I have a friend whose father-in-law reacts hysterically at the mention of Coca-Cola. Why? Because he is convinced, through some convolution of logic, that the drink contains cocaine. When someone tries to tell him otherwise, he says obstinately: why would the company name it Coke unless it contains traces of cocaine? A logic impossible to argue with.
What does this have to do with poppy seeds, you might ask. Well, poppy seeds are banned by countries like the UAE, Singapore, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia simply because it is presumed that they contain trace amounts of opium and will be addictive merely because they come from the poppy plant, from which opium is also derived.
A friend once had the alarming experience of trying to trace the Man Friday of his Dubai-based cousin. My friend had seen him off at the Delhi airport, but his cousin rang up a few hours later to say that he had mysteriously disappeared. Before long, the story unfolded. The poor guy was caught at the Dubai airport with a jar of suspicious-looking contents: poppy seeds. No amount of reasoning with the drug enforcement department at the Dubai airport could convince them that it was a harmless spice, fairly commonly used in Indian kitchens.
Many Bengali families, who have relatives in Western countries, too have quasi-horror stories to relate about carrying poppy seeds in the folds of their saris in suitcases to avoid detection. American airport security, for example, is convinced that anything that comes from the poppy plant must be extremely addictive. Indeed, until the 1990s, you could be jailed for failing a urine test after consuming two bagels, but the US authorities have since re-looked at the parameters of opiates.
Despite all the fear-mongering, most poppies have nothing to do with opium. There are 11 kinds of poppies and most of them are ornamental garden varieties. They produce neither the opiates nor the poppy seeds. It is only the white poppy (Papaver somniferum ) that produces both poppy seeds as well as six types of opiates: morphine, codeine, thebaine, papaverine, noscapine and oripavine. They are extracted from the latex of the white poppy pod while it is still green. Once the pod is completely dry and begins to rattle when shaken, it indicates that the poppy seeds within are mature and can be extracted.
Because of the opiates, valuable for medical purposes, the Government of India strictly controls the crop: both the geographical region where it is cultivated as well as the exact size of each farm. Any deviation, however slight, and the grower’s license is cancelled. Large-scale deviations and the licence of the entire area is withdrawn. This is why Barabanki near Lucknow and Ghazipur in eastern UP, near the Bihar border, does not grow poppies any longer, as I discovered on a trip to Lucknow, when I went to see how poppy grows in the field. By the time I went, however, the entire crop had been moved away from Barabanki. To find out why, I went to meet the friend of a friend. He was initially hesitant to talk about a subject that is as explosive as a minefield, but agreed on the condition of anonymity.
Since morphine, codeine and the other opiates are needed in the medical industry, there’s no question of banning poppy cultivation out of hand. My source told me that, in order to control the cultivation, the Narcotics Commission hands out permits to those farmers who have a certain amount of land in the poppy-growing belt. Not only that, the commission also strictly monitors exactly how much land each farmer has under poppy cultivation, carefully measuring it and stating the exact area in the permit.
But, of course, there are ways to get around this. Farmers have their fields measured, but then grow poppy plants at the margins of the fields as well. My source painted a bleak picture of a bunch of agriculturists – prepared to take desperate measures for a fast buck – who would often sell off the clothes of the field workers: After all, at the end of a working day, there’d be some sap clinging to the fabric and skilled experts knew how to extract most of it. Unsuprisingly, addiction was a raging problem in Barabanki, which was why my source had escaped to Lucknow with his wife and teenage children. He’d seen too many teenagers growing up with stooped shoulders and vacant eyes.
Today, Neemuch in MP is the only place where poppies are cultivated for the production of opium in India. Now, Tasmania, in Australia, is the world’s largest producer of opium poppies and is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the world’s production.
Nowhere in India is the use of poppy seeds, called posto in Bengali, as common as it is in Bengal. Depending on which side of the border they hail from, Bengalis either use it for a couple of dishes like potatoes and ridge gourd (aloo posto and jhinge posto respectively) or obsessively in every meal. People whose ancestors hailed from East Bengal (Bangals, as they are called) are partial to spicy food. Poppy seeds have a taste that veers towards mild and nutty, so they use posto, in fewer dishes. People who owe their ancestry to West Bengal (the Ghotis), on the other hand, are partial to sweetness in their food and use it almost obsessively. To them, a meal without posto is no meal at all. My neighbour, who is a Bangal, buys barely a hundred grams of poppy seeds that last her family of four through the month. Her sister, on the contrary, who has married a Ghoti, also with a family of four, goes through an entire kilo of poppy seeds in a month! Posto bata is one of the most popular ways to eat posto in Bengali communities. It’s a chutney made with ground poppy seeds and flavoured with raw mustard oil. Aficionados like to eat it with slightly overcooked rice. Lal masoor bodis is another popular dish: quenelles made with skinned masoor dal that has been pounded and mixed with poppy and nigella seeds to impart texture and taste respectively, before being sun-dried. But the most intense use of poppy seeds – actually I’d say of any spice in the whole panoply of Indian cooking – is in posto boras or fried morsels. Cups full of the spice are coarsely ground, seasoned, mixed with sliced onions, and half-roasted, half-fried on a griddle, like a kebab. It’s enough to send a Ghoti to heaven!
In the Bengali kitchen, poppy seeds are invariably ground before being used, but it is a challenge in a food processor and is difficult unless you soak the poppy seeds beforehand. (Hungarians, other substantial users of poppy seeds, have a mincing machine with ultra fine blades to do the job.)
But while Bengali cuisine uses poppy seeds mostly in vegetarian preparations, Lucknow cooks use it to thicken meat gravies and for its nutty texture, often in conjunction with chironji (Buchanania lanzan ), cashew paste and grated dried coconut. In Hyderabad, pulverized poppy seeds together with sesame seeds, peanuts and grated dried coconut form the base of several gravy dishes like dum ka keema and dum ka murgh and a few types of halwa. In the case of sweets, the poppy seeds are kept whole; in the case of meat dishes, they are finely ground with other ingredients like peanuts and chironji. The Chettiars too have a similar use for poppy seeds. They use it to thicken vegetable kormas.
Kashmiris use it atop kulchas – those soft, buttery biscuits eaten with tea – and on phirni made with semolina and milk. In that respect, they follow the more Western usage of poppy seeds where they are sprinkled on breads and biscuits for a mildly nutty bite.
In Shimla, Yatish and Minu Sud are the owners of The Chalets Naldehra. On a recent trip to their place, they tell me about siddus from the apple-growing region of Himachal Pradesh: Kotgarh, Kotkhai and Jubbal. They are puris made with yeast and stuffed with poppy seeds. Baked – traditionally in hay rather than in an oven – they are dipped in ghee and eaten. Although Yatish does suggest going off to the interiors of the state to sample some siddus, I reluctantly decline, as I have work to finish. I do, however, go down to the Gunj, the lowest level of Shimla’s bustling market, where in the area between the Krishna temple and the Ram temple, there are shops that sell spices, pulses and grains. Every other spice is visible except poppy seeds, because, as one dealer explains, the price has sky-rocketed and so it is kept safely inside the shop, not spilling across the passageway in sacks, as all the other spices are.
The Sud community has its roots in Kangra. Now spread to many parts of the state, indeed, the world, they have their own cuisine within the tiny state of Himachal Pradesh. Yatish tells me about his all-time favourite: hafeem dana halwa. Apparently, this is one of the uses to which they put poppy seeds. It sounds kind of illegal, but that is the name the Sud community has given poppy seeds. Minu outlines the process to me. After the poppy seeds have been cleaned and soaked in water, they are ground on a stone tablet. Next, plenty of ghee is added and the mixture is slowly sautéed. In Himachal Pradesh, poppy seeds are considered very drying, and the only way to eat them is with tons of ghee. Sugar is added when the mixture turns pale brown. Because the whole process is so laborious and takes an age to complete, today hafeem dana halwa is today only made twice a year: on Shivratri and on Janmashtami.
Despite the many concerns over the addictive qualities of poppy seeds, records all across the world show that poppy seeds have been in use for centuries for a large variety of uses. The use of poppy seeds in cuisine have been known for at least 3,000 years, by the Egyptians (the Ebers Papyrus dating to 1550 BCE mentions their sedative use), the Minoans, the Bronze Age civilization on the Greek island of Crete, who used poppy seeds as a sedative for cranky babies, and the Sumerians of present day Southern Iraq, an agricultural community that dates far back as 2700-1450 BCE, who also cultivated poppy plants for its seeds. In India, it has been mentioned in writings that date back to the 8th century CE.
So no matter the many challenges in producing, transporting and even cooking this controversial spice, we can safely say that the poppy seed is here to stay for centuries more to come.
POPPY SEED HALWA
Part of Sangeeta Khanna’s family is from the district of Ghazipur, once an important poppy-growing district between UP and Bihar. This halwa was a popular pudding in the family. You don’t need to soak the poppy seeds unless you are going to attempt this on a grinding stone; in an electric grinder, the sheer quantity will make it easier if it is dry.
INGREDIENTS
• 200 g poppy seeds
• 4 tbsp ghee
• 100 grams sugar
• 100 ml water
METHOD
• Grind the poppy seeds in an electric grinder till they form a lump.
• Add about 100 ml water and continue to grind, till you get a thin milky paste.
• Pour in the ghee into a heavy-bottomed kadhai and tip in the poppy seed paste.
• Stir constantly while maintaining a medium heat, scraping the bottom if necessary.
• Once the colour darkens slightly, but the paste is still moist, add the sugar and stir slowly till all the sugar is incorporated and the sugar dissolves.
• Once the sugar is dissolved, turn the halwa into serving bowls. The appeal of this lies in its simplicity and the inherent sweetness of the poppy seeds. It is not recommended to garnish it nor flavour it with essence.