BY TARA NARAYAN

SIGH. COME TO think of it, the best of everything goes to big-time markets like Mumbai! To think that this time last week I was moon mooning nostalgically down one of my favourite wet or al fresco veggie and fruit markets i.e. the road side market outside the Vile Parle (East) suburban railway station. Taking pleasure in buying bunches of tender spring garlic (wonderful in a green chutney), big round golden green aonla (or Indian gooseberry, Rs.40 kg), tender amba-haldi — the twin spring time gingers, one creamy in colour and with a faint green mango enshrined in it, and the other golden aromatic turmeric root…just scrap and grate the two, spike with sea salt and lemon juice and stir, store in fridge and serve as pretty relish to liven up a meal…it’s said to be a great winter time chutney to keep infections at bay! Other things: Strings of tender green and purple mogri with a bite of sharp radish about them, you chop them in a salad or coleslaw. Lots of pale green slender bal kakdi, you find lots of these up north when summer comes around; in Delhi vendors go around with bal kakdi and office goers patronise them to quench thirst.

VIJAY STORES

I step into Vijay Stores to see what’s new: Their garlic spiked batatavada get over real fast in the evening and I used to make special trips to buy them once upon a time; here are such things as thick rounds of savoury garlic bhakri, double pepper flecked delectable crunchy puri, miniature balushahi, more than half a dozen ladoo… including the winter time methi-gond ladoo, even packets of large whole-wheat chapattis smeared with peanut oil (do you know that in Goa once upon a time chapattis were smeared with kokum butter?). They were also retailing the Guju piece de resistance of the season’s last oondhiyu (the Gujarati community’s favourite veggie mix in which a variety of field beans, purple yam and semi-ripe banana feature predominantly, also fenugreek dumplings). Hey, Vijay Stores is special and worth visiting if you’re ever this side of Vile Parle (East) railway station side.

In fact, do a walkathon after a breakfast of idli and the best sambar I’ve tasted to date at Ramakrishna here, they open at 7.30 am and so what if the price of idli has gone up to Rs.22…at Ramakrishna there’s value for money (can’t say the same for Goan Udipis!) and you may also ask for their excellent “powder chutney” to go with your idli or dosa. Do you know that a survey has revealed the South Indian masala dosa as the national dish of India?

SEEDLESS GRAPES

WHAT else? Seedless green grapes are in season and everyone in Mumbai is making the most of them, Rs.40-Rs.60 kg. I don’t know why fruit juice places don’t serve grape juice like they serve it at most refreshment places in Bengaluru where green or black grape juice is routinely available. There’re some old temples here which I love to visit on the morning of Shivratri, getting up as early as I can… the Parleshwar Temple, a Ram Temple, and a Sannas Ashram temple which draws a lot of folk. If you’re a tourist looking for local colour, you should go rambling down suburban markets like this one at Vile Parle (East) or Matunga (East) — instead of Crawford Market down town British Mumbai. There’re far more sights, finds and excitement in the traditional wet markets of Mumbai and I at least will always prefer them to the come lately swanky malls and chains of organised food bazaars like the Tatas’ Star Bazaar chain for the khaas aadmi!

TATA RUN

JUST for a dekho I’d dropped in at a Star Bazaar in Andheri one evening and was impressed by the neatness, efficiency and wholesale prices - both vis-à-vis quality and quantity. Systems were in place, everything price-tagged… after shopping and piling up one’s trolley one may go and order 100 g of jeera rice and 50 g of veg Manchurian balls at the very well organised food counters - where combo meals sell by weight! At the cashiers’ counters it hit me and was horrified by how every little thing purchased was billed and put into plastics. There’s this scene of shoppers with trolleys piled high with plastic wrapped goodies…the plastic bags may double as garbage disposal bags at home but we all know where all that goes in Mumbai which was Bombay!

There’s not an iota of eco-conscious sensibility when it comes to shopping at these fancy food bazaars or malls - everything comes in plastics. Nobody understands when you say, do me a favour, keep the plastics and let me put these dozen oranges in my cloth shopping bag! You’ll probably get thrown out by a bouncer for being a weirdo. Give me my unorganised old-fashioned road-side wet market outside Vile Parle (East) railway station and I’m perfectly happy chatting with veggie vendors and doing my shopping…where the vendor himself or herself will ask if you’ve brought your “thela”? It’s here that I guess I leave a bit of my heart behind every trip to Mumbai which was Bombay!

BACK at the Panaji market this week I noticed that the season’s early baby green mangoes have started coming in. Vendors outside the market in the early morning before 8 am are majestically asking for Rs.20 per five or six little ones — while I want them at last year’s Rs.10! You may do a deal if you buy a whole heap of these so called chepnim mangoes…the male vendors do less kit-kit. I always think that Goa’s chepnim or pickled-in-salt baby green mangoes can replace olives and the first freshly pickled chepnim of the green mango season have a most prized delicious bite.

I slice chepnim mangoes like a fan and serve them with say a hot afternoon’s light meal of curd rice or dahi bhat…sliced chepnim in coleslaws and salads is also very agreeable and one of these days you should put in thin chepnim slivers in cheese sandwiches. Chepnim is absolutely my favourite mango pickle because of its dulcet tartness and most homely xitt-codi places in Goa will serve it without charging you. I don’t mind being charged for a plate of perfectly done sliced chepnim green mango!

You can buy chepnim in the market for vendors are marketing them and they’re even available in plastic packs at supermarkets like Magson’s in Panaji. If you’re buying them from a vendor at the market make sure the vendor has a basic sense of hygiene and his bottles are clean… some of them retail these baby green mangoes in brine in dirty plastic bottles! They are selling freshly made diced baby green mango miskut too, but this can be a fiery pickle to buy and oozing with oil… hot, tart and scrumptious. Fresh miskut can rival any other pickle and it’s my second favourite Goan pickle… smother it or roll it in just about anything you fancy, be it bread or chapatti dal-rice and a bowl of fresh curd. Enjoy!

This is to say make the most of baby green mangoes currently in the market. Make green mango chutney, slip mango slices into dal and fish curry. Make green mango aam ka panna to drink and sweeten with jaggery, not sugar. Hey, make your own chepnim mango pickle at home and it’ll last you for months for use in various ways.