Flavours of a Coorg Monsoon – Bamboo Shoots Fry

From the early weeks of June, to the end of August, great, sullen formations of clouds rise from the West coast, climb the ghats, and engulf the hills of Coorg. The rain pours down in sheets, without a thought of interrupting itself and the roar of water fills your ears, as every stream becomes a raging torrent. Even in the rare, muffled silence, every leaf drips audibly. It is a time of rare beauty, for anyone willing to abandon the comfort of a warm room, and wander across the cloud covered hills, usually drenched to the skin, but exhilarated. There’s a delightful verse doing the rounds among Coorgs now, evocative of this season of rain and mists. Roughly translated, it goes something like this – the rains come pouring down, streams overflow, turning into rivers; the highlands are hidden, the forests darkened with mist. It’s time for dried meat, fresh water fish, crab curry, home-reared chicken curry, tender bamboo shoots and madde puttu (a sweet made from a medicinal plant) It’s the season of Kakkada for Coorgs.

The month of Kakkada spans mid-July through mid-August, a time when the busy rice -transplanting season kept people outdoors, hard at work, in need of warm, comforting food. With the incessant rain, the monsoon brought many, coveted gourmet treats – stores of dried, smoked meats and dried fish made an appearance.

Vegetables like the Mangalore cucumber, gourds and pumpkins were carefully stored in attics to shore up the bleak monsoon months; a special colocasia leaf that grows, orchid –like, on trees was steamed into puttus and dried jackfruit seeds pounded into a tasty chutney, or made into a rich, earthy curry, as the heavy rains flooded all farms and gardens. Golden segments of ripened Jackfruit pods were rubber through bamboo sieves, and the extract steamed in koovale leaves (Schumannianthus virgatus), that have a distinctive fragrance and delicate taste of their own, into koovale puttu a steamed rice sweet. This was carried down to the paddies as a snack to lighten the intense hard work of transplanting. There were small delicious crabs to be caught and curried, and this was when, traditionally, the wonderful Coorg vinegar, kachampuli was made. The fury of the monsoon rains is not quite what it used to be, and modern markets have taken care of the lean, monsoon months, but Coorgs have not lost their taste for old favourites. There are tender bamboo shoots to look out for, and this is when madde thoppe, a medicinal plant (Justicia wynaadensis) comes into season. According to our traditions, for eighteen consecutive days, the medicinal properties of the plant, which guard against many ailments increase, with one added on each day. Its fascinating that this plant, which grows all year round, should produce a concentration of medicinal properties just when the weather is at its most bleak, and people are exposed to cold, wind and rain, standing in flooded paddies – Nature’s Bounty? The juice is extracted from the leaves by crushing and soaking them overnight, then boiling them in water. The purple extract is a monsoon special all Coorgs wait for, to cook into a delicious payasa, or a puttu. Bottles of the juice are carefully transported to people living in other towns, so that they don’t miss this yearly offering from the land.

My mother-in-law’s monsoon kitchen, like my grandmother’s, was always filled with the tang of fermenting bamboo shoots. The slices floated in a large vessel of water that was changed daily, over 48 hours, to detoxify them. In a small outdoor kitchen, a huge vat of madde thoppe leaves simmered, on a wood fire letting off clouds of steam into the moisture -laden air. The juice would soon be cooked into a comfortingly soft payasa sweetened with jaggrey that was consumed in large, uninhibited scoops. Moss grew, grasshopper green, over roads, front yards and walls, innocent looking and dangerously slippery, one careless step sending you skating out of control. We walked to school from my grandparents’ home, cutting across a small wood, wading through a cold, stream. The rain came down in sheets, umbrellas flipped inside out in the gusts of wind and we carried our slippers in our hands, as the muddy little rivers that flowed over the roads threatened to carry them away. Embankments collapsed, sometimes blocking the way home; we hardly noticed, we were busy discussing what tea time specials might be set out for us on the dining table that afternoon. At home, if a door was left open, blasts of icy winds blew through and any outing meant returning drenched and cold, wiping sticky clumps of wet earth off your shoes on a metal scraper outside the door. The power supplies were disabled for days on end. And somehow, it never seemed to matter, because there was always a fragrant, delicious, much-anticipated seasonal treat waiting on the table.

And here’s the simple verse again, that makes the Coorg heart skip a beat. It paints a perfect picture in words, of the rain drenched landscape and all the riches it offers:

Jori bhuva male
Thumbana thod pole
Mucchina kunde
Irtana kaad
Onak erichi
Pacche meen
Njende curry
Naad koli
Baimbale
Madde puttu
Kodavak ikka Kakkada

Baimbale Barthad - Dry Fried Tender Bamboo Shoots

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 10 minutes mins

Course Main Course

Cuisine Indian

Servings 4 people

Equipment

• 1 Pan or Kadai(Wok)

Ingredients

  

• 3-4 tbsp Oil
• 1 tsp Mustard seeds
• 8-10 Curry leaves
• 3-4 Dried red chillies ,broken in half
• 4-5 Cloves Garlic ,peeled and lightly crushed
• 250 grams Bamboo shoots ,prepared

Dry Roasted Spices to Finish:

• 1 tsp Cumin seeds
• ½ tsp Mustard seeds
• ¼ tsp Fenugreek seeds

Instructions

 

• In a kadai or wok, heat the oil and when hot, drop in the mustard seeds. When they begin to sputter, add the curry leaves, dried red chillies and garlic, stir for a minute.
• Add the prepared bamboo shoots and fry of 7-10 minutes, until any remaining water evaporates, but the bamboo is still juicy and moist.
• Sprinkle with the dry roasted spices and serve with a squeeze of lime, hot ghee and akki ottis. A very simple and delicious way of enjoying the full flavour of crisp, tender bamboo shoots.

Keyword Baimbale Recipe, coorg bamboo shoots fry

ALL MATERIAL ON THIS WEBSITE IS COPYRIGHTED: If you wish to use any of tHIS material, KINDLY WRITE TO THE AUTHOR FOR PERMISSION.