Snack
The seventeen year old begs for deep fried potato thingies. It’s ten thirty at night. The potato blobs are out of a packet, not from scratch – I’m not a bona fide saint yet. Still, it’s past my bedtime and the kid is treading on dangerous ground. Muttering imprecations, I manage not to set the kitchen on fire. As they fry, I think about all the healthy stuff he prefers not to eat. We have enough fruit and salad veggies in this house to certify as a farmer’s market. Ditto for eggs and milk and bread and butter. But no, only the artificial stuff, out of a packet, will do the important job of filling up that bottomless pit I love and call my son.
It gets me thinking. About the snacks we ate as kids. Packaged food was almost unheard of back in the day. Maggi made its appearance when I was studying for my Master’s degree in Pune in the early 1990s and it was a godsend to us poor paying guest students. Much maligned these days, it can’t be denied that an entire generation survived hellish college canteens and messes, thanks to that friendly yellow packet.
But before Maggi? There were biscuits, sure, but we didn’t eat too many of those. What we did eat a lot of was bread. Modern bread, to be exact. White, sliced, bland. Toasted, buttered, jammed or cheesed. Loaves of it disappeared down our throats every evening at tea time. Toasties made in the old fashioned way – the sandwich went into a square metal receptacle which clamped shut. The long handle made it easy to toast on the fire. Inside the sandwich was crammed a mixture of cheese, onion, tomato ketchup and chillies. Golden brown, crisp and oozy, it’s the one snack from my childhood that my boys love. They add unnecessary bits to it – mostly meat – but it’s drool worthy on its own.
The cream off the top of boiled and cooled milk. Sprinkled with sugar or with a blob of jam swirled through with a finger. Hot chapatis or bread to soak it up. Pure milk fat. Totally sinful, totally heaven.
Beer mugs full of banana milk shake. So thick a spoon was needed to help it out of the mug and down our throats. Cold coffee or mango milk shake were a rare treat. It was mostly good old banana shake that waited in the fridge when I got home from school. I would drop my bag, head to the kitchen and stand in the cool rush of air from the open fridge door, downing that shake, feeling the energy rush to my head.
A house speciality was ghee gor no chas. Essentially, a treacle made by melting the best jaggery in the purest ghee. It had to be eaten quickly, scooped up with chapatis before it hardened and became jaw breaking toffee. Amazing stuff. Fat, iron, sugar – an energy bomb for my delectation. Fair warning: it’s an acquired taste. I tried making it for my kids once – they turned up their noses at the gooey sweetness. Not surprising they turned out to be junk food fiends.
We used to get the most delicious little mutton samosas – thin wrapping, spicy filling. They were sold three to a packet, each a mouthful. We devoured them by the dozen when we could lay our hands on them.
When we begged and pleaded, my mom would make what I now call Eggs á la Zenobia. This was a slice of buttered bread on which a little volcano ring of grated cheese and finely chopped green chilli was used to anchor an egg yolk. The egg white was whipped to soft peaks and arranged on top of the yolk. Simply seasoned with salt and pepper. The whole thing was baked until the egg white became meringue like and golden. Mom always grumbled because this was a laborious process, we could each put away two or three easily and she had a small oven. But oh, that soft yolk oozing out when you cut into the middle, the melting cheese, the toasty meringue – now that’s what I call a snack…
Damn. It’s eleven thirty, and now I’m hungry.