சுவையான ஜவ்வரிசி கிச்சடி

சுவையான ஜவ்வரிசி கிச்சடி செய்வதற்கான எளிய செய்முறை குறிப்பு. இந்த ஜவ்வரிசி கிச்சடியை காலை உணவாகவோ அல்லது மாலை சிற்றுண்டியாகவோ உண்ணலாம்.

தேவையான பொருட்கள்

• ஜவ்வரிசி – 1  கப்
• வேர்க்கடலை – 4  மேசைக்கரண்டி
• உருளைக்கிழங்கு – 1 நடுத்தரமானது
• பட்டாணி – 1/4 கப்
• உடைத்த முந்திரிப்பருப்பு – 4 – 5
• பச்சை மிளகாய் – 2
• காய்ந்த மிளகாய் – 1
• எண்ணெய் – 2 மேசைக்கரண்டி
• கடுகு – 1/2 தேக்கரண்டி
• சீரகம் – 1 /4 தேக்கரண்டி
• மஞ்சள்தூள் – 1/4 தேக்கரண்டி
• பெருங்காயம் – 1/4 தேக்கரண்டி
• கறிவேப்பிலை – ஒரு கொத்து
• மல்லித்தழை – சிறிது
• தேங்காய் துருவியது – 1  தேக்கரண்டி
• எலுமிச்சம்பழச்சாறு – 2  தேக்கரண்டி
• உப்பு – தேவையான அளவு

செய்முறை

1. ஜவ்வரிசியை நன்கு கழுவி 6 – 8 மணி நேரம் வரை ஊற வைக்கவும்.
2. நன்கு ஊறிய பின்பு தண்ணீரை சுத்தமாக வடித்து விடவும். வடிக்கும் பாத்திரத்திலேயே 1 மணி நேரத்திற்கு விட்டு விடலாம்.
3. கடாயில் சிறிது எண்ணெய் ஊற்றி வேர்க்கடலை மற்றும் முந்திரியை பிரவுன் கலராகும் வரை வறுத்து, தனியே எடுத்து வைக்கவும்.
4. அதே கடாயில் மேலும் சிறிது எண்ணெய் ஊற்றி மிதமான சூட்டில், கடுகு, பெருங்காயம், சீரகம் மற்றும் காய்ந்த மிளகாய் சேர்த்து வதக்கவும்.
5. பின் பச்சை மிளகாய், கறிவேப்பிலை சேர்த்து நன்கு வதக்கவும்.
6. இதனுடன் நறுக்கிய உருளைக்கிழங்கு சேர்த்து மிருதுவாகும் வரை வதக்கவும். உருளைக்கிழங்கு வதங்கியவுடன் பட்டாணி, மஞ்சள்தூள்,உப்பு சேர்த்து மேலும் 2  நிமிடங்கள் வதக்கவும்.
7. இறுதியாக ஊற வைத்து வைத்துள்ள ஜவ்வரிசியை சேர்த்து சேர்த்து 2  – 3 நிமிடங்கள் வரை தொடர்ந்து ஜவ்வரிசி நிறம் மாறும் வரை வதக்கிக் கொண்டே இருக்கவும்.ஜவ்வரிசியை ஒன்றுடன் ஒன்று ஒட்டாமல் வதக்கி, 5 -7 நிமிடங்கள் வரை வேக வைக்கவும்.
8. இறுதியாக வறுத்து வைத்துள்ள முந்திரி, வேர்க்கடலை, மல்லித்தழை, தேங்காய் துருவல் சேர்த்து கலக்கி இறக்கி வைக்கவும்.
9. குறிப்பு
10. ஜவ்வரிசியை 6  – 8 மணி நேரங்கள் ஊற வைக்க முடியவில்லையெனில், வெது வெதுப்பான நீரில் 2 – 3  மணி நேரங்கள் ஊற வைத்தால் போதுமானது. தண்ணீர் மிகவும் சூடாக
    இருக்கக் கூடாது, வெது வெதுப்பாக இருக்க வேண்டும்.

Eateries around Chennai concert halls seize the opportunity

Food and music: The special stall put up by Sri Krishna Sweets near Narada Gana Sabha. Photo: M. Karunakaran.

T S Atul Swaminathan The Hindu 14 Dec 2013

From special stalls to new menus, they are trying every smart way to woo the rasikas to their food counters, says T.S. Atul Swaminathan

It is that time of the year when Carnatic music aficionados flock to the Sabhas for performances by their favourite singers and dancers. And it is the time when eateries around these Sabhas expect brisk business.

Hotels, restaurants and tea stalls proximate to these sabhas look hopefully to the rasikas who prefer to eat outside rather than at the sabha canteens, which are bound to be crowded.

A good number of them try to be proactive by offering special menus.

Hotel Shelter at Mylapore has, for instance, woos the Rasikas through something it has introduced for this music and dance season: Varieties of Dosas offered as part of the evening menu.

“The new menu offered for this season has elicited a good response. We have a mixed crowd, which includes families and youths. They come and discuss the performances of artistes and upcoming concerts,” says A. Amarjothi, executive, F&B, at the hotel.

Some are more aggressive in wooing the rasikas. Sri Krishna Sweets has put up a special stall at Narada Gana Sabha, as part of the season. A. Rammiah, restaurant manager, Sri Krishna Sweets, says the stall will be kept till January 2. “Business during the music season is good. There is a mixed crowd,” he says.

S. Jayachitra, B. Rajalakshmi, and B. Radha, a trio that runs a tiffin centre opposite a popular Sabha, say the business picks up in the evening due to the music season.

“But the drivers create problems by parking the vehicles near the entrance, which is designated as a no-parking zone. When we ask them to park their vehicles elsewhere, they yell at us and drop big names,” says on of them.

There are other voices with different stories to tell.

C. Jawahar, executive, Food & Beverages, at one of largest vegetarian restaurant chains in the world, says the business is the same as before. “There is a drop in the party bulk booking orders as many people prefer not to celebrate auspicious functions till January 14. Otherwise, we have the usual crowd coming in during the evenings,” he adds.

A. Poornima, a coconut vendor, says the music and dance season has not done much for her.

“Though many attend the music concerts and dance performances in the city, business is dull. As there is a biting chill in the air in the evenings, people prefer hot snacks,” she points out.

VEGETARIAN EGG SUBSTITUTE? A startup backed by Bill Gates believes they can

Associated Press | San Francisco | Updated: Dec 09 2013, 10:39 IST

SUMMARYFunded by prominent Silicon Valley investors, Hampton Creek Foods seeks to disrupt global egg industry.

Funded by Bill Gates, a food-tech startup is aiming to replace eggs.

The startup is housed in a  garage-like space in San Francisco's tech-heavy South of 

Market neighborhood, but it isn't like most of its neighbors that develop software,

websites and mobile-phone apps. Its mission is to find plant replacements for 

eggs.Inside, research chefs bake cookies and cakes, whip up 

batches of flavored mayonnaise and pan-fry omelets and French toast -all without 


eggs,

The startup is housed in a garage-like space in San Francisco's tech-heavy South of Market neighborhood, but it isn't like most of its neighbors that develop software, websites and mobile-phone apps. Its mission is to find plant replacements for eggs.

Inside, research chefs bake cookies and cakes, whip up batches of flavored mayonnaise and pan-fry omelets and French toast - all without eggs.

Funded by prominent Silicon Valley investors and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Hampton Creek Foods seeks to disrupt a global egg industry that backers say wastes energy, pollutes the environment, causes disease outbreaks and confines chickens to tiny spaces.

The company, which just started selling its first product - Just Mayo mayonnaise - at Whole Foods Markets, is part of a new generation of so-called food-tech ventures that aim to change the way we eat.

"There's nothing to indicate that this will be a trend that will end anytime soon," said Anand Sanwal, CEO of CB Insights, a New York firm that tracks venture capital investment. "Sustainability and challenges to the food supply are pretty fundamental issues."

Venture capital firms, which invest heavily in early-stage technology companies, poured nearly $350 million into food-related startups last year, compared with less than $50 million in 2008, according to the firm.

Plant-based alternatives to eggs, poultry and other meat could be good for the environment because it could reduce consumption of meat, which requires large amounts of land, water and crops to produce, backers say.

It could also benefit people's health, especially in heavy meat-eating countries like the U.S., and reduce outbreaks of diseases such as avian flu, they say.

"The biggest challenge is that people who consume a lot of meat really like meat, and to convince them to try something different may be extremely difficult," said Claire Kremen, faculty co-director of the Berkeley Food Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

The American Egg Board, which represents U.S. producers, said eggs can't be replaced.

"Our customers have said they're not interested in egg substitutes. They want real, natural eggs with their familiar ingredients," Mitch Kanter, executive director of the board-funded Egg Nutrition Center, said in a statement.

The industry has reduced its water use and greenhouse gas emissions, and hens are living longer due to better health and nutrition, he said.

Hampton Creek's quest to replace the ubiquitous chicken egg is also backed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Khosla Ventures, a venture capital fund started by Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla.

In its food lab, biochemists grind up beans and peer through microscopes to study their molecular structure, looking for plants that can fulfill the culinary functions of eggs. So far, the company has analyzed some 1,500 types of plants from more than 60 countries.

The research has resulted in 11 "hits," said Josh Tetrick, the company's CEO.

"Our approach is to use plants that are much more sustainable - less greenhouse gas emissions, less water, no animal involved and a whole lot more affordable - to create a better food system," said the former linebacker on West Virginia University's football team.

The company's first product - the mayonnaise - is sold for roughly the same price as the traditional variety. It soon hopes to start selling cookie dough and a batter that scrambles like eggs when fried in a pan.

"The egg is a miracle, so one of the hardest parts of replacing it is all the functions that it can do," said Chris Jones, the company's culinary director of innovations and a former contestant on Bravo TV's Top Chef.

While Hampton Creek takes aim at the egg, another Gates-backed company is targeting the chicken itself.

Beyond Meat, located in Southern California, sells "chicken-free strips," which have the taste and stringy texture of poultry but are made from plant protein. It is sold at Whole Foods and natural food stores. It's also working on a product that mimics beef.

Inside its test kitchen in El Segundo, Caitlin Grady, the company's culinary ambassador, stir-fried the strips with broccoli, onion, peppers and sesame oil. "I cooked it just like a regular stir-fry, but I don't have to worry about the meat being raw," Grady said.

The company is also funded by Obvious Corp., a startup incubator founded by Twitter's founders, and Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley's premier venture capital firms.

"It can fit in a vegan's diet. It can fit in a carnivore's diet," said Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown. "We're trying to appeal to the full range of consumers that are making some shift toward healthier protein."

Simple formula keeps this mess afloat in Triplicane ,Chennai

People dining at Kasivinayaka Mess at Akbar Sahib Street, Triplicane. 

Photo: K.V. Srinivasan

The Hindu : Prashanthradhakrishnan ;Chennai:2 Dec 2013

While many eateries of its kind have pulled down the shutters and disappeared without a trace, Kasivinayaga Mess in Triplicane continues to do roaring business. Prasanth Radhakrishnan on what keeps it going

First things first. A mess is a mess and not a hotel because of two things. The menu for each meal is fixed – one does not get to order. It is mainly those in the know who flock to the mess – unlike your average hotel near a bus stop or at a junction, the mess does not cater to much of what is called ‘the floating crowd’.

 As a member of the above-mentioned crowd, I missed the place twice. Located off Parthasaraythy Street, itself located off Bells Road, Kasivinayaga Mess (Vegetarian) would have been missed again were it not for the small group of people waiting patiently in front of its small door.

 Puzzled over why the crowd was lingering outside when there were clearly vacant seats inside, I confidently strode in, and mildly shocked, bought a token for meals plus curd for Rs. 61. (I had read stories of meals costing Rs. 23).

A view of the Kasivinayaka Mess at Akbar Sahib Street, Triplicane

 Photo: K.V. Srinivasan

Small tables and stools – 40 of them – were arranged in four rows. In seats 20 – 40, people were immersed in their food. Most of the seats 1-20 were vacant except two where people were winding up. The answer presented itself when the two stragglers left and suddenly, the crowd outside came in quietly, bought tokens and took their seats.

 Lunch, evidently, was to be had together even if you did not know or did not want to know you neighbours at the table. K. Vasudevan has the content expression of a man who has run a well-known business for 40 years. He began Kasivinayaga Mess, encouraged by the response he got from running one in Presidency College in the 70s, a time of great student unrest. “My principles, then as now, are the same.

 I buy the vegetables every morning and no leftovers served,” he says. They seemed to have helped, for nearly 500 customers throng the mess at a time when the once-hundreds of messes have come down to dozens. “The messes miscalculated,” he admits. “They were making food for a 1,500 people when there were only a 1000. That combined with the increase in fast food places saw many of them shut down,” he says.

In seat number 18, alongside my ‘batch’-mates, I notice everyone laying their token chips on the table, so to speak. A man rushes past, collecting them and the familiar ritual begins. The washing of the plantain leaf, the poriyal (thankfully coconut laced) and kootu and then the rice accompanied by ghee and paruppu.

 The rice is a bit sticky but the rest of the stuff tastes great. It might be a limited meal but it sure is filling though what strikes me is the speed at which everyone is wolfing down their meals. I pride myself to be a fast eater and I am disconcerted.Vasudevan seems to be no fan of doctors. “They keep advising people to be health-conscious and eat cha

pathis. In fact, some customers have even requested us to serve chapathis but I am not for it. We’ve maintained a balance all these years, serving particular combinations of vegetables that are both popular and healthy,” he says. However, the doctors seem to have had their impact.

The number of customers has gone down at night. “It is mainly the regulars who still come here, especially employees from government offices and other firms in the vicinity, that too for lunch,” he says. It does not help that prices of vegetables have been rising steeply as have been labour costs, he adds. All-in-all, I made good time.

 By the time, rice was had with sambar, rasam and curd, half the people of my batch were still eating. It was a classic working day meal, not much time spent on musing about the ambiance or the service – rather an extremely quick but satisfying interlude before a few more hours of sitting in an office. As I step out, Vasudevan is talking to an old-timer, an erstwhile customer of the late 70s who later moved to another part of the city. 

The customer, an ex-AIR employee has a ton of stories of his own, of interviews and shows and of how Kasivinayaga Mess would supply food to his office when all shutters were down due to strikes in those tumultous times. “Vasudevan’s wedding was really memorable. The food was from the mess and many of us regulars went and had a lovely lunch,” he laughs. “I make it a point to stop by when I come to this part of the city,” he adds.

Meanwhile, Vasudevan goes inside and returns with a packet full of paruppu podi, whose virtues the customer had been extolling. As he would say, “Ten people might shout at you for various reasons but the one customer who sings praises of your food is what makes your day.”

A taste of Mint Street,Chennai

Flavours of the Street: Vishnu's Chaat shop at Mint street draws many people. 
Photo: B. Jothi Ramalingam

The Hindu ,Shivani Pandey :2 Dec 2013

Residents who have left the neighbourhood and moved to other parts of the city keep returning to Mint Street for Vishnu chaat's items. Shivani Pandey on his success story

For those regularly passing through Mint Street, Vishnu is a familiar stranger. For some though, he is the man who serves them mouth-watering chaat items day after day.

For around 40 years, Vishnu has been selling his goodies from the same spot on Mint Street. Therefore, residents of Sowcarpet who have long shifted out of the neighbourhood but have retained a taste for his gastronomic preparations, know where to find this hawker. There are indeed erstwhile residents who make regularly make visits to Mint Street just for his samosa, pani puri and cutlet, among other things.

Ajay and his wife, an aged couple, say they left left Sowcarpet five years ago, but keep returning to it to have Vishnu’s pani puri.

Vishnu says, “He thanks his grandfather Babulal and father Ramaswarup Sharma for what he is now. His grandfather used to sell kulfi, but due to poor earnings, shifted to selling chaat items. During those days, people craved chaat items. After six years, my dad took over from my grandfather. The mantle was passed on to me fifteen years ago,” he says.

He recalls how he would, after school-hours, get trained by his dad in preparation of these snacks: He would stand beside his dad and patiently watch the process. The long hours at the shop did not exasperate Vishnu. “I was more interested in cooking rather than studying,” he says.

The drills of discipline he was subjected to early on, now help him as a hawker. He says he wakes up at 4 a.m. for preparing all chaat items. From 11 a.m to 9 p.m., I will be at Mint Street selling them. After 3 p.m., the sales get intense. On special days – such as Diwali and Rakshabandhan – people wait in queues to buy these chaat items, says Vishnu.

Nikita, a customer, says, “I loves the flavour of his pani puri and do not mind standing in a queue for it.” He is at present going through a lean patch. He explains, “This year, sales are down mainly due to two reasons: increasing competition among chaat item sellers and skyrocketing prices of vegetables and other food items.”

He is however still happy that he earns enough for his family, which consists of his parents and a brother.

The life inside the Masterchef House

The Hindu :8 Dec 2013

Popular Masterchef Australia contestant Rishi Desai on life inside the Masterchef House. As told toMADHUMITHA SRINIVASAN

Rishi Desai is no stranger to Masterchef Australiafans, The Kolhapur boy was especially popular for giving a refreshing twist to Indian food like his modak -inspired dumplings with soy-caramel. Rishi, a 35-year-old public servant with IP Australia in Canberra, is by now used to chopping, poaching, frying, baking, arguing and rejoicing with nine cameras zooming in on every single detail. Even his snoring!

But what the cameras, and thereby the viewers, do not get to see is the goings-on inside the Masterchef House, where the contestants stay for the five and a half month-long schedule of the show. “There are no stories, by the way,” Rishi says as he begins his insider’s view of the house.

“The house is huge, because 22 people have to live there. It has five bedrooms, three living rooms, one study stocked with cookbooks, a big kitchen and a nice backyard with a swimming pool. There’s a two-car garage and its three walls are filled with pantry items. Anything you want will be there. If it isn’t, all you have to do was ask. It is absolutely humongous.

“We could watch television — except Channel 10 on which Masterchef airs because you were not supposed to watch yourself on TV. We didn’t have wallets because we weren’t allowed to shop for anything. No Internet because we were not supposed to look up recipes online or see what people were saying. We couldn’t even use phones.

“It was just 22 people who loved food, who talked about food, and watched food on TV — we had about 200 channels on TV but all we did was watch food channels — and cooked constantly. We were a diverse group of people: Italians, Japanese, Southeast Asians, Indians, West Asians, British, Portuguese… We had a roster system, as the kitchen wasn’t big enough for 22 people. We would wake up in the morning and speculate about what was going to happen that day.

“Australia is a diverse, multi-cultural country. People are used to having others from different backgrounds around. But when we got into the house, it took us a while to get used to each other. It took us about 10 days until we knew each other’s names and figured out what was happening. After that we made amazing friends.

“After spending three months in the house, Lynton (Tapp) said to me, “I know more about you than my friend of the last six years.” That was amazing because we didn’t have our families around and were looking for support from each other.

“There was friction, of course. Sameera and I had lots of fights but it wasn’t like “I am not going to talk to you ever!” It was more a difference of opinion, a debate. We’re both headstrong people. At the end of the day, we worked together because it was a collective effort. We said to each other, ‘If you don’t cooperate, I am not going to get the pin. If I don’t cooperate, you are not going to come back into the competition.’

“It’s the same with the judges too. They don’t come to the house but they interact with you on the sets and we spent a lot of time in the Masterchef Kitchen. They were happy to give us feedback and talk about how to improve our food. After the show, we had a big party and all the judges gave me their phone numbers and said that I could call them any time. If I pick up the phone and say, ‘Matt, I need help’, I am sure he’ll say ‘Yep!’. We spent almost five and a half months together; after that we are friends for life.” 

Mandela’s Life in Food and Drink

Vikram Doctor  ET
Saturday December 07, 2013, 07:18 AM

In October 1990, soon after leaving prison, the 72-year-old Nelson Mandela travelled to India to receive the Bharat Ratna. He was the second non-Indian citizen (after Khan Abdul Ghaffer Khan) to receive it and this was his first Asian country he visited after release.

 The Times of India reported that at the Rashtrapati Bhavan reception a journalist saw him snacking on vadas and asked if he liked Indian food: ““Oh yes,” Dr.Mandela replied with a smile and remarked “we can have a long discussion on this.”

He could, and not just on Indian food. Some national leaders are known for ascetic diets or indifference to food. Mahatma Gandhi was famously frugal in his tastes, while Anya von Bremzen, in her wonderful new memoir of Soviet cooking dubs Vladimir Lenin “Mr. Stale Bread and Weak Tea” for his lack of interest in food. But Mandela was a boxer, a well-built man, who from jail on Robben Island in 1970 would write to his wife Winnie: “You know darling there is one respect in which I dwarf all my contemporaries or at least about which I can confidently claim to be second to none – healthy appetite.”

Talking of Mandela’s interest in food might seem rather mundane at a time when the world mourns this symbol of freedom and reconciliation. Yet it was for the simple, mundane things of life he was fighting – for good food for everyone in the bounteous country he lived in, for the ability to eat it with one’s family without fear of arrests or deportation, for being able to have a meal in any house or restaurant with friends whatever their race. There was much more too, of course, but Mandela was no ideologue and for him the material things of life were what mattered most.

It shows in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, where he remembers his childhood in the green hills of the Eastern Cape, wandering with other boys “to gather wild honey and fruits and edible roots, to drink the warm, sweet milk straight from the udder of the cow.” He didn’t romanticize this life – he knew they lived on milk, maize, sorghum (jowar), beans and pumpkins “because the people could not afford anything richer” yet he never forget how good such simple food could taste. He loved the sour milk of his Xhosa community so much it once almost gave him away. He was hiding with a white friend in Johannesburg and left a glass of milk on the windowsill to ferment, like we leave dahi out at night. Then he overheard two black men outside wondering what such an obviously black food was doing outside a flat in a white neighbourhood: “I left for a different hide-out the next night.”

Mandela was always ready to try the foods of the other communities in South Africa, and Indian food soon was a favourite. There were several reasons for this, starting with the fact that Indians enjoyed slightly more freedoms than the blacks and so could provide vital spaces for the struggle in its early years. And with spaces came food, as Albie Sachs, an activist who would become a famous judge, told me. He once went for a meeting in an Indian house and was told to stay for supper: “I reacted like any white South African and wondered how I could drop in at such short notice.” But his friends laughed and said the Indian aunty making the food was used to it: her curries were easily extendible to more guests and could be kept warm, or reheated with no loss of taste, as meetings dragged on forever.

There are several recipes for curries in Anna Trapido’s Hunger for Freedom which describes itself as a gastro-political history of Mandela’s life. It is a wonderfully obsessive book, tracking down the foods of his life, and the people who cooked them. This often makes it a tribute to the women of the struggle who played a two-fold role, both sustaining it from behind the scenes, yet often stepping to its forefront. Amina Pahad, for example, whose son Essop became a minister in the new South African government, is remembered here for the chicken curry she always provided at the shortest of notices, but also for how, as Mandela wrote, she “put aside her apron and went to jail for her beliefs. If I had once questioned the willingness of the Indian community to protest against oppression, I no longer could.”

Indian restaurants were another space where different communities met, and one played a personal role in Mandela’s life. In was to one of them in 1957 that he took a beautiful young woman called Winnie Madizikela for a first lunch. It was chicken curry, mutton curry and rotis, and she had never eaten anything so spicy in her life: “I would take one spoon, swallow and drink Coca-Cola, then attempt another. By the time we finished eating, I had tears in my eyes and was sneezing.” She had wanted to impress this upcoming lawyer and activist and now felt it had been a disaster. But, in fact, as Trapido writes, he was charmed by her inexperience and asked her to marry him the same day.

Indian food became even more important as the apartheid government started prosecuting the activists in the Treason Trials from 1957-60 in order to shut them down. Local families took one week in turn to supply the activists with food, and Ahmed Kathrada, one of Mandela’s closest comrades, recalled that “the accused looked forward to the Indian weeks because they cooked substantial food: curries and rice and so forth The white ladies made peanut butter sandwiches.” One lady, Mrs. Thayanayagee Pillay, was such a dedicated and good cook that Mandela and the others wrote her a joint letter of appreciation and gave her a sari in the ANC’s black, green and gold colours. Years later when Mandela came out of jail he called Mrs Pillay again and she rushed to meet him, wearing that sari and carrying fish curry!

Indian food was also useful when the activists were actually in jail. Adelaide Joseph, a Transvaal Indian Congress activist would bring them Indian food, including rotis with messages tucked between. And she told the policemen to ask them to send uneaten food back since they were poor and had a dog to feed. The return messages were in the rotis for the dog! Such easy flows of food and information ended when the prisoners were exiled from the mainland, to the prison on Robben Island. The intent was to isolate them so effectively that they would be forgotten and the struggle wither in their absence.

It was the true achievement of Mandela and his comrades that far from letting this happen, they turned it around. In the isolation of Robben Island they were forced to put aside all divisions and find a united strength to resist the regime. The rebellions were often small, yet cumulative, and as in prisons across the world, it often started with food because that is the one thing jailers cannot entirely deny if they want their prisoners to live. The food was often bad and it was also differentiated by community, yet the prisoners found ways to pool them, to be inventive and improve them and at the extreme, to stage hunger strikes that usually forced the jailers to give in.

Indian food played its role here too. Mandela’s lawyer was Dullah Omar, a South African Indian who would later become Minister for Justice. When he went to meet Mandela his wife Farida sent samoosas and fruit with him, and always the jailers sent it back. But just once they overlooked it and Mandela was delighted to eat his first banana in 15 years. Indian priests went to cater to the spiritual needs of the Indian prisoners and one of them managed to smuggle chillies, the only spices the men ever got. They also brought sweets and special foods for festivals and as one prisoner recalled when Eid or Diwali came “everybody was suddenly converted to Hinduism or Islam.” But with Mandela, he added, the interest was real “and he did use to attend all types of services… (it was) not just about the food.”

As the apartheid regime came under increasing pressure it realised it had to treat Mandela differently. He was shifted back to the mainland, to conditions more like house arrest. Some of the most evocative food descriptions in Long Walk to Freedom come from here as, aided by a warder who was a good cook, Mandela learned to enjoy food again. Finally he was freed and it was time to lead the new country – and reconcile it with the old. One of the things he did as President was to invite the wives of all the old apartheid leaders to meet the anti-apartheid women activists. Amina Cachalia, one of the leading Indian activists recalls everyone was intimidated: “Most of our women didn’t have too much to say to the other women.” But Mandela spread his charm and, equally important, poured lots of sweet sherry and Cachalia remembers it all ended with everyone at ease (and perhaps a bit tipsy). Perhaps only Mandela might have thought of such an event – and pulled it off with the help of good food and drink.