Hyper Local Drinks

One of the greatest delights of travelling to places one had not been to before is discovering things you have never eaten or drunk before - and especially finding very local and very traditional specialties which you might never find again anywhere else.

I thought I will share my experiences with some (mostly non-alcoholic) unique drinks, I have had the good fortune to partake over the years! The problem that I am going to face though while describing these is - since these are one-of-a-kind concoctions, it becomes very difficult to explain to someone else who hasn't experienced them, what these really taste like - because it is hard to think of something that I can use as a common reference to compare them with!

Hyper Local drinks 1 - Hajma-hajam

Let me start at home (or not too far away from home) - Ahmedabad, Gujrat, India!

A few years ago an uncle of mine used to live in Ahmedabad, close to the Indian Institute of Management campus. We used to go and visit him many times. In the evening after dinner, we would all go in has car to a spot close to the campus gate. A guy with a hand cart used to be there only at night (and this was many years ago, so I don't know if it's still there) surrounded by a large throng of people and a long line of cars and scooters by the road-side. Apparently people used to come a long way to buy a drink called Hajma-hajam (Pronounced as हजम Not हजाम 😂😂 - just clarifying).

I have never been able to find this drink anywhere else - not even in Surat. What it contained I do not know - it had rock salt salt, black pepper, perhaps ground tamarind (or something else with a sour-sweet taste) and may be Dates as sweetener and god knows what else. That guy always refused to reveal the contents and also refused to sell only the "masala" which he used to mix in Soda to make his Hajma-hajam. But it's taste is still on my tongue. Even after my uncle left Ahmedabad, if I happened to be in Ahmedabad for other work (and our office was in Gandhinagar so I would general stay somewhere there) if I was spending the night there, I would hop into a taxi and go to IIM just for a glass of Hajma-Hajam!

One problem with such unique hyper local specialties is - describing their taste in terms someone else can relate to! because the taste is unlike anything that you can compare it with. That is why they are specialties!

So imagine powdered Hajmola tablets + dates + mint + panipuri-ka-pani + Rooh Afza sherbet all together and think what that might taste like? But even that will give you only a partial hint of what Hajma-hajam tasted like.

I hope someone creates a bottled version of it and distributes it outside Ahmadabad too.

But on second thoughts that may not be such a good idea because such industrialization will require standardization of the recipe and that always makes the true "mystique" of such unique concoctions disappear.

Hyper Local Drinks 2 - Tongba

One delightful discovery of my visit to Sikkim a couple of years ago was this drink called "Tongba" made from fermented whole grain Millet.

I don't know whether it is appropriate to call is a Millet "beer" or a Millet "wine". To me the process of making it, sounded in fact like a that of "Sake" (using Millet instead of the rice from which Sake is made). Just as in case of Sake the "secret" ingredient khesung - the mold that is used to start the fermentation - can be obtained from only a handful of experts to whom you must apply if you want to start your own batch of Tongba. Only the experts know how to make khesung and that knowledge is handed down from generation to generation (just like the strains of Sake mold which run in the family of the Sake maker for generations). Just like in the best of the best "Junmai Daiginjo" Sake, no alcohol is added externally so is the case with the genuine Tongba. Ofcourse the step of polishing the rice is missing in the preparation of Tongba (so one could say real high quality Tongba is only "Junmai").

Anyway, so the process as I understood (and I could be mistaken in some of the detail) is = You select the best quality Millet and cook it. Then mix the khesung obtained from the expert you trust, with the cooked Millet. Leave it covered for a few days in a bamboo basket. Then once the fermentation is complete, transfer the fermented mass to a tightly sealed earthen pot and keep for about 6 months. During which the fermented mass matures and mellows. After that it is ready to drink BUT there is a peculiar way to drink it.

You pack a hollow bamboo container (See the photo above) with the fermented Millet mass, stick a bamboo straw made from a specific bamboo called Malinggo (the straw is also peculiar - the bottom end is blocked off but slits are made on the side!) and then pour boiling water over it. In about 5 minutes the water seeps through the fermented mass and your drink is ready!

See the photo of a Tongba ready to drink. And you can replenish your "glass" 3 or 4 times like this before you must change your millet.

The taste is like nothing else I have ever tasted before - the aroma of freshly cut wood, earthy smells which emanate from parched ground after the first rain, with the exhilarating non-smells of unpolluted fresh air in the early morning in a forest just beginning to wake up? I don't know how exactly to describe it.

And ofcourse it is alcoholic but you get more intoxicated by the unusual flavors than by the alcohol in it (which is usually very low - 2 or 3%).

I even bought a Bamboo container and straws - planning to give it a try after returning home BUT that was before I was told about this Khesung - the secret mold that only the experts in Sikkim (or perhaps Nepal) can supply! So I guess I will just use it to drink water from I guess!

Local drinks 3 - Yerba Mate

Mate is really not quite as Hyper local as Tongba or Haajamaa-hajam. It's drunk in many places in South America. It is supposed to have originated in Paraguay. But besides Paraguay where Mate is the national drink, it is also the staple drink in Argentina and Uruguay.

Mate seems to have strong cultural significance both as a part of the national identity as well as in social terms. Drinking mate is a social activity. It is considered bad hospitality if you don't offer Mate to a guest. People closely related or otherwise close to each other may actually drink Mate from the same cup (perhaps something like the Native American tribes sharing a pipe?? I don't know),

Mate is made from the leaves of the Yerba mate plant (a member of the Holly family), which are dried and ground into a coarse powder. The terminology here gets a little confusing, at least for a foreigner like me - Yerba refers to the plant as well as this powder. And Mate refers to the drink as well as a peculiar container or cup from which it is drunk.

Preparing the drink is simple, Yerba (the powder) is put in a container and hot (75-80 degrees Celsius but not boiling) water is poured over it. Mate drinking is so entrenched in the habits that if you buy a water heater or an electric kettle in Argentina, it will have a setting simply named Mate. So after pouring the hot water, you allow the Yerba powder to settle down slowly so the clear liquid remains on the top. But this whole process is almost a ceremony and often there are heated debates about the best method to be adopted for the powder to settle down - tilting, slowly shaking etc. It is said that the ideal process is the one in which the sediment forms a kind of conical shape at the bottom of the container with a flat instead of the more usual pointed top !!! Of course whether that makes any difference to the ultimate taste, I cannot comment on.

What does it taste like? A bit like green tea, but more woody like freshly cut branches of a tree and earthy. For example, like the smell you will get if you boil water in a brand new earthen kulhad or somewhat like a black roasted but little bitter water chestnut, that's the closest I can describe it.

The method of drinking it is peculiar - Mate is traditionally prepared in a dried Calabash cup and drunk directly from it using a real silver straw. This cup is also called Mate as is the drink inside!

Of course in modern times people use all kinds of non-traditional containers - Ceramic cups, Thermos bottles, Metal utensils and also other white metal alloys or ceramic or other materials for straws instead of silver.

The straw has holes on the side (like the Tongba straw) not at the bottom. See the Photo.

And did I mention that it has a LOT of caffeine - some say, more caffeine per cup than even the darkest of coffees! And no wonder i saw people in Argentina sipping it all the time!!

Hyper Local drinks 4 - Chicha Morada

Since the last one I talked about was Mate from Argentina, I thought I will just jump across the Andes mountains and hop over to Peru to talk about an absolutely delightful, refreshing and unique drink called Chicha Morada (see the photo) which is known to have been consumed in Peru for thousands of years.

The Peruvians have gifted the world two important staple foods which are now consumed in large quantities everywhere in the world - Potato and Corn, The ancient Peruvians through selective breeding created edible and nutritious versions of both from their wild ancestors. As a result Peru today grows 4000 kinds of potatoes and 55 kinds of corn!

One of the most widely grown variety of these 55 types is the purple corn (see the photo below).

Basic Chicha Morada is made by boiling the purple corn with pineapple peels and Quince - a cousin of apples and pears, with bits of cinnamon and cloves. Once boiled the clear juice us strained and a sweet sauce called Chancaca is added to it. Then it's cooled before being served. Of course there are infinite variations of this basic recipe created by adding orange peels, other spices like rosemary, grated apple etc. Every family has its own "secret recipe".

Now a days, of course you get ready to drink bottles or ready-to-mix powders of Chicha Morada but these prefabricated versions never taste so good as freshly brewed kinds - and restaurants compete with each other by advertising their special variations of the standard Chicha Morada. So every time you go to a new restaurant you must always check whether they are serving bottled Chicha Morada or their own brew.

It's one of the most "refreshing drinks" I have tasted. After a hot, long walk at the Maras salt mines or a breath-taking (literally so because of the high altitude) short climb up the steep terraces of Ollantaytambo, a swig of ice-cold Chicha Morada instantly brings life back into your tired legs and lungs and brings the color back into you cheeks!

Chicha Morada is non-alcoholic and non-caffeinated, full of antioxidants - healthy like Amrut Kokam (except for the sugar in it), and as refreshing as Amrut Kokam and even tastes a bit like Amrut Kokam (But that may be purely an illusion created by my mind because both have identical deep purple color), It's sweet and sour with a hint of grapes and apples in it perhaps and a bit of sharpness due to the cloves. It's just divine.

Local Drinks 5 - Kvass

Again it's not strictly correct to call Kvass hyper local. It has been a very popular household drink for more than 6 centuries all over the Slavic countries - Russia, Central and Eastern Europe. It's said that Tzar Peter the Great loved Kvass and it was the most widely drunk beverage in imperial Russia. In modern times though it has been industrialized which has taken it's originality and vivacity away and made it into a tame, standardized soft drink but on the positive side, this also made it available all over the world. Even in Mumbai I found a shop called Zam Zam Sweets advertising Kvass.

But like many of these traditional drinks (Chicha Morada from Peru or Ginja from Portugal for example) while the bottled versions are quite good, the traditionally hand made brews are just a world apart.

I first tasted Kvass in Ekaterinburg - the city that straddles the boundary between the European and Asian parts of Russia. After a hot afternoon's walk, we sat down at a road side café for a coffee and I saw the guy at the next table drinking this golden liquid from a mug (see the photo above). I thought it was beer, so I asked the waiter but the only English word he knew was "Yes". Luckily he saw what I was pointing at and brought me a mug and tapped on the menu to tell me what he had brought for me. But the menu was in Russian so I didn't learn anything anyway. So I took a photo of the menu to figure it out later.

The beverage did not feel alcoholic although it tasted like a sweet beer. But it was absolutely refreshing to my parched throat and I just loved it. Later in St. Petersburg we had hired a guide to take us around the city. I showed her the menu and she explained that what I had had was called Kvass - a very traditional Russian drink. But she also wrinkled her nose at the menu and said "that's the bottled Kvass - except as a last resort I wouldn't ever drink that". She then took us to a restaurant where they served the traditional home-made drink to show us what in her view was the "real" Kvass and boy was she right! This was just divine and no comparison with the bottled version - it was still tasting like a sweet beer but somehow far richer in taste, with a hint of bitter lemon and raisins and some unknown spice, or perhaps just mint.

I asked how it is made. And surprise surprise, it's made from rye bread - even stale rye bread is fine. The bread is toasted and mixed in boiled hot water with raisins and the sap of Birch tree as a sweetener (these days many just use sugar but that doesn't taste as good). The sediments left over from the last batch of Kvass are added to this mix as a starter to initiate the fermentation process. Sometimes spices too are added to the mix and it is left alone to ferment by itself. These days people also add yeast to expedite the fermentation but that again results into an inferior taste. Also now a days people add all sorts of other things like beet or orange peels etc to create variations in taste.

But the traditionalists like our guide frown on such adulterations! To be fair I did not taste any of these modern versions, so I can't say from first hand experience whether these modern innovations in fact are better or worse. So after fermentation is complete the clear liquid is filtered out and refrigerated. Ideally it is consumed within a couple of days for the best experience. Because although it is classified as non- alcoholic and even children drink it, it does contain a very small amount, usually about 0.5% of alcohol. And if you let it stand more more than 2-3 days, more alcohol is formed due to natural processes and the taste becomes bad.

But Kvass like Chicha Morada or Tongba has this unique taste that is just unforgettable.

And this is the last for some time. There are many more especially alcoholic drinks like Ginja, Umeshu or Cachaça which are worth talking about but perhaps after some time.