The sweet smell of Caramel

When I was a small boy, every year it would be a festival or a function, be it a marriage, baby shower, birth announcement, or some such thing, where the old ladies would gather in the kitchen and make some sweets and savories that make your mouth water, just thinking about it!

A couple of bricks would be placed, clay plastered around and before you knew it, the stove was ready! They would have charcoal and "varaati's" (dried flats made of cowdung and straw) as the fuel. The extra large vessels reserved for the special occasions would be gathered from the "paran" (attic) and the ladies would go about the preparation process.

The chilies were sundried, the rice soaked and dried off on large towels, the trips to the mill to powder chillis, rice, lentils and even sugar(yeah, these were days before electric dry and wet grinders were there in every household!), the impatient waiting to see the goodies take shape!

Usually kids were not allowed into the kitchen area during these times. My grandmother always made an exception for me, simply because I would watch and ask her a million questions! Somehow between my grandmother and my grand aunt, who was referred to by every kid in every generation as "Ambulu Mami" , they would actually take time and explain things to me, probably because they were bored, or amused at my curiosity. Incidentally, Ambulu mami, was my grandma's aunt, but just a few years older than my grandma, so they were more like sisters!

They would take turns stirring the jaggery paste to make "vella paagu" aka caramel and then put peanuts, cashewnuts or split roast peas (pottu kadalai) and pour it into a large tray which had clarified butter spread on the surface.

At this point, the two ladies who had spent almost an hour stirring the syrup with the giant ladles with bored looks, would act like they just got an overdose of adrenaline. There would be a frenzy of activity, where they tested the temperature of the rapidly cooling mix with their fingers. In a motion that reminds you of gymnasts powdering their hands before going on the rings in the Olympics, the two of them would powder their hands with a mix of rice flour and powdered sugar and rip out small globs of this hot mix and roll it into little balls.

They had a small time window before the whole thing would solidify into a hard mass. "Reheating the mix would deteriorate the taste!", they would tell me. Sometimes they would put the plate (taambaalam) over a vessel with hot water to keep it from solidifying so fast. I am sure there is a lot of science behind the various phases of sugar syrup and the temperature vs. hardness response to rapidly cooling sugars, but this was definitely more art than science!

There is something to be said about making stuff and eating it, as opposed to just buying it and eating it. My grandmother is too old. My mom is going through surgery after surgery. Making all this stuff at home is definitely lost with the new generation, be it with San, my sister or Sister-in-law. They are all good cooks, but they would not venture past the usual rasam and sambar, to make laddus, or Jaangiris or even the therati paal.

"That is too labor intensive. Why spend all that time when I can go to Grand Sweets or Sri Krishna sweets and just buy it?" would be the question. In all fairness to the fair ones, they just don't have the motivation! They can all make the pongals, payasams and vadai's for the special occasion, but that is where it stops. My mother-in-law is still old school and she can do non-standard stuff and sometimes we talk about somehow capturing these things for posterity! She is probably the last of the dinosaurs, if you exclude me from the list.

Call me old school, but eating is just part of it. I would always long for the semisolid "Mysore pak" that is still bubbling on the stove than eat the cold solid pieces a day later. Same goes for Kaju Kathlis or Badam Halwa. Taking in the smell, the texture of what is cooking is a whole different deal. Somehow I feel Jr. and the little one are missing out on this.

It has been raining heavily here for the last two days. Wanted to get back in the kitchen and make something out of the normal. So went about making pottukadalai urundai's. Brought back lot of memories! San was definitely amused. She even videotaped the stuff. However, Jr. was just more interested in the eating than in the making. Who knows, even having a kitchen stove might become an alien concept two decades from now and the microwave will replace the stove!

Maybe there is no point to passing on these tricks to the next generation?

Here are the finished "yummies"...

I have been thinking a lot of my Sachi Patti (Saraswathi!) and Ambulu mami since yesterday. Do not know why. Went through my old photos and actually dug out this one from the early nineties. The one on the left is Ambulu mami and the one on the right is my grandma.

Like I told San, you can learn to do anything as long as you have great teachers! I was gifted with two great teachers when it comes to making caramel and kadalai urundais!

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