Monsoon Diary Page 3
Good rasam is the vegetarian equivalent of chicken soup—a comfort food that perfumes the air and soothes the soul. To this day, everyone in my family measures their rasam against my grandmother’s and falls short.
RASAM
A heartwarming comfort food that South Indians eat with rice as a first or second course accompanied by vegetable curries, rasam is served in America as a starter soup on a winter night. I offer a diluted version as a hot drink with appetizers or fried papadam.
SERVES 6
1 cup toovar dal (red gram dal)
2 teaspoons olive or canola oil
4 plum tomatoes, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon asafetida
1 teaspoon rasam powder (available at Indian grocery stores)
1 teaspoon tamarind concentrate (available as Tamcon in Indian grocery stores)
1 teaspoon ghee
1/2 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
Chopped fresh cilantro
In a heavy 1-quart saucepan, cook the dal at a bare simmer in 3 cups of water until most of the water has evaporated and the dal has the consistency of a paste, 40 to 45 minutes, stirring frequently during last 15 minutes to prevent scorching. You can also cook the dal in a pressure cooker until it is soft, about 20 minutes.
Pour the oil into a 2-quart vessel, and heat over a medium flame. Add the chopped tomatoes, salt, turmeric, asafetida, and rasam powder, and sauté until the tomatoes are soft. Add 3 cups water and stir in the tamarind paste. Cover and bring to a boil. Simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes.
Add the dal paste and 2 cups water to the tomatoes, stirring to incorporate. Bring the rasam to a boil, stirring occasionally. The rasam should be the consistency of thin soup.
Heat the ghee in a small skillet, then add the mustard and cumin seeds. When the mustard seeds start sputtering, pour the oil mixture into the rasam.
Garnish with chopped cilantro sprigs.
THREE
Sun-Dried Vegetables on the Roof
ALTHOUGH MY GRANDPARENTS WERE devout Hindus, they strongly believed in a Catholic education minus its religious instruction. When I turned three, my grandparents enrolled me at a nearby preschool called Avila Convent. I went there for a couple of hours each day and spent the remainder of the time at home with my grandparents.
Sometimes I accompanied my grandfather to his clinic. He set me up behind a large wooden table and gave me his stethoscope, plastic droppers, and sample-sized medicine bottles to play with. The nurses indulged me by becoming patients and letting me poke and press their hands. I could hear Nalla-pa in the adjoining room, questioning patients and dispensing an array of colored tablets for various ailments. His ability to cure pains and illnesses seemed magical. All through my childhood, I believed that I was going to become a doctor and take over Nalla-pa’s clinic, until a high school biology class convinced me otherwise.
Most of the time, however, I stayed home with my grandmother. She taught me how to cut vegetables with a blunt knife, clean corners without skimping on disinfectant, and spice food with a liberal hand. “Use your fingers to add spices; only then will the food carry the scent of your hands,” she said. We talked a lot, or rather she talked and I listened. She would discuss the day’s problems, include me in her reveries, or make fun of the neighbors.
Nalla-ma delighted in performing hilarious imitations of her neighbors, most of whom she cordially disliked. She was sure that one of her neighbors was bribing the servants to extract household gossip; another was funneling away the city water that belonged to her. She had feuds with everyone in the neighborhood.
Once, she became suspicious that a neighbor was stealing coconuts from her trees and decided to set up a booby trap to catch him in his criminal act. That evening Nalla-ma and I went up to the roof to count the coconuts on the trees. I could barely count to ten, but that didn’t faze Nalla-ma. She gave me a bunch of stones and told me to place one stone down on the roof every time I counted ten coconuts. Although I didn’t realize it then, it was my first math lesson.
After several recounts, we agreed that there were sixty-six coconuts spread among six trees. Then Nalla-ma stirred up a black, tarlike concoction that she smeared on each of the coconuts with a broom tied to a long stick. It was made from a poison ivy–like plant, guaranteed to cause itching and rashes. “Let him try to steal my coconuts now,” she said darkly, even though no theft was ever discovered.
In all her interactions with me, my grandmother presented herself with ruthless honesty, almost in spite of herself. In this age of political correctness when most people are afraid to voice their opinions and are guarded even with family, Nalla-ma stood out as someone who revealed herself completely, warts and all. What greater gift could she have given to the all-absorbing mind of her first grandchild?
EVERY MORNING I woke up to the sound of my grandmother shouting at Maariamma, our maid. Maariamma was a widow of indeterminate age and erratic bladder control, with whom Nalla-ma had a testy love-hate relationship. In Hindu mythology Maariamma is a fierce, vindictive goddess, who inflicted smallpox and chickenpox on errant devotees and accepted blood offerings as sacrifice. Our own Maari, as we called her, was the complete opposite of the goddess for whom she was named. A dark, wrinkled woman with gray hair and no teeth, Maari accepted the abuse that Nalla-ma heaped on her with cheerful equanimity.
Nalla-ma viewed Maari with a combination of irritation and suspicion. It infuriated her that of all the maids in our neighborhood, old Maari was the only one she could get. She had tried employing younger, more efficient maids, but they always quit, sometimes after dramatic tirades and always in the middle of a job, because they couldn’t stand Nalla-ma’s harsh tongue and meager wages. “Just my luck to be stuck with a half-wit that nobody will employ,” Nalla-ma muttered. “And one that isn’t even a proper Hindu.”
Every now and then Maari appeared for work clad in a sparkling white cotton sari and a matching scarf around her hair. We knew that the sisters from Avila Convent had been at work again. Whenever a Catholic priest arrived from abroad, the sisters went into missionary overdrive, converting the neighborhood poor to Christianity with offers of clothes, food, books, and money. Our Maari was one of the many who lined up outside the church, tempted by the pristine white garments that the sisters handed out and the envelopes of cash that she needed so badly. But she always reverted back to Hinduism after a few days, preferring her dime-sized bindi and colorful saris to the Spartan clothes of newly converted Christians. Apparently, her Christianity commanded a higher price than the sisters could afford.
While even I—a four-year-old—could see that Maari had many shortcomings as a housekeeper, she had one redeeming quality: she was an expert at making vatrals and vadams, dried dehydrated vegetables such as okra, cluster beans, and eggplant that are pickled, sun-dried, and stored for the winter. In taste and texture, they are like chips.
To Nalla-ma’s chagrin, Maari was better at making vatrals than she was, for it required finesse and patience, both of which Nalla-ma had in short supply. So Nalla-ma ceded the role to Maari, whose main occupation in the summer months was to make and store large quantities of vatrals, which Nalla-ma then packed and sent to her sons, daughter, nieces, and nephews. When my parents came to visit, as they often did, they always returned with bags of vatrals and vadams.
COME JUNE, Nalla-ma, Maari, and I set off to the bazaar to buy large quantities of whatever vegetable was in season and therefore cheap. This wasn’t a simple exercise because Nalla-ma’s favorite shopkeeper, Raju, whom she bullied into giving her the best bargains, took flight the moment he saw her, for he knew her haggling ways. So we took a long, circuitous route to the market that deposited us behind Raju’s stall. Then we crept around and ambushed him.
“Ah, you have come,” Raju said resignedly when Nalla-ma sprang up before him like a genie. “My income today is going to
be cut in half.”
“What are you saying, Raju?” Nalla-ma chided. “I am your best customer. Who else will buy such large quantities of vegetables from you?”
“And who else will give those vegetables to you at such a low price?” Raju replied without missing a beat.
They went back and forth a bit before Nalla-ma demanded in a businesslike tone, “So, what is in season today? I need four kilos, so you better give me the best of what you have.”
“The okra and carrots are good,” Raju mumbled. “But leave some for my other customers.”
Raju was a thin, curly-haired man with a protruding jawbone and a permanent worried crease on his forehead. As Nalla-ma picked through his vegetables, she kept up a lighthearted banter while slipping a few extra carrots into her shopping bag. Cheating Raju out of vegetables gave her inordinate glee, because she was convinced he charged her extra. “He thinks that just because I am an old woman, I have no sense of how much things cost,” she muttered as she scooped up kilos of okra, green chiles, and bittergourd. We hauled the vegetables home in a smoke-belching, auto rickshaw that Nalla-ma hired for her market trips.
Back at home Nalla-ma and Maari went into overdrive. A chart hanging on the kitchen wall served as their manual. On it Nalla-ma made a list of vegetables with cryptic notations next to each. “Okra— first batch, inferior variety: Bought June 16. Soured June 18. Roofed June 20. Stored in light blue plastic container on June 24. Not yet moved to pantry.”
Making vatrals was a three-step process, and each step took time. The vegetables were washed, then sprinkled liberally with rock salt and placed in a covered vessel so that the salt would draw out the water. The next day the water was drained and the vegetables were soaked in sour yogurt, which is to vatrals what vinegar is to pickles—it gives the flavor. Once the vegetables had absorbed some of the sour yogurt flavor, which took another twenty-four hours, they were taken upstairs to our roof and spread out to dry in the sun for two days.
At the peak of the vatral season, Nalla-ma had several processes under way at the same time, which was why the chart was invaluable. Every inch of space in the kitchen was given up to vatrals. On the counter were several vessels of yogurt at various stages of fermentation. Each vessel had a color-coded paper label so that the yogurt could be monitored for peak sourness. If left too long, it would curdle and become rancid; if used too soon, the vegetables would not acquire the right sour taste and flavor.
After soaking the vegetables in sour yogurt, Maari and I put them in large, square pieces of muslin and carried them up to the roof to dry. Once the vegetables turned crumbly dry and brittle with not a drop of water in them, they were stored in tall, multicolored plastic bins. A few days into the vatral-making process, my grandfather protested that the whole house smelled of sour yogurt, an odor that wouldn’t dissipate till the fall.
IN JULY the wind changed. The days were still fiery, but the afternoon thunderstorms carried a whiff of the monsoon rains that would soon invade South India. The heat of the day combined with the afternoon showers made vegetables ripen quicker, sometimes skipping the tender interim stage that was so crucial for making vatrals. In the market Raju lamented over his hard vegetables and high prices. The pickings were slim, and by mid-July Nalla-ma and Maari deemed the vatral season over. It was time to clean up and finish operations before embarking on making vadams, waferlike rice-flour chips that didn’t need vegetables to provide their flavor.
Unlike the slow, deliberate, multistep process of making vatrals, vadam making was more spontaneous, like a brush stroke, and had to be done all at once. This speed suited Nalla-ma’s personality, and she took charge from poor Maari, who was reduced to being the sidekick and assembling the ingredients.
First Maari hand-pounded the rice in our ancient, heavy stone grinder. There were enough flour mills in town, but Nalla-ma insisted that hand-pounded rice flour gave the vadams a nice crunch, whereas milled flour was too fine and lacked texture. Maari insisted that Nalla-ma was making her hand-pound the rice not for its texture but to torture her. Wisely, she refrained from saying this in front of Nalla-ma.
Our grinding stone had been given to my grandmother by her parents as part of her dowry, and she bragged that the ancient granite had been quarried and seasoned up north, where the quality was better. The knobby black stone had a cylindrical hole in the center, into which Maari poured small quantities of raw white rice. In her hand was a long wooden pounding stick capped with a thick iron cylinder at its base. With the steady, graceful movements of a dancer, Maari lifted the stick high and dropped it down on the rice with a dull thud. I squatted on the floor and watched the rise and fall of the stick, hypnotized by its rhythm and fascinated by how easily Maari dropped the stick in the center of the hole right on top of the rice instead of hitting the sides. The earthy perfume of ground rice filled the air, lulling me into a contented somnolence. Every now and then Maari would pause and I would dip my ladle in to stir the rice around. After an hour of pounding, the rice took on a grainy yet soft texture that I haven’t been able to duplicate with any of the modern gadgets that litter my kitchen these days.
On vadam day Nalla-ma woke up at 4:00 A.M. Maari had been asked to sleep at our house the previous night, and we roused her from her slumber. Nalla-ma brewed a pot of hot, strong coffee. We trooped up to the roof carrying bins of rice flour, tapioca, spices, buckets of water, and two portable kerosene stoves.
While Maari cranked the temperamental stove to get it going, Nalla-ma mixed all the ingredients in an iron wok and rapidly folded in the oil until the mixture became a slick, gleaming dough that didn’t stick to the sides. When the dough reached a pasty consistency, Maari doused the stove with water and Nalla-ma removed the heavy wok to let it cool.
By then the sun was coming up. My grandfather and I were conscripted into action. We took spoonfuls of the white vadam paste and quickly spread it into a circle on the cloth. We had to work rapidly, since the paste would harden if we didn’t use it up right away. By seven o’clock we had taken all the paste and flattened it into vadams. They were thin and would dry quickly. By the end of the day, we could empty them into the bins to deep-fry later. These vadam fritters were the perfect accompaniment to a South Indian meal. To this day, when I bite into a crisp vadam or vatral, I think of my grandmother’s intent face and rapid calligraphic movements as she cajoled, rolled, and shaped a simple rice-flour mixture into a delicious treat.
Few women in South India make vatrals and vadams anymore, especially in the cities, where ready-made ones are available in packets. However, the practice persists in villages, where groups of women spend entire summers rolling out vatrals and vadams all day long, exchanging gossip, tidbits, and advice in between.
Vatrals and vadams served a more practical purpose as well. During the winter months, when vegetables are scarce and prices high, Indian women substitute vatrals in lieu of vegetables in their kuzhambus (gravies). Vatral kuzhambu is a tasty, hardy dish that will keep for days without refrigeration, since it doesn’t contain any ingredient that might spoil. A thick tamarind broth provides the base into which fried vatrals and spices are mixed and boiled.
Tamarind is a delicacy in South India, used to flavor every liquid dish ranging from watery rasams to thick kuzhambus. The tamarind tree is an evergreen with feathery leaves and yellow flowers. Its plump pods yield the soft brownish edible pulp so prized in cooking. Vatral kuzhambu gains its taste from liberal use of the tamarind pulp and dried vatrals. A spoonful mixed with rice and ghee is a favorite dish in my husband’s family.
VATRAL KUZHAMBU
There is a story of a newlywed village woman who seduced her husband with vatral kuzhambu. The man, shy and awkward, had made no moves on his wife after their wedding. A month later the woman decided to take matters into her own hands. After sending her husband to the river for his bath, she resolved to concoct an aphrodisiac based on an ancient recipe with ingredients like yakshi madhu (angels’ honey), saffron, cream of coco
nut, drumsticks (murunga fruit), and lotus hearts. The only problem was that there was nothing in the house save a few sun-dried vatrals. The woman panicked. She scrounged around for a ball of tamarind pulp, fried the vatrals with some spices and oil, and made vatral kuzhambu. The husband returned from the river, ravenously hungry. The woman mashed the rice with vatral kuzhambu and ghee and offered it to her mate. “Feed me,” he said. With the first bite, he licked her finger; with the second, he took her hand. With the third, he lifted her onto his lap. The rest, as they say, is best left to the imagination.
South Indians are suckers for a good vatral kuzhambu. Kuzhambu means spicy gravy, and it can be made with any vegetable. Nonvegetarians, as they are called in India, make it with chicken, fish, or lamb as well. Vatral kuzhambu is usually made in the winter months when vegetables are scarce and therefore expensive. This version is fairly spicy and is best eaten with rice and ghee.
SERVES 4
1 lemon-sized tamarind ball or 1 teaspoon Tamcon (both available in Indian grocery stores); see Note
2 tablespoons clear sesame oil (available in Asian markets or Indian stores)
1/2 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1/2 teaspoon channa dal
1 to 2 red chiles
1 cup of any type of vatral: sun-dried lotus root, okra, and orange peel (available in Indian grocery stores)
2 teaspoons sambar powder (available in Indian grocery stores)