Monsoon Mood & #ChaiPakodaDay: Dakor Na Gota & Masala Chai

Pakodas, pakora, pakodi, fakkura, bhajiya, bhajji, bora, ponako, whatever name you call them, they are essentially a fried snack (fritter) popular in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. According to the Sanskrit-English Dictionary the word pakoda originates from the Sanskrit word 'pakvavada' a combination of the Sanskrit words 'pakva' meaning cooked and vada meaning small lump or its derivative 'vadaka' meaning round cake made of pulse fried in ghee. At their simplest, pakodas are individual vegetables sliced and dipped in batter OR finely chopped individual or mixed vegetables coated in batter, and then deep-fried. The batter is typically made of chickpea flour or besan. Whatever the pakodas are made of, nearly 99% of the time pakodas are deep-fried and very crisp on the outside. And in this crispiness lies their charm! 

That said, Pakodas are a single concept with a thousand interpretations! Since we first celebrated #ChaiPakodaDay back in 2017, I have come across countless varieties, recipes, many even entirely new innovations! Just search #ChaiPakodaDay on Instagram and you’ll get an idea of this diversity - and serious pakoda cravings too. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

The reason I chose to celebrate #ChaiPakodaDay on the 30th of July is that by this time the monsoon rains have arrived in most parts of the country. And there is the collective Indian philosophy that the ideal way to enjoy a rainy day is with crisp fresh-out-of-the-oil pakodas and a piping hot cup of chai. After all, “baarish mien chai-pakode to bante hai, yaar!” 

If all this hasn’t set off some intense cravings, perhaps my recipe for Gujarati Dakor Na Gota might just do the trick! And if you are already half-off your seat to go fry something up, try this one - it won’t disappoint.

Gujarati Dakor Na Gota and Masala Chai 

Dakor Na Gota and Masala Chai is a combination that takes me back to my childhood. Dakor na Gota are a popular kind of pakoda that are said to have originated in the city of Dakor in Gujarat. They were my father's favourite, so they’ve made it to the rest of the family’s list of favourites too. These chickpea flour and semolina pakodas are spiced with chilli, ginger, sesame, cumin, coriander and more. And certainly are a ‘perfect bite’ that’s hot, sour, salty, and subtly sweet. They are usually served with spicy green chutney and a cup of hot Gujarati Masala Chai to wash them down!

Gujarati Masala Chai is a bracing beverage brewed with fresh herbs like lemongrass and mint, and warming spices like pepper and ginger. The Cha no Masalo or spice mix is usually made in large quantities and stored in a box alongside the tea leaves and sugar in the pantry of a Gujarati home. Most families have their own favourite blend, but the masala will include all or some of the following: cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, star anise, peppercorns, cloves, nutmeg and mace. You could choose to experiment with different proportions of spices to make your own or use a commercial one.

Dakor Na Gota

Time: 45 minutes; Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 1 cup Gram Flour (Besan)
• ½ cup Semolina (Rava/Sooji)
• 1 tsp Green Chilli and Ginger paste 
• 1 tsp Cumin Seeds
• ½ tsp Turmeric Powder
• ½ tsp Garam Masala Powder
• ½ tsp Red Chilli Powder
• 1 tsp Fennel Seeds (Saunf)
• 1 tsp Coriander Seeds
• 1 tbsp Sesame Seeds (Til)
• 1 tbsp Whole Black Peppercorns
• ¼ tsp Sodium Bicarbonate
• 2 tbsp Sugar
• ½ tsp Citric Acid Crystals or 1 Tsp Lime Juice
• ½ cup Water
• 2 tbsp Chopped Coriander Leaves
• Salt To Taste
• 3 tbsp Oil + Extra For Deep-frying

Method

1. Combine all the ingredients except the oil for deep-frying in a mixing bowl with ½ cup of water and make a batter. Allow the batter to stand for 15-20 minutes.
2. Heat the oil in a kadhai or pot on medium heat for deep-frying. When hot, reduce the heat to low. 
3. Stir the batter vigorously. Carefully drop spoonfuls of batter into the hot oil and fry small pakodas on a gentle heat so that the insides are cooked well.
4. When they float to the top of the pot and are reddish brown, they are done.
5. Drain on kitchen paper and serve hot with green chutney and Masala Chai.

 

Gujarati Masala Chai

Time: 10 minutes; Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 2 cups Milk
• 2 cups Water
• 1-2 Lemongrass leaves, cut into segments
• 10-12 Mint leaves
• 4 tsp Sugar or to taste (optional)
• ¼ tsp Chai Masala Powder or to taste 
• 4 Green Cardamom Pods, pounded
• ½” piece of Fresh Ginger, coarsely crushed
• 4 tsp Tea leaves

Method

1. Combine the milk and water in a pot.
2. Add all the remaining ingredients, except the tea leaves. Bring to a boil.
3. Once it reaches a rolling boil, lower the heat to a simmer and add the tea leaves. Be careful, because when the tea leaves go in, the concoction tends to rise and can overflow.
4. Turn the heat back up and bring the mixture to a boil. When it boils and rises, lower the heat, till it settles. Raise the heat till it rises again, then reduce the heat once more. Leave it to simmer for a few minutes.
5. Finally, when the tea rises again and is a nice reddish colour, take the pan off the heat.
6. Strain the tea into cups and serve with the Dakor na Gota or any other pakodas of your choice!

Enjoy!

Honey in Regional Traditions and Ceremonies

India is one of the top 10 honey-exporting countries in the world, with Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, UP, Bihar and West Bengal being major honey-producing states in the country. One of the oldest natural sweeteners in the world, honey has been a part of the Indian diet since time immemorial. So in a country with such culinary diversity, in what ways have we traditionally used it? What recipes called for honey? What other traditions did it play a part in? I had many questions on this much-revered ingredient…

My usual instinct when researching ingredients is to scour cookbooks, but I haven’t been able to find any Indian cookbooks on honey. In fact, even regional cuisine cookbooks barely mention it. Of course, a vast majority of India’s knowledge is still only found in the oral traditions passed down through generations. So I turned to some of the regional food experts I know.

Until a few decades ago, most of the honey we consumed in India was wild, harvested hives built with no human intervention. Over time, humans evolved many ways of harnessing this through various forms of beekeeping, developing symbiotic relationships with bees.

I remember when my son was little, my husband’s Nani gifted me two bottles of honey with instructions to feed him some regularly. These bottles were from Nanaji’s reserves, and I learned that Nanaji was a beekeeper, and had hives of wild bees in his home. I discovered a few years ago that Uttarakhand has a long tradition of beekeeping using hollow wall hives built into the architecture of traditional rural homes.

Similar use of wall hives can be found across Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and other northern, mountainous states. Honey has obviously been intrinsic here, drizzled on foods of all kinds from bread, to porridges to dessert. However, actual recipes that use honey to cook with are few and far between!

What about other regions of the country, I wondered. I turned to my friend Ruchi Srivastava, food researcher and veritable encyclopedia on the food of Madhya Pradesh and surrounding regions, for insights. “Honey has always been treated very preciously in Central India.” She went on to elaborate that thanks to the thick forest cover in the central belt of Nagpur, Vidarbha, and Madhya Pradesh, honey was always plentiful here. However, it is not easily available in urban areas. “In fact, growing up in Bhopal, we couldn't get honey in the city markets as we do now. We got it at weekly rural mandis, where tribals would bring honey and wild fruit for trade”. In these regions, honey-gathering has been the livelihood of forest-dwelling tribes like the Gond and Baiga, who live within the Satpura jungles of MP even today.  

This intrinsic connection between tribal communities and honey is deeply embedded across most tribal belts of India.

Towards South India, the Kodava community of Coorg, who inhabit a forested region in the Western Ghats of Karnataka has always had honey as a staple in its diet. “There were originally no borders between farm and forest. We were people of the forest,” shares Anjali Ganapathy, a Kodava home chef I reached out to. “We wouldn’t ever buy honey. Even if it wasn’t forest honey, it would be from our backyard - most homes would have a hive in their garden, where coffee, pepper and other plants grew. My grandmother had a few bee boxes, too!” Even today honey continues to be a staple feature at the Kodava table. “We have honey at breakfast or as a post-meal sweetener drizzled over ottis, puttus, dosas and more!” But it is not really used as a cooking ingredient in recipes.

Guwahati-based home chef and expert on the cuisines of North East India, Kashmiri Nath concurred on this. “Today, there is a lot of honey farming in Arunachal and Assam – but traditionally with all the forest cover, there was only wild honey. Because of its scarcity, honey was expensive, and more commonly within the purview of the wealthy. But even then, it wasn’t a part of our everyday cooking.

In fact, it is from tribal communities that I managed to find a couple of real recipes connected to honey. Albeit very simple ones. One was Keera Pori, made by some honey harvesting tribes in Kerala. In this, dried Amaranth seeds are roasted on a hot earthen pan, over a wood fire till aromatic. After being cooled on a leaf, the seeds are mixed with honey till they form a slightly thick, sticky mixture. Keera Pori is eaten as a simple sweet treat.

Speaking of a similar millet and honey sweet, nutritionist and cookbook author Supriya Arun shared references to Tamizhar Unavu - a book written by Bhaktha Satsala Bharathi in which there is a special chapter on food in the Sangam age that chronicles the Kurunji people or mountain dwellers of the Chola dynasty. “They ate tubers, malai thaen (mountain honey) and malai nel (foxtail millet as it is called in the mountains” She goes on to share that the tribes of the hills of Tamil Nadu believe even today that lord Muruga married Valli - the daughter of the hill tribe chieftain - by garlanding her with Kurunji flowers. “And so, even today, thinaiyum thenum, or foxtail millet and honey ladoos are made and served as prasad to Lord Muruga on auspicious days like shashti in the Tamil months of thai and karthigai.” She concludes her email with a famous Tamil invocation to Lord Ganesha by the great Tamil poet, Avvaiyar. 

Even today honey is an important ingredient in Prasad bhog, or ceremonial offerings across the country. Panchamrut, a crucial element in many Hindu pujas is another example. “Honey is a key element in Panchamrut,” elaborates Anagha Shirvadkar, nutritionist and culinary chronicler. This mixture of five ingredients is typically used to bathe idols of gods and goddesses in pujas. “The liquid that collects at the idol’s feet then transforms to Tirthamrit and is distributed and consumed as prasad.”

“In many parts of the country, if a kheer or halwa is made for bhog, it must contain honey,” adds Ruchi Shrivastava. If one cannot afford it, and sugar or jaggery is substituted, they will still add at least one spoon of honey, for its ceremonial value.”

And yet for all its popularity, economic, ceremonial and traditional value, all my forays into online references, cookbooks and conversations have yielded very few actual recipes. Dr Mohsina Mukadam, the eminent Indian food historian, once told me that when we research food, we look for what is there, but we also track what is not there. So here are my conclusions at this point. 

I realised that the further the source of honey, the more valued honey was. And perhaps because it was so rare, one used it with utmost care and preservation. 

Ayurveda says honey should not be heated as it loses its medicinal properties.  Perhaps this is so strongly integrated that honey is rarely subjected to heat in Indian cuisine and mostly used as a topping or added to a dish and mixed in the rare recipes available. 

The Madhulaja I shared in my last post, having evolved from being sweetened with honey to liquid jaggery today suggests that with jaggery and later sugar becoming available as cheaper, more accessible options, honey was replaced by them in recipes that used it. 

In case you have any inputs dear reader, do please leave a comment. In the meanwhile here is a recipe for Gulgule with Honey glaze.

Honey Glazed Gulgule with Orange Cream

Serves: 6 Time: 30 mins

Ingredients

For the Glaze

• ¼ cup Water
• ½ cup Saffola Honey

For the Orange Cream

• 1 cup Cream
• 2 tbsp Orange Zest 

For the Gulgule

• 2 Bananas, mashed
• 1 cup Water, hot
• 1¼ Whole wheat flour
• ½ tbsp Fennel seeds
• ¼ tsp Baking powder
• Oil for frying

Method

1. To make the glaze, combine the water and honey in a bowl. And mix well and keep aside till required.
2. To make the orange cream, combine the cream and orange zest and leave to infuse. 
3. To make the gulgule, begin warming up the oil in a khdhai. 
4. Meanwhile, make the batter. Mash the banana with hot water. 
5. In another bowl, combine the whole wheat flour and baking powder into a large bowl and add the fennel seeds.
6. Add in the mashed banana mixture and mix well with fingers or a fork to beat in air. The batter should be thick and not runny but float when you drop a bit into cold water.  
7. When the oil is hot, using a spoon, drop small amounts of the batter into the oil to form bite-sized balls. Fry each batch for 5-7 minutes or until golden brown and cooked thoroughly. 
8. Remove with the help of a perforated spoon and place them on a plate/ tray lined with oil absorbent paper. 
9. When done add the warm gulgule straight into honey glaze and toss to coat well.
10. Place the gulgule in a platter and drizzle orange cream over. You can also add some fruit and mint leaves to garnish. Serve.
    
    

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This recipe using Honey is sponsored by Saffola Honey.  All the recent news about the adulteration of honey had me worried. Especially the part about added sugar as an adulterant. Post some research and talking to experts and otherwise, I finally zeroed in on Saffola Honey for daily use because it's tested using Indian Regulatory standards for honey as well as NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) test and has been proven to be free of any adulteration and specifically has no added sugar. Stay tuned as we explore the myriad ways in which honey is used in traditional beverages in the next post. This series of recipes with Honey is sponsored by Saffola Honey."

Acknowledgements:

This blogpost was written with insights from -

• Anagha Shivardikar, nutritionist and culinary chronicler of Maharashtrian cuisine
• Anjali Ganapathy, Kodava home chef and culinary chronicler
• Kashmiri Nath, home chef and North East Indian cuisine expert
• Ruchi Shrivastava, food researcher and food show producer
• Supriya Arun, nutritionist and cookbook author 

References:

Arawwawala, Menuka & Hewageegana, Sujatha. (2017). Health Benefits and Traditional Uses of Honey: A Review. Journal of Apitherapy. 2. 9. 10.5455/ja.20170208043727.

Agarwal, Tarunika J. 2014. “BEEKEEPING INDUSTRY IN INDIA: FUTURE POTENTIAL.” IMPACT: International Journal of Research in Applied, Natural and Social Sciences Vol. 2, no. Issue 7 (Jul): 133-140.

Swetha Dasaroju*, Krishna Mohan Gottumukkala (2014)

Current Trends in the Research of Emblica officinalis (Amla):  A Pharmacological Perspective. International Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences Review and Research 

“This Is How The Kadar Tribal Community In Tamil Nadu Extracts Wild Honey From Trees.” by Adivasi Lives Matter in Youth Ki Awaaz, Aug 12, 2020. 

Celebrating Indian Food Writing Through The Month!

In my career with food, I have first and foremost been a food writer. While I revel in the joys of other forms of chronicling, be it styling and photographing food or illustrating it through my Foodles, food writing will somehow always hold a special place. Food writing is such a wonderful medium of expression, and also, for me, of chronicling. Through it, I have been able to document, preserve, teach, transport, transform, lament, celebrate and so much more!

And it is not just in the doing that I find joy, but also in consuming food writing. The number of food books I own (a whole wall of them!) and the growing selection on my desk and nightstand at any given point will tell you that food books are my lifeline. I turn to them for most things – research, reference, recipes or just inspiration – in my work and outside of it. Over the years I've devoured more books, magazines, blogs, essays, articles and social media posts on food than anything else!

And each year, at this time, when we hit the six-month mark into the year, I find myself reflecting over all the wonderful food books that make it to the shelves. With monsoons hitting, it often becomes the perfect time to dive into food and cookbooks. With the lockdown, the food book scene globally has seen a lot, but in India particularly, food books seem to be coming into their own. So I thought I would make monsoons, July - August, the quarter to celebrate food books and the craft of food writing!

To grow as a writer, I believe one has to keep reading and learning,  So each week, in this time, look forward to a round-up of books on Indian cuisine and culture by Indian authors, what makes them special, why I recommend them, what I liked about them and why you might too! I’ll be focusing on Indian food history, community cookbooks, books on regional Indian food, Ingredient forward books and of course, new releases (for the years 2020-21). 

In my career as a food writer I have seen the space of food writing evolve year on year.  This pandemic has changed so much about how we live and work, especially for those in the business of food.

I am working on launching a full fledged Culinary Chronicling Course for select hand-picked candidates.

But food writing is a very vast genre of culinary chronicling. And one kind of food writing that is imperative to anyone in the food and content space right now, is food writing for social media. And so this July I am bringing back my Food Writing workshops in an online format. The first of these will be a workshop on Food Writing in the Age of Social Media.

On a global scale, food has come into the forefront across platforms from print to social media in the last two-odd years.  And in this era of social media everyone is talking about food across blogs, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn and Clubhouse! SO how do each of us, as individuals, small brands, food businesses, or content creators make an impact? 
Make no mistake, today it is no longer enough to write and sit back waiting to be read. You are a brand, you have to market yourself. And quite frankly, I believe that good story-telling and good writing that bring it together can make all the difference to your social media. It can make all the difference to brand “YOU.” 
That's where well-curated content can make all the difference. Whatever the platform, to grow on it one needs to approach it with some level of thought to written content. A little attention to detail, use of journalistic skills, some thought into the uniqueness of topics, inquiry and research, developing a voice for your brand and you can make all the difference to your channel content. 

Food Writing in the Age of Social Media

A workshop curated for food content creators, foodpreneurs, and small businesses. Designed to get you thinking about your story in the dynamic social media arena of today. And how you can create content with impact, engagement and returns in this new age of collaboration, co-working and a post-pandemic lifestyle. 

1) Defining YOUR story
2) Planning content strategy 
3) Writing content that resonates 
4) Defining themes and topics
5) Creating impactful food content 
6) Stirring yourself in - voice and personality

Date – Saturday, 24^th of July 2021
Time – 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm IST
Price – Rs. 700

To Register:

UPDATE- Registrations for this round are now closed. 

Step 1 - Please make the payment of Rs. 700 

Step 2 - Email a screenshot of the transition details to bookings@apbcookstudio.com along with the name of the participant so we can confirm your registration. Without this, we will not be able to add you to our list of participants.

Please note, we will send the meeting link for the workshop back to the same email ID you contact us from, so do keep an eye on it.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series, about my favourite books on Indian food history - coming soon! In the meanwhile, do tell me some of your favourite Indian food books in the comments.