RADHUNI
Radhuni is the dark horse of Indian spices as not many people know about it. It is only used in panch phoron, the five-spice blend that is a signature component of the cooking of Bengal. (Though Odisha, Bihar and eastern UP too have their versions of panch phoron, they do not contain radhuni.) I suspect that radhuni is indeed not known outside West and East Bengal. Even in Bengal, many people are unaware that so much of their food contains radhuni. I have several Bengali friends who had absolutely no idea that the panch phoron that seasoned so much of their food contained radhuni till I had a conversation with them about it.
Radhuni comes from the plant Trachyspermum roxburghianum , from the umbelliferae family that mostly consists of aromatic flowering plants and is commonly known as the celery, carrot or parsley family. It is akin to wild celery, and its appearance is not unlike carom (ajwain), though in taste it is closer to fenugreek. The Hindi name for radhuni is ajmod, derived from the same Sanskrit word as ajwain: ajamodika . Technically, it would be called a fruit, but then, chillies are called fruits too by botanists.
I must say that I am extremely partial to this somewhat obscure spice. Its fragrance is not heady and intoxicating – you have to have a fairly sharp sense of smell to perceive its fragrance at all. But, to me, it tastes like a combination of celery and caraway, with a mild, fleeting flavour when used in the correct quantity.
The primary source of the spice is Bangladesh, where the bulk of the crop grows; but ironically, radhuni in Bengali cuisine is primarily a staple of the Ghotis, that is, the people who are native to West Bengal as opposed to the Bangals who came in from East Bengal. They are also the only ones who use radhuni on its own, though even that is becoming increasingly rare in modern households. However, the one dish that always uses a tempering of radhuni alone is shukto: the signature Bengali vegetable stew. Light years apart from the assertive, bitter dish that the Bangals favour, the Ghoti shukto is mild with a combination of five homely vegetables cut into chunks, sweetened with milk, ghee, a dash of sugar and tempered with radhuni. You can also cook mustard leaves and masoor dal and temper them with just radhuni. But be careful: Only very small quantities of this spice are required. It is easy to overpower a dish using this spice that is content to remain firmly under the radar.
Radhuni also has a certain amount of medicinal properties. It is helpful in the treatment of colic, asthma, kidney disorders and diseases of the digestive tract. Indeed, some digestive churans in Ayurvedic medicine include radhuni.
SHUKTO
Our maid Jaya is a true-blue Bangal, originally from Bangladesh. I prefer her version of shukto to that of the fancy restaurants where I have sampled it.
INGREDIENTS
• 1 medium sized aubergine
• 100 g pumpkin
• 2 raw plantains
• 1 large white radish
• 2 large dal bodis (lentil nuggets)
• ½ tsp fennel
• 1 tsp poppy seeds
• ½-inch piece of fresh ginger
• 1 tsp radhuni
• 1 whole red chilli
• 2 tbsp ghee
METHOD
• Make a paste of the poppy seeds, ginger and fennel. (Jaya does this on our grinding stone, but you could use an electric grinder.)
• Cut all the vegetables into even-sized chunks: long rather than broad. That is the traditional shape of shukto vegetables.
• Add the oil in a wok and gently fry the bodis.
• Remove from wok; add bitter gourd and sauté.
• Take off from heat and add the paste.
• Sauté it, then add all the vegetables and bodis with enough water to make a thick gravy after the vegetables have cooked through.
• In a small vessel, heat the ghee and fry the red chilli and the radhuni.
• As soon as the fragrance arises, pour over the vegetables in the wok, cook for half a minute. Serve hot.
CAROM
Another spice from the umbelliferae family that has an uncompromisingly Indian appeal is ajwain or carom, also called bishop’s weed. These tiny little seeds (which are, technically, fruits) grow from plants that are cultivated in Punjab, Bengal and in south Deccan within India, as well as in Egypt, Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. The flavour of the seeds has a piercing quality, not unlike thyme, but with a peppery appeal. In fact, in one of nature’s mysteries, one third of the volatile oil in ajwain is thymol, and the only other plant that yields this oil is the herb thyme. Yet there is no taxonomic connection between thyme and ajwain! The mystery continues. Though the leaves resemble celery leaves and ajwain used to be called celery seed in cookbooks written during the Raj, there is no resemblance between the two plants either. There’s just one more thing: the matter of its origin. While most authorities attribute it to the Indian subcontinent, historian Andrew Dalby points out that its Sanskrit name ‘yavani’ means ‘the Greek spice’ suggesting that its provenance was one of the Greek kingdoms of the Middle East.
Ajwain packs a huge punch, and is as much a part of our kitchen cabinets as our medicine chest. Every grandmother in the country will rush to prepare a teaspoon of ajwain with black salt and asafoetida for any sufferer of a gastric disorder, whether its indigestion, bloating or the other ills that befall overeaters.
Not surprisingly, given its digestive properties, it makes its way into the cooking of many communities.
It finds its place in the panch phoron (five-spice mix) that is used in Bengal, Odisha, parts of Bihar and Assam. In Bengal, radhuni often takes the place of ajwain, since both spices have notes of pine, more developed in the case of radhuni, and a cool, camphor-like, refreshing aftertaste. In Gujarat, ajwain is one of the cuisine’s defining spices, used for cooking arbi or colocasia leaves (called patra), root vegetables, green beans and even a simple onion and tomato gravy.
Matthis – tea-time savouries made with white flour, a dash of shortening and water, and deep-fried – usually include a pinch of ajwain seeds in them. Perhaps it is because the spice has a great affinity for starch. For the same reason, you’ll find a combination of ajwain, salt and chilli powder being used as a stuffing for parathas: the ultimate comfort food for anyone from Punjab. Across North India, commercial bakeries in every neighbourhood churn out vast quantities of plain biscuits with a little ajwain, salt and sugar: a staple to offer with tea to unexpected guests. Whoever first hit on the formula was clearly a genius. Then there’s paneer pakora, which is nearly impossible to make without a dash of ajwain.
And it’s not only North India that has stumbled on to this winning combination of flour/starch and ajwain. Try the greasy yet irresistible bhajjis sold on Chennai’s Marina Beach that have ajwain lurking in the spicy gram flour batter, and you’ll definitely be coming back for more. Chef Srinath Sambandan formerly of The Park, Vishakapatnam, tells me that all masala puris in Andhra Pradesh use ajwain.
The other place where ajwain invariably makes an appearance is in Amritsari fish. You’ll know winter is just around the corner when roadside stalls make their appearance all over Delhi and Punjab. Generous fillets of fish are marinaded in a paste which contains chilli powder, turmeric and ajwain, and then fried in a kadai or baked in the tandoor, depending on how sophisticated the stall is. Here, the presence of ajwain is needed not so much as a digestive as to take away the odour of the fish. (There seems to be the firm belief in Punjab and many northern states that all seafood has an inherent smell that won’t go away unless it comes into contact with the wonder spice: ajwain!)
It also goes without saying that ajwain is the ultimate pickling spice. Nobody throughout the length and breadth of the country would dream of making a pickle without ajwain. Such is its brand equity as being a digestive spice! In fact, in Tamil Nadu, I’ve come across a drink called paanagam or panakam, which is used to welcome guests, made with tamarind and jaggery for a sweet and sour taste, and flavoured with dried ginger and powdered ajwain. It not only refreshes you and quenches your thirst, but because of the presence of ajwain, it has the added effect of making you feel hungry.
When it comes to medicinal properties, ajwain is not just used for digestive ailments. When my children were young, protecting them from colds and coughs was a preoccupation every winter. Then one day, a neighbour gave me a gift. It was a bottle of mustard oil that had been heated to smoking point, with a teaspoon of ajwain added to it before taking it off the fire. The resultant decoction had been left out in the sun until it became a dark amber colour. My kindly old neighbour told me to rub the oil on to the soles of my children’s feet and their chests every night after tucking them into bed. Every winter since, I have made the oil myself, and even gifted it to friends and family over the years. And if you have a bad cold or blocked nose, boil a teaspoon of ajwain in water and inhale the steam. It works wonders!
If a girl is suffering from menstrual cramps, just boil a litre of water, put in a heaped tablespoon of ajwain seeds and boil steadily till about half the water has evaporated. Now, wait till the water is warm but not boiling hot, pour it into a glass bottle (such as a jam jar) and place it on the lower abdomen of the sufferer. I was extremely sceptical of this at first when I heard it, but since then, I’ve lost count of the number of sufferers whom I have converted with this home remedy.
MATTHI
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tbsp semolina
• ½ tsp carom seeds
• Salt, to taste
• Refined oil for frying and dough-making
METHOD
• Mix all the ingredients together to make a firm dough. Add 1 tbsp oil to the dough while mixing to make it moist and soft. Let it rest for 10 minutes.
• Flatten out the dough into a sheet, a little thicker than a chapatti. Prick the entire sheet with a fork. Cut out small rounds or diamonds or any other shape you want.
• Heat the oil in a kadhai and fry them on low heat until they are golden brown. Cool and serve. These keep well in an air-tight container.
FENNEL
When I first went to my in-laws’ house, I figured that I would have to make several adjustments. More than a quarter of a century later, I’ve overcome most of them. But one that I still grapple with is the use of fennel, or saunf. Before I was married, like most people who lived in North India and ate the cuisine that a series of maids cooked – not a rare occurrence, I’m sure – cumin and coriander went into well-nigh everything. In Kashmir, the first culture shock was to learn how little cumin and coriander were used in this cuisine. Instead, there was fennel in practically every dish.
There are many variations of this spice, but the two broad variations are the darker hued, delicate fennel that comes from around Lucknow, and the fat variety, much lighter in colour, that grows in parts of Rajasthan and Gujarat. It is only the latter variety that is used in the kitchen. The darker, slimmer kind, considered the more refined sort, is used mostly as a mouth freshener.
Because two types of fennel grow wild in the Mediterranean region – the annual sweet fennel that is used in the kitchen as well as the perennial wild variety that is bitter and not used for culinary purposes – it is assumed that fennel is native to southern Europe and the countries of the Mediterranean. However, it has been around since antiquity in Indian and Chinese cuisines. The Italian make the most intensive usage of the entire plant: The edible variety of fennel has been called Florence fennel and its bulb is used as a vegetable, and the pollen is collected painstakingly and sprinkled over cooked dishes. Even the tender leaves are chopped finely and used to flavour pies and sauces.
It is easy to see why fennel is such an important spice: It has the ability to provide sweet as well as spicy notes simultaneously, the only seed spice to do so. All other seed spices are overwhelming savoury, with little in the way of sweetness. The sweetness is due to the presence of the compound trans-anethole that also exists in aniseed and star anise.
The very first spice that I remember tasting was, in fact, fennel, because of gripe water, a slightly sweet, extremely pleasant clear liquid that I used to be given from time to time as a baby for treating colicky symptoms. When my children were born, my mother-in-law would boil a little fennel in half-a-cup of water and the resultant decoction was cooled and stored till the babies let out a loud yell indicating their need for a sip or three of gripe water.
That fennel is an excellent remedy for ailments of the digestive tract is well known. There is a theory that the use of fennel in food is primarily because of it being settler of stomachs. It is precisely because of this that it makes an appearance in Indian restaurants, where it is served in bowls at the conclusion of a meal.
Fennel is always used in North-Indian pickles in conjunction with fenugreek, kalonji and ajwain. It is also used for those savoury preparations that have a sweet tinge, which is, after all, the flavour profile of the spice. Thus, in Kangra, where celebratory menus have a clearly defined sweet, salty as well as sour component, melon seeds (char magaz) and fennel are combined with a thin sugar syrup and eaten with rice as one course. Rentha, as it is known, is served with a plethora of other dishes, all either spicy or sour, as an antidote to its sweetness.
In West Bengal, the single usage of the spice is after it is browned gently, pounded and then sprinkled over the deluxe version of tomato chutney. This version of the chutney has tiny bits of raw mango to perk things up, raisins to add sweetness, and, among other spices, fennel to make it recognizably grand. The other usage of fennel is of course in panch phoron, to temper a dish of dry vegetables called chochchori as well as a couple of types of dal. Considering that most Bengali families eat either one or the other dish at least four times a week, a considerable amount of fennel is used, but that is nowhere near the quantities used by other communities.
As I mentioned before, fennel plays a crucial part in Kashmiri wazwan. A few dishes are flavoured with no other spice except fennel, and the only ready powdered version of this spice that I have ever encountered across the length and breadth of the country is in the valley. Wazas use powdered fennel in yakhni, the mild, curd-based gravy while aab gosht, or mutton curry made with milk, uses whole fennel seeds. Aab gosht translates into ‘water meat’ and refers to the fact that the milk keeps its natural colour: no chillies to redden the gravy and no turmeric to add the trademark golden hue.
Besides Kashmir, the only other community that uses fennel in any significant amount is the Chettiars. Meenakshi Meyyapan, the gracious owner ofThe Bangala, a heritage hotel in the heart of the Chettinad region in Tamil Nadu, holds an informal workshop on the cooking of her beloved community for those of her guests who are interested. And plenty of them are.
Meenakshi Aachi (or Aunty as she is called) tells us that sweet spices like poppy seeds, cloves, cinnamon and fennel are to be combined with cumin, coriander seeds, coconut and chillies. When all the ingredients have been sautéed separately on low heat, they are ground on a flat basalt rock that every kitchen in the Chettinad region has. This mixture is, quite frequently, added to vegetables or chicken preparations. I can vouch for the fact that it takes me back to my trip to Karaikudi. The typically Chettinad combination of fennel and cumin is what makes the flavours of this cuisine so unique.
The Tamil-Muslim community of Uthamapalayam and Madurai also uses quite a bit of fennel in their cooking. No kozhambu – the Tamil word for curry – is complete without powdered saunf, which also goes into lamb mince, koftas, biryani and their signature mutton curry, called thakkadi. In the West, fennel often refers to the tuber root of the plant, which is eaten as a vegetable – stir-fried, baked or raw and the feathery leaves are used to garnish a salad. Fennel is an ingredient of a famous liqueur too: Absinthe is made with wormwood, fennel and a few other ingredients. In India, however, it is more or less confined to the spice rack.
RASHMI SOOD'S MEETHA
My college friend Rashmi Sood was a great cook even in the days when a heater and a saucepan was all that our hostel ‘kitchen’ consisted of! Here’s her recipe of a meetha that exemplifies the sweet-savoury taste of fennel.
INGREDIENTS
• 2 tbsp ghee
• 1 tsp fennel
• 1 tsp magaz (melon seeds)
• 10–12 dried coconut slivers
• 1 cup raw papaya, cubed
• 1 cup water
METHOD
• In a heavy-bottomed pan, heat ghee. Add fennel and magaz. Cook till golden brown.
• Add papaya and cover till papaya softens.
• Add sugar and water and stir till sugar dissolves. Cook till it thickens to the consistency you like. Add coconut slivers. Serve hot over steamed white rice.
KASHMIRI STYLE TURNIPS
Meat-loving Kashmiris would never dream of serving this rather homely dish when visitors are over, but it is precisely because there is no lamb in this version that you can taste the sweetness of the fennel.
INGREDIENTS
• 500 g turnips, washed and peeled
• ½ cup mustard oil
• 1 onion, finely sliced
• 5 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 1 tsp turmeric powder
• ½ tsp fennel powder
• Salt and sugar, to taste
METHOD
• Cut each turnip into three thick slices horizontally (i.e. one slice will be the top, one the middle and the other the bottom).
• Heat the mustard to smoking point, let it cool. On medium heat, fry the turnips a few at a time, till they are translucent but not brown. In the same oil, fry the onion and garlic.
• Take the vessel off the fire and put in the chilli, turmeric and fennel powder.
• Stir for a few seconds on a very low flame. (Kashmiris do not sauté their spices and the colour of burnt spices is very unattractive to them.)
• Add the turnips, hot water, sugar (start with half-a-teaspoon) and salt.
• Cook till done. The sugar will just about cut out the pungency of the oil; it will not be perceived as such in the finished dish. It will also accentuate the natural sweetness of the fennel.
RASHMI SOOD’S DAHI TAMATAR PANEER
INGREDIENTS
• 300 g paneer, cubed
• 50 g paneer, mashed
• 5–6 tomatoes large, chopped finely
• 2 cups thick yogurt, churned
• 1 cup makhana (fox nuts)
• 1 cup cashews, halved
• 1 tsp ginger, finely grated
• 2 tbsps refined oil
• 1 tsp black cumin (shah zeera)
• 3–4 broken green cardamon
• Red chilli powder, to taste
• 3 tsp fennel powder
• ½ tsp turmeric powder
• Salt, to taste
METHOD
• In a heavy-bottomed pan, heat refined oil, gently sauté cardamom and black cumin.
• Put in the tomatoes and grated ginger and fry till the oil forms a layer on the top.
• Spoon in all the dry spices and sauté.
• Add yogurt, keep stirring till it boils and cook till the oil is visible on the sides of the pan.
• Put in the crushed paneer, cashews, makhana and fry.
• Add paneer cubes and mix well.
• Now add enough water to make gravy and cook for 10 minutes. Add salt to taste and simmer till it thickens.
• Garnish with coriander leaves.
DRIED GINGER
Chef Saneesh Varghese, of The Oberoi Group, cannot ever eat something with the flavour of dried ginger, without remembering Maundy Thursday, the day before Good Friday. That’s because many Christian communities of Kerala drink milk that has been flavoured with dried ginger powder and cardamom on that day. When I asked him why, he couldn’t give a specific reason. Even though the reasons have been lost over time, the tradition, and its flavour, continues.
It’s exactly the same with me. Walk into the kitchen of the average householder of the Goan Catholic community and you’ll never find dried ginger powder, because it’s just not on the culinary radar. However, in Goa, the festival of every saint in heaven is celebrated with the same gusto that is present in all other spheres of life in this coastal paradise. The church or chapel in question gets a whitewash. An army of furniture makers and purveyors of women’s and children’s apparel set up camp for a week on the grounds around the church. The sweet sellers appear out of nowhere. The sweets are not particularly good, or even particularly popular, but one of them, kadeo bodeo, a homely, fat pretzel with a layer of dried sugar syrup forming the crust, has a strong flavour of dried ginger powder. I, too, cannot rid myself of the association between saunth and church festivals because I have grown up eating kadeo bodeo at church festivals.
While ginger, a cousin of galangal, is used in every kitchen in India, dried ginger powder, or saunth, is less common. Ginger is thought to be native to India as the largest number of genetic variations of the plant (as accurate a barometer as any) exists in the country, and India is the largest producer of ginger in the world, producing a third of the world’s crop. Most of the essential oils of ginger are present in the skin of the plant, so once ginger is dried with the skin removed, the final product has a markedly altered flavour profile. As a result, a number of ways of drying ginger have evolved. Each is practised by one region or another, and the taste is identical, no matter what the method: With the skin intact, with it bruised in parts, with the skin removed by peeling and with the skin removed after being scalded in boiling water. Once ginger has been dried, it loses 80 to 85 per cent of its weight. Throughout the world, ginger is available in three forms: fresh, dried (and usually powdered) and preserved in sugar. As in the case of turmeric and mango, both of which are used in their fresh as well as dry forms, these two versions are not interchangeable. In the Western world, ginger beer and gingerbread make use of dried ginger whereas in Chinese, Japanese and Indian food, a full meal without fresh ginger is practically unthinkable.
In Goa, the Hindu community too makes plentiful use of dried ginger powder. Whether it is dried Bombay duck or red pumpkin, saunth is used to lend a spicy, warm note to many Goan dishes. It is the same in Kashmir: while Muslims use it too, the Hindu Pandits use it far more liberally, sprinkling it in almost every dish. In fact, it is one of the defining flavours of the cuisine, together with asafoetida.
My own perception of dried ginger is based on the fact that it is extremely heating to the system. It is probably why it is used in many dishes in Kashmir, as a kind of antidote to the cold. Even during the summer in Srinagar, any ingredient that is considered cooling enough to give you a cold – tomatoes and gourd are two examples – are never cooked without half a teaspoon of powdered, dried ginger, just to crank up the heat factor.
Surprisingly, nowhere else in the country is dried ginger powder used as much as it is in Tamil Nadu, particularly in the Kongunadu community of the eponymous region whose largest city is Coimbatore. The region is well-known for turmeric. The ancient cuisine of Tamil Nadu, researchers tell us, used dried ginger powder as the only spice in their food. At that time (3rd to 16th century CE), there was no chilli, so dry ginger and black pepper provided the spice quotient. In Ettuthogai , the classical Tamil poetic work written in the 4th century CE, the author gives us a vivid picture of the culture of the people at that time, describing ‘the mountains of dried ginger root [that] could be seen for sale in the markets’.
Today, the most prominent communities of Tamil Nadu seem to be the Iyers and Iyengars, but they only make up 10 to 15 per cent of the population. Other regions of the state – Chettinad, Kunkunad, Nanjilnad, North Arcot and a host of others – each have a distinctive cuisine. It is these cuisines that have been researched painstakingly by food historians of the state. But the Kunkunad region, which coincidentally consists the turmeric-growing belt of Mettupalayam, Coimbatore and Erode, has a cuisine that is not even particularly well-known within the state. However, by all accounts, dried ginger powder is one of the elemental spices of the region. It is used in a plethora of masala powders by the community, most notably along with black sesame, groundnuts and turmeric. The region’s most well-known spice blend – Pallipalayam masala, named after the eponymous town – too contains copious amounts of saunth.
DEEBA RAJPAL’S GINGERBREAD CAKE
Deeba Rajpal, one of the most prominent home bakers in the capital whose blog is called Passionate About Baking , tries to bring her passion for food styling and her love of wholesome ingredients together in her baked goods. This is one of her trademark cakes.
INGREDIENTS
• 100 g unsalted butter, softened
• 135 g jaggery granules or finely chopped jaggery
• 3 tbsp golden syrup or honey
• 2 tbsp water
• 1 tsp dried ginger powder
• ½ tsp cinnamon powder
• Zest of 1 orange (or ½ tsp orange extract)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• 2 eggs
• 175 g whole-wheat flour
• Demerara sugar for sprinkling
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
METHOD
• Preheat oven to 180o C. Line a baking sheet with parchment and lightly grease a 6–7-inch round baking tin.
• Place the jaggery, butter, honey and water in a heatproof bowl. Heat in microwave for a minute, until the butter has melted. Whisk well with a balloon whisk until the jaggery and butter are combined.
• Add the ginger powder, cinnamon powder, orange zest, vanilla extract, baking powder and baking soda. Whisk well to mix.
• Whisk in the eggs one by one. Now fold in the whole-wheat flour gently.
• Ladle into the prepared tin and sprinkle over demerara sugar. Bake for approximately 20–25 minutes until risen and light golden brown (adjust the temperature according to your oven). Use tester to check if done.
• Allow to cool in pan for 10 minutes, then gently loosen sides to remove. Serve warm as is, or with a drizzle of unsweetened single (low-fat) cream.
SESAME
Every year, as winter approaches, there are a couple of things that I look forward to. First of all, sellers of boiled eggs make their appearance all over Delhi’s roads. They position their carts near bus-stops on the roadside and the sight of them warms my heart. Eating a boiled egg on the side of the road is a pleasure that I’ve never been tempted to partake of – so far, at any rate. I welcome their appearance chiefly because I can herald the start of my favourite season. But it’s the other beginning-of-winter phenomenon that really gladdens my heart: It’s the arrival of rewri and gajak in the market. While rewri is a rather simplistic sweet fit for the nursery, it is gajak that is stupendous. Made with either sugar or jaggery and sesame (til), gajak is available all through winter, and with very good reason too. Ayurveda deems that sesame is warming to the system. Ditto for jaggery. That makes eating gajak practically a necessity during the cold months, usually from right after Diwali till the end of February. It is just as well, because sesame is only harvested around Diwali in UP, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Punjab where it is grown as a kharif (summer) crop. In Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Tamil Nadu, it is grown as a rabi (winter) crop.
At my insistence, Atul Choudhury, a Delhi-based photographer, takes me on a day’s trip to Meerut – home to some of the most famous gajak in the country – sometime after Diwali. Though Atul has made Delhi his home, his roots are in Meerut, so in the few hours we spent there, I got to see every single shop selling gajak, and there are dozens of them.
At Kansal Shudh Mishthan Bhandar, Sri Kishan Kansal, the fourth-generation owner of the famous sweets shop, waxes eloquent about the quality of sesame called Ganga Sagar. What is particularly notable about it is the almost complete absence of black grains of sesame, which would ruin the appearance of the sweet.
Kansal runs me through the recipe: For every kilogram of gajak, you need 750 grams of sesame and 250 grams of jaggery. While every mithai shop in town sells quantities as large as 50 kilos of gajak a day or more, nobody actually hires the skilled labour that is needed: They rent out workers by the day because the gajak season lasts a mere three months of the year. Kansal says he only uses about one sack of til a day during the rest of the year as compared to a humongous 20 sacks a day used in the peak season, with each sack containing roughly 50 kilos. The artisans work out of fairly primitive surroundings: They are all barefoot because the gajak will be tossed on to the floor and kneaded and pulled. It is as fascinating as watching noodles being made in the Chinese-speaking world. After visiting Kansal, Atul and I stroll down a road where over a dozen tiny shops all sell nothing but gajak. Each shop sells a few varieties of gajak and every winter, a couple more are added to the evergrowing list. These are usually variations on the texture and shape of the basic form.
What is remarkable is that far from being alone in the rewri and gajak sweepstakes, Meerut has Agra and Gwalior for company. Each one has a distinctly different style of making the delicacy – I’d hate to fuel the burning controversy about which is the best. However, each town probably uses 2,25,000 kilograms of til in a season, which lasts for two or three months. Although one associates spice with cooking food, in this case, spice in vast quantities is used for a sweet. What makes gajak great as opposed to merely good is the technique that causes it to become brittle, like mille-feuille. That, and the whiff of ghee. Ghee is also what is used in lavish quantities in bhugga – an earthy mixture of sugar, khoya and til pounded together: the Punjabi cousin of gajak.
Tilkut is a somewhat similar winter speciality of Gaya in Bihar. Sesame seeds are pounded with great force with a wooden hammer on the floor with a quantity of jaggery. The heat of the pounding causes the gur to partially melt and fuse with the sesame seeds, most of which become pounded to a coarse powder.
Sesame is also used to coat a fried morsel made from pounded rice flour, filled with grated desiccated coconut. Called andarse ki goli, they are very slightly sweet because of the coconut and are highly seasonal: They are made during the monsoon months in Haryana, Punjab, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and some traditional markets in Delhi. Though this rather dense doughy ball is coated with a few grains of sesame seeds, it is considered suitable for eating in the rainy season, a time when, before climate change, temperatures actually dropped significantly after summer.
While in North India, sesame seeds are used as a spice, though not in great quantities, what is almost never used is sesame oil. In South India, on the other hand, til oil is so highly rated that in Tamil it is known simply as ‘nallenai’, which, translated, means good oil. (If, however, you are preparing Chinese food and need a few drops of sesame oil, resist the temptation of substituting the produce of Tamil Nadu: The flavour profiles are as different as they can be. The sesame oil that is used all over South India is made from raw sesame seeds, and does not have a strong smell. On the other hand, the Chinese variety is made from toasted sesame seeds for the precise purpose of being strongly aromatic.) In Kerala and Tamil Nadu, til oil, also called gingelly oil, is used to make pickles, whether of shrimp, mango or large lemons. Vegetarians consider this oil indispensable for tempering sambar: no other oil will do. Fish eaters across Tamil Nadu will never use any other oil for fish curry.
Sesame is the one spice that has that has the distinction of being grown on every continent, because of its ease of growing, whether for oil or for use as a spice. Considered the oldest oilseed known to man, the earliest references to it were in the Greek comedies of the 3rd and 4th centuries BCE, according to Jack Turner’s book Spice, the History of a Temptation . It is considered native to sub-Saharan Africa as well as to India (although the two cultivars are distinct from each other). There is evidence of a 4,000-year-old drawing on the walls of a tomb in Egypt depicting a baker adding sesame seeds to dough, which dates its use as a spice to around four millennia ago. Look in virtually every part of the world, and you will see this ancient spice. Take for example, tahini, which the countries of the Middle East use as an ingredient in many preparations, notably hummus and other cold mezze. In addition, sesame seeds themselves, whole or pounded, find their way into a number of sweets in the region as well as in Turkey. Japanese food has a pronounced usage of sesame seeds, sesame sauce and sesame oil. Every South-East Asian restaurant in Indian metropolitan cities serves goma-ae – a super simple, extremely tasty and healthy cold salad featuring steamed whole spinach leaves with a dressing whose defining flavour is sesame seeds. It serves as a reminder of how spices don’t need to overpower to be effective. But the prize for using the most amount of sesame seeds goes to McDonald’s, which buys three-quarters of the entire crop of Mexico for use on its buns!
Microbiologist Sangeeta Khanna does not believe that sesame seeds are a spice. Her opinion is that they are oilseeds, rather like mustard. According to her, sesame seeds have no spice note whatsoever. My own opinion is that leaving out sesame seeds from a list of spices has never been done by any author, Indian or Western. To omit any mention of them here would be tantamount to attempting to reinvent the wheel!
SANGEETA KHANNA'S SESAME BRITTLE
This recipe is courtesy Sangeeta Khanna's Banaras Ka Khana blog, where she chronicles heirloom recipes of eastern UP and Varanasi.
INGREDIENTS
• 500 g white sesame
• 200–250 g jaggery (I use 200 gm or even less)
• 2–3 tbsp fresh ginger, finely grated
• 1 tbsp water
• Ghee, to grease the baking tray or plate
METHOD
• Dry roast the sesame in a pan on low heat, stirring all the while. It will be ready in about 10 minutes or as soon as a nutty aroma starts emanating and the colour turns golden brown.
• Now mix the grated or curled (using a paring knife) jaggery and grated ginger in a heavy pan or kadhai. If the jaggery is in small pieces it can be used directly.
• Heat these ingredients on high flame with a tbsp of water and watch the melting of jaggery. The jaggery and ginger mix will cook together, first melting to make a syrup and then bubbling to become a frothy mass.
• Tip in all the roasted sesame to it and mix quickly so every grain of sesame is coated with the sticky syrup of jaggery.
• Grease a baking tray with ghee and spread the mixture over it evenly. Press the mixture firmly and smoothen it using a cold, greased knife. Let the brittle cool down completely, invert on a work surface, cut in desired shapes.
NIGELLA SEEDS
Kairouan in Tunisia is a charming little town whose Mosque of Uqba attracts many tourists from around the world. The old, walled part of the town, where the Mosque stands, is fascinating, especially for someone as food-obsessed as I am, with shops selling rudimentary kitchen implements that would not be out of place in a village market in India, alongside coffee houses and a bakery. It’s the aroma wafting from the bakery that makes me take my place at the end of a long line of customers at 4 o’clock one afternoon. The large bun-shaped bread I choose is good enough, but it is the sprinkling of spices on top that remains fresh in my memory even after all these years. Warm, nutty nigella seeds, slightly sweet fennel and whole cumin. Try as I might though, I was unable to spot the nigella seeds in any of the stalls, though the big four – turmeric, chilli powder, cumin and coriander were present – all ground and arranged in neat piles on wheeled carts.
Back home in India, restaurants sprinkle nigella seeds (kalonji) on naans. Quite why, nobody really knows. What’s fascinating, to me at least, is that no other Indian bread is topped with this little black triangular seed. Not tandoori roti, and certainly not griddle-fried breads like paratha or deep-fried ones like puris. The only theory I’ve come across that comes close to explaining this curious phenomenon is this: Prophet Muhammad has been credited with the saying, ‘Black granules are the cure for everything except death.’ It is assumed that black granules referred to here are kalonji, which is why they are called habbatul baraka in Arabic, which translates to ‘blessed seed’. There is a hypothesis that the action of sprinkling nigella seeds on the flatbread in the Middle East mimics the action of bestowing blessings. If true, it would explain why in India, wholly indigenous breads like parathas are not sprinkled with the spice. It would also explain how the bread in Kairouan was sprinkled with nigella seeds, though the presence of the other spices remains a mystery. Warm and nutty are the first two flavours that explode on your palate when you bite into a nigella seed. And its fragrance is powerful indeed – pass any kitchen where it is being broiled or fried and the aroma will envelop you.
Though it is believed to be native to South-West Asia, there is no conclusive proof of its provenance. However, all the earliest archaeological evidence points to Egypt, where it was found in Tutenkhamen’s tomb and to Turkey, where it was present in a flask that dates back to the 2nd millennium BCE. In India, it is grown primarily in three states: in MP, near Neemuch, in UP between Lucknow and Kanpur and in West Bengal, in a smaller amount. From the wholesale markets, most of the crop, which is harvested in April, goes to North India for use in pickles and East India for use in panch phoron and as tempering in curries. Unlike other crops that have several grades, nigella has but one quality, but after processing, it can be divided into average, machine-cleaned and sorted. These are grades that do not concern the average consumer: they are buzzwords for traders who are asked for particular specifications.
The highest use of the spice is probably in West Bengal where it is used in panch phoron. Bengalis who trace their origins back to East Bengal make more use of kalonji (called kalo jeere in Bengali) than anyone else in the country. Machher jhol, the classic Bengali fish curry, is made with a tempering of nigella seeds, as is masoor dal. Bodis, little sun-dried dumplings made from masoor dal, also contain kalonji in addition to posto.
While nigella is famously used on naans in North India, it is also an important pickling spice and so is used in those vegetable dishes where a pickle-like flavour needs to be recreated, like achari aloo. Many sweet chutneys are made with kalonji, and some people use it as a tempering spice in kadhi. In UP, kalonji is often used to stuff karelas, along with a few other spices, namely fennel, coarsely pounded red chilli, coriander seeds and aamchur.
Despite its less-than-spectacular usage in Indian cuisine, kalonji is the hottest selling item in any Unani medicine shop and is credited with the ability to cure diabetes, obesity, asthma, falling hair, kidney stones, arthritis and even paralysis. Drinking half a teaspoon of kalonji oil in half a cup of boiling water once a day, Unani doctors will tell you, can vanquish most of your chronic ailments. While nigella seeds are known to have radical scavenging properties and are a known antioxidant, research in several Middle-Eastern universities like Egypt, Riyadh and Jeddah, is on to verify exactly how miraculous these little black seeds really are.
Until then, I am quite content to smell the warm, toasty smell of nigella seeds atop freshly baked challah bread, German pumpernickel, Iranian barbari or Turkish pitta bread.
SALMOLI MUKERJI’S KALO JEERE DIYE ILISH
INGREDIENTS
• 500 g ilish (hilsa fish), cut into pieces
• 1 tsp nigella seeds
• 2–3 green chillies (slit lengthwise)
• 1 tsp vegetable oil
• Turmeric, just a pinch, for colour
• Salt, to taste
METHOD
• No thorough washing under running water for hilsa, lest its fragrance be washed away. The fresh fish should be just dipped in bowl of water and drained quickly. Put a little salt and turmeric on the raw fish and set aside.
• In a kadhai heat vegetable oil to smoking point, put in the nigella seeds and the slit chillies till they splutter, lower heat and put in water – 2 to 3 cups for 4 to 6 pieces of fish.
• Add a pinch of turmeric and salt to taste, stir, cover and boil. When water is bubbling, put in the fish, cover and cook till the fish is cooked through. Flip fish over to cook well.
• Serve with extra green chillies to taste and steamed rice.