Sabudana : How It's Made ||साबूदाना कैसे तय्यार किया जाता है || Farming engineer

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It’s horrid to imagine life without the occasional plate of sabudana khichri- that delightfully contrary dish that’s somehow soft and crunchy, zingy and comforting at the same time. Just as it’s sad that years can sometimes slip by without a single breakfast at Prakash Shakahari Upahar Kendra, purveyor of the most reliable sabudana vadas in Mumbai. Always crisp on the outside and air-light on the inside. Always worth the drive and the wait. Even worth the having to share a table with three disapproving gents who clearly want to consume their thalipeeth in chatter-free peace.
Few things make me as happy as a plate of sabudana khichri studded with peanuts and golden potatoes. Or a warm stack of sabudana vadas, served alongside a punchy, peanutty chutney. Or even the silky, milky sabudana porridge made for babies and invalids.
The bottom line is that I love sabudana. Even though I’m constantly being told I shouldn’t.
I’ve heard horror stories about the making of the little white balls from the pith of sago leaves or tapioca roots. (Unhygienic. Fermented in open pits full of insects. Strong smells.)
I know that each bead is nothing more than a “small, rounded starch aggregate, partly gelatinised by heating”. In short, pure carbs, unredeemed by the slightest trace of protein, vitamins or minerals.
I know that sabudana has a sneaky tendency to misbehave. However carefully you soak it, there are days when the khichri clumps together in a sticky mess. On other days the little balls remain hard and obstreperous.
All of which makes no difference. To me, sabudana is the stuff of memories. Of snacks served at the homes of friends after a long, hungry day in school (so much more welcoming than the pale glass of milk waiting at my own home); lunches in the office canteen on wet, windy days during the month of Shravan; quick bites grabbed at bus depots during rattly rides from Sholapur to Kolhapur. There’s more - foodie journeys to Pune aboard the Deccan Queen and meals at modest Maharashtrian eateries across Mumbai - Kelkar Vishranti Gruha in Fort, Mama Kane’s in Dadar and Vinay Health Home in Girgaon.
It is also the taste of tradition. After all, sabudana plays a starring role during the Navratri fasts. It pops up virtually everywhere during Shravan and is used in papads, kheers, laddoos and halwas. How much more desi can you get?
Then I sat down to write this piece, and realised that the tale of sabudana in India is much more recent than I’d imagined. Tapioca and sago arrived here just 150 years ago as fancy exports from Singapore and Malaysia. It was only during World War II - when exporting commodities became difficult - that the first, crude sabudana units were set up in Salem in 1943. This seems to indicate that sabudana khichriand sabudana vada - seemingly so infused with tradition and history - were invented around the same time as the computer.
Outside India, though, the beads have a hoary past. Sago was an important food in China about 5,000 years ago, before rice stormed the scene. It, however, remained a staple in Southeast Asia through the millennia. At the end of the 13th century, Marco Polo introduced it to West. “They have a kind of tree that produces flour, and excellent flour it is for food,” he wrote about his time in The Sixth Kingdom of Fanfur (Indonesia). “The trees are tall and thick but have very thin bark and inside the bark they are crammed with flour.”
Almost 300 years later, Sir Francis Drake brought back sago bread from his voyage around the world and explained that it came from the “toppes of certain trees, tasting in the mouth like some curds, but melts away like sugar...”