Spice Trail

WHEN A BUNCH OF Tunisian traders stationed in present-day Kozhikode asked one of Vasco da Gama’s men why they had travelled across the globe, taking the rather circuitous route around the Cape of Good Hope, to come to India, he is said to have replied, “Christians and spices.” For centuries, since the time when the ancient Roman philosopher and military commander, Pliny the Elder, complained bitterly about Indian pepper draining the empire’s gold, India’s wealth of spices has stoked popular imagination and colonial ambitions in equal measure.

It was pepper that drew the world to the shores of Kerala, but the world of Indian spices, as anyone who has explored the mystery of Lucknow’s enigmatic lazzat-e-tam (potli masala) knows too well, is far more complicated than the pepper that once was literally worth its weight in Roman gold. And it is into this ocean of complexity that writer-podcaster-self-labelled ‘Khansama’ Sadaf Hussain has waded into with his labour of love that seamlessly combines history, science and recipes from across India. Love it is, but it is also Herculean labour, for like everything Indian, starting from Vidia Naipaul’s “million mutinies”, spices express themselves in as many ways as there are people populating our wondrous land.

So, we have the universe of the garam masala, whose ingredients and formulations vary from home to home, and it is qualitatively different, despite several of the ingredients being common, from Delhi’s chaat masala, or Maharashtra’s goda masala, or the East Indian bottle masala (which is unique to Bandra’s East Indian community). And all these are a world removed from the many masalas that define our cornucopia of pickles (from the Bihari kucha to Kerala’s pachadis), or the Bengali paanch phoron, or the sambar masala (which is not to be confused with the Parsi Khambati sambhar masala), or Kashmir’s ver (which has garlic if it’s used by Muslims and is without it, when seen inside a Pandit kitchen).

Hussain navigates these choppy waters of competing tastes, traditions and textures, travelling from Delhi’s Khari Baoli to Goa’s Mapusa and Kochi’s Mattancherry spice markets, from Mata Badal Pansari in Ahmedabad to Jodhpur’s MV Spices. What makes his work doubly rewarding is the bunch of recipes that follow each chapter and each one of them is like an invitation to start cooking.

The most striking feature of the book is its thematic architecture. If Andrew Dalby’s ground-breaking book on the subject, Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices, is arranged according to individual spices, Masala Mandi is divided into chapters that span the entire spice experience, from biryani to chai, to chhole/rajma, to kebabs, to street food.

What Hussain succeeds in conveying is how different combinations of the same spices express themselves differently to ensure, for instance, that the Ambur biryani has unique aromas and flavours that set it apart from the Dindigul Thalappakatti biryani, although both originate in Tamil Nadu. Likewise, it’s a unique spice mix that sets apart the surati from the suleimani chai, the latter being hugely popular along Kerala’s Malabar Coast. And the spice mix that goes into Amritsar’s iconic chhole is significantly different from what goes into the same preparation made in the neighbouring city of Jalandhar. Instances such as these can be multiplied and this is what makes Masala Mandi a page turner and each page of it a revelation.

This is a book that you will keep going back to.

booksflavoursMasala Mandi: A Guide to the World Of Indian Spice BlendsSadaf Hussainspices