Smoke and Embers
The chool stands as a permanent fixture in many rural kitchens. Though ours is small, it has defined our family’s memories
By Archish Kashikar
The sun rolls down into the horizon, and the warm-hued brush strokes in the sky turn to cool shades of blue and purple. Trees rustle gently, and patches of dry shrubs dot a dusty earth. Far from the comforts of a cityscape, the winter starts to bare its cold teeth to the open outskirts and the air tingles.
Here on the rural borders of the Nashik district, a thin veil of mist envelops a lone house. The structure is simple, a traditional village farmhouse with plain walls, a veranda with a dry mud floor, and a backyard of an endless tranquil expanse, a scattering of red flame trees, and a great canopy of the ancient banyan.
While walking to the left of the house, towards a small cowshed, we try to not trip over the few hens aimlessly running around, clucking, and pecking in the dust for some grub. Metal bells around the buffaloes and crunching of hay let us know that they were preparing to wind down. On the right side of the veranda in a clearing, along the outer wall of the farmhouse sits a clay stove, also called a “chool” in my mother tongue.
The chool stands as a permanent fixture in many rural kitchens, sometimes inside the home and sometimes outside. Ours is a small one. As if to spring up like a pimple from the ground, the stove has a somewhat rectangular shape that stands about a foot high. The once smooth clay is now aged with cracks, wrinkles, and uneven pale patches of repair. It has a hollow centre and two openings, one on the top to hold vessels and another in the front, to add in wood and let air in to feed the fire. Streaks of residual soot clings to the walls, illustrating a tapestry of the stove’s history.
In the chill of the winter dusk, my dad calls out to me, “इथे ये ना लवकर, चालू करतोय मी लगेच” (Come quick, I’m starting it soon). You wouldn’t normally characterise an IT consultant as the type of person with a knack for outdoor cooking, but apparently, my dad has hidden talents. I run out quickly, meeting his green-eyed gaze. His hands fill the stove in earnest, with firewood and hay as tinder. As the golden warmth of the flames spread around the clearing, the crackle of the wood breaks the silence and the smell of dusty smoke fills the air. Sheepishly, I ask what we have to do next and my mom brings out the ingredients as if to answer my question.
“बघा आता तुम्ही दोघं, मी vacation वर आहे” (You two can look after this: I’m on vacation), she says, retreating to her armchair facing a sinking sun. After waiting for my dad to finish up his yearly ritual of starting the wood fire, I put the heavy steel “kadhai” on the fire. I wait in excited anticipation for the flame to heat the trusted ancient utensil, which is in essence a wrought iron wok with steeper sides. Open fire cooking has always been something of a wonder to my inner pyromaniac. Finally, after years of simply watching both my parents, it was my turn. I assumed it was because of me mentioning that I wanted to become a chef, but apparently, there was another reason behind this which I would find out much later…
In the chill of the winter dusk, the flames dance, and the smoke irritates my vision. But I’m ready to learn how to master that open flame and the chool under the watchful guidance of my father. As the chool reaches optimal conditions: flames in full roar as all the wood turns to glowing red bricks of coal, and the kadhai aptly heated; I pour in some peanut oil and then add whole cloves of garlic. A pungent sharpness spreads through the air and as the sizzle reduces, in go the fenugreek leaves and a secret blend of spices, known only to a few within the family. The air around us changes its scent, as our noses are attacked with a ferociousness of the spice and a bitter odour of the wilting fenugreek. A lone damp rag was my only friend while trying to ensure that I don’t drop the volcanic metal and the contents within. Beginner’s luck was seemingly paying off. My arms eventually succumb to the hardest workout of my life, sautéing the mix extremely quickly, to prevent it from sticking to the vessel and burning.
Moisture starts makings its way out of the heat-stricken leaves, bubbling and sizzling while effectively deglazing the kadhai, blending with the crust of spices stuck to the bottom. The bright green fenugreek darkens and shrivels, the garlic develops an elegant shade of gold, and the smells change yet again. Now though, beckoning at our noses, the aromas are accented with touches of caramelised earthiness and the mellow sweetness of spices. I mentally steel myself and power through, despite the pain in my arms (and a rumbling belly).
The fenugreek leaves then wilt in the blistering heat and develop a brown char along the edge with oil bubbling in the background. My dad, who was staring at this change from a short distance, reminds me to add in the crushed peanuts. The coarse particles add in a slight crunch, a contrast, and a toasted nuttiness to the dish while the finer powder soaks up the concentrated flavour-laden liquid pooling at the base of the kadhai. In the final stretch of cooking, I see him glaring over my shoulder, inspecting my work like an annoying, perpetually unimpressed factory floor supervisor.
The result, to the relief of my anxiety-stricken father, passed his absurdly high benchmarks. Looking up after a bit of cleaning, I see my father staring off into the distance. He asks if I’m done and then immediately starts a speech about how I missed the sunset. I let out a visible sigh in the cold of the twilight and the glow of coals while cradling my arm which has been absolutely demolished. Yet, I smile to myself knowing my little venture to master the open flame had a great start. We then proceed to eat this smoke-infused spicy stir-fried fenugreek with millet flour flatbreads that we also cooked on the stove, once the flames died down, with an expert helping hand from mother-dearest.
I had made that recipe dozens of times before experimenting on the open flame of a wood-fired stove. But the sheer unpredictability of the flame — having to maneuver myself to make sure the food did not burn as I cooked — made it a lasting memory. The technique I had just gotten a taste of was something I would continue to develop over time, but this first instance allowed me to develop a keen awareness of the flames’ intensity.
The simple pleasure of exploring the unknown with regards to cooking, and the happiness I felt after mastering it, is always within me as a source of motivation and hope. That memory, along with the beauty of the family-friend’s farmhouse that I visited, the cold weather, and how well the dish turned out, also had a significant impact on my culinary personality. The familiar fenugreek stir-fry that was a constant in my repertoire, tasted entirely different. Maybe it was the raw heat from the open flame and the infusion of smoke that elevated it to a whole new level, or perhaps it was just in my head. Fennel Hudson iterates in his books that “Cooking and eating food outdoors makes it taste infinitely better than the same meal prepared and consumed indoors” and my fenugreek agrees.
The radical difference I felt and tasted simply can’t happen without that open flame, and I will always believe in the simple charms of traditional techniques. This style of cooking on a clay chool fired by wood or coal, was the traditional way of cooking across my state of Maharashtra before the arrival of gas and kerosene stoves. According to a news article covered by India’s national newspaper, the community in the 1950s, thought of LPG cylinders as a “bomb”, which also had a very off-putting odour. They also claimed that the exorbitant prices of the cylinder itself, coupled with higher gas prices than coal or wood deterred them from even considering this new fuel1. It led to an extremely slow rate of change. Chools were therefore the norm, along with kerosene stoves until the late 1970s.
My grandfather was born in the 1930s in a rural part of the state of Maharashtra and grew up with chools, much like everyone else in his generation. They were used by families for cooking, as well as other tasks like heating water. Leaving his house quite early in life, my grandfather had to start cooking out of necessity and the chool proved to be the cheapest solution. He soon took to cooking and continued to do so after his marriage. Even into his late years, he jumped behind his trusty stove whenever possible. It was my father’s generation that witnessed the adoption of the LPG stoves during their adolescence. He, therefore, was familiar with the chool, as he used it for household chores along with my grandmother. But it was my grandfather who managed to pass down his hobby of cooking to my father.
Just before I started working at my first job as a chef, I learned that my grandfather was an avid cook. He had passed long before he got to see my culinary journey take root and bloom. Although I had memories as a child of my grandfather loving food, I never imagined that he would cook very often. My parents saw a similar flame kindling inside when I mentioned I wanted to become a chef before our trip to the farmhouse. It was then, that my father decided to get me acquainted to the chool.
I think that lesson was a way for my father to remember my grandfather’s memory, by passing on a tradition that would allow me to reconnect to my roots.
References
Parekh, Rutuja (2012). “In the 50s, LPG’s big fight was with coal, kerosene stoves”. Retrieved from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/in-the-50s-lpgs-big-fight-was-with-coal-kerosene-stoves/articleshow/73210771.cms
