"Before the English came to India, say 400 years ago, how would our people have made aviyal?" I asked at lunch as we started serving ourselves the delicious food of the day.
When parents are way old, there are not a lot of topics on which I can engage with them. The most common topics relate to old stories--of places and people--and food. And boy there is plenty to talk about just on these! We love food, but our love is not of the Instagram variety nor about overeating, which are the two ways in which modern "love" for food seems to manifest in people.
Further, while I am well into my premature retirement, the inner academic in me is alive and well to constantly ask questions and think about everything that interests me. So, I lead group discussions at the dining table too!
Aviyal is one of the many favorites of mine in the old country cuisine. It is a mixed-vegetable dish. The question that I posed was about vegetables that are native to the peninsular region of the Subcontinent versus the veggies that have been adapted into the cuisine.
Consider the aviyal recipe at this site, for instance, and the photo that accompanies it:
The bright colored vegetable is, of course, the carrot. In addition to the carrot, the recipe also includes potato, chayote squash, and more.
Four hundred years ago, aviyal would not have included potatoes, carrots, and chayote squash. These are, to borrow my late grandmother's phrasing, "English vegetables." She and elders like her used that phrase for a good reason: they were not native to the geography and culture, and they were foreign. "English" meant European, not merely the people from England.
A family lore is that when this grandmother's brother went to Bombay (Mumbai) many, many decades ago, he stayed with one of the extended family members. A special, very special, vegetable was served at lunch for him--green (bush) beans. Yes, one of those "English vegetables" that was extremely rare back in the village.
The list of "English vegetables" is long, with most on the list not from Europe but from the Americas. The Columbian exchange found its way to India. So much have the foreign veggies become a part of the food landscape that it would shock a great many in the Subcontinent to know that these are not native to the land.
So, what would have gone into making aviyal 400 years ago?
- Eggplant aka brinjal
- Snake gourd
- Elephant yam
- Jackfruit seeds (at home we love this)
- Moringa fruit aka drumstick
- Green plantain
- Ash pumpkin/ash gourd
- Taro
- Chinese potatoes (we love this too at home)
- Coconut--of course!
At the discussion, we decided that bitter gourd and cluster beans would have been prepared as separate dishes and would not have been included in the aviyal.
The aviyal that we ate had carrots and beans, but there was no taro nor jack seeds and, sadly, no Chinese potatoes either. But, that did not stop us from making sure that there would be no leftovers!
PS: If this food discussion interests you, then you might want to read this brief evolution of the Indian cuisine. Maybe take a look at the photos there to make you drool over your smartphone! However, influenced by that essay, do not try to make and sell bhaang 😇
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