Chapter 2
Where is the bone??
I married into a food loving Marwari family. But it was anything but a ‘traditional’ Marwari family.
Ordinarily you’d picture a dining table well represented by Rajasthani staples – Dal Ka Cheela and Pyaz Kachori for breakfast, Gatte Ki Sabzi and Kair Sangar for lunch, Ram Khichdi, Kadhi and Papad Ki Sabzi for dinner, finished off with Mung Dal Halwa for dessert.
But in my husband’s house it was bacon and eggs for breakfast, chicken chop for lunch, fish and chips for dinner, and fruit trifle for dessert. Far from what I expected!
Growing up in a middle class Sindhi household I had never even heard of bacon, chicken chop, fish and chips or trifle. Ah, but I knew what eggs were. And I knew what chips were (I hadn’t crawled out of an alien spaceship, after all).
Of course, everything tasted delicious. But the first time I was served fish and chips at the table, I was told it was crumb-fried pomfret. I looked at it disbelievingly, since it didn’t look like any fish I had eaten at my parents’ house. This was a long piece of something, covered in something else, which was crisp and not easy to cut into. I had to use a knife and fork. Never had to use those to eat fish in my life before that. I pretended like I knew what ‘crumb-fried’ meant too. I thought it was ‘kum’ (meaning ‘less’, in Hindi) fried. I asked my husband “How is it kum fried when its deep fried? It should be called zyada fried!” Yes, you can add the rolling eyes emoji in your head while reading this.
Like I said, I come from a simple middle class Sindhi family that lived in Sindhi Society in Chembur. Our knowledge of food was limited to whatever my mother cooked for us everyday (which was mainly food from her Sindhi heritage).
Sindhis eat a lot of fish, but mainly pomfret. Each piece has a big bone in the centre and the fish is usually buried under a masala paste of some sort - Seyal or Thoom or Daag. Where the heck was the bone in this ‘crumb-fried’ fish? Chewing on the bone was the best part of eating fish! And what the hell was a ‘fillet’ anyway?
I got used to being surprised by my food.
When I had chicken chop for the first time I was confused about how the chicken piece was round but still had a little bone coming out of it. Where was the rest of the bone? It was the juiciest part! Did they have some special chicken in South Bombay that didn’t exist in Chembur? I had only eaten my mother’s delicious chicken curry, where every piece had bones, bathed in a seyal masala, bhunoed to death and cooked in the pressure cooker. I promise you, it was the tastiest curry you’d ever have.
Since I was newly married, I wanted to adjust to my new family. I ate what was put in front of me without asking too many questions, till I was bold (re:stupid) enough to enter the kitchen myself. I finally saw how a chicken leg became chicken chop (i.e. beat the crap out of it) and how a whole pomfret was converted into a fillet of fish. I would cringe every time the centre bone was removed and thrown away thinking nooooo, I could be chewing that! And WHY are they throwing out the head and tail when they could just fry it up, add some dhania powder, amchur, chilli powder, haldi and GIVE IT TO ME with a side of dal and chawal.
Fortunately it wasn’t long before other odd humans like me entered into the family (my sisters in law). It was a happy threesome, especially on sundays, remembering our own childhoods relishing the ‘bad bits’ of food - chewing on the bones in chicken curries, mixing pickles and curd into our mutton biryanis (one of them would add ketchup to this mix, but we won’t go into that today), and just generally getting the most joy out of our food as we could (which included eating with our hands 😃). The best part was gleefully watching our husbands stare at us with shock and horror. Happy days.
Full disclosure, Fish and Chips is now one of my favourite dishes. With tons of tartar sauce, of course.
But I still don’t care for any boneless meat.