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THE RELUCTANT GOURMET

THE RISE OF BREAD Every region has its distinctive way of eating bread

Ever eaten bun-butter-jam? I’m not talking about croissants on snowy crockery, delicately spread with golden butter and strawberry jam. They’re as far removed from the desi bun-butter-jam as champagne is from toddy.

This is the food of the masses. Piled on trays in the glass display cases of small local bakeries, besides violently coloured cakes and solid vegetable puffs, they’re fresh rolls, slit in half and generously slathered with pale homemade butter that’s crunchy with powdered sugar and bright red mixed fruit jam. Eaten with tall glasses of sweet, milky, piping hot tea, they’re just one example of how India has taken the very British loaf of bread, and twisted, coerced and coaxed it into avatars that are as Indian as flaky parathas dabbed with mango pickle, or kulchas stuffed with spicy paneer.

The Americans like their sandwiches spread with peanut butter — made by grinding roasted peanuts with a dash of oil and sugar — and jelly. The British have Marmite, a dark, sticky paste with such a distinctive taste that the company’s marketing slogan is ‘Love it or hate it.’ (I personally think it tastes like old socks in a blender, but apparently it’s an ‘acquired taste’ like blue cheese or caviar. And people who like it can’t do without it.) The Australians have the ‘salty, slightly bitter, and malty’ vegemite, made with a by-product from beer manufacture combined with vegetables and spice, made popular by that fabulous old song ‘I Come From A Land Down Under’ by Men At Work.

In India, every region has its distinctive way of eating bread. In Mumbai’s Irani cafes it’s brun-maska, a crusty bun oozing butter, served with tea. In Goa, there’s the Portuguese-inspired crisp pao bread, perfect for sopping up their tangy prawn balchao, or fiery pork sorpatel. And Pondicherry still has its baguettes, or French rolls, baked to a deep brown in old brick and stone ovens fired with casuarina leaves and wood.

In Chennai, you’re spoilt for choice. Innovative, canny local bakers, tea shop owners and small shopkeepers have realised that their customers, who work long hours at strenuous physical jobs, enjoy luscious, over-the-top preparations, which ooze the good stuff, whether it’s sugar, butter, ghee or oil. Hence the city’s iconic ‘cream bun,’ a flamboyant creation consisting of spongy bread bursting with crunchy cream, beaten into a buttery consistency with a generous amount of powdered sugar.

Then there’s the fruit bun. In posh bakeries it’s a mere bun with raisins. In the hands of practical everyday bakers, with more imagination than resources, it’s a joyful festival of bright tutti frutti (bits of candied fruit in outrageous colours) and achingly sweet desiccated coconut folded inside.

Then there’s the ever popular khara bun. In the grand tradition of herbed bread and globally-loved Italian foccaccia, made with rosemary, sun-dried tomatoes and pepper, the bun is a mixture of green chillies, curry leaves and local spices, all kneaded together with the dough, and then baked. There are variations on this, like filling it with mustard-flecked potato and then brushing it with ghee. Or stuffing it with paneer. Fancy cafes are also evidently eager to get a slice of the action, considering how enthusiastically they’re now promoting chicken tikka sandwiches, or adding desi spices to their previously ‘unsullied’ French recipes. These bursts of innovation can have some rather surprising results, such as the Cha Bar (in the Oxford bookstore), which made sandwiches with chicken topped by slices of golden, deliciously ripe mangoes during the mango season.

But for grit and innovation, the sandwich man on the street is tough to beat. Every sandwich man has his own routines and recipes, even if they make basically the same sandwiches: bread-omelette, masala, cheese and jam.

The popular stalls outside Alsa Mall in Egmore, for instance, make fabulously gooey hot toasted jam sandwiches. And vegetable sandwiches, pasted with blistering mint-and-green chilly chutney piled high with sliced cucumber and tomatoes. In a customer-relations coup, you’ll even be given “time pass,” a piece of newspaper piled with sliced cucumber dusted with salt. The vendor on Mint Street, on the other hand, works on constructing the perfect sandwich, vegetables, chutney and then a careful sprinkling of fresh, crisp omapodi (or sev), to create an astonishingly sophisticated play of colours, textures and flavours. It’s really the best thing since, well, sliced bread.

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