Mulberry and Makoy Mornings
The riot of colours that March brings to Delhi's lawns and greens, stretches into April. The mulberry fruits abundantly, the Semal is in bloom, the Tesu has added to the colourful glee of Holi, and abundant small annuals flower and fruit. My college has a flowerig African Tulip to boast of and when I drew the attention of one of the hardwoking maalis on contract, to it, Joginder informs me that he had seen the tree but was unaware that it could produce such beautiful flowers. The African Tulip grows in abundance in Kerala and Karnataka, and there are a few straggly trees in New Delhi as well. It has a long flowering season, since I have seen it in bloom in January and December in Karnataka and Kerala, and in springtime at New Delhi.
March and April are flowery and fruitful months.. This year reinforced for me the discovery that creamy green long mulberries are sweet and delicious and can be consumed at once. The purple mulberry tree, with which I am blessed has tiny fruit that range from slightly sour to pretty sweet flavours as it moves fom a deep pink to a dark purple. For years, I have gathered the fruit and made compotes and jams and used them to add to cheese cakes and muffins. This year, I decided to use them as additons to a tamarind sauce that is called vettakozambu in Taml Nadu.
Made with a thick tamarind base, the vetthakozambu is a niche delicacy. Unless you were born in the previous century, it is unlikely to stir any memories. This sauce, eaten with hot rice or with curd rice or akki rotis, grows slowly on the palate, but if eaten more than once it becomes a part of an old treasured vintage memory that must be nurtured.
Usually, vethakozambu is made with dried and salted and then fried beries such as the turkish berry (shundekkai) or the makoy , both difficult to access fresh in North Iindia. Usually the sundried version of both berries can be bought from the Tamil Stores in different part of New Delhi, in the absence of obliging relatives who can ship it from the deep south.
Along wth the vethal which is shallow fried in oil, one can add fresh vegetables such as bhindi, ash gourd, colocasia, drumstick and shallots to name a few vegetables, to a salted and turmericked tamarind sauce and allow it to thicken. As it thckens, sambaar powder and salt are used to enhance the flavours and then a chaunk comprising of mustard seeds, kari patta, methi, hing a table spoon of chana daal and a red chilli or two, are sauteed in gingelly oil and poured into the vegetable and vetthal infused tamarind puree. Chopped coriander and karipatta leaves can be added yet again, and eating this with fried pappad and roasted potatoes and hot rice, makes for an exhilarating experience.
My recipe involves replacing the fresh vegetable with a large bowl of purple mulberries and adding them to the roasted makoy vetthal. The sauce takes on a beautiful beetroot colour and looks exotic, even to my trained vethakozambu viewing eyes. It was a great success on the two occasions that I served it, and my cup of delight flowed over. Mulberry and makoy Vettakozambu is something to salivate over.
Which brings me to the makoy part of my narrative. The makoy grows all the year round and in North India, only rural migrants and part-time gardeners seem to know about it. It grows pretty much everywhere and the leaves of the makoy are added to yellow dals. They have cooling properties and are quite delicious, ridding the mouth of ulcers. The makoy has tiny whire flowers and small berries that grow in green clusters. In Tamil Nadu and in other Southern states, it is referred to as mala-thakkali and the leaves are regularly consumed as cooked greens while the berres are gathered and soaked in salt and curd and dried in the hot season and when they turn brown as they dry , they are packed into little polythene packets and supplied to shops that deal in pickles, pappads and drid vadis and vetthals. The makoy fruit that are overlooked ripen into a beautiful orange or deep purple and are delicious . Their seeds are similar to those of the tomato, and the orange berries mimic the colour of tomatoes as well. They are possibly called malathakalis, (which translates into moutain tomatoes) and are accessible to any one who knows of this plant. The dried or green berries can be added to sambaar and the fried makoy is delicious as a garnish to curd rice as well.
The purple coloured fruit are sweeter than the tart orange ones and these grow in abundance at the college where I teach. Jayaprakash, who works on contract to Sulabh was walking out of the rewilded section of college with a handful of with makoy fruit. When I asked him if he had been gathering mulberries, he shouwed me the makoy fruit and shared them with me. This was a morning when I had an early class that made me scuttle breakfast, so the extended fruit was most welcome.
I'm sharing a picture of the fruit I gathered on yet another early morning, that Padma Priyadarshini so kindly photographed for me:
Also known as black nightshade or solanum nigrum, this small plant that grows in nature has amazing properties. When my mother was ill with jaundice and we were young children, she trained us to identify this plant and sent us out to the small common charbagh garden in front of our house to gather these leaves, since cooking them and eating them was a staple cure for jaundice. The berries are supposedly anti-inflammatory and provide natual relief from pain. So the garnish to this leafy and fruity narrative is the fact that not only is this a plant of great medicinal value, its edible leaves and fruits can be relished in a variety of ways.
