Espacios naturales protegidos (incluida Red Natura)

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ome stories evoke untroubled times, golden days that transport your mind, make you forget everything but the tenderness and exhilaration of those far-flung images. While attending the Bihar College of Engineering in Patna from 1948 to 1952, my father went once in a while for coffee with friends. The India Coffee House charged one-quarter of a rupee for coffee. It was a princely sum to the young college students, but my father got all he could from the treat, adding milk and sugar to the coffee since it did not cost extra, cooling himself for as long as possible under the coveted ceiling fans over the tables. There, he dis-cussed all manner of critical issues with friends. Their heads tipped to-gether in discussion until a strong point caused a sensation, whereupon the men would rear back, raise their voices, and fling their hands up em-phatically. Usually, though, the Coffee House was too expensive. For half the price, one-eighth of a rupee, Baba could get corn grilled in a char-coal oven by a street vendor, who first dribbled it in oil and then flavored it with masala. How delicious, how heady to stand and munch alongside the road. How rich the feeling of having enough coin for the act.

On family trips to India in the 1960s and ’70s, though, all the adults would mutter dire things about cleanliness when confronted by street vendors and steered us away. I was told that only people who grew up eating those foods

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could get away with it now. The rest of us had stomachs too delicate for the job. So naturally, nothing spelled nation to me quite like munching street foods right from the cart. I was tortured by longing for the sizzling aloo tik-kas, puchtik-kas, and shingaras as we passed by.

Eating on your feet near a cart and a fryer can conjure place like no other act. The ingredients are local, as are most of the other eaters standing with their hands cupped around puchkas and aloo tikkas, my mother’s favorites.

The people stand in relaxed postures, shoulders hunched slightly until they toss their heads back to catch all the savory juices. The dishes are mostly quite fresh, and they are cheap. It is the same the world over. Picture bagel carts in New York, cheesesteak vendors in Philadelphia. In my hometown of Pittsburg, Kansas, I think of snow cones at Lincoln Park. A Tunisian baguette filled with a fried egg, potatoes, and harissa instantly makes me think of hot desert sun. Forget seating arrangements. You could only eat those sandwiches on the go. Dhabas serving chaat, India’s savory, tart, hot, sweet street food, is at the heart of the country’s food culture.

In the southern states, the chaat experience is not the same as in North India. In the south, street corner vendors dole out hot idlis, medu vadas, and oothappams or spread dosa batter thinly onto hot griddles. Shingaras (or samosas in Hindi), though, are available in most Indian states.

But in the north, chaat is a category by itself. Any variety of it is an entic-ing blend of four tastes—sweet, sour, pungent, and spicy. The word chaat is derived from the Hindi verb chaatna, meaning “to lick one’s fingers clean”

after eating a tasty dish. One story has it that chaat came from a concoction prepared and eaten by Punjabi merchants as they sat managing accounts for their retail and moneylending businesses. To pass the long work hours, the men would nibble at puffed rice and soon began to add things like jaggery, ginger, and tamarind chutney. The resulting food was tasty enough that they began to lick their fingers after eating.

One beloved chaat is puchka. A filling made of small potato cubes or mashed potatoes, masalas (spices or spicy sauces), and boiled chickpeas is placed within a broken puchka. The tiny round puchka, made of wheat flour and semolina, is deep-fried in oil until it puffs up into a firmly crisp, hollow ball. This ball is then punctured from the top, filled with potatoes, boiled chickpeas, or boiled bean sprouts, and dipped in water spiked with coriander, black salt, green chili paste, mint, cumin, and sometimes tamarind. In Delhi

they call it golgapa, and in Mumbai it’s panipoori. The water and fillings can be made more or less pungent according to taste.

Chaat wallahs (snack vendors) offer strained yogurt to ease digestion and serve green coriander chutney and sweet tamarind-date-jaggery chutney to perk up the flavors of chaat and entice your taste buds. And these never fail to do so.

I ate street food only when I wasn’t with my parents. The memory of it now transports my mind, like my father’s, to exhilarating times. My husband, Terry, and I went to India in 1986 after our two-year Peace Corps assign-ment, and for the first time in my life I saw India without a family filter. We rode buses, bought tourist-class train tickets, and sat for hours during the long overland journeys. En route, we discussed the United States with Indian schoolteachers on holiday, university researchers, and engineers on business trips. They clustered around my husband and asked thoughtful questions, gave inquisitive nods of encouragement as he talked, and generally made him feel welcome. I held back, viewing these encounters with the mass of travelers in India with trepidation. My family had kept my brother and me separated from other travelers. No buses, ever. No waits at train stations. No standing in line at ticket counters and chatting with those nearby. The ordinary ebb and flow of travel in India in those days was time consuming, sometimes dirty, and always chaotic. To lessen these stresses, we arrived by family car, had our bags deposited, and walked directly into our compartments. This time, I was in the India on the other side of the glass. The one that roiled with life and strife, the one that beckoned from beyond the window.

At the southwestern town of Cochin, Terry and I purchased samosas from a street cart. It was a rare treat, my first street vendor food (other than coconut milk in the north), and we reveled in the experience: the hovering patrons, the beeping motorized rickshaws, the sizzling morsels, and the gritty texture of pavement beneath our feet. The act of eating absorbed all the attention of the patrons. There was little talk. Since we had lived in North Africa for two years, our stomachs had linings like cast iron. We were now qualified to stop at any street stand with no fear and, oh, that taste was sweet. Next, we bought overnight accommodations at a government-run hostel. We crossed the bay by small boat and arrived at what was once an opulent palace. It had been built on an island, covering it entirely. While it had a bit of a neglected air, the marble “bones” were solid, sweeping, and elegant. I was transported to the era of the Raj; we drank tea and ate breakfast breads in the morning under

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the soft wap-wap of ceiling fans on the veined-marble, open-air veranda. Of all the images of that trip, I carry with me the hustling beep-beep of cars, the rickshaws, the maids with short straw brooms sweeping marble floors, samosas off a cart, and tea on a veranda. As it did for my father before me, food links me directly to place, and to the memory of untroubled days.

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puchka (chickpeas in tiny puffed breads with spices) Serves 6–8

The night before you want to serve, grind the following and make a paste:

5–6 mint leaves, minced

2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, minced 1–2 green chilies, chopped

½ teaspoon cumin seeds two shakes black pepper

½ teaspoon black salt (regular white salt can be used) Put the paste into 2 quarts of water.

Add 2 tablespoons panipoori moshla (found in Indian food stores) and re-frigerate overnight. Strain the water before serving.

Also, the night before:

Cook 1 large potato in its jacket. Cool and store in the refrigerator overnight.

For the puchka, knead the following until smooth, cover, and set aside 30 minutes:

1½ cups semolina (sooji) 1 teaspoon oil

1 teaspoon flour salt

club soda

vegetable oil in a small, deep pan or wok to deep-fry the breads

Make grape-sized balls with the dough, press with a tortilla press, or roll with a rolling pin to about 1½ inches in diameter. Fry the resulting flat rounds in medium-hot oil until crispy. In the end they should be about the size of a ping-pong ball.

Or, buy ready-made puchkas at Indian grocery stores.

To serve:

Place one 16-ounce can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans) in a small serving bowl. Peel the potato, cube it into ½- to ¼-inch squares, and place in a small bowl. Keep the spiced water with a ladle and the small puchkas nearby. Place a puchka in your palm, puncture it with a thumb, put in one or two potato pieces and several garbanzos, and then dribble in the panipoori water. Add tamarind chutney or green coriander chutney if desired. Pop into your mouth.

Napkins are needed!

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aloo tikka (spicy potato patties) Serves 4

2 potatoes, peeled, boiled and mashed with a fork

¼ cup onion, finely chopped 1 green chili, finely sliced 1½ teaspoons salt 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Mix all the ingredients in a small bowl and form 2- to 3-inch patties. Heat the oil in a heavy frying pan. When hot, place the potato patties in a single layer around the pan. When lightly browned, turn. Serve with taetul (tamarind/

date chutney and/or coriander chutney) and slivers of raw onion.

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taetul chatni (tamarind/date chutney)

16-ounce bag of ground, mashed dates (or whole dates, soaked in water for 2 hours and then blended in a food processor)

3 tablespoons tamarind paste

½ teaspoon salt

½–1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

½ teaspoon ground coriander

½ teaspoon ground cumin

2–3 tablespoons brown sugar, or gurr (palm sugar); adjust quantity as needed

Mix the above ingredients in a small bowl. Adjust spices to taste. Can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 6 weeks.

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The recipe for the cilantro chutney mentioned in this chapter is on page 29.

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shag-piang pakora (spinach and onion fritters) Serves 4–6

1 cup chickpea flour

¼–½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

½ teaspoon salt, or to taste

½ cup water

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

8 ounces fresh spinach, chopped (frozen, defrosted spinach also works)

½ of an onion, thinly sliced

Mix the chickpea flour, cayenne powder, salt, and water in a small mixing bowl. Adjust spices to taste. In a separate bowl, mix the spinach and onions.

Heat oil in a frying pan, and when hot gather a 1½- to 2-inch clump of the spinach and onions between your fingers and dip into the flour mixture to coat. Place batter-covered pakora into the hot oil and repeat until the bottom of the pan is filled. Fry pakoras until golden brown, turning to get all sides.

Serve warm with taetul chutney [see recipe on page 119] or fresh cilantro chutney [see recipe on page 29].

Variations: Use other vegetables of your choice, such as ¼-inch-thick sliced potatoes, cauliflower florets, onions by themselves, or whatever takes your fancy.

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