Bengalureans are used to finding this ingredient all over the menu in their homes when winter hits the city, to the point of OD-ing on it. Avarekai has to be made into saaru, thrown into upma, simply turned into usli, patted into akki rotti, fried and cooked with mutton or eaten with ragi mudde. Whatever the form, every traditional home will do the avarekai drill through most of December and January.
Of course it’s a different thing now with the bean available through most of the year. But the sogadu -- the characteristic aroma and taste that the winter crop comes with, is unduplicable.
Most Bengalureans also look forward to the annual avarekai or avare bele mela this time of the year, hosted by the 35-year-old store Shree Vasavi Condiments in VV Puram. With a dear friend and home-chef in tow (how much avarekai can you eat alone?) the sampling begins. We decide to leave out the standard fare dosa and rotti we anyway make at home. Instead we make a beeline for the sweet dishes. First the avarekai jamoon, a tad disappointing because we break open the jamoon and find no bean, only to be told that the beans are boiled and then made into paste and added to standard jamoon batter. Hmph!
Time was when gramdmas and grandchildren and everyone in between in the lineage sat down to peel the avare beans from the pod, sift through the wiggly worms, soak the beans to produce hithikida-avarebele or hithakbele -- where the beans are de-skinned and split. (Dishes made with the de-skinned version are different and taste way differently; many retain the skin because its fibrous and nutritious). But now markets are awash with de-podded beans. And if someone is taking the trouble to cook a multitude of dishes, then you will jolly well go out and eat it to save yourself the laborious process.
Next comes the avarekai honey jilebi, a much more successful attempt at transforming the bean -- the light green crispy squiggles are sweet but end on a contrasting brackish note because of the bele. The hithakbele yellavare gets our thumbs up -- it’s got the best of all worlds in it -- it’s healthy, seasonal, uses a ground base of yellu or sesame in keeping with winter ingredients, with luscious coconut, jaggery, cashew and raisin, all bunged in with the boiled hithakbele. People, though, seem more enamoured of the bili-holige (white holige) and saaru combination -- a first at the mela in this edition. We take a tasting cup of saaru and and it hits us smack in the face -- this spicy and pungent cuppa. No wonder people are packing it and taking it home by the litre!
The beans hold a special place in heart of the Arya-Vaishya business community (referred to locally as Shettru) in the old pete area of the city. No other community showers as much love on this bean, experiments with it and feasts and enjoys it as much as them — it is almost a status symbol. And it is from this fanatical fondness for the bean, specially in its fried form, that the festival has sprung up.
Takeways at the store range from avarekai chikki, halwa, sohan papdi, dry-fruit slabs, nippattu and the deep fried fiery mixtures — with pudina, garlic, or black pepper, and avalakki.
Among the savouries, the avarebele mosaru kodubale offers a distinctive taste — again boiled bean batter is mixed with rice flour and spices and kneaded with sour curd to produce this version of what looks like deep fried onion rings. While the traditional kodubale is a harder crispy one, this one yields a soft inside much like the goli bhajji. The bele has always lent itself well to the evergreen masala vade and the giant versions being fried here tantalise the senses. There is of course, rice varieties, rottis, idlis, dosas, ottu shavige, phaddu, made from it, bonda and even payasa.
The evening sees the bean take on Chinese avatars and find its way in noodles and manchuri, as well as chaat avatars. I can’t decide if it’s a great adaptation or just desperately adding avarekai to any conceivable form of food. I figure no one’s complaining.
The lack of rains this year has meant that not much of the avarekai has come from Magadi; there is more from Chikmagalur, Kolar and Mulbagal areas, says Swathi K.S., second generation proprietor and organiser of the festival. This year is the 17th edition. “Every day almost 500 litres of avarekai are being used in the cooked form.
The mela is on at VV. Puram till January 15. This year, for the first time, it also travels to other parts of the city -- catch it next at the Malleswaram Grounds (opposite K.C. General Hospital) from January 18 to 22 and at Nagarbhavi, Chandra Layout Main Road, where it is on from January 25 to 29.
