Spice of Life
By JANE AND MICHAEL STERN
CLIMBING THE MANGO TREES
A Memoir of a Childhood in India
By Madhur Jaffrey
Illustrated. 297 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $25
Food alone is only a necessity. In the life and lore of those it
nourishes, it can also be a spellbinding medium of communication.
When Madhur Jaffrey writes of being 4 years old and perched with the
other children in the mango trees in her grandfather's orchard by the
Yamuna River in Delhi, describing how the older ones on high branches
peeled and cut the fruit and passed it down so the younger ones could
dip the slices in salt, pepper, red chilies and roasted cumin all
this while the grown-ups snored in nearby rooms cooled with vetiver-
perfumed curtains she's not just telling us about her first
explorations of the notions of hot and sour. She's evoking a whole
world. Wistful, funny and tremendously satisfying, "Climbing the
Mango Trees" is a memoir about learning to taste, and about being the
precocious fifth child in a large, colorful family living in a
spectacularly interesting place and time India in the final years
of colonial rule....
Jaffrey's taste memories sparkle with enthusiasm, and her talent for
conveying them makes the book relentlessly appetizing. A breakfast
treat with a name that translates as "snack of wealth" is "the most
ephemeral of fairy dishes, a frothy evanescence that disappeared as
soon as it touched the tongue, a winter specialty requiring dew as an
ingredient." She remembers going with her mother to Old Delhi's Lane
of Fried Breads, where hot parathas were complemented by cauliflower
with ginger and green chilies or carrots stir-fried with young
fenugreek greens: "The hot, hot parathas floated in ... all puffed
up, ready to be deflated and devoured even before all the steam had
hissed out."
Jaffrey's description of the arrival of a man called the khomcha-
wallah for Saturday tea ("akin to telling a Western child that he
could have a whole candy shop for the entire afternoon") is
devastatingly delicious. He comes with a basket of chaat (hot and
savory snacks) that include dahi baras, fried split-pea patties he
spreads with creamy yogurt, salt, a hot chili mixture and, finally,
tamarind chutney "as thick as melted chocolate." "As we ate them,"
she recalls, "the dahi baras would melt in our mouths with the
minimum of resistance, the hot spices would bring tears to our eyes,
the yogurt would cool us down, and the tamarind would perk up our
taste buds as nothing else could. This to us was heaven."
Jaffrey provides many family recipes, including one for split-pea
fritters, as well as directions for preparing both traditional and
easy tamarind chutney. The whole package fritters, yogurt, chili
mixture and chutney is a stupendous dish, and not too hard to make
at home. But the full magic of Jaffrey's description has less to do
with the chaat's extraordinary flavor than with the presence of the
khomcha-wallah and the wondering appetite of a child....
Read more at NYTimes.com:
http://tinyurl.com/yy6rdw
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