My Malpua Days: The best kind of monsoon food is laden with your childhood memories

This is not to cast into doubt the sobriety of my entire childhood; it was just that my father believed implicitly in the therapeutic powers of brandy. Every time we got caught in the rain and arrived home bedraggled like drowning rats, we would promptly be bundled into clean, dry clothes and given a thimbleful of brandy to keep tummy upsets, colds and a whole host of infections at bay. This means that when it rains, and people are chuntering on about samosas and cutting chai, that look of longing on my face is me thinking about the warm buzz of my father’s love. And brandy.

Brandy isn’t all that there is on my mind in the monsoon, though. I have other rainy-day fare that I crave too. First, there is patore, the pahadi version of the Gujarati patra. Arbi (colacasia) leaves are daubed with a paste of besan and spices, piled up one atop another, tightly rolled up like fat yummy cigars, steamed and then tempered when ready to eat. Patore can’t be made from scratch when you want to eat it, so a certain amount of prep is essential to enjoy it at exactly the point that it rains. My mother, who is the champion patore-maker of all time, would stock our fridge with several logs of the steamed leaves right through the rainy season. It needs no chutney or condiment to make it complete, but to my mind, patore always tastes best when accompanied with a side of rain and thunder.

Other standard pahadi monsoon food that I am crazy about is what my grandmother would whip up for us. First, her signature atta ka halwa, which was simplicity itself: atta dry roasted with a little besan, drizzled with ghee and then drenched in sugar syrup and cooked till every grain swelled contentedly, bursting with flavour and goodness. This would be studded with raisins, which had been plumped up in warm water, and served hot from the pan.

The other rain staple at my grandmother’s home was pakoras, made pahadi style. Every family has a particular style of bhajia or pakoras they prefer. But, in all humility, I will offer that the best pakoras of all time, with absolutely no debate, were the ones my grandmum made on rainy days. Potatoes and onions were diced along with tiny slivers of green chillies. These weren’t dipped into batter and fried like regular pakoras. Instead, a small amount of dry besan would be added to the diced vegetables, and then barely moistened with just a little water so that the besan paste acted as an adhesive, not as a coating. Hand smoothened clumps of this would then be fried to a wicked crisp and served hot to the panting, drooling family. Crispy bits of the outside with little crunchy besan bobs would intersperse with soft bits of potato and onion, and the slivers of green chillies in the mix would have our ears burning and our eyes streaming while we demolished mound after steaming mound. Today, I make these pakoras on rainy days. And despite the fact that my knife skills aren’t great, my frying is ordinary and it just doesn’t rain the way it used to — these pakoras still taste as brilliant as they did when my grandmother made them.

When I don’t feel like pakoras, I turn to the other rainy-day food I have eaten since I was little — my mum’s fried potato croquettes with a crust of broken vermicelli. The tiny shards of fried vermicelli on the outside give the croquettes a crunchy textured coating, while the potato stuffing sharpened with just a few tiny pieces of onions and green chillies is lush yet piquant. Served with a sharp green chutney, they are the perfect counterpoint to the pouring rain.

Every monsoon, there are a few days when it seems like the heavens have opened up and everything will be washed away, when you cannot even open a window for fear that the strong wind will wrench it clean off. And it’s on those days that I crave malpuas. Because on exactly days like this, my mother would make and feed us malpuas. Fried in ghee and doused in sugar syrup, they are and have always been irresistible to me. As a kid, the success of every monsoon was simply the count of how many malpua days it had encompassed.

I adore malpuas. I love how the burnt bits at the edge are crisp and caramelised and contrast with the soft golden pillowiness of the centre. I love that they are juicy and crisp and you can choose how sweet you want to make them and how the simple act of eating them can make you feel enveloped in the cosy fug of love.

However, here is the tragic truth. I am a hostage to my conditioning. Much as I adore malpuas and would love to eat them more often, the only time I can really enjoy them are the days when it seems that the end of the world is nigh. There is some malpua-shaped switch in my brain that only gets thrown when it rains and rains and rains. Any time else and it’s simply not the same.

So, when the rain comes down, but not in sheets, when I am caught in a squall but not totally soaked to the bone, when the trees outside sway but don’t careen madly about their axes — those are the rainy days that I fry my pakoras and eat my patore and sip my brandy.

But really, every monsoon, what I am doing is actually biding my time, peering at the sky and scanning the forecasts and waiting for the best days of all, the malpua days.