Masala
A bag sits on my kitchen table. Inside are neat parcels of gnarled roots and dry leaves, stars and tiny planets, cylinders and spheres, all manners of red and black fire. I open each parcel, releasing the aroma of the souk and the mandi into my kitchen. Fifteen parcels in all – my grandmother’s spirit hovers at my shoulder as I clean out the odd bit of grit or branch. There, I say to her, satisfied? She mumbles to herself and floats away to sit on top of the fridge. From this vantage point, she guides my nose and hand as I roast each pile of treasure on a slow fire.
The coriander seeds are plump but light hearted. They jostle out on the hot pan, a fresh green gold. They splutter and chirp cheerfully. But as they respond to the fire, they turn darker, sullen. I have to watch carefully that the seeds don’t turn bitter with the heat. Off they come just as the aroma turns from green to smoke.
The cumin seeds are next, each a perfect oblong, eight ridged and tapered sharply at both ends. They know their worth, sedately pouring out of the packet, heavy and weighty. They scratch the skin as they dance on the hot pan. The heat releases the oil trapped in the ridges and the seeds lose some of their weight, turning lightly from grey to brown.
Smaller quantities of more exotic spices follow, some of whom I cannot name in English and only bring into my kitchen on this one day each year. I am making an annual supply of Dhana-Jeeru, a garam masala powder that lists fifteen ingredients, from a recipe handed down to me by my grandmother’s mother.
As the poppy seeds roast, I stand sentinel, stainless steel spoon at the ready. I remember a fleeting childhood memory. But first, the stainless steel spoon. Poppy seeds are full of hidden moisture. While roasting them, gauge the level of lachrymosity at the start – the moisture causes them to cling to the cold spoon when you swirl it through the tiny spheres of pale cream. As the fire burns up the tears, so do the seeds gradually dry out. When they no longer stick to the spoon, they are ready to leave the heat. By now, the cream is the deeper yellow of Cornish clotted cream.
My grandmother had a rather unconventional childhood in French Pondicherry. Her own mother, married young to an older, stern man, was bewildered by the sophisticated society in which she was expected to hold court. Drinking champagne (try pronouncing each hard consonant like my ancestress did – cham, pag, nee) and eating biskoot was no compensation for being left out of conversations at parties and being ignored by remote husband and his friends. She took refuge with the much friendlier staff in the kitchen. It was here that she felt most at home. Here she learnt to give deft little exotic touches to her cooking, happily adopting French and Tamil cooking ingredients and techniques to produce her unique take on Parsi cuisine, the likes of which had never before graced her husband’s table. Fortunately, he approved at least of her culinary skills and their daughter, my grandmother later brought these recipes with her into her marital home.
As a toddler, I have a memory of crawling into the backyard in search of my grandMamma. I could hear her voice raised in admonishing tones. There she stood, all four and a half feet of plump, pink pugnacity. Arms akimbo, tiny bun skewered mercilessly with large hair pins, feet peeping out from underneath the full length house coat. She was supervising the grinding of the masala for her signature chicken curry, adapted from the Tamil Molagatanni into our family’s beloved Moltani. The kitchen help sat crouched over the glistening black stone, small piles of roasted cashewnuts and poppy seeds at the ready. The stone was dry, no drop of water would taint this masala. As the boy rhythmically bent over the task, first the nuts, the the seeds dissolved under the heavy pestle into the silkiest of pastes.
As the delicate opioid fumes rose from the poppy, she picked me up in her arms and turned to leave, with one final order: “Don’t stop grinding until you begin to yawn. Then bring the pastes inside.” The crushing of the poppy seeds would only reach its zenith when enough of the hidden oil had been released along with the most subtle of aromas. This paste created the silky texture of the final curry and was the culprit in the soporific effect a moltani lunch had on all imbibers.
I think of my grandmother as the poppy seeds slide off the spoon and then it’s time to take them off of the heat. The morning passes, in turn acrimonious and soothing as spice follows upon spice. Mustard, light as rain, black as night. Star anise, choking the back of my throat with its licorice smoke. Cinnamon, resisting the heat, and then, suddenly the house smells like fresh baked buns. Fenugreek, oh, its bitter beauty, the deal-breaker in this blend of spices. Sesame, subtle, sweet, like those indispensable yet often ignored people we take for granted. The house fills with the smells, some acrid, others unpleasant. What a wonderful miracle it is that each will miraculously blend into another to produce that rich fragrance that takes me back to my childhood home.
I have sacrificed the grinding of these roasted spices on the stone for the sake of my back and sanity. My kitchen blender does a half way decent job and I am not fussy – my grandmother shakes her ethereal head at this lazy girl but refrains from comment. As the powder emerges in batches, I have to leave the kitchen as the sneezing starts and the eyes water. A splash of cold water, a breath of air on my balcony and I head back inside.
The tall glass jars are lined up on the table, checked and rechecked for dry interiors. The red glass lids are cheerful as I fill each bottle and screw on the lid tightly. In this seaside town, moisture is the enemy of all this effort. I order the bag of spices only after I have spent at least a fortnight lathering my dry skin with moisturiser, a sure indicator that the monsoon has finally turned its back on the city. The dry season is upon us, with its flowers and cool mornings. It is now that the dhana-jeeru must be made and sealed off in its legion of bottles for the coming year. This one morning of work yields enough masala for my family and friends to enjoy through the year. All the dhansaak sundays, the aromatic chicken dishes and the vegetables elevated by its addition, beckon and entice.
My grandmother died when I was twenty years old. She never taught me how to roast the spices just right for her dhana-jeeru or tasted my moltani. But I feel her at my shoulder, pince-nez precariously perched on the little button of a nose, round face glowing in the heat. She comes to visit my kitchen on this day every year, making sure that her mother’s recipes are followed to the letter, and I like to think, to give her granddaughter a little spectral pat of encouragement and approval at a job well done.