Accepting offerings of food (and drink) at relatives’ places can be a tricky proposition at the best of times, with an odd (or perhaps eclectic, a matter of perspective) selection of sweet and savoury items that are accompanied by coffee or tea (or juices depending on the season, and sometimes just milk) irrespective of the time of day; refusal is rarely an option to wriggle oneself out of the compulsion to have at least ‘a little’. But this ‘problem’ has become even more pronounced since I turned vegan a few years ago, and has led to some amusing situations (you will probably now realise that the title of this article was an intended play on the second word, and not a typo).
Generally speaking, most Indians are not genetically predisposed to having food allergies as compared to say in the West, which I suppose explains the lack of food labelling. This also leads people to assume that most food items are eatable, and hence niche diets do not get much consideration. Peanuts (and nuts) are a good example of an allergen that barely ever gets thought of. But probably the most ubiquitous ingredients are dairy products! Milk, butter and ghee (and nowadays paneer) are so pervasive that you will struggle to find foods (well at least sweet ones!) that do not use them. Even when dishes seem vegan, an innocuous tempering of spices using ghee snatches away the labelling. This is probably the first thing my mother had to curb herself from doing! Though the dishes cooked in our house are inherently vegan, these were the sort of little adjustments that were required to ensure they remained so.
Even so, it is difficult to be cognisant all the time, especially considering the usage of these ingredients is embedded into the psyche (and of course the recipe). This happened to my aunt; she proudly proclaimed, on my last visit, that she had taken particular care to not use milk skin (the fatty top layer or film that forms on heated milk) in the coconut sweet she’d made. I became a tad self-conscious hearing that as she had had to change her recipe only for my sake, but was nevertheless impressed that she’d made the effort. The other items on the menu were mangalore bajjis (bondas) and set dosas (the anglicisation of dosai or dose, and its subsequent mispronunciation is a topic I shall consciously steer away from in this article); being foods that have curd or buttermilk as a key ingredient in their respective batters’ fermentation process, I assumed the necessary modifications had been done to them too and happily gobbled them up without enquiry. The revelation only came after my cousin innocently brought up the topic of the recipe and blurted out that curd was an ingredient! Only then did it dawn on my aunt that this had completely skipped her mind. Profuse apologies followed, which were accepted with a slight grief. Thankfully, I was not allergic to dairy products and so the damage was not physical but ethical. Ah well, it turned out that this wasn’t the first faux pas of the trip as a few days prior I had just had some mangalore bajjis in a restaurant! In my enthusiasm to have one of the signature dishes of the place, I had forgotten to check if it was curd-free. Ignorance was gastronomic bliss on that day, I suppose.
Another instance of misplaced judgement occurred at my father’s aunt’s house (just to be clear, these incidents are not solely attributable to aunts). Knowing that I could not partake of the usual foods, they endeavoured to make me some fruit salad, which I acquiesced. Again, there was a pronouncement; sugar had been avoided, with the healthier sweetener replacement honey having been used instead. I gently reminded them that honey was not vegan as it came from bees, and the fruit salad was hastily withdrawn with apologies from both sides (from them for having offered it, and from me for having refused it). It is quite surprising how many people forget that honey is the regurgitated secretion from an insect. I guess we humans have a thing for consuming secretions from other animals!
Speaking of which, I am glad I no longer have to consume milk (in any form), especially at relatives’ houses. I have always had a love-hate relationship with milk – cheese I found extremely delicious, and of which I was a connoisseur – but milk was always consumed grudgingly, as it was supposedly good for health. The less said about ‘nutritional’ milk drink powders the better; I only drank them believing the claims of the various companies of a taller future, but sadly could not escape my genetic shackles and still ended up vertically challenged. The absolutely worst episodes of drinking milk were undoubtedly at relatives’ houses when I was young; since I did not drink tea or coffee, I would be forced to have milk instead. These came in a variety of flavours and sugar levels, none of which made them any more palatable, but I would sometimes be offered hot and plain milk – the horror! One of the advantages of being vegan has been to eliminate this issue completely, along with avoidance of many other sugary treats.
All this said, I was pleasantly surprised though to have encountered a product that I had never heard of before on my previous trip to India. Aware of the limited alternatives to dairy products available there, I had planned to buy a few pots of soya yogurt which I intended to use as a starter culture to make my own curd using soya milk. Unfortunately, I forgot to buy them and was deeply despondent only having realised the omission the night before my flight early next morning. I had planned to be resigned to my fate of not being able to have any curd during my stay, as previous visits to shops in search of non-dairy curd had proven to be fruitless, but my mother was persistent in her search and came across an option that was available online – peanut curd! I was naturally sceptical of how it would taste, even though I loved peanuts, but decided to give it a try. And I was not disappointed! It was very impressive, and one could hardly tell that it was made from peanuts were it not for the faint aftertaste. Currently there is only one company that makes this product (so you can figure that out without me having to put a shameless plug in), but I’m hopeful that others will follow suit with veganism picking up. Until then, I expect many more adventures on each visit!