Mmm methi.
Why we hate spinach and yoghurt, or love karela and bacon may be a matter of genetics, life experiences, or familiarity. Last week, when I was in Hong Kong, I tried century eggs for the first time, and though I did not barf, I strongly doubt that I will be craving them anytime soon. These preserved eggs have a jellied brown “white”, a grey-green yolk, and a smell something akin to a Sulabh Shauchalaya. I was very glad for the pickled ginger they gave with the eggs. I shall admit that for me, ammonia and sulphur are acquired, unfamiliar food smells.
There is no shortage of ingredients in Indian cuisine that are as abhorrent to many people. There are people with quirks – a friend hates eating anything white, another has given up baby brinjals because they remind him of roaches, and a third thinks ripe papayas and bananas stink. Then there are foods that sharply polarise opinion, the kind that divide families and friends (try waving methi under a Parsi friend’s nose and witness the facial contortions that follow). Here are a few others that incite disgust and delight:
Fenugreek leaves and seeds
In the hallways of apartment complexes in the Western world, there is a distinct scent that gives away the presence of an Indian immigrant household: fenugreek. More than cardamom or red chillies, the one ingredient that heralds our love for spice is methi in all its forms: seeds, fresh leaves and dried leaves (kasuri methi). For those who love it, it has a wonderful, earthy, bittersweet aroma. For those who don’t, it smells like strong maple syrup at best, and rancid garbage, dirty goat, or ripe body odour. The culprit for this aroma is sotolon, a highly powerful aromatic compound that affects the smell of our sweat and urine. Among foods that make you stink, methi is on par with garlic and raw onions.
Certain communities love fenugreek. Gujaratis make a dried chutney with ground fenugreek seeds, Sindhis use the seeds to flavour their kadhi, in Rajasthan they make a sweet relish called methi ki launji. The best way to enjoy methi without any of the odorous after-effects is to grow it at home, and to use the young, sweet shoots as a salad microgreen.
Jackfruit
From December to June, markets in Mumbai celebrate jackfruit season. There are dedicated handcarts, with adept sellers who peel and clean the fruit all day. It’s a joy watching them work through the spiny skin and sticky jelly inside; amateurs trying this could easily take off a finger or stab a nerve in their hands. Not so much fun for everyone is the smell that pervades fruit markets during these months; perhaps this is why, in recent years, jackfruit sellers have started covering the peeled ripe fruit with clear yellow plastic. Two compounds are responsible for the fermented cashew- and banana-like aromas of the ripe jackfruit: 2-methylbutyl acetate, and ethyl-3 methylbutanoate. They also make it smell, to some people, like sweaty hair, and dirty socks.
When it’s not ripe, and only as smelly as a freshly cut potato, jackfruit can put off people in other ways. Its meaty texture – it can be used as a substitute for mutton and when crumb fried, can pass off as fish cakes – is precisely why some vegetarians find it hard to swallow. Like with most unpleasant foods, a great way to get initiated into the jackfruit fan club is by eating it deep fried. Fried jackfruit chips, available in wafer shops around Matunga, taste delicious even to jackfruit haters. Chheda Stores in the Bhanu Jyoti building on Lakhamsi Napoo Road (Tel: 022 2414 4245) always has some in stock.
Liver and kidney
The two most commonly available forms of offal in Mumbai are victims of deep revulsion. To some, these organs’ jobs of processing toxins make them disgusting, to others it’s the smell (kidney can smell like piss) or the shoe leather-like, mouth-drying texture. Plenty of people hate them for all three reasons. Liver, however, can be delicious, when, for instance, lightly sauteed in spices on a tawa. Foie gras, the fattened liver of goose or duck, is considered a delicacy by the French. Possibly the best way to enjoy liver is as a pâté, or mousse-like paste made with fatty liver that is seasoned, and often served with a sweet, fruity aspic or preserve, to be spread on little toasts, and enjoyed in small bites of head-filling aroma. People who like both liver and kidney will agree that they taste excellent in pie, or chopped into kheema masala.
Both are very nutritious. Liver is rich in iron, vitamins A and B12 and folate. Kidneys contain selenium, B12, iron and zinc, along with all the fat-soluble vitamins. Smart cooks neutralise kidneys’s strong taste by brining them before cooking them very gently, to prevent them from becoming tough.
Bottle gourd, lady’s fingers and drumsticks
Disliked individually or collectively, these three vegetables are considered by detractors to have textural faults that cannot be made up by their flavour virtues. Bottle gourd or doodhi is too mushy; lady’s finger or bhindi is too slimy; and drumsticks are too woody. Fans of theirs, on the other hand, like the butteriness of doodhi, especially when paired with nutty channa dal; feel that deep-fried bhindi topped with masala makes potato wafers taste dull in comparison; and believe that the act of scraping out the flesh of drumsticks with their incisors, edamame-style, is addictive, meditative, and delicious.
Take a cue from the Guajarati muthiya, and use doodhi in an eggless cake. It provides moisture and texture quite the same way that zucchini improves cake. At Mangoes, the Mangalorean and Goan restaurant in Orlem, owner Sheldon Fernandes says that customers who have always hated bhindi like it in the eatery’s prawn and okra curry, even though it’s not fried, because he controls the cooking time and technique to make sure the slime gets broken down. Methods of doing this include adding acid to the dish (via lime or tomatoes), drying or roasting it before cooking it, and salting it at the very end. Drumsticks, alas, are not as easy to tackle – they take work to prepare and eat because they require much scraping, and have an acquired, slightly bitter, vegetal taste.
Asafoetida (Hing)
Any ingredient that has the word “foetid” in its name can’t be entirely pleasant. Hing’s sulfurous compounds make this resin (which seeps from the rhizome of the ferula herb) smell like flatulence or rotten eggs – possibly why it is also called devil’s dung. But once you temper it in a little oil, the sharp, pervasive odours turn into the soft aromas of sweet onion, roasted garlic, and warm spice. Hing is used in dals and other dishes that are hard to digest because it has many antiflatulent, stomach-soothing properties. In Thailand, a tincture called Mahahing is sold in chemist’s shops. Mothers apply it on infants’ bellies to cure them of colic. So while it smells like flatulence, it actually reduces the chances of it occurring.
The biggest grouse with hing is that when kept in the kitchen, its raw pungency seeps into cabinets and other ingredients. But for most families who like cooking with it, the occasional sulfurous blast is not a big deal, especially since there is no substitute to hing. An airtight container also helps. My favourite way to enjoy asafoetida is to temper it in ghee until it foams, add bits of green chillies, a pinch of rock salt, and then quick roast makhana or popped lotus seeds in it. As a TV-watching snack, this beats popcorn.
Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.