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Tosha For AlifBe~6

Alka Keswani — Sat, 20 Feb 2021 07:08:17 +0000

We are now at 6th letter of AlifBe i.e Sindhi Alphabet series and the letter is ت which is त in Devanagari while in Roman Sindhi it is written as T~ i.e by using a Tilde (~) as suffix as we don’t have a corresponding alphabet in English. It is pronounced as T~ as in Taiwan, Taliban, Tabassum etc. In Sindhi it is taught as T~ for Taaro i.e a star! And the Sindhi dish starting with T~ is Tosha! Tosha are very popular Sindhi sweets and these are mostly distributed in Temples as prasad and also in condolence meets, particularly if the departed soul was an elderly person! There are many theories about why this particular sweet is called Tosha (Singular is Tosho). Tosha in Swahili language means enough/suffice but then the word Tosha comes from the Persian word Tosha which means provisions. Also the term ‘Toshasi rah’, which in Persian means ‘provisions for the journey’ or Viaticum, points out the connection as the Tosha sweet was also carried by many people in the past when they would travel for official purposes or otherwise! Also in Punjabi the word ‘ToshaKhana’ is used for the secured storehouse for valuables and there is a Toshakhana in Darbar Sahib in Amritsar. Toshakhana (Meaning Treasure house) in Jammu and Kashmir, during the Dogra rule were the secured rooms in Mubarak Mandi complex where precious antiques were stored. It is interesting to note that there is sweet dish called Tosha (Toosha) popular in North of Kashmir which is different from Sindhi Tosha but is similar to Sindhi Bhori (crumble) and is made by first crumbling a maida roti (Sindhis make whole wheat flour rotis) and mixing it with sugar and nuts along with poppy seeds and the crumble is then shaped into oblong balls. In Punjabi the term Tosha means happiness or satisfaction and in Fazilka (a place in Fazilka district, Punjab) Tosha sweets are immensely popular but those are made using cottage cheese as base. Sindhi Tosha too are made in varying ways. Some use beaten curds while other use milk to knead the dough. Some add pepper and shahi jeera while others don’t. Some add sweetened milk while others add sweetened water in the dough. Sometimes rose essence is used in the syrup made for coating Tosha. Basically Tosha are oblong or pod shaped fried dough rolls coated with sugar syrup ( somewhat similar to the syrup coated Shakar para!) The syrup is of almost 3 thread consistency and hence once cooled, it crystallises as a crumbly coating on Tosha. If the syrup is of less than 2 thread consistency when you add Tosha to it, the fried dough will turn soggy after cooling. I have tried many recipes for making Tosha but today I am sharing the one that gave me best results! Print Tosha For AlifBe~6 Tosha are oblong shaped fried dough balls with a coating of crystallised sugar! Ingredients 1 cup All purpose flour 2 tsp Ghee 1 tsp sugar 3-4 tsp of water 2 very small pinches of Baking soda A pinch of salt A tsp of milk powder Oil for frying For Sugar Syrup ½ cup Sugar ¼ cup water Few strands of Saffron (optional) Method In a small bowl mix a tsp or so of sugar and 3-4 tsp of water till sugar dissolves. You can use milk or beaten curds in place of water. In a mixing bowl (or use a paraat or thali) mix the flour, milk powder, a pinch of salt, baking soda (be very careful, as excess of soda will not only impact the flavors but also the texture) and ghee till the mixture resembles bread crumbs. The mix when packed in a fist should retain the shape and not crumble. Add more ghee if needed. Using the sweetened water, knead the dough. It should neither be too hard nor too soft (somewhat like the dough for samosa/ pakwan). Let the dough rest for 30 min. Knead the dough again to smoothen it as much as possible and then cut small portions and roll each to make smooth oblong shaped rolls. From one cup of maida I got 8-9 rolls. You can increase or decrease the size of the rolls. Take a frying pan and add sufficient oil for frying. Heat oil till medium hot. Fry Tosha, in batches, first on medium flame and then on low flame, constantly stirring so that the Tosha are fried evenly. Once pale brown, remove Tosha from oil and drain on kitchen towel/Tissue! Take a pan or Kadai and add ½ cup sugar and ¼ cup water and let it boil. Cook the syrup till it starts to froth. Check the consistency. It should be around 2 thread consistency. Mix in the fried Tosha and stir well so that the syrup coats each Tosho evenly. By this time the syrup would be too frothy. Switch off the flame when you can see only a little of syrup around the edges. Remove Tosha from the pan and spread on a plate. Make sure that Tosha are not piled up on each other. Once cooled, the syrup will crystallized and form a pale while crumbly coating on Tosha. Allow Tosha to cool down completely before consuming. Store in an airtight container. These stay well for 4-5 days! 3.5.3251 And if you are interested in learning how to read and write Arabic Sindhi then do join me in my journey of exploring the Sindhi language and script along with Sindhi food. To begin with you can check these small videos that are created to help you understand how the consonants/alphabets are formed or written. To make it easier to understand Devnagari and Roman Sindhi Alphabets are given alongside! Do let me know if you too are learning the script and the language along with me. I can share helpful tips/notes or learning material that will help you immensely! Can you guess the next alphabet or the dish??

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Bheendi Pickle For AlifBe~5

Alka Keswani — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 13:54:17 +0000

The next letter in AlifBe for Sindhi food series is ڀ i.e Bh or भ as in Bharat or Bhutan. Please Note: If you don’t wish to read further but want to directly move to the recipe of Bheendi Pickle, then kindly click here! Else, do read on…… If you remember previous posts then you nay have noticed that except first alphabet ا (A), rest three alphabets covered so far ; ب (B), ٻ (B^), پ (P) have same basic shape while the number of dots vary! The fifth alphabet is formed using the same basic shape having 4 dots below the horizontal line. And a Sindhi dish starting with the alphabet ڀ i.e Bh or भ is Bheendi! No it is not an Okra dish! It is a classic Sindhi Pickle made from raw mangoes! The Sindhi Community is famous for its Pickles and Papad and Shikarpuri pickles were and still are the most famous pickles. Shikarpur, a city and capital of Shikarpur district in Sindh, was a well known hub for gold and spice trade along with cotton, brass etc. It was the city known for its schools and was the first city to have and intermediate college. Shikarpur was also popular for its distinct pickles and the credit would always go to the underground water of Shikarpur which used to be so sweet that the vegetables grown there would have peculiar flavors that would reflect in the flavors of Shikarpuri Pickles and hence pickles from Shikarpur would be toothsome and many a times even, exquisite, like the Bheendi pickle! Bheendi pickle is made from grated raw mangoes mixed with popular pickling spices like fenugreek seeds, kalonji, fennel seeds etc. but what makes this pickle unique is the way it is pickled. Spoonful of the pickle mix is tied in a potli of muslin cloth and the process is repeated for rest of the mix.All the potlis are then left to mature in the water+vinegar+mustard oil bath! I know many of you might be wondering about the name Bheendi and trust me, you are not alone! They say “It takes a village to raise a child” and this project ‘AlifBe of Sindhi food’ also takes a village to exist, thrive and prosper! Only those who got involved with me in my hunt of the traditional dishes, the proper pronunciations and the ‘nomenclature’ of the dishes, would know how exhausting this research and the project could get! I was always intrigued by the word Bheendi used for this pickle considering Bheendi was the term used for Okra but all I could gather was that it is called so because the pickle looks like a dot or bindhi. I was not convinced at all but since Spoken Sindhi is not as standardised as written Sindhi I assumed that maybe Bheendi is a corrupted word for Bindhi and my life moved on peacefully until the moment I reached for the alphabet BH in this AlifBe for Sindhi food series! As usual I first turned towards my better half to help me find some references in Sindhi Dictionary. Nothing helpful was found in the one we had. Then began the unending discussions with Barkha Khushalani Di (the one who is generously helping me out in this project since the day it was conceptualised) and for several days the brain storming went on and on but we were unable to conclude something assuring. I was getting restless but got some hope from the Kutchi connection; the Bandhani process (Tie and dye process) where tiny portions of fabric are tied using nylon threads (called Bheendi in local language) in specific patterns and dyed to make the popular Bandhani style clothes. Bandhani tie and dye process is known from Indus Valley civilisation era (As early as 4000 BC) and this dyeing process was introduced and popularised by Khatri community. I had a hunch that the way this pickle is tied in muslin cloth the name Bheendi might have a connection with bheendi in Bandhani. But I am yet to find if that is the real reason for the pickle being named Bheendi. I tried contacting with some people from Cloth (retail)/ dyeing/ weaving industries but am yet to get some relevant information about the connection between Bandhani Bheendi and Bheendi pickle. And just when I was about to give up, I received this message from Surrayya Kapri “Bheendi refers to tying your head with a cloth. Bheendi is tied using a cloth around your head to secure the rao (dupatta). In Sindh, older ladies tie a bheendi round their heads.” Phew!!! I finally got some relevant answers! BTW Surrayya Kapri from New Jersey, is a fan of Sindhi language, culture and food (cooking included). Her ancestral town is Kunri in Umarkot, Sindh, which is a big market for red chilies. She often shares with me the lesser known recipes/dishes/ jewellery/attire/fabrics/traditions of Sindh and Sindhis from bygone as well as modern era and we both often crib about the way our culture is losing its sheen. So now that we know why Bheendi pickle is named so, let us focus on how this pickle is made! Some make this pickle using tender raw mangoes (Kairi) while others use Rajapuri raw mangoes (not the kairi but the raw mangoes) You can find the recipe of the Bheendi khatti using raw mangoes, here! This pickle is also known as Kadhukash/Kadhukas/Kadukas/potli/gathri/gathiri pickle and the recipe varies across the community. Some do add whole spices like Kamaal Patt (Tej Patta), nutmeg, cinnamon etc along with the regular pickling spices while others avoid whole garam masala. And now comes a little twist! It ain’t a mango pickling season yet, in Mumbai but a fortnight ago I found some tender raw mangoes in the local market. We generally don’t get tender mangoes in January/Feb in markets around. Felt skeptical enough to not buy in bulk but couldn’t resist the temptation of buying a few since I had a recipe to try out. For those who are connected with me via Instagram might remember a post shared by me, about some traditional Bengali ingredients that I purchased from Amar Khammar, an online portal and one of the ingredients was Panchphoron, a typical spice mix used generously in Bengali cuisine. The Panchphoron is a mix of five spices; Fennel seeds, Mustard seeds, Cumin seeds, Kalonji (nigella seeds) and fenugreek seeds. I was curious to try a variant of Bheendi pickle using Panchphoron mix, since fennel, fenugreek and Nigella seeds are used in Bheendi pickle. I wanted to check how the pickle flavors vary if cumin and mustard seeds are added along with other spices and how different the pickle would taste considering that the proportion of each of the spices used in Sindhi style may be different from the proportion of each spice used in Panchphoron mix. So I pickled two mangoes using the panchphoron mix and I must say it works fairly good! So what I did was that I grated 2 mangoes (tender raw mangoes, but sadly the texture of mangoes after grating was not good enough) and to it I added salt, 3 tsp of Panchphoron mix, some turmeric, around 10 garlic cloves, 1 tsp red chilli powder, 2 tsp of crushed patali gur (Date palm Jaggery, courtesy Mr Arun Kumar Pandey), a dash of asafoetida and mixed 5 tbsp of mustard oil that was heated to smoking point and cooled before using. Rest of the process was same as that of Sindhi Style Bheendi pickle. So can you think of other Sindhi dishes starting with ‘Bh’? Do share pictures/recipes of Sindhi dishes cooked by you and I will publish selected few on this blog, with due credits!

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