Suvir

Preserving: Family, Relationships and Foods

A guest post by Tishya Doraiswamy, my most gifted and talented niece, a high schooler in Delhi.

It’s always wonderful to see family cooking together. Just the other day, I had the wonderful privilege of witnessing my grandmother teach Suvir – an uncle of mine, how to make her famous Lasora pickle – I got to see the two best cooks in my family work together.

A day before Suvir came to my grandmother’s house, she prepared everything in anticipation washing and keeping the Lasora out and ready to prepare.

The next day, Suvir came to learn the famous recipe – the only way to learn recipes from my grandmother is by watching and making them with her, since she only ever prepares food through estimation. However, the food she makes is always wonderful – and having an award-winning chef in the kitchen surely couldn’t do any harm.

Lasora, also known as pink pearl or Indian cherry is popular in India, especially when it comes to making pickles such as this one.

Garlic Chutney: Made for Usha Bua (paternal aunt) with hopes to indulge her as she always does me

Usha Bua believes that garlic chutney is good for her health. Belief and faith are as important as fact and medicine to the overall goodness of our being. 

If garlic, has her eating more plan based food, which she does as a vegetarian, then who am I to question the science that might not find veracity behind the flawed studies cited to her about the curative powers of garlic. 

Dr. Willet of Harvard School of Public Health often says that is spices, aromatics (garlic and such) and herbs, can get people eating mostly plant based diets, then go ahead and believe what you want to, and eat lots of good veggies, whole grains, legumes, pulses, and herbs and spices - and find yourself doing good to your body. 

And so, this birthday of my beloved Bua (dad's cousin sister), I was on a mission to make her a jar of spicy and delicious garlic chutney.

Strawberry and Cream Ice Cream

Strawberries-and-Cream Ice Cream - Recipe from Masala Farm

Half-and-half from the Battenkill Valley Creamery  along with eggs from our chickens and strawberries from our favorite strawberry farmer, Brian Talmadge of Black Lab Farm combine to produce the richest, "goldest", and creamiest strawberries-and-cream ice cream you can imagine.

Lucky for some, number thirteen

And just like that, the lovely gent helping me at the store in Khan Market, decided the weight of how many pounds of marmalade I would be canning. Thirteen pounds of citrus of four varieties. 

Mosambi (sweet lime), Keenu (Kinnow, a hybrid first develop in California mixing two cultivars), Malta (Tangerine) and Chakotra (Ruby  Red Grapefruit).

Armed with four more hands at our disposal, Smita and I decided to make even more marmalade. Marmalade that I was determined to make with hand-cut juliennes. 

It took us a good four hours to process the fruit. Shama and Kamal were wonderful abut learning quickly and then steadily going at the citrus till it was all done.

Smita and I made an apple cake as they readied the fruit to marmalade. Life was beautiful in more ways than one.

Menticultural Mandarin Marmalade

Preserving seasons through canning is not unlike preserving precious moments of our lives in our brains canning jar. 

Fruits we preserve, like memories and moments we save in our heads, ought to be chosen with utmost care. Only the best preserved. The mediocre, best let go, allowed to fade, removed where possible, forgotten over time, even better never committed to memory. 

Just as rotten fruit robs a jarful of preserve its goodness, so do a few low moments rob our lives of peace of mind. Robbing us respect for self, trust in fellow man, and worst of all, hope for the future. 

As I began making Mandarin Marmalade with my darling cousin-in-law Smita, I was thrilled to be at the side of a person, who if humans could be preserved, is worthy of canonized canning. Hers is beauty not skin deep. It stems from a deep well of mindful caring, and seemingly ancestral respect for fellow man. Veneration for tradition and honored values. 

Lucky me to have found a wonderful fellow jammer and beautiful Mandarin oranges from the gardens of three incredible women - Dr. Kavita Chaudhary, Smita and mom.