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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

Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
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.
Kaveri Ponnapa

Kaveri Ponnapa is an author and widely published independent writer on heritage, food and wine. She is the author of The Vanishing Kodavas, an acclaimed cultural study of the Kodava people, and a collection of Kodava poems, A Place Apart, Poems from Kodagu. Kaveri is an acknowledged authority on Kodava culture, history and food traditions.

  1. Jyothi Arun says:

    Baimbale curry and Otti is my favourite too! Thank you for the recipe. Would like to read your book Vanishing Kodavas. Will purchase soon during my visit to Bangalore.

  2. Hina Gujral says:

    Every time I read your posts it makes me fall in love more and more with Coorg and also my roots, which are at Nainital. The way you have nurtured your traditional cuisine, culture through your blog is really commendable and so so inspiring.

    1. kaveri ponnapa says:

      Hello, Hina, thank you for taking the time to write in. I am delighted that you enjoy The Coorg Table, there is so much that our small community has to offer the world. And yes,we all keep on falling in love with Coorg again and again! I hope you can visit someday, if you haven’t already. Your home, Nainital, is very beautiful too, I have been there a few times. I’m sure you have interesting local dishes to share too. Do keep visiting these pages, and try out the recipes. Warm wishes, Kaveri.

  3. Kaverappa Padeyanda says:

    Baimbale wow! It’s taking my days back to my childhood. We use to go like hunters in search of biamble…..Biamble and Otti is my all time favourite……..Missing Coorg……..

    1. kaveri ponnapa says:

      Hello Kaverappa, thanks for visiting this page. Yes, akki otti and bimbale in any style is the perfect combination,and it brings back memories of Coorg. I hope we all some this year. Do share The Coorg Table’s posts with your friends.Best wishes, Kaveri

  4. PanCuisine says:

    Hi!

    I was hunting for Coorgi Pork curry and came across this site. Bookmarked your pork recipe and i was very pleasantly surprised to see this bamboo shoot recipe. I didn’t know it was popular elsewhere other than in the North East. Great to know the common devotion to ‘pork and bamboo shoot’ though the spices and preparation style definitely varies :D. Lovely recipes!

    1. Kaveri Ponnapa says:

      Thanks very much for writing in – yes we love bamboo shoots and pork,also colocasia, wild mushrooms and bracken ferns, and a number of other ingredients that are popular in the North East. Another favourite we all love is dried and smoked meat.But we cook everything very differently, and that, I think, is the most interesting part of all. I hope that you enjoyed the recipes, would love to hear how they turned out.

    1. Kaveri Ponnapa says:

      Crunchy, tender and delicious….we can never complain about the rains, when we get treats like this. It makes my mouth water too, just looking at the picture.

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