Say sour and tamarind, tomatoes, lemons, curd and vinegar come to mind. Yet, if you closely examine cooking practices across the country, you will come across a host of other alternatives from plants, leaves, bark and flowers to dried and fresh fruit, which are also used to give the required sourness to a dish. These are popular add-ons in particular dishes. While they are not widely used, they are community or region specific. Culinary experts, inquisitive cooks and connoisseurs do work with them, but in a limited manner.
Pooja Pangtey, Co-founder of Meraki Bombay, a travelling pop-up kitchen focusing on various hill cuisines, says, “It is interesting to see how the khatta -loving pahadi s introduced a sour flavour to their recipes, especially in the context of local produce and wild ingredients.”
NEW DELHI, 06/06/2013: Amchur, sun dried raw Mango on sale at Khari Baoli in Delhi. Photo: V.V. Krishnan
One of the oldest and easiest substitutes is raw mango. Dried raw mango powder or small mangoes ground to paste have been a part of innumerable dishes. Amchur is used extensively in cooking across the country. In parts of Maharashtra and Kerala, it is not unusual to dry slices of raw mango, which are then carefully stored and used to make a variety of dals and sambars .
Besides mangoes, dried pomegranate seeds are also used as souring agents. Uttarakhand uses the desi variety of pomegranate called darim, which is smaller than the commercially-grown ones and is also more sour. The trick in using pomegranate seeds is to first soak them in water for a few hours and then grind them to a paste using the same water they were soaked in. The black colour that the famous pindi chole gets is because of this procedure.
The Garcinia family, comprising kokum , kodumpuli and tekera , are other popular ingredients to add sour flavours to a dish. Kodumpuli is also called cambodge, brindleberry or Malabar tamarind. The rind of this matured fruit is dried over fire naturally to get the black colour. It is more of a backyard crop. Kokum has also gained prominence and is grown commercially more these days.
The advantage of using these is that, unlike tamarind, which has to be soaked in water and the pulp extracted, these souring agents can be used directly as they dissolve easily in a dish. Kokum has a refreshing taste and can be made into a sherbet too. So can tekera or thekera from Assam.
Pooja also tells us about almora patti , a flower which she chanced upon on one of her trips to Uttarakhand. “During my trip to the Jaunsar-Bawar regions, I came across these wild pink flowers. They are used to add a sour touch to chutneys and fish curries.”
The North East, especially Assam, uses many such ingredients. Tengse tenga from Assam is a creeper, which is used as a souring agent.
Fresh Tamarind with leaves
Varied options
Elephant apple or tenga is another option. This fruit is cut into small chunks that can be stored in a refrigerator and used when required. Bogori is a kind of berry, used to make a sweet-and-sour pickle. The hog plum is used in cooking in the Mangaluru coast. Bilimbi or irumban puli are other souring agents. The leaves of gongura or roselle are used extensively in Andhra Pradesh. Beside these, carambola , star gooseberry and dried amla are also used.
Unripe plums are used to make sour pickles and chutneys, while the dried version occasionally finds its way into meat dishes. Kachri is a kind of wild cucumber, grown in Rajasthan and other parts of the country, which is used to make chutneys or dried kachri powder.
When compared to the freely available tamarind and tomatoes, these ingredients are not easy to come by. Yet, each of these can be developed into a range of preserves, chutneys, jams, jellies, pickles and more.
Perhaps, more research and better availability of these ingredients will see such alternatives take off in a big way.
