July 21st
Soft brown rice idlis, with piping hot sambar and spicy coconut chutney for late breakfast. Idli and dosa are two South Indian breakfast staples, I would choose idlis over dosa while my brother and sister wouldn’t. Both dishes are made from very similar batters: rice and urad dal blended together, and then fermented overnight. Dosa batter is more diluted; pancake-y and can have a higher rice content as it is spread into a thin crepe and fried in oil/ghee/butter to become crispy. Idli batter is thicker, scooped into oiled metal trays with round moulds, and then steamed. I enjoy thinking about the joint effort between microorganisms and us, our dependency on them in the kitchen.
We picked up my sister from her bus stop after school and ate a late lunch together. Another fermented dish, this time a dough made out of semolina, flour, curd, salt, sugar and a pinch of baking powder to create soft bhature. The dough is rolled out into small circles, then deep fried to form puffy, pillowy (bread). Chole bhature is the dish together- a chickpea curry that soaks into the bread. I also ate mine with raw mango pickle: pieces of raw mango preserved in mustard oil, with salt, chilli and other spices. Over a week ago I ate lots of raw mangoes, sliced into slivers and dipped into a mixture of salt and chilli powder; sour-spicy-salty. Just the thought of them makes me drool.
My mother’s family is from Punjab, but they’ve previously lived in Gujarat for decades. It’s interesting seeing foods from both states combine, and especially apparent as I get to eat different food whilst I’m at my father’s. Timings differ, with my mother’s family eating each meal around two hours later, and they often eat more Farsan (side dishes) or Nashta (snacks), which are Gujarati words. For dinner we had papri chaat, often eaten as a snack sold in stalls all across India. A selection of papri(crispy fried savoury disks)-boiled potatoes-boiled chickpeas-spiced dahi(curd)-peanuts-sweet tamarind chutney is all assembled together in a ratio of your choosing, and then topped with sev. It’s tangy and moreish, and everyone has a taste and textual preference- I love mine with lots and lots of dahi. A day of dense dishes, I slept well.
Hi all I’m Ru (she/they), a designer and researcher based in South-East London. I’m part of Em–Dash Press, a small press that produces (amongst other things) a series of zines on our shared love of eggs. I’m also a part of à la carte, a collective that explores the relationship between food and care through a series of workshops. Find my instagram here.