Sampling Indian Food for Divali with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
My family has had fun living
in Virginia and California as a military family. We learned about Divali, the Indian Festival
of Lights in Virginia thanks to our Indian neighbors.
In fact, my fondest memories
of being a Navy wife in Norfolk, Virginia, home of the largest Naval Base in
the world, was swapping Christian and Hindu sweets with my Indian neighbors as
we celebrated our different religious traditions.
Everyone in our apartment
complex was in the Navy except for our next-door neighbors, who were from
India. They always loved talking with my
daughter Florence, since their own grandchildren lived “up North.”
At Christmas, my daughter
presented them with a plateful of Christmas cookies – peanut blossoms with
Hershey kisses, chocolate chip cookies, Russian tea cakes and so on, she
proudly said, “I made these all by myself.”
The following year in
October, our next-door neighbor knocked at our door. She told us, “These are the traditional
candies we eat on our holiday of Divali.”
We thanked her and ate
everything in about twenty minutes. I
took the plate back in what I thought was a polite hour later.
Our next-door neighbor
invited us in when we brought the plates back.
We told her how much we liked the candies. We sat down, and she placed more of them in
front of us.
We could not stop eating the
candy that came in many colors with almonds and pistachios on top called barfi.
Indians cook this treat by
evaporating milk along with sugar and ghee, purified butter.
They spread the mixture on a
greased, round tray called a thali, and then, cut into it.
Other sumptuous goodies we
ate included nutty ball bundles called laddoos made from fried semolina flour,
sugar, ghee, milk, nuts, and carrots.
The only mouthwatering
sweets, though, had intriguing sweet and savory syrup on them. They did not know the name of the ingredients
in English, but several visits to India’s Clay Oven (now closed) in Monterey,
California revealed what these secret ingredients were: cloves, green cardamom,
black cardamom, and bay leaf.
This aromatic syrup flavored
sweet rolls called gulab jamun made from milk, flour, rose essence, and ghee as
well as little balls that had sugar candy inside rasgoolas.
Cooks make rasgoolas with
flour and chana, a soft cheese made by adding lime juice to warm milk and then
straining it through a muslin cloth.
Cooks make balls with the
dough, and then, soak them for ten minutes in the syrup.
My neighbor appeared out of
the kitchen with a plateful of saucer-sized orange coils that are one of the
most difficult sweets to make in the Indian kitchen – jalebis. I bit into the cold, crunchy crust of my
first jalebi to discover a rose-flavored syrup inside the coil.
The tricks to achieving this
culinary masterpiece are a perfect saffron-flavored dough, a coil squeezer, and
warm syrup. Cooks deep-fry the batter in
ghee, and then, place them in the warm syrup.
The coils absorb the syrup,
leaving the one side crunchy. Jalebis stay fresh for only one day, so my
daughter and I made sure that none were wasted.
I asked what Divali
celebrated. My neighbor told me that
there were two Divali stories. The first
tells that the day honors the God Rama’s coronation after he had conquered
modern-day Sri Lanka after being exiled from his home.
The second story relates that
the god Vishnu killed a giant demon. His
people celebrated his return with lights and decorations. The stories’ characters differ, but both recount
victory over adversity.
“The name of the festival
itself,” he continued refers to the little clay lamps with oil and wicks called
“dipa” set up in a row called “avali.”
Together they form, the
alternative name of the festival – “Dipavali.”
My neighbor said that Indians
celebrate Divali by doing things such as buying new clothes, buy new accounting
ledgers, and lighting fireworks. Most
importantly, Indians say prayers to Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, asking
her to visit their homes.
I said, “I think Lakshmi has
already visited me” which made the neighbors laugh.
Note: Parts of this story were printed in The
Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200, 000).
You can sample Indian food at
the Ambrosia Restaurant in downtown Monterey, California. They have a nice lunch buffet and lovely
dinners. I like lamb vindaloo (spicy)
and mango lhassis (mango yogurt drinks).
They also have lovely, bronze Nataraja sculptures located around the
restaurant.
You can buy ingredients for
making Indian food at home at the Asia-Pacific Market on Reservation Road in
Marina, California. They sometimes sell
live crab, spices in bulk, and have tropical fruit for sale.
By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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