Indian cuisine and the magic touch of vinegar

[suchandra 1]

Never heard that vinegar is being used in vedic cooking but could be that we have to always learn new things.

 

<arttitle>Indian cuisine and the magic touch of vinegar</arttitle>

7 Jun, 2008, 0202 hrs IST,Vikram Doctor, <artag>TNN</artag>

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/The_Leisure_Lounge/Indian_cuisine_and_the_magic_touch_of_vinegar/articleshow/3107834.cms

 

It’s not that easy to find them these days. Sweets and soft drinks have taken over most places. You need to look for a playground, not one where yuppie mothers bring highly controlled kids, but an ordinary one where the kids come themselves and get hot and dirty.

 

You’ll probably notice them making their way to a pushcart parked in a small lane to the side. It will be piled high with groundnuts in the shell and then heaps of the local Indian fruits you never see in supermarket — long purple jamun or small purple phalsa, small green avla (starberries, also known as Otaheite gooseberry), large yellow-green amla (Indian gooseberries), elegantly shaped carambola (starfruit) or its close cousin bilimbi, tamarind both plain and in sticky red syrup, green mango and more.

What they have in common is a distinctly sour kick. They are also sweet, salty, fruity, astringent, bitter, sulphurous with kala-namak sprinkled on them, or hot with chilli. But they all make the mouth pucker with sourness and this is what kids find irresistible.

 

Let kids abroad rot their teeth with sweetness or grow fat on chips — in India we crave khatta (when will multinationals catch on and offer really sour drinks and sweets?) Yet sourness is an often overlooked factor in Indian food.

 

We talk of the importance of the different spices and masalas used in different parts of India without acknowledging the equally important role of our souring agents. Dahi in the North, tamarind in the South, kudumpalli (fish tamarind) on the Malabar coast, kokum in Maharashtra, lime, vinegar, amchur (dried green mango), anardana (dried pomegranate seeds) and others are all vital elements in the structure of Indian recipes.

 

Spices give a dish its distinctive character, but the souring agent gives it the acid kick that brings it to life. Look how we squeeze lime on so many desi dishes, its clean fresh bite cutting through the grease and clarifying all the other flavours.

 

Sourness is cooling in hot weather perhaps because sweetness can be cloying and somnolent while an acid taste kicks you awake. That’s why the kids go after the khatta-cart, and why we drink nimbu-pani, lassi, aam-panna and so many sourish drinks.

 

Yet for real appreciation of sourness you must go to the Middle-East and Maghreb. Here’s where you’ll find fascinating souring agents like Iran’s kashk which is dried yoghurt or dried powdered limes. Fruity sourness comes from sumac or zaresht (barberries, from which Britannia restaurant in Mumbai makes their wonderful berry pulao) or the wonderful thick sweet-sour syrup made from boiled down pomegranate juice.

 

Morocco’s preserved lemons give a salty sourness, while Egypt has cooling drinks like kerkedeh, an astringent decoction of dried hibiscus, or our own tamarind, made into a drink that hawkers carry in bulbous glass jars through Egyptian markets.

 

Egypt is also where the oldest remains have been found of perhaps the most important of all souring agents — vinegar. Urns dating back to 3000 BC contain vinegar remains, while elsewhere in the Middle East Babylonian texts explains how to make a type of vinegar from dates.

 

The Chinese also discovered vinegar, most probably from rice wine, and this sort of independent discovery must have been common since almost any alcoholic drink can be made into vinegar from the oxidation of its ethanol.

 

The name vinegar implies soured wine, but you can make it from any liquid that ferments like beer, sugar cane juice, coconut water, fruit juices or honey.

 

The discovery would have been more in realising that what just seemed to be booze gone bad still had extensive use in preservation, disinfection and consumption.

India though has remained relatively immune to the value of vinegar, despite our taste for sourness and no lack of liquids that could be made into it. This may stems from our complex attitude towards alcohol, with vinegar deriving residual guilt though not alcoholic itself.

 

Its odd though that, according to Achaya, there are references to alcohol in Vedic texts, but the first mention of a vinegar like liquid comes in the much later Buddhist texts, though he also notes a reference in the writings of the surgeon Sushrutha, from around the 6th century BCE, to "preparations called asuta, which are vegetables like gourds and radish preserved in vinegar."

These may have been the precursors of pickles, though an alternate theory dates them to later, around the time when vinegar was first being really popularised by the Portuguese. The British glossary Hobson-Jobson suggests achar derives from the Latin acetaria, the meaning of which isn’t clear, but seems to imply the use of acetum or vinegar.

 

This is interesting, but inconclusive (especially since Hobson-Jobson sometimes seems over-eager to find foreign origins for Indian things). The Portuguese do seem to have introduced the extensive use of vinegar in cooking in India and it is still much used in Goa, at least among Christians. Goan Hindus use kokum and this is a distinguishing factor between the two cuisines.

 

Other Christian communities in India use it as well, possibly because vinegar has a somewhat sacral status since Jesus was given vinegar to drink while on the cross.

 

For those used to the acrid chemical vinegar commonly available today, this might seem like a further torment, but in fact vinegar in water was a common drink among Roman soldiers, simultaneously cooling, stimulating and also perhaps safer since the acid disinfected the water.

 

Susan Visvanathan in The Christians of Kerala, her study of the Yakoba community, notes that vinegar has both sacred and practical use during long Good Friday celebrations, You can try this for yourself — a dash of vinegar in a glass of cold water is really refreshing especially in these last muggy days before the monsoon.

 

It can even taste good, with the cold water diluting its acid bite and opening out more complex tastes, like with whisky. It should be good vinegar though, not chemical nor imported balsamic, which is more of a condiment.

 

Balsamic is the one vinegar we’ve become familiar with thanks to the popularity of Italian food, but its not typical of vinegars since it gets its dark, treacly character not from its liquid of origin, but from long ageing in barrels of different types of wood.

 

This is what makes real balsamic so expensive and it’s why one should avoid cheap ‘balsamic’ vinegars being sold in India market these days.

 

For that one can try wine based vinegers, all imported, but I hope some Indian winemakers consider making some of their output into really good vinegar. For now the Borges brand from Spain has a sherry vinegar with really nice, caramel overtones, a fruity Rioja based red wine vinegar and a light ‘champagne’ vinegar based on cava (Spanish sparkling wine).

 

Among Indian vinegars the most interesting by far is the dark and complex tasting barrel matured sugar-cane vinegar made by E.F.Kolah & Sons of Navsari since 1885. Parsis are the other Indian community to use vinegar in their cooking, perhaps a link to the many sour flavours of Persian cooking, and Kolah’s is their vinegar of choice.

 

Outside Navsari it is sold in sachets with an appealing old fashioned label and I often take sachets as a gift for foodie friends outside Mumbai.

Fabindia has two coconut water vinegars in its range of organic foods. The distilled white vinegar has a nice sweetish taste, while the brewed brown vinegar is more medicinal tasting. Hi-Sel is a toddy vinegar with a slightly tipsy taste.

 

I have an old bottle of apple cider vinegar from HPMC, the Himachal Pradesh corporation best known for apple juice. Cider vinegar is credited with many health benefits including weight loss which is why you sometimes find it in health food stores.

 

It tasted rather rancid, but had a good fruity aftertaste. My sister sent me a bottle of kudumpalli vinegar from Coorg: it’s extraordinary stuff, thick as treacle with a powerful, almost metallic taste. It’s awful by itself, but the merest teaspoon transforms meat curries.

 

From Auroville you get the Satsanga brand of kombucha vinegars, also supposed to have healthy properties. These are sold flavoured with tarragon or fennel (saunf), which gives a nice herby taste.

Inspired by this I decided to try combining vinegar with those indigenous souring agents from roadside carts. So far I’ve steeped tamarind in white wine vinegar and the result has been excellent.

 

You get a dark fruity-acid liquid that is easier to use than tamarind, but with a distinctively spicy-sour Indian taste. I am told that you can sometimes get vinegars brewed from really Indian ingredients like mango and jamun and if any readers know from where I’d like to know.

 

Till then tamarind flavoured vinegar will be my souring agent of choice.