The taste of my childhood

No matter how hard I try, those tastes are impossible to replicate

 

What is it about childhood taste memories that they are almost always impossible to recreate once you have grown up? I ask because I have been struggling over the past few weeks to recreate the taste of langar dal I used to eat as a child growing up in Calcutta (no, we didn’t call it Kolkata in those days). Living in predominately Sikh neighbourhood and practically next door to a gurudwara where my (Hindu) mother was a regular worshipper, I used to live for those special days when Guru Ka Langer would be served. 

 

All the food was delicious and the kara prasad was to die for, but what lives on most in my memory is the taste of the black dal. A mixture of black urad and chana dal it had a deep, rich taste that left me asking for more…and just a tad more, until even my tolerant mother was deeply embarrassed by my greed. I remember the crunch of the ginger, the kick of the green chili and the caramelized taste of the onions, all brought together by the unctuous goodness of desi ghee.

 

Overtaken by nostalgia last month, I tried to recreate the recipe in my own kitchen from memory. But no matter how hard I tried, and how many variations I went through, the dal – though delicious in its own way – never really tasted the same. I added the ginger and garlic while slow cooking the dal; I tried caramelizing the onions in desi ghee; I tried frying the garlic separately; I tried using only green chillies and then just the red ones. I even called my childhood friend and langar companion, Kavita Walia, in Calcutta to get her inputs and then used her method to cook it. But while every variation was good in its own way, it was never quite the langar dal of my memory.

 

I have had much the same problem when I try and make the sookha black channa subzi that my mother used to make for the Navratras on the day we worshipped Kanjaks in our home. I know that she used only ginger, green chillies, amchoor and a dash of chaat masala to get that fresh but tangy taste that went so well with puris and halwa. But no matter how many times I experiment with quantities and ingredients or even time of cooking, my channas never taste quite as a good as my mum’s. 

 

Ditto, with the black carrot kanji that my grandmother used to make in giant beyams every winter and leave out in the sun for day to ferment. I have tried making it with different kinds of carrots, different sorts of mustard seeds, experimented with black pepper, even added a bit of sirka. But no, the kanji remains stubbornly my own creation, the special touch of my Daadi is missing.

 

But I guess that is the way of all childhood food memories. They take up such a special place in the palate of your mind that it is impossible for reality to match up to the taste that exists only in your memory. Maybe I can’t recreate my childhood tastes because memory is playing tricks with me. Or it could simply be that nostalgia tastes better than anything that I could possibly rustle up in my little kitchen with the benefit of hindsight.