O ne of my earliest memories as a child is of receiving 10 paise every morning as pocket money from my parents. Even in the 1960s, while it was far from being a king’s ransom, it was quite adequate. It got me my favourite zeera golis, among other things. I can’t remember how much they cost, but it was obviously less than 10 paise. They came in a cardboard box, half the size of a matchbox, with a red print on it. I used to suck at the churan-like sweet-sour-salty coating and savour the zeera that, even at the age of nine, struck me as sharp and astringent.
Sharp and astringent it is, and also peppery, with citrus overtones according to people who use this spice. And there are many users. Zeera is used not only in virtually every corner of India, but in wide swathes all over Asia, Mexico and North Africa. Lebanese shish taouk, Thai green curry, Indonesian and Malaysian rendang all use this humble spice, which is native to the Mediterranean basin. And it has been around for centuries: In fact, there is evidence that cumin was in use in parts of the world over 5,000 years ago. Cumin seeds excavated at a site in Syria have been dated to 2000 BCE. Evidence of the use of cumin, found in the New Kingdom of Egypt, dates back to the period between the 16th–11th century BCE. Even the Bible mentions cumin, as well as mustard seeds and coriander. The book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, chapter 28, verse 27 imparts the information that ‘Certainly caraway seed is not threshed with a sledge, nor is the wheel of a cart rolled over cumin seed. Certainly caraway seed is beaten with a stick, and cumin seed with a flail.’
From Egypt, where cumin is believed to have originated, it spread to other parts of the Middle East, where it is prevalent to this day, being served in its powdered form as seasoning next to salt at every dining table. It is believed that cumin first spread to Iran and from there to India and the Far East in one direction, while the Spanish took it with them to the Americas, having been converted themselves to its cause by the Moors. Yet, there’s no denying that India is the largest, most significant producer and exporter of this most elemental of spices. The lion’s share of cumin comes from Rajasthan and Gujarat, and though some other states produce it too, the quantities are too insignificant to contribute to national figures.
There’s a fair amount of confusion in the etymology of the various kinds of cumin. All European languages refer to it using the root word cumin, for example, cominho in Portuguese, komino in Basque, kimino in Greek and so on. However, all the Asian and Central-Asian languages – Georgian, Hindi, Thai, Uighur – use variations on the root word zeera . The only exception is the Arabic word kamoun, that has more in common with Europe.
Due to translation errors, it is often interpreted as aniseed, fennel (saunf), caraway or even nigella seeds (kalonji). That’s because kalonji, the teardrop-shaped black spice that is sprinkled over naans in restaurants, is called kalo jeere in Bengali while Germans call cumin kreuzkümmel, kümmel being the name for caraway, another quite different, spice. Even the Chinese call cumin ‘little fennel’, leading to confusion all around!
In the course of my research for this book, I bought cumin from wherever in the world I happened to be. Hapless friends were bribed and blackmailed to procure a tablespoon of cumin from friends/relatives/buyers/customers/suppliers who happened to be visiting Delhi from anywhere between Mexico to China. In a few months, ingenuity and luck had increased my stash to a sizeable amount. They all seemed different, yet had one common characteristic when I looked at them under a magnifying glass: black ridges running down their length. When I counted them, each cumin seed had exactly nine ridges, no matter where in the world they originated from. There were no other commonalities. The sample from Uzbekistan was tiny and fat, almost like carom (ajwain), except that it had the flavour of cumin and had the characteristic ridges. The Moroccan sample was faintly curved and far darker than almost any other sample I had, except for the Iranian variety which was the darkest, most shapely and fragrant. The Indian sample was the strongest in flavour and the Chinese sample had the lightest colour.
When I looked at a single cumin seed under a microscope, I could make out tiny bristles. These are what differentiate cumin from other, similar spices like fennel and caraway. There are a lot of differences between the wild caraway that grows in Ladakh and the Gujarati/Rajasthani cumin. Ladakhi caraway is rounder and much darker in colour, because it is a completely different spice, albeit one that has been historically confused with cumin, both in Northern Europe and in India.
I looked for a laboratory that could analyze the composition of each sample and tell me about it. A couple of samples looked like black cumin. Was that really what they were? Or were they simply a mutation from regular cumin? Why was one sample fragrant and another intense? Why was one mild and another strong? But, unfortunately, no laboratory that I contacted had the equipment to carry out such a study. ‘Give us the samples,’ they all entreated, ‘and we’ll tell you what adulterations and pesticides have been used.’ There was no point in telling them that I simply was not interested in adulterations. I imagine that this stems from the fact that in our country, adulterants occupy our mind space more than pure knowledge for its own sake. When I mentioned this to Delhi-based food technologist Iram Rao, she was not surprised in the least. In the absence of government rulings, there is no standard curve for components.
Frankly, I was shocked. Traders buy spices in great volumes from other countries, keeping a close watch on international cumin prices, which rise to a crescendo near the time of harvest. Websites give information on weather conditions in and around the fields of other cumin-producing countries. However, soil and climatic conditions impact the flavour profile of spices a great deal, as indeed, they do all agricultural products. So if one is importing a substantial quantity, the least an importer can do is to match flavour profiles as accurately as possible, and the only way of doing that is to test for components and their percentages. The owner of G Waterfront, an upmarket Indian restaurant in Shanghai, told me that he imports cumin from India rather than use the far more economical Chinese cumin. The reason being that the latter is not only much lighter than its Indian counterpart, it has a pronounced lemony note and lacks the earthy pungence of Indian cumin.
Speaking of components, all spices contain volatile oils. Roasting or sautéing serves the purpose of bringing these to the surface. While most spices benefit from being roasted (turmeric doesn’t), cumin is absolutely transformed when roasted. I’ve always felt that the half hour or so a week that I spend roasting my cumin and coriander seeds is well worth the trouble. This is one chore I am happy to do myself. I add one drop of ghee to the cumin and roast it gently. After it changes colour and releases a glorious fragrance, I grind it in the food processor. It makes a huge difference to any dish. When I have the time, I even pound whole cumin seeds in my limestone mortar and pestle, and then add them to whatever I’m cooking. Even on days when I hardly have more than a minute to do this job, the coarsely ground cumin releases so much flavour that it makes the whole exercise worthwhile.
Black cumin is the default variety that grows all over the Kashmir valley, though the higher the altitude, the better, and more fragrant the spice. It even grows in rather unexpected places, for example, along the runway at Srinagar airport. It is tended to assiduously by the maintenance men of the Airport Authority of India, who then sell it at the downtown market on their day off. Once I got to know about this, every time I was on a flight from Srinagar to Delhi, I’d keep my eyes peeled on the strips of wild grass that grow on either side of the runway!
Kala zeera, or black cumin, is also called shah zeera. But Gernot Katzer, the author of the definitive spice pages on the internet, suggests that ‘shah’ may be a mispronunciation of ‘siyah’, the word for black in Persian. With a far more flowery flavour, as compared to the stronger, more robust but less refined product that we all use in our kitchens, black cumin grows wild in Himachal Pradesh and in Kashmir. Within Kashmir, there is a huge difference between the cultivated product of say HMT (around the now extinct watch factory), on the outskirts of Srinagar, and the wild product of the Gurez valley. The former is fairly fragrant. But put it next to what suppliers bring to Srinagar from Gurez, and it suddenly seems a rather sorry specimen. When professional cooks, or wazas, make lists of things for their customers to buy, they invariably specify that they want shah zeera from Gurez. And because wazas are notorious for wanting only the best (and, in the process, wringing their customers’ pockets dry), one can presume that Gurezi cumin is indeed the finest. By comparison, what grows in HMT sells for one-sixth of the price.
Does black cumin make the journey to the plains well? Well, yes and no. I buy a couple of month’s supply at a time either during my visits to Kashmir or ask for it when family comes visiting from Kashmir. As this happens to be a continuous process through the year, I have never had to stock more than 100 grams of it at a time. It survives well in a tiny, air-tight steel jar which I keep especially for black cumin. On the other hand, every time I have had occasion to ask for it in a grocery store in Agra or Delhi, I have been handed some musty-smelling substance – that I would not otherwise touch with a bargepole – usually from the back of a store where no more than a few hundred grams of it are lying in a giant grubby plastic jar that would comfortably fit over two kilograms of the spice.
So is it poor planning on the part of shopkeepers or the too-short shelf-life of the spice? I haven’t quite figured out that one myself. However, what I do know is that when I first visited Srinagar as a newly-wed in the early 1990s, you couldn’t find regular cumin in the valley at all, only black cumin. Because regular cumin is hardly used in Kashmiri cuisine, nobody ever needed it. Now, with several thousand people from the plains living in the valley, you can find lads selling piles of common Indian spices in each of the main markets: Lal Chowk, Maisuma, Kokur Bazar and Maharaj Bazar – areas in the centre of the new part of town. In the heart of the old city, however, you still won’t find any other type of cumin except the fragrant variety that grows in the valley.
Slowly and inexorably, however, things are beginning to change. Even in the old city, families now use spice mixes like Bawa Masala Company’s (BMC) meat masala and garam masala. A few years ago, BMC would not have been sold in Srinagar at all – so minuscule would have been the demand. Kashmiri families are still traditionalists who believe that their way is the best, particularly in the most vital matter of food. Garam masala, containing as it does a plethora of aromatic spices, is never used in its ground form in Kashmir; instead, what goes into a dish a second after it is taken off the fire is the fragrant Kashmiri zeera. Crushed between finger and thumb, it releases its full aroma, whereupon it is sprinkled – uncooked and unbroiled – over any finished dish that contains lamb, which is to say, virtually every preparation in the valley, at least in Muslim families.
I have heard praises being sung of green split moong dal with a tempering of kala zeera sizzled in ghee. If it is true, it is certainly a novel use for shah zeera, quite different from anything that Kashmiris do with it. However, in Himachal Pradesh, kala zeera is used quite widely, a corollary of it being grown there. Housewife Rashmi Sood from Kangra sautés and uses it in those dishes that contain curd. For everything else, she sticks to regular, or safed, zeera. The only exception is kadhi. Though its base is curd, she uses regular cumin.
My friends, Yatish and Minu Sud of Shimla, show me the stash of Kinnauri cumin they have. Used only by the pinch, it goes into any dish where it does not have to be cooked. They claim that the higher the altitude, the better the quality of cumin: exactly like in Kashmir.
Away from the rolling mountains of Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, in the arid plains of Rajasthan, I met Major Umaid Singh Rathore, who looks nothing like what one would imagine a cumin farmer to look like when he wears his army uniform, but is exactly that. With a full-time job that frequently takes him away from the Jodhpur region, where his ancestral fields are, Rathore has no option but to give his 25-acre plot out on a yearly contract. The only problem is that cumin, being the delicate crop that it is, cannot be the only thing cultivated; there have to be others as well. This is because while the spice is maturing, any rain or even cloudiness will turn the crop dark. And consequently, it will fetch a significantly reduced price. That is why farmers around Jodhpur hedge their bets by growing four different crops together, so as not to lose out if February and March are cloudy or rainy.
The same concern is echoed by Jyoti Jasol, who comes from the village of Jasol in Rajasthan’s Barmer district. Though she now lives in the lush green oasis that is Udaipur, Jyoti’s parents cultivate cumin in the homestead. It’s not an easy crop to grow, they grumble. First of all, around Diwali, the price of the spice shoots up because of the demand-supply equation. It’s the time of the year when agriculturists sow cumin and a quintal is required for every hectare. It is only a couple of months later that the seed forms in the diminutive fruit of this plant. Once this happens, the farmer’s real headache starts. Jyoti explains that this is the time when watering has to be really careful and controlled, if at all. Watering leads to the seeds becoming heavy. Once the cumin plant becomes top-heavy, there is danger that it will bend to the ground. If that happens, it spells bad news, because the seed turns blackish and is nearly worthless on the market. The stalks containing the seeds don’t even have to topple to the ground – rainfall at this crucial juncture will also blacken the seeds.
Curiously enough, cumin, like many other seed spices, grows best in soil that is not very rich. The poorer the nutrients in the soil, the richer the flavour of the spice. Once it is sown, it requires minimal watering. In fact, because it grows best on sandy soil, any amount of watering will do: The roots capture as much moisture as the plant needs; the rest filters quickly through the sub-soil. So it is no surprise that western Rajasthan, which is largely a desert, is where the most intensely flavoured cumin grows. This part of Rajasthan also produces the largest size of cumin and because size really does matter – in so far as this particular spice is concerned anyway – it is the Rajasthani cumin that is exported to western Europe where premium quality is always sought.
Obviously, Jyoti Jasol has never bought a single packet of cumin in her entire life: Her mother comes to visit her in Udaipur with several kilos of the spice that last Jyoti a full year. It is the same with any member of the Rajput community: when they visit relatives, they gift them with, not apparel or handicrafts, but with the produce of their thikana or fiefdom. To Jyoti, it is not merely an organic spice (her family uses no chemical fertilizer), but a slice of a lifestyle, where women from the village of Jasol gather to thresh and sift the cumin, singing ballads all the while.
Threshing by hand is not an option in neighbouring Gujarat – the state that grows the lion’s share of India’s cumin – because the volume is far too large. Take for instance, Unjha, a crummy little town near bustling Mehsana, a two-hour drive from Ahmedabad on roads that would do any European country proud. Unlike towns like Jasol in Rajasthan, Unjha is not quaint and village-like. Instead, all you see are godowns, factories and the market yard. But the most characteristic feature of Unjha is, of course, the smell: The fragrance of cumin permeates the air. People who drive on the highway from Ahmedabad automatically know when they reach Unjha because of this fabulous fragrance. But don’t sniff the contents of the jar of zeera in your kitchen to imagine the smell in Unjha: It’s milder, well-rounded and sweet, rather than the sharp and astringent smell we’ve come to associate with zeera.
Hetal Dave, the managing director of Rasa Foods and Spices, allowed me to accompany him on a business trip to this town which is at the centre of the cumin universe. After five minutes in his supplier’s factory, I began to feel mildly euphoric with the fragrance. It was certainly better than any essential oil I have ever encountered in a spa. The factory itself was a cavernous hangar-like building, one of several rows of similar buildings in that part of town. Several hundred bags of cumin, in various stages of processing stood in rows, and in one corner were the rather rudimentary machines.
When cumin is brought by the farmer to a factory, it doesn’t resemble a spice as much as dried grasses and herbs. So many inch-long dried sticks and hay get packed into sacks along with the spice itself, that it becomes simply unrecognizable. I scooped up a tablespoon of the hay and sticks, popped them into a plastic pouch to examine at leisure and then promptly forgot all about them. Less than a month later, as I was leaving the Srinagar airport, with several spice samples, including the unprocessed cumin, in my handbag, an unsmiling female police officer demanded that I empty out my bag and show her the contents. She tried to prise away a free sample of body lotion that I’d been given at a shopping mall a while back, stared at my lucky rock crystal but positively hit the roof when she saw my precious unprocessed cumin. She demanded to know what it was, and when I told her, she laughed with a rather nasty twist to her mouth. She stomped off to her superiors and jeered, with a look in my direction, ‘She’s trying to tell us this is zeera!’ It took a little white but eventually the whole thing was sorted out, somewhat amicably.
Coming back to the unprocessed zeera at Unjha, four processess turn it to the zeera we are familiar with. The first process sieves the sand and dust away; the second process takes away the loose sticks; the third separates the seeds by size and the fourth removes what is picturesquely called the moocha – the tiny whisker-like silken stalk on one side of the seed.
Hetal Dave’s supplier is a processor, broker, godown owner, exporter and trader all rolled into one – not a very common combination in Unjha. Most people in the cumin trade fall into one category or the other. Minesh bhai is one of 1,500 traders in Unjha, one of 500 brokers and one of 15 exporters.
He explained to me that by the time a branded packet of cumin reaches our kitchen, it has already travelled a good deal. From the farmer, it comes to a factory to be processed. Since not all factories are run by brokers, it then travels to a broker who sells it in multiples of 12.5 metric tons, which is the bulk necessary to load a 20-foot container. A distributor then buys from a broker and supplies to cities and towns. Local suppliers, small-time brands, hotels and caterers, in all likelihood, purchase from a distributor while large brands like Ramdev in the west and MDH in the north buy directly from brokers like Minesh bhai.
So, what about contract farming? It is a concept that has gained currency in recent years, where a large buyer deals directly with the farmer and buys all of the farmer’s produce. On the plus side, the farmer does not have to go looking for a buyer. On the other hand, the fixed rate usually favours the buyer, not the farmer. But Minesh bhai tells us that cumin farmers around Unjha are much better educated than the national average and are extremely aware of market conditions. They are unlikely to commit themselves to a non-competitive situation. A few farmers around Unjha drive their own cars, a dramatic departure of our city-bred image of an emaciated villager dressed in tattered dhoti-kurta!
Unjha has metamorphosed into the market yard for several other seed spices like fennel, sesame and fenugreek, notwithstanding the fact that farmers have to travel relatively far to reach it. The vast expanse of the market yard at Unjha spells prosperity, in a manner that beats the chilli market yard at Guntur in Andhra Pradesh and the turmeric one in Erode. Is it because zeera commands a higher price than these other spices? It is certainly the reason why farmers in Gujarat like to cultivate the spice more than the other spices that grow in the region like fennel and fenugreek.
As in the case of other spices, when farmers do not get the price they are hanging out for, they store their crop in godowns, for which they are charged a fee by the godown owner. Minesh bhai is a godown owner as well and has 5000 bags of cumin in his godowns, being held in reserve for a multitude of farmers, all of whom are waiting for the optimal time to sell.
Minesh bhai also tells me that McCormick’s agent visits Unjha periodically. McCormick is a bona fide American brand that buys its spices from all over the world. Also, there are several other brands who are registered in western countries and sell there, but have tie-ups with companies in Gujarat. Thus, XXX Spices that sells in western Europe has cumin packaged in Ahmedabad, sometimes by YYY Spices. YYY Spices doesn’t, however, suffer from an identity crisis – it undertakes the deal as a purely commercial one. Frequent as this sort of thing is, it is never spoken about publicly – perhaps because the relationship between buyer and seller in this tightly controlled world is usually considered as inviolate as the bond between a married couple and secrets are just as closely guarded as in a marriage.
India’s love affair with cumin is well evidenced throughout the country, in well-nigh every dish from chaat to curries. Go to your neighbour’s place for a hearty breakfast of potato curry with puri and the woody note in the curry will be a gift of zeera. Go out for a plate of chaat in the afternoon and among the medley of flavours, textures and spices, you’ll catch a hint of cumin. You go shopping in the evening and stop at a street corner kebab stall and, lo and behold, there is a trace of cumin in that too. If you go to a more upmarket restaurant for kebabs, the regular cumin would probably be replaced by black zeera or shah zeera in the marinade. For dinner, because you don’t fancy anything elaborate or heavy, you decide on a simple mixed vegetable pulao with a raita: impossible, once again, without cumin. As you turn in for the night, about the last thing on your mind is the relentless way that cumin has followed you around, yet, there has not been a single item on the day’s menu that has not had cumin in it.
Travel to South-East Asia and it is the same story. Whether it is Penang curry in Thailand, ayam rendang in Malaysia, Vietnamese chicken curry or Indonesian beef curry, they will all have cumin. However, because the spice is never roasted there as it is in India, and because it is combined with shallots, candlenuts, coconut milk and lemongrass, the cumin tends to be a base note rather than the star of the show, as it tends to be in Indian cuisine.
It is the same in the Middle East and Mexico. Both cuisines use cumin, but the accent is elsewhere. The only exception I can think of is the Middle-Eastern breakfast dish of ful – a hearty dish of stewed beans where you pick out your own accompaniments, all set out in little bowls. You can choose chopped cilantro, powdered roasted cumin, olive oil, chopped onions, chopped tomatoes, tahini and lemon juice. Put it down to prejudice, but for me, olive oil and cumin with ful is a marriage made in heaven.
In Mexico, where cumin grows, you will find it in the unlikeliest of preparations: from tortilla soup, mole sauce to chili. It may be halfway across the world, but the same operative is at work. If you think of mole as a curry with a mélange of various spices and herbs, it is not surprising that cumin is one of them. And chili, made with kidney beans – with or without the addition of beef – has to have the digestive action of cumin.
Back in India, there is no doubt that cumin is more prevalent in some parts of the country than others. Not only do members of the Vaish, Bania and Marwari communities in UP and Delhi use cumin in most of their cooking, they also take great pains to roast four days’ supply and store it in an air-tight container on their kitchen shelf. (Roasting more than that would be counter-productive, because the essential oils of roasted cumin tend to evaporate after four days.) There is scarcely an item of food within the Vaish community, whether it is chaat, jal jeera or potato curry, that does not have cumin in it. But then, they do not use onions or garlic in cooking, so spices are all that can be used to add a robust dimension to the food. In combination with asafoetida (hing), cumin also helps to digest lentils, especially whole lentils with the skin on, and lentil dumplings like moong dal mangochis. There are, however, some rules for using cumin in this community. No dish that uses gram flour has cumin in it, with the result that kadhi made in a Vaish household will not be tempered with cumin, but with fenugreek and asafoetida instead. In addition, some vegetables: Spinach, kachalu, pumpkin and yam are not cooked with cumin. And milk-based gravy dishes like matar, makhana, khoya do not make use of cumin. Similarly, there are a few dishes in Punjabi cuisine in which cumin is not put: Fish, yam, mustard greens (sarson ka saag) and pumpkin are a few examples.
The signature pandhi curry, or pork curry of the Kodava cuisine of Coorg, is made by broiling a few tablespoons of cumin till it is almost black, and then combining it with black pepper and kachimpuli, the viscose souring agent of Coorg cuisine. It is then added to slow-cooked pork that has lost most of its moisture. Undoubtedly, the character of the dish comes from the cumin.
The only exception to this general fondness for the ubiquitous zeera is perhaps the Muslim community of UP where it makes its appearance in one or two dishes, if at all. I was rather taken aback when, on a visit to Varanasi, I asked a housewife how much cumin she used and she had to think and think. Finally, she came up with the answer, ‘My mother sends me garam masala that she prepares herself. That has cumin in it.’ The Lucknowi signature bandh gosht is made with cumin, but that is the only exception. For everything else, a mélange of aromatic spices and coriander powder are used.
Speaking of coriander, almost every cook in the country uses cumin and coriander together, so much so that the names of these two spices are often said in the same breath. Ask any Indian cook a recipe and they’ll most likely start by saying, ‘Sauté an onion, then throw in the zeera-dhania and then add the vegetables.’ In Gujarat, all brands of spice that are sold in the state have a product called ‘dhano-jeera’. In deference to the Gujarati population of London, spices stores like Dadoo’s in Tooting and Patak’s in Euston also sell dhano-jeera. Made up of 70 per cent dhania and 30 per cent zeera, it is also bought whole, in bulk, and ground by housewives in Gujarat when they purchase spices and ingredients together for the entire year.
It is slightly different down south. In Tamil Nadu, for any dish that uses coconut, cumin, whole black pepper and green chillies are used for sautéing. Coriander is used for an entirely separate set of dishes. In Goa, there’s no talk of cumin and coriander in a single breath; instead, when you use cumin, chances are that you are also using whole black pepper in the same dish, so you’d speak of jirem-mirem in Konkani. Housewives who dish out whole spices to their maid to be ground on a stone speak of jirem-mirem with the same cadence their compatriots in the North use for zeera-dhania.
Cumin’s fabled digestive properties also make it a part of an altogether different industry. Visit Manek Chowk in the old city of Ahmedabad, and through all the clamour of shining aluminium vessels on sale and piled in heaps right in the middle of the road, you’ll see half a dozen carts. The carts belong to the purveyors of a uniquely Gujarati favourite collectively called mukhwas. Digestive pills (churans), candied betel nut (supari), spice seeds, processed dates – mukhwas is a treasure trove for the gastronome on a budget, because it includes fragrant ingredients at a fraction of the cost of, say, cardamom (elaichi). The chief purpose of mukhwas is to act as a mouth freshener, and indeed, you cannot leave a restaurant in most of Gujarat without being offered at least one type of mukhwas. In a sense, it is like the fennel seeds (saunf) and sugar candy (mishri) of a North Indian eatery. But while the two elements of saunf and mishri never vary, mukhwas in Gujarat varies from one restaurant to another, with quite ordinary eateries occasionally serving intriguing and uncommon mouth fresheners while much grander restaurants often stick to the plainest varieties. And cumin is the leitmotif that runs through most of these. On one of my visits to Ahmedabad, I chanced upon a semi-dried date filled with a churan that had zeera; zeera golis with a whole cumin seed in the centre; mixtures of various ingredients that invariably featured cumin, but the most intriguing was zeera ‘dal’.
It is only in Gujarat that this industry exists, and make no mistake, it is an industry. Here’s how it works: A cottage industry worker buys about a tonne of cumin, removes the insides, leaving an empty husk behind. The inside, which looks like a cumin seed except that it’s flat, is moistened, mixed with salted water and dried. (A Gujarati friend who lives in New York and craved seeng dana, or salted peanuts, from home, one day figured out how to make peanuts the way they’re sold on street corners back home. Buy peanuts with their skins on, arrange them in a micro-wave dish, add half a cup of water to which salt has been liberally added, and microwave the whole thing. In a while the water dries up, but the salt penetrates right inside the peanuts. It’s the same principle for zeera dal.)
Try watching TV with a packet of zeera dal in your hand. Or munch a mouthful after a heavy meal. It’s so addictive that I have to restrain myself from making a meal of the mukhwas itself. And meanwhile, what happens to the relatively worthless outer husk? Why, some unscrupulous tradesman buys it up, powders it and then sells it as zeera powder under some obscure brand name, making a killing.
SABUDANA KHICHDI
Jayesh Paranjape of The Western Routes takes tourists on food trails around his home city Pune as well on journeys around Maharashtra in search of the best local food. Whether it is the eye-wateringly spicy mutton preparations of Kolhapur or the alphonso mangoes of Ratnagiri, this young man knows his food exceedingly well. Below is his recipe for sabudana (pearl tapioca) khichdi.
INGREDIENTS
For the khichdi:
• 2 cups sabudana
• 2 large chillies, cut in medium sized pieces
• ¼ cup groundnuts, roasted, peeled and coarsely powdered
• 1 medium-size potato, boiled, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 2 tsp sugar
• Salt, to taste
• 4 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 tsp ghee
For garnish:
• Coriander leaves, finely chopped
• Fresh coconut, grated
METHOD
• Wash the sabudana and soak it in 3–4 cups of water in a large, shallow bowl. This is to allow the sabudana to easily absorb the water and double in size. Soak it for at least 7–8 hours, but preferably overnight.
• When ready, add salt, sugar, crushed ground-nuts and lemon juice to the soaked sabudana and mix well.
• In a kadhai (wok) heat the oil and add cumin seeds, chillies and potatoes and sauté for a few seconds.
• Turn the heat to medium, add the sabudana mixture and mix well.
• Turn the heat low and cover for 2 minutes. Once you take the lid off, make sure that you keep mixing the khichdi, as sabudana has a tendency to stick to the pan.
• Pour 2 tsp ghee from the sides of the pan and mix well.
• Garnish with grated coconut and finely chopped coriander leaves. Serve hot.
CHEF RAMON’S ‘EAST-WEST’ SAUCE
When Chef Ramon Salto Alvarez had taken over operations at The Leela, Gurugram, he and his team were doing a sit-down
dinner whose theme was ‘East meets West’. This sauce was such a marvelous fit (and tasted so great) that I snaffled the recipe before dinner was over! It was paired with some sort of roast chicken as far as I can remember, but I could be wrong!
INGREDIENTS
• 400 g black berries
• 200 g raspberries
• 100 g strawberries
• 300 g blue berries
• 130 g sugar
• Salt, to taste
• 1 tsp black salt
• 1 tpsp cumin powder, roasted
• 1 tbsp refined oil
METHOD
• Take a thick-bottomed saucepan and put on medium heat.
• Add all the berries to the saucepan along with salt, sugar and refined oil.
• Cook the berries on slow heat stirring after every minute. The berries will start losing moisture and become mushy. Once the berries become mushy, keep cooking till you achieve a chunky texture with very little moisture. Once the chunky and thick texture is achieved. Add the black salt and roasted cumin powder and give the chutney a nice stir.
• Check for seasoning, sweetness and sourness.
• Remove from heat, let cool and store in a container. Use as and when required.
Note: The fresh berries can be substituted with mixed frozen berries if berries are not in season.
Chef Arun Kumar is a film-maker and restaurant chef. He discovered his talent for cooking when he used to have to feed an entire unit on location, with little or no resources at his disposal. His caterings showcase the food of all four southern states, but there’s little doubt that his heart beats for Kerala, his home state.
INGREDIENTS
• 250 g yellow pumpkin, peeled and sliced
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 coconut, grated
• 2 green chillies
• Salt, to taste
• Curry leaves, to taste
METHOD
• Boil pumpkin till soft.
• Mix half of the coconut with cumin and green chillies to form a paste.
• Roast the other half of the coconut in a pan till brown. Keep aside.
• Sauté the coconut paste, add the pumpkin, and salt to taste.
• Mix well and cook for a few minutes. The pumpkin should become mushy.
• Add the browned coconut and curry leaves.
• Mix well, serve with steamed rice.