Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya - Discovering New Foods

In Kamala Markandaya's story, Nectar in a Sieve, we often come across different foods. However, there is so much that you can barely keep track! Even so, most of the names of the foods were foreign to me and so I decided to take a look at what each of them were. For example, she mentions the food in her garden, "the beans, the brinjals, the chillies and the pumpkin vine."

The first food that I searched up was brinjal since I had never heard it before. However, I realized that it was more familiar than foreign. Brinjal is just another word for eggplant. In South Asia, the plant is referred to as brinjal instead of as eggplant and there are other name variations as well, such as augerbine, garden egg, guinea squash, or melongene. It simply depends on the area that you come from.

The descriptions of food in the text are simply amazing and detailed in such a way that they make you hungry as well. "Between us we prepared mounds of rice, tinting it with saffron and frying it in butter; made hot curries from chillies and dhal; mixed sweet, spicy dishes of jaggery and fruit; broiled fish; roasted nuts over the fire; filled ten gourds with coconut milk; and cut plantain leaves on which to serve the food."

This description is pretty fantastic and some of dishes I was unsure about. I searched up what saffron is and ended up getting the location of an Indian Cuisine restaurant in Kalamazoo called Saffron. However, after looking a bit more, I realized it was a spice commonly known as Saffron Crocus. It is one of the costliest spices by weight and originates in Greece and Southwest Asia. It is said to smell like hay and make foods appear a golden color.

Curry is another dish I was uncertain of. I had heard of it before but never before had I bothered to see what it consisted of. Curries are dishes usually from Southern Asian countries. They consist mainly of spices and herbs or dried chillies, making it somewhat spicy. The spices put into the curry is either whole or ground and the dish can be cooked or raw. Curry can contain meat, poultry, or seafood.

Dhal is something else that was mentioned throughout the book quite a lot. I found that it can also be spelled as Dal and is actually lentils or dried lentils, peas, or beans that have been stripped of their outer hulls and split. Dhal refers to a thick stew so I am imagining that Dhal would be like lentil soup, something that is common to eat in Mexico as well - something I ate when I was younger. I think all of these foods may sound fancy but they are in relation to what we eat everyday as well - unless all you eat is fast food, then that's a different story...