Dhirda: Millet Crepes

 

Dhirda

Recently my sister and my cousin took my mom and maushi (aunt) to task. They cornered them during a routine evening chat and accused them on their faces. The moms accepted the accusation and meekly submitted to improving the state of things in the coming future.

The subject that made my will-take-non-nonsense-from-anyone Aai agree with us (an occasion which is rarer than the Snow donuts, yep they exist), was our contention that our maushi and Aai have given up making many of the nice dishes my grandmother used to make as evening snacks when we were kids.

The French have Crepes, we have dhirda

Any evening if you visited her house, you were sure to be treated with something garam garam. If you were particularly lucky you were served piping hot crisp tandalachya pithacha dhirda.

On a side note: When I try to make these, it’s always a disaster. They all decide to convulse in a gooey mess in the middle of the pan…be it Teflon, other non-stick types, iron or cast iron. Mine almost feel as if the batter looked up at me from the vessel and decided unanimously to converge at the center of the pan and turn into an unappetizing looking blob.

While mine are disasters, my Aaji’s were edible Chantilly lace handkerchiefs with a hint of crispness around their edges.

As you bit into one, it was an explosion of tangy, spicy and starchy goodness all at once clamouring for attention. Your brain didn’t know which taste to focus on, and your hands just shredded the dhirda to bits, stuffing your face without knowing what they were doing. Almost unknowingly, the plate was empty and we thrust it towards her for more.

Being thin-crepe-like, we could devour 6-7 of them at one go, with her standing for hours making them patiently.

Sometimes the sweeter version of the dhirda would be made. That was simplicity at its best. The batter had nothing except salt. Once ready and off the pan, it was dusted with a fine coating of snowy white castor sugar or peethi sakhar as we call it in Marathi. Sans any chillies or masalas, the pure nutty taste of rice with the hint of sweetness made it one soul-satisfying meal.

Not that she did not make a whole menu of soul-satisfying dishes. Other savouries the girls listed in their ‘write-down-aaji’s-dishes’ mission were sanja, the yellow version of upma but with tomatoes and peas; various versions of pohe- dadpe pohe were uncooked but soaked thin pohe were tossed with freshly cut coconut, a dash of salt, sugar, ground green chillies, and the sweet goodness of freshly grated coconut. Other versions were Kande pohe, Batate pohe and even Matar pohe with generous mix of sweet seasonal fresh peas. Each version had the balance of sour, sweet and spicy perfectly in place…every single time.

Coming back the list, taking pride of place in the list was shevancya shira, vermicelli upma with extra doses of curry leaves and dried red chillies making it one kadak dish. Thalipeet of course is a Maharashtrian speciality and hers were even more special thanks to one secret ingredient. Now years after she is no more, I dare to reveal this- left over dal from last night’s dinner. This protein burst gave extra taste and flavour to her thalipeets while our moms struggled to match her taste…not knowing they needed to raid the refrigerator. 

When I was shown the list and asked for missing items, I quickly pointed out Ukad, which is probably one of the simplest and quickest dish to make is high on my list of favourite things. It is nothing but a clammy, glutenous paste of rice flour, ginger, garlic, and chillies cooked in sour buttermilk. Eating it is an effortless exercise as you just need to swallow, there is nothing to chew. Perhaps that’s why it appealed to my lazy ass teen self.

Sometimes when Aaji was bored or tired, she made easy stuff such as potato wedges tossed with powdered pepper, store-bought spicy boondi mixed with boiled potatoes, chat masala and curd to make a lip-smacking chat. But these ‘shirk’ days were few and far between.

If you landed at her place any time after 5pm, you were sure to be fed a freshly made what South India calls as ‘tiffin’ items.

Sweet shira or what north India knows as sooji halwa also had versions. It was always made in homemade pure ghee. In the mango season, it reached a whole new level of sophistication with the addition of generous amount of Alphonso mango pieces. Rest of the year, we had to make do with the banana version. Once she even put pink food colour in it mistaking the bottle for yellow colour she intended to put. The fuschia pink kadhai of shira looked extremely unappetizing, proving Apicius, the 1st Century Roman gourmand’s contention “We eat first with our eyes”.

Despite having no difference in taste the shira didn’t seem good to us. This was one of her very rare failures. Another instance I remember is when she added too much baking soda in a usually much-loved dish called khapar polya, which are type of pancake made from a fermented batter and had with sweetened rich coconut milk. The resulting dish was stinking of soda, proving another theory that we eat with our nose too.

We teased her about this goof up so many times that she got very cross with us when we mentioned it. Barring these two occasions she never messed up any dish.

As a habitual messer in the kitchen, this is an amazing success rate for someone who cooked for close to 50 years or more, every single day!

Now the list had other interesting stuff such as kansachi usal, made with fresh corn and coconut; olya kajuchi usal, a seasonal delicacy made using fresh cashew nuts, a once-a-year treat which I never really acquired a taste for. Give me salted cashew nuts any day.

Talking of season items, every summer one evening was sure to be dedicated to phansachi sandana, which essentially are jackfruit puree and sooji idlis relished hot from the steamer soaked in thin stream of liquid ghee.

A winter delicacy was purple yam fritters or geraduche kaap. Another awful sounding dish but full of umami. These were simply had with a side of fiery chilly powder and salt to dip and eat.  

A non-Maharastrian item that was included in this menu was a sweet concoction made from Rajali Keli or Nendrampazham bananas especially the sweet ones from Kerala. Some ghee, some jaggery, loads of coconut, some cardamom and nutmeg…ohhh my mouth is watering at its intense caramel flavour.

She also made a spicy version of this one where the bananas were split lengthwise and stuffed with coconut and coriander chutney and then cooked. This one I hated but other loved.

One hilarious incident is when my 4-year-old cousin spent an entire evening crying saying the bananas are spicy when actually that day Aaji had made and served the sweet version. To her 4-year-old brain the association with the spicy taste from the previous time was so strong that she kept crying and insisting that that sweet dish was tikhat.

Her sabudana khichadi was super-duper too but that is one dish that my maushi has mastered and I think does better than Aaji. The rest of the list- kothmbir or kobi vadi, kela dhirda, dahi vada, wangyache kaap, tomato omlet and perhaps some items which we have forgotten…made every evening as a hungry teenager a time to wait for…waiting to feed the gnawing hole in our bellies. Burp!