Kanji winters

After a scorching north Indian summer season, the golden solar of winter brings a 24-carrot deal with

North India’s winter of polluted discontent, which makes day by day headlines, is compensated for by a sudden efflorescence of greens and fruits.

After the furnace fury of the new season which scorches the land, a delicate solar colludes with the soil in a benign conspiracy to supply an exuberant abundance of verdure. Cauliflowers like cumulus clouds tumbled to earth, sunburst oranges and maltas, sui saag and sarson, which with makki roti makes for the necessary Sunday lunch, large moolis of nose-tingling pungency which make good stuffing for paranthas served with lashings of ghee.

Unlike their anaemic summertime cousins, the robustly purple winter carrots go into the making of gajar ka halwa, wealthy with creamy khoya and slivers of almonds, served lava-hot, wreathed in fragrant steam that mingles with the chilled vapour of the ice cream ladled on prime.

My private favourites are the purple-black carrots that mark the appearance of the chilly season in north India, and are used to make kanji, the mildly fermented, tartly astringent drink made by steeping thickly sliced carrots in brine with black mustard seeds, and letting them bask within the golden glow of winter sunshine.

Kanji may be very a lot an acquired style, and I acquired it years in the past, not in north India however in what was then Calcutta.

I don’t know if the black carrots had been regionally grown or travelled all the way in which from the north, however each winter in Calcutta, Bunny’s mom would have massive clear-glass jars of kanji soaking within the solar, perched on the window sills of the flat the place Bunny’s dad and mom lived.

Isn’t it prepared? I might ask. Be affected person, we’ve to provide it time, Bunny’s mom would say. When the purple color of the kanji confirmed it was prepared, the beverage was drained to the final drop, and the pickled carrot slices eaten with a satisfying crunch.

When we moved from Calcutta to NCR, Bunny continued the kanji custom within the stick-and-carrot clime of at present’s north Indian winter, by which air pollution is the punitive stick and the carrot of reward is simply that.

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