Spice route to the past

• SUBHA J RAO   –   The Hindu

Think pickles and you’re immediately transported to childhood. When summers meant mothers, aunts and grandmothers working their way through mounds of cut mangoes, measuring out spices, salt and freshly-pressed gingelly oil. Finally, the spicy mix would go into huge, waist-high jars, be covered with a cloth, and tied with a piece of string. The pickle jars were off bounds for most; only the chosen lady of the house would do the honours every day — air out the mix, give it a quick stir with a dry ladle, and re-seal the jars till the contents inside were ready for consumption.

Once we left home, moved cities and took on new culinary influences, relishes and salsas took on new meaning and maagali kizhangu and maainji oorugai became things restricted to a few hundred households.

Now, traditional pickles and thokkus are making a comeback, and how!

Spice Route Gourmet

Express Avenue and Ampa Skywalk

USP: Drumstick pickles, maagali kizhangu

The aroma of a spice mix handed down generations hits you the minute you walk into Spice Route Gourmet inside Express Avenue and Ampa Skywalk malls. You automatically veer towards the source — four aromatic bowls bearing pickles usually never seen outside of a peengan jaadi (porcelain jar) in a home. There’s tender drumstick enveloped in a fragrant masala, amla dusted with spices and left to soak in gingelly oil, a glistening green gongura, and lemon pickle made according to a hand-me-down recipe.

The pickles are usually rationed out, because the demand is high, but the company refrains from mass production.

Founder Kannan Doss fondly remembers a visit to Salem, when he got to sample a lady’s delicious cooking. The meal included a memorable pickle. When he started Spice Route Gourmet, she was roped in to make traditional but rarely-seen pickles. The drumstick pickle and maagali kizhangu are made by her using quality ingredients sourced by Kannan.

“The pickles are replaced every seven days. Usually, they are all sold out by then. We make them in batches of 50 kg for distribution among our outlets, and, sometimes, have to stop people from bulk purchases,” he smiles.

A Telugu lady from Chennai makes maavadu in the Andhra style. “During pickling, she does not allow anyone to enter the room. Luckily, we’ve managed to find these precious people,” he says.

Also popular in their store are the curry leaf pickle and the tomato thokku that follows Kannan’s wife’s recipe. Desi tomatoes are simmered for hours; the masala features Kashmiri and Byadgi chillies, for flavour and colour, and a dash of jaggery cuts through the tartness. As for gongura, it follows the style of Kannan’s grandmother. “She would ferment it for three-four months in the loft (paran). We’d yearn to get a spoonful.”

The store also does a mean organic brinjal pickle, inspired by the ennai kathirikkai.

Balmaadi Estate

Select organic stores

USP: Narthangai, avakkai

Unnamalai Thiagarajan speaks about her friend Manju with fondness. It was she who gave her the recipe for avakkai. Today, the pickles from Balmaadi Estate, made just once a year, are known for their neat flavours. The ingredient list comprises mostly organic fare and no stabilisers or preservatives. The stars, of course, are the Rumani mangoes and narthangais that are plucked from Unnamalai’s garden in Alwarpet. “I started doing this 10 years ago; it was just an attempt to share with others what I do for my family,” says Unnamalai, 56. Last year, she sold 350 small bottles of avakkai and 300 of naarthangai.

Before the summer showers, the fruits are plucked and dropped into waiting nets or gunny bags, before being washed and wiped. The next day, Unnamalai and her domestic help sit around a large sheet and prepare the mango. The men help chop the mangoes, seed intact, in one stroke after placing them on a teak block, while the women ready the masalas. All come together in a huge enamel vessel. By evening, the pickle is ready to be stored in large jars. They are repackaged into smaller bottles once orders come in.

Jyo’s Pickles

Specialty food stores

USP: Coriander and ginger pickles, avakkai

You may have seen the delightfully packaged Jyo’s Pickles in some specialty food stores. The glass bottles are covered with a cloth and tied with a string. “My mom’s idea,” smiles Sweta Garapati, co-founder.

Sweta has fond memories of the pickle-making ritual at her grandmother’s home in Ayodhyapatnam near Vijayawada. Even today, their pickles are made and packaged there.

“It’s a way to ensure the taste stays the same and also provide employment to the women in the village,” says Sweta. “The wives of marginal farmers don’t have much to do when there is no work in the fields. We employ them to clean the ingredients and take care of packaging. My grandmother still makes the pickles,” she says.

The brand makes about 500 small bottles a month, and the range comprises mango, tomato, red chilli, gongura, coriander, and the like. There are no preservatives and they are packed in glass bottles. Their pickles, especially ginger and coriander, work beautifully as spreads and in sandwiches. At the Old Madras Baking Company, the grilled chicken sandwich uses ginger pickle and the three-cheese melt has a liberal dollop of coriander, says Kamalika Krishmy, franchise owner, Egmore.

Jyo’s was also created to cater to friendly demands from friends, and Sweta says they stick to seasonal pickles. Gongura and red chillies, for instance, are made in batches whenever there’s a fresh patch ready for harvest. “Coriander is a common pickle in our house, and only after we starting bottling it did we realise that it’s rarely retailed,” she says.

Jyo’s sources raw materials directly from farmers, and claims it doesn’t add anything artificial. From June, they hope to retail out of Hyderabad too. “What’s most important is that people appreciate the taste; it’s in keeping with the current trend of eating clean and going back to the basics.”

Moturi’s

Available on orders and at Crimson Chakra

USP: Avakkai pickle

For generations, women in the Moturi family, which runs Crimson Chakra, have been making avakkai pickle in their ancestral home at Aargullu near Gudiwada. The mangoes are sourced locally or from their own farm, and the pickle making was a celebratory affair. Women in the village would gather, clean the ingredients that went into the much-celebrated pickle, and step back. The matriarch of the family would do the final mixing. The resulting delicacy, manna to many, would be parcelled off to family far and wide, and some lucky friends as well.

It was these friends who craved more that gave the idea for Moturi’s the brand. “One day, at the dining table, over a five-minute conversation, Moturi’s was born,” says Ashmita Boopathy Moturi.

The pickles are made in Chennai, with most of the mangoes coming from the trees at Crimson Chakra, and a few from a trusted seller in Mylapore. Next up, they plan to launch ginger and cauliflower pickles.

“My mother-in-law Lakshmi makes the pickles, a deeply meditative process for her. The mixing is always done near a tulsi plant, and she meditates once it’s made, because it is a gift from Nature, and the good vibes must be passed on to the end-user,” says Ashmita, who helps market the brand. Lakshmi’s daughter Indrajala handles the packaging and designing.

Even if there is demand, the Moturis plan to keep their enterprise small. “I’m a medical engineer and I believe that food is a powerful language the body understands. As important as the food, is the manner in which it is prepared and the motive behind it. Niche heirloom pickles are more flavourful and you cannot discount the fact that they’ve been made by someone who loves doing so,” says Ashmita.

The first batch of 150 bottles of 500 gm (Rs. 225) each has almost been sold out. They sent out a pack to Bangalore, and some friends carried them abroad as well. “People like the fact that we use virgin gingelly oil and locally sourced ingredients. Our chillies come from Gudiwada, where they are specially ground in a chakki,” says Ashmita.

Once the initial buzz subsides, Ashmita and Indrajala have their work lined up — learning to make pickles from Lakshmi.

Terra Earth Food Store

Neelangarai, Abhiramapuram

USP: Green pepper, kadaranga pickles

It’s difficult to not get caught up in Meera Maran’s enthusiasm as she explains Terra’s approach to pickle making. They began serving pickles along with millet-based dishes, and before they knew it, there was great demand. Now, Terra makes traditional pickles such as maainji, green pepper, kadaranga… “I won’t even call them specialty pickles; they are simple things that are usually found only at home,” says Meera, founder. But, they do add a little twist, because at Terra, ‘variation is our theme’, she laughs. So, an infusion of jaggery reduces the bitterness of kadaranga. “With pickles, you need to stick to a traditional taste palate; pickles trigger nostalgia,” adds Meera, whose team also makes cauliflower and carrot pickles, and a luscious keerai pickle using arakeerai or sivappu keerai. All the pickles use Himalayan salts, and organic, cold-pressed oils, and, sometimes, organic unfiltered apple cider vinegar.

Meera says their pickles work as spreads too, and go well with millet sevai or their upma bread sandwich. The gongura pickles originate from the patch of green at Terra. “Everything is made in a limited quantity. We don’t want to go bulk.”

Prices range from Rs. 90 for a 100-gm bottle of maainji to Rs. 290 for a 300-gram bottle of green pepper pickle.