactory senses in a hundred peppery, spicy, and meaty notes. I remember the drool collecting at the bottom of my mouth threatening to dribble out from the corner of my mouth. I remember the look of that tiny, perfectly browned, parcel of meat bursting with flavour and heat. I remember wanting to take the whole plate and running away into a dark corner and indulging in sinful gluttony.
This was my first pork cocktail sausage. Since then I have eaten many many kilos of pork sausages. Of all sizes and with all kinds of spices. I have eaten them in the city, eaten them in arid dry towns, and  have gorged on them in the hills.  And each time has been as pleasurable as that first forkful.

Well, the intestines are a hardly the best introduction to any animal, with this particular one it is as good as a Miltonian prologue.
An exercise in grammar, the sausage is a synecdoche for the pig. A feminist nightmare, the pig is a case study in objectification which is cut, dried and quartered in terms of its nether parts.
Raw materials for a culinary artist, the various parts of the pig have been sculpted into a veritable masterpiece in charcuterie.
A cook's dream, the pig is smoked, boiled, dried, roasted, baked, broiled, fried, steamed, chargrilled, and pickled into perfection.

So eating one pork sausage ( I was allowed only one) was as precious as a bite of the forbidden fruit. The pig was much worse than a dirty word in my house. It was a monster from a medical nightmare in my hypochondriac family. It was a creature of disease, The harbinger of the deadly tapeworm and ringworm. Till date, every time I share a pork recipe with my mum, recount a particularly excellent meal where pork figures in the menu, or talk about a fantastic neighbourhood deli selling excellent ham and salami,  I inevitably have to listen to the oft repeated warning against tapeworm along with the oft repeated horror story which i shall now share with you. However it comes with a warning. And those with a weak stomach should stop reading now!

So this is the legendary tale of caution in our family. Embellished over time but true in its essence. It is about a distant cousin. A carnivore with a penchant for the pig, he travelled far and wide sampling some of the best pig in the country. And one fine day, he vanished. Rumours came flying out of different parts of the country. Some said his hair had grown till his knees, some said he moved around with a harem of tribal women and some said he was afflicted by some strange disease that gave him the power of foresight. However, it was a terrible gift they said, every time he had a vision, little white snakes/worms would burst forth from under his skin and medusa like crawl over his body to that of the supplicant (yes he supposedly had supplicants now).

Six months later I saw him. He was bald and thinner and had a scar across his temple. And well,  no sign of the rest.
The white snake/worm bit was true. the tapeworm travelled through the pork into his bloodstream and right to his brain. Whether they broke through the skin and hurtled through a short distance before landing with a gooey splat on his wife's dinner plate during a particular romantic dinner (another rumour), or created a medley of activity in his brain and gave him the gift of vision: that will remain a mystery forever. Meanwhile it was good enough to be the grande dame of old wives' tales in our house.

Thus, we never ate pork in my family. Never entered a meat shop selling pork.
I longingly eyed sausages on distant plates.
I occasionally tasted an unfamiliar,  elusive taste in the Chinese food we often consumed while eating out. Drowned in virulent red or brown gravies that destroyed the flavours or textures of any of the individual ingredients, pork was sometimes unknowingly slipped in to the melee of meats in the seafood or mixed meat soup/noodle/broths.
Plagued by the fear of the omnipresent tapeworm, the piggie remained dirty and forbidden.
And just like adolescent teens lusting after the lamest porn, even this sliver of pork disguised in its Indian-Chinese avatar was the stuff of drool-worthy dreams.