Pickled, spiced and salted and sunned: Beyond seasonal eating

One aspect of Indian cuisine that has always fascinated me is the art of preserving the best of our bountiful seasons for the leaner months.

While most of India doesn’t really have lean months—we are an agrarian economy after all—there is something lovely about our way of capturing the essence of a season.

Come summer and we see the peak of what can only be called the great Indian bounty.

Mangoes, the most precious of them all, are fruiting. Fish are aplenty in markets. The humble jackfruit ripens and perfumes the air. Berries like the foraged karvanda and jamun make their appearance by staining the streets with purple hues. Pushcarts heave with ice apples or tadgolas. Cashew apples leave their trace on the tropical air. Watermelons are displayed as walls of dark green with tempting pink insides on highway pit stops.

Summer is also the time for pickling.

The freshest, ripest, sourest fruits that make an appearance in the heat are lovingly collected and put into ancient receptacles and treated with much care till they are brined and spiced for the year.

As a child, growing up in cosmopolitan Bombay, summer was always the season of discovery. Not only was it the holidays, which meant more time at home, it was also time spent around neighbours.

Oh, the smells! You could tell which neighbour was preserving what, simply by sniffing.

It helped that the things being dried, preserved or pickled were sharp to begin with.

I remember a particular Goan neighbour whose kitchen could be smelt from a mile away. You see, she would make choriz (Goan sausages) and hang their red beads around the walls of the kitchen and string them through the balconies.

What felt like a too-pungent aroma then is now something that makes my mouth water, as I hunt through Goa for the finest homemade choriz beads.

Meanwhile, my Maharashtrian neighbour’s home was a sight to behold. Deep red chillies and perfectly round papads spread over chatais and charpais lined the small compound outside their ground-floor house. The sun was used to its fullest potential to dehydrate goodies well before the coming rains.

Even now, not far from where I live, there are fields of drying fish. The Kolis (fishing community) of Mumbai stop all fishing activity during the monsoon and use the harsh summer sun to preserve their catch. How, you might wonder, does fish last a year?

In square patches of shore adjacent to their villages—and often right next to swanky high-rises—the Kolis painstakingly spread out the day’s catch after sorting it on sand banks that have been used for this purpose for generations.

Depending on which way the wind is blowing, streets far away are filled with the smell of salty fish. And while that might seem offensive to some, to me it is the smell of Bombay. A reminder that we are people of the sea.

The Kolis tell me that the dried fish market is quite lucrative and they actually make more money from this trade than from regular fishing. Judging by the heaps that are put on weighing scales and displayed by the road, it certainly looks like it.

The East Indian community of Mumbai goes a step further in the process of drying fish. They apply spices to the ubiquitous sukkha bombil or dried Bombay duck, which is then packed and sealed, and bought by homesick families who secretively hide their stock in checked-in suitcases on their flights back to the west.

Pickling is one of the main summer routines in a traditional home. The best produce from the garden or the market is sourced, spiced and laden with oil to be savoured through the year. Each home has its own recipe and all of them are delicious.

Pickling isn’t just a matter of following a recipe from the books. It is a ritual. One that involves the entire family. There’s usually someone to wipe the vegetables and fruits, someone to cut them, someone to prepare the barnis (ceramic jars) and always someone to eat the bulk of it before it reaches the salting stage.

In Mumbai’s wadis and chawls, it was always a community affair. Women from different houses would clear up their schedules and spend afternoons together at one chosen lady’s house, making pickle while sharing gossip.

Summer in Mumbai is also the time for masalas or spice mixes.

Many communities like the Maharashtrians and East Indians make their own masalas for the entire year.

Places like Lalbaug and Masjid Bandar see a steady stream of customers picking and choosing the best spices. Each lady comes equipped with a humongous bag and a tattered piece of paper that has the quantities scribbled down. This paper is guarded fiercely, as recipes are handed down generations and is absolutely not the sort of thing that is shared.

At this time of the year, it is such a delight to walk through some neighbourhoods that still have spice mills, because the aromas are mind-boggling.

Most households have their own trusted spice mill and maintain deep familial relationships with the owners. They’re usually on a first-name basis, and pleasantries and details of respective family members are swapped as the spices are handed over for pounding.

The East Indians have a fascinating tradition of hand-pounding spices that is done by a troupe of women from Gorai. Families book them in January for the summer season of April and May. Sadly, not many of these ladies are left to continue this profession.

I love to watch how the women of the houses all around me place all manner of spices on brightly coloured old sarees under the sun.

Each of the spices is cleaned by hand and turned till crisp in the scorching heat.

Souring agents like the pretty kokum fruit and tamarind are also sun-dried and preserved in tall barnis that go to the back of dark cupboards.

Mango, in all its stages of ripeness, is used in murabbas, aam papads, marmalades, jams, aamchur, squashes and aam ras to stock up for the rest of the year.

The monsoon and its melancholy will be here soon but summer is truly a time to tune into the nostalgia and romance of little jars brimming with seasonal goodness and the sweet lull of gossip in dappled corridors.

DENISE D’SILVA is the author of The Beyond Curry Indian Cookbook. Follow her on Instagram @eatwander.repeat and find more of her Eat. Wander. Repeat column here