A Chef with a Dash!

RIP, Ma'am Buch!

Today (9th July, 2023), Mrs. Nirmala Buch (IAS:MP:1960) passed away at her Bhopal home. Since the last one year, she was not too well, and had been in and out of hospital. 

She was an illustrious civil servant, a tall leader, an activist and a passionate change agent, and will be much missed by me, her colleagues and many others who came in contact with her.

Personally, I will always remember her for offering me kanji at her home.

Respected Ma'am, Rest In Peace. Warm regards.

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Sharing a blog I had written a few months ago:

A Chef with a Dash!

An invitation from Ma'am Buch

Upon invitation from Nirmala Buch, an esteemed senior colleague and Former Chief Secretary, Government of MP & Former Secretary, Rural Development, GoI, we had assembled in March 2020 at her lawn under the mango tree and maintained covid protocol of discreet distance and masks.

For about an hour the six of us discussed how to help an NGO working for underprivileged school children. I had written a few stories for children, Mrs. Buch had learned, and had invited me to contribute to content development, and use of story-telling method to make the pedagogy more interesting. She mostly listened, and nudged us to work out a plan of action to be implemented in the coming months.

First Taste of Kanji

During our discussion, her cook served us tea and biscuits. I didn’t want tea. Ma’am asked, ‘Don’t you take tea?’

I do, Ma’am, but avoid too many cups since it gives me hyperacidity.

Okay, have a glass of kanji, then.

Her cook brought in a glass of kanji. It was about noon and rather warm, and the kanji was refreshingly cool and tasty.

It’s very good, Ma’am.

Have one more glass, it’s home-made, and a good probiotic drink. In UP and Bihar, most homes make and consume this drink during the warmer months and serve it to guests. A matka-full of kanji is readily available at most homes. It’s very easy to make.

This is the first time I had tasted kanji. Curious, I browsed through a few short videos on You Tube: how to make traditional kanji. Easy Peezy.

Why not try it, I thought?

Kanji Recipe

I bought the ingredients – carrot (red carrot since I didn’t get the recommended black carrot), and beetroot, and diced it to appropriate size, took a Borosil glass jar of about a litre capacity, put in the diced pieces, added common salt, sendha namak, a pinch of hing, freshly crushed black pepper, and roughly ground rai seeds. Heated 750 ml water bringing it to a boil, cooled it to warm level, and poured it into the jar, and stirred it with a long ladle. I covered the mouth of the jar with a clean white kerchief and tied it with a string.

On the terrace, I put it in the sun during the day, and brought it indoors at night since it was still a bit chilly at night. The next two days, I gently stirred the contents in the morning before putting it under the sun.

On the third day, I sniffed the delightful aroma, and tasted a spoonful. It was delicious. Poured from the jar two glasses, and garnished it with fresh pudina leaves from the terrace, and voila, served it with a flourish to Sanjukta: Organic pro-biotic drink made by a Chef with a Dash!

How could she not be impressed?!

Sun: Celestial Cook

Time now to offer my unqualified apology to the Sun – Food Producer, Processor and Preserver, and the celestial cook- who indeed made my kanji whereas in a hubristic trip I bragged of being the chef. Who other than the sun gently warmed my kanji in the morning, turned on peak heat at noon, and slowly tapered to sim in the afternoon?

Before the advent of electricity and refrigeration, every housewife knew how to harvest raw solar energy for food processing and preservation. Every house had a courtyard which worked as a solar energy processing unit. The women made pickles, badis, sun-dried vegetables (brinjals, tomatoes, beans) and fish for the lean season. 

Purnamasi, my grandmother made amazing mango pickle with liquid jaggery in a paatli - a mid-sized earthen pot with the right thickness made specifically by the village potter for pickling- mixed the ingredients, tied a clean piece of white dhoti to its mouth, and put it in the courtyard for the sun to work its magic. In a few days, the diced mango changed colour, the thickening liquid was a golden brown, and the heavenly aroma wafting from the pot was like an incense offering to the Sun god in thankfulness for filling our world with food and flavours. 

The women did not know of Fahrenheit or Celsius, but knew very well that badi (made with ash gourd, black gram, and spices) made in the month of Margashira would be soft and delectable but that made in Maagha with the same ingredients would be ruined. There is a Sambalpuri saying for that: Magshirar badi, gua ghiar ghari; Maaghar badi gai hadar sari (Badi made in the month of Margashira is soft and delicious like cow ghee, that made in Magha is like a cow’s bone!). By the way, the best badi in the world is still made in the rural areas of western Odisha, and the best badi I have tasted was made by Dhar mausi, our neighbour at Burla.

Conclusion

Thanks to Mrs. Buch for serving this amazing traditional drink, and leading me to make it myself. Thanks to the Sun which did all the work and fermented my kanji with tender care.

Cost of a glass of home-made kanji: about INR 2.5 or a little less, as per my back of envelope calculation.

Go ahead, try it, you’ll be pleased with yourself, and your spouse would be bowled over with your belated culinary skill.

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Notes:

1.    I’ve also used a small matka to make kanji, and the taste is even better.

2.    Kanji can also be made only with carrots. Nisha Madhulika in her You Tube video uses black carrots. I added beetroot, an anti-oxidant, and the colour was even more vibrant.

3.    The diced sticks are not to be thrown away. A few sticks may be put in the serving glass. These may also be eaten as marinated vegetable or mixed in a salad. Your choice!

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Postscript

Mar 29, 2023

I had posted the blog on Mar 24. I thank my readers for their very useful inputs on regional variations of kanji. Odia readers mentioned that in Odia homes kanji is made from rice gruel (peja) and not from vegetables, and that Kanji offered to Lord Jagannatha as part of chhappan bhog is also a rice-gruel based preparation. Someday, I hope to make Jagannatha Kanji.

I made a subsequent batch of kanji, and spiced it before serving. I took a drop of oil, roasted panch phutan aka panch phoran, a few pods of crushed garlic, a little crushed ginger, a whole red chilli, and curry leaves, and a few freshly-plucked pudina leaves. It tasted a lot better than plain kanji.

Here is how it looked:

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