Summers of Sour and Heeng Ka Achar....

 

I have moved to the North until May to work on my second book on Uttaranchali cuisine. It was beautifully pleasant when I first got here but it’s getting hotter by the day. Afternoons are hottest, oppressive almost and often when the rest of the house is taking its afternoon siesta, I will be driven to the kitchen in search of something sour and spicy to eat. Sourness is cooling in hot weather perhaps because sweetness can be cloying and sleep inducing but an acid taste accentuated with some chilli and salt can invigorate you!

In Mumbai in the summer on these sort of days we would make our way to the corner kairiwalla.  Their species is dwindling but you will still find them wherever girls and women congregate. And with two schools and two ladies hostels in the lane parallel to the one in which my mother’s house is situated, there is still one guy that makes his way slowly around the area, daily. His pushcart loaded with piles of sour temptations to make your mouth water; fruit and dried fruit you would never find in the supermarket or even all together in your local market – plump oval purple jamun or tiny purple phalsa, small green avla (starberries, also known as Otaheite gooseberry), large yellow-green amla (Indian gooseberries), the attractively shaped carambola (starfruit) and/or its close cousin the bilimbi, tamarind both plain and in sticky red syrup, bel (woodapple) and so much more. And green mango, which based on your choice could be green and super sour or just beginning to ripen, its flesh tinged with gold, and sweetness just beginning to bleed into its sourness, curiously, accentuating the sourness! He would slice it up into a paper cone, add a sprinkle of masalla and wrap it up for a drooling gaggle of girls. (Unfortunately I do not have a picture of the kairiwalla, I have been meaning to get one but not gotten down to going and clicking one just yet. But you can get a look see here http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4037/4390862891_97984f4b44.jpg)

Then one day I discovered the flavour of the Kairi wallas Kairi’s distilled into a bottle. In the form of my future Mother in Law’s Heeng ka Achar. (How portentous that was is a thought I often have!) It was the first thing made by her hand I ever tasted, and to date it remains my favourite of the huge repertoire of achaars she makes. The mangoes on our tree are just about ready to be made into Heeng Ka achaar and I am going to be making this years batch with my ma-in-law this week. Here are pictures from last year’s pickle making session. My Ma in law loves to do this pickle when I am in Dehra Dun because I am one of those cooks who can happily lose herself in hours of repetitive cutting that things like this pickle require. (Which is why chopping vegetables is often left to me at other times as well.)

Even now, when we are grown and married and my sister, Neha who shares my weakness for these goodies, and I are susceptible to the charms of the kairiwalla’s wares. On the rare occasions we are together at mom’s home, she will go and buy us an assortment of things, badgering the kairiwalla to give her an extra large helping of the spicy salt that comes with them and we will congregate over the scattering of newspaper bundles, feasting on the sourness of summer, zingy with salt and chilli!! Thinking of my siblings today and Summers of sour!

Heeng ka achar

Although it is called Heeng ka achaar, this is a green mango pickle made with green mangoes that are picked before their stones harden. That is not to belittle the role of Heeng in this pickle, for the magical quality it gets would be impossible without it. Its a simple pickle to make, but one of those marriages made in heaven. There are no substitutes for the Mango and the Heeng. No other sour fruit or vegetable would do. And without Heeng it would be a shadow of itself. And the quality of the heeng is really important. Heeng or asafoetida is a hard resinous gum, grayish-white when fresh, darkening with age to yellow, red and eventually brown. It is sold commonly as a fine yellow powder, sometimes crystalline or granulated but we use a solid form that is like lumps and far stronger than the commercial powder. It is also more expensive but so good that a little goes a phenomenally long way. It lasts more than a year, getting progressively better with age and goes with just about anything from khichdi and daal rice to mathri and parathas. And if you are feeling queasy, just nibble on a bit of this pickle and you will be ok!

Ingredients

2 kg raw mangoes-peeled and chopped

200-300g salt

1/2 c/ 75g chilli powder or to taste (mom uses a 1:1 mix of kashmiri chillis and spicy chillies from her garden.

A 5g lump of Asafoetida

Method

Cut your Mango into bitesized free form chunks. (You can reserve immature chunks to add to dals for delicious sourness.) Grind Heeng with salt and chilli powder. Place mango in a large steel bowl and add the spice mix a little at a time. You might not end up using it all. Aim to achieve a bright orangey red. And when you have this, taste the pickle, if it tastes right, stop mixing in spice mix. If not, add some more until you are happy with it. The great thing about this pickle is it tastes almost like it will on maturing at the mixing stage, the flavours only mellow with a little as the mangoes give forth their juices . When you are happy with your pickle transfer to a large glass jar and place in the sun for a few days, or just mature for a few days. I usually pick up the last bit in the bowl with the melting spice mix and settle down to savour it right away as my Ma in law cringes watching me (she can’t handle sour flavours)

Mad about Meat

Dear Rushina,

When I first moved to Mumbai, my cousins took me to Leopold café. As I relished their beef mushroom soup and beef chilly, I remember thinking Mumbai would be full of great non-vegetarian places. Imagine my utter shock when I moved to Chembur and only found vegetarian places. To be fair, I later discovered that Chembur can boast of a considerable number of great non-vegetarian places. However, in the beginning, all I saw were vegetarian restaurants. It was a dark and gloomy time for me complete with the raging monsoon rains to bear witness. Not accustomed to how big and busy the city was, my timid attempts to venture out were largely unsuccessful. And the meat lover in me grew more ravenous and rabid, leading me to throw caution to the wind. I began frequenting very shady ‘bar restaurants’ in Chembur camp on my own to devour plate upon plate of chicken and mutton!
These were desperate times and even as I succumbed to the measures they called for, I knew I was living dangerously. This had to stop soon. I needed to get my fix with less risk involved. As if the universe feared for me, serendipity intervened and one afternoon, when the rains had paused for a rest, my friends invited me for lunch at Sunny’s. Now the thing about Sunny’s, like most other great restaurants is that, it is located in the most obscure corner of Chembur. If someone doesn’t take you there, you’ll never find it. Past Chembur station, under the bridge, under another, in the midst of furniture shops, a bakery and a booze joint, a sign with Sunny’s (the logo , no prize for guesses, is a sun with rays) diffidently lets you know you’ve arrived.
My ever grateful memory must narrate my entry into this now hallowed space in slow motion. Filled with men, women, children eating all sorts of wonderful exotic looking fare, I felt at home at once as we walked past them to the ac section. It was there, that my friends introduced me to south Indian (specifically Kerela) non-vegetarian food. Until then, I always thought all south Indian was vegetarian and basically masala dosas at that. Thanks to my outraged friends from different parts of ‘south’ India, I am now aware that this is perhaps the gravest misconception I am guilty of to date, and I have gladly committed the rest of my life to atone for it.
I had my first taste of Chicken Chettinad and marvelled at the complex medley of spices that flavoured the meat. Their mutton sukkha was unlike anything I’d tasted. Thanks to Sunny’s, I left my perilous practice of eating at ‘bar restaurants’. I had somewhere safe to go every time I craved meat. Now content, I calmed down enough to explore Chembur more leisurely and found many other fabulous non-vegetarian restaurants such as Oceanic, Le Café, the restaurants around diamond garden. My newest discovery is the café at Oro spa which serves great salads.
As far as meat is concerened, I am far from sober. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. But thanks to Sunny’s, I’ve learnt to indulge in my addiction in as safe a manner as possible.