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LISA TSERING
Thirty years after it was invented in India, the Sumeet grinder, an oddly futuristic assemblage of stainless steel and bullet-proof plastic, has developed a loyal cult following even in the United States.
Loved by millions of Indian cooks, this remarkably powerful yet compact grinder-cum-blender is catching on in American gourmet kitchens as well. The Sumeet grinder comes in three models, the most popular being the Asia Kitchen Machine which comes with three separate attachments: A 1.5 litre stainless-steel blender jar, a small grinder jar and a one-pound capacity plastic grinder jar. Also available are the Domestic Plus (which has the same motor but with two attachments) and the smaller Sumeet Multi-Grind, available at $85-$100.
``I have two of them,'' Floyd Cardoz, executive chef of Tabla, New York's hottest Indian restaurant, told the California newspaper India-West. Cardoz uses the larger Asia Kitchen Machine for grinding daal and wet ingredients, and the compact Multi Grinder for spices for suchtrademark Tabla dishes as coriander and mustard-crusted shell steak served over fluffy onion naan with achaar and baby Basmati risot to with cardamom. Cardoz calls the Sumeet grinder ``the best in the market''.
Niloufer Ichaporia King, a Bay Area contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle, Fine Cooking and the Journal of Gastronomy, and a specialist in Asian cross-cultural cooking, is another such fan. ``We demonstrated it at a regional Asian food conference for the Culinary Institute of America and got a lot of chefs interested in it,'' she said, describing the Sumeet as a fixture in the standard Indian urban household.
Sure, any $20 spice grinder will do for garam masala, and food processors can slice onions and grind meats. But the really tough jobs in the Indian kitchen - grinding freshly dried corn for makka ki roti, almonds for badam ka halwa or daal and rice for idlis-will leave the average blender or food processor smoking in protest. According to Mihir Premjee, president of Sumeet Centre Inc, theNorth American wing of the Chennai-based company, it's the Sumeet built-in handle and scraper, backed by a 3/4 horsepower 550 watt motor, that sets it apart from mainstream processors such as those from GE or Braun.
``The handle is the unique feature,'' he said on phone from his Toronto office in Canada. ``You can stir ginger, coconut, even garlic, while the machine is running without adding water.'' It can also grind dry spices, including cloves, asafoetida, nutmeg and fenugreek as well as grains like wheat, millet and rice into a fine powder.
``It's entirely different from a food processor,'' said Raj Patel, manager of Kumud Electronics in Sunnyvale, California, which sells around 50 machines a month for $189 each. Although it won't replace the Cuisinart processor for slicing, said Michael Koon, another Culinary Institute user, ``it's good for fine spices and curries that need more intense grinding''.Way back in 1963, S P Mathur, an electrical engineer for the Siemens Co in India, was inspired to createa better grinder on witnessing his wife's frustration at a broken jar on her Braun grinder, explained Premjee. With Mathur's research revealing that other grinders couldn't handle the rigours of Indian cuisine, he redesigned the motor, blades and jars, first in glass, then in aluminium and finally in stainless steel and plastic. He named his invention Sumeet, which means ``good friend''. It wasn't popular at first, said Premjee, but as more and more cooks saw the need for a kitchen appliance that would be capable of performing Indian cuisine's toughest jobs - dry and wet grinding, mincing and pounding the ingredients of the country's diverse cuisine - the grinder's fame skyrocketed.
Today, the product's fans number in millions, he said. S P Mathur, now a wealthy man in Mumbai, has seen the popularity of his invention spread from India to North America. Now that he's on the Web (www.sumeet.net), he's hoping to make fresh idlis and chutney a fixture in every Indian household across the globe.
--India AbroadNews Service
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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