The most innovative festive eats that I tried this season have been gujiyas and kachoris stuffed with, well, California prunes! Without the mandatory khoya that makes so much of Indian mithai heavy on the palate and stomach, prune-stuffed gujiyas proved to be lighter and healthier and the kachoris had a unique sweet-and-spicy flavour that gave an unexpected twist to the familiar pan-Indian snack. As we bit into these, it was with considerably less guilt than what accompanies usual such binging: prunes, after all, are one of the new superfoods that urban Indians are being told to incorporate in their daily diets.
My first acquaintance with this new ingredient in the Indian kitchen may have come via contemporarised Indian snacks. But really there is no reason why we should be so unfamiliar with prunes. These are simply dried plums. You can find them selling in convenient packs at almost any leading grocery store in your city. Though there are a host of brands that are selling them, all the prunes available in India today come from California, a leading producer. Unlike fresh fruit that spoils fast, the dried version can be stored in the kitchen sans even refrigeration without spoiling.
A host of health benefits are now attributed to prunes. And these can be used as a quick, high-energy snack any time of the day or incorporated into recipes, ranging from cakes to indeed gujiyas, kachoris, relishes, and more. With their high-fibre content, prunes are supposed to look after your digestive health besides being full of vitamin B, potassium, iron, and antioxidants. They can help control blood sugar and cholesterol levels and help build bones, but what I also found intriguing was a study done on California prunes that suggests that, indeed, they help reduce wrinkles. So a couple of prunes a day may keep the doc seriously away, or that is the contention of nutritionists and food writers all over the world.
While the prune is being hailed as the new superfood, what I find most interesting about the ingredient is its versatility. There are so many ways in which you can use it in the kitchen?and in case you are too lazy to attempt a spot of cooking, you can just bite into the succulent and sweet flesh as an instant snack.
There are some cuisines, of course, where the prune is a vital ingredient: Moroccan being one. And should you want to attempt a tagine or two at home, you would definitely need to incorporate the ingredient into your cooking. Like many other cuisines around the world that are the result of diverse culinary and cultural influences, Moroccan food synthesises seemingly disparate tastes?sweet and spicy (together in one dish) being a common combination; which is why the sweetness of prunes is often required to balance the heavier meat-based gravies.
It is this combination of sweet with spices that can go a long way in the Indian kitchen too, turning usual and common dishes into the exotic. There are a host of recipes where the ingredient is used in desserts: from pancakes and cakes to indeed prune and apple halwa that chef Nishant Choubey of Dusit Devrana hotel also made on Holi. But try playing around with the ingredient in traditional Indian main courses and you will be surprised.
Chef Choubey, for instance, taught me to make prune kachoris as well: stuffed with spicy dal, ginger, asafoetida, green chillies; the typical desi mix balanced nicely with the sweetness of California prunes. You can also do a nice prune relish?with prunes and a splash of red wine and white vinegar. Serve this with kebabs or chaat.
I experimented with a dish of vegetarian kofte, stuffing soft cottage cheese kofte with bits of prunes and then putting them in a tangy tomato-ginger gravy. The Persian influence in Mughlai-based cuisine means that often dried fruits and nuts go into rich gravies, giving them the finesse associated with courtly food (as opposed to the rustic, simpler curries of, say, Punjab or coastal India). To stuff bits of cashews, almonds or raisins (which are similar to prunes in that these are dried grapes) has been standard practice in Mughlai cooking.
But another ingredient that traditionally went into this school of cooking that forms the base of richer north Indian cuisines today was the aloo bukhara?plums! Used either fresh (tomatoes were possibly a later day, cheaper substitute) to flavour meat curries or in its dried form (prunes) as stuffing for kebabs and kofte, this was a royal ingredient. It is ironical that it should be making its reappearance in India as an unfamiliar ?new? ingredient.
The writer is a food critic