Locavore

The yummiest Kachori's are sold in the back lanes of Khari Baoli. A small eatery in Khajuraho served the the best dry-mango pickle I have tasted, and some of the nicest meals I have had were served in tiny, family-run eateries in Kyoto...

Good food is often underrated, and very often served far from the world of frenzied reviews, tik-tok videos and reels. It often reminds me of Joshua Bell, one of the finest musicians in the world of western classical music, who once went busking as an experiment. At the busy entrance of a metro station in Washington, he played his violin for nearly an hour - six classical pieces from Bach, Massenet, Schubert and Ponce. Hardly anybody noticed, and even fewer stopped by to listen. From the people who did not recognise him he got about $20 in change. The very next night, he played at a fancy music concert where each ticket cost about $100!

Food and music was on my mind when I read this nice piece on Chef Thomas Zacharias. A chef for over 15 years, after training abroad and serving in leading restaurants, decided to travel the forgotten corners of the world to seek out ingredients, techniques, food traditions, folklores, stories and food recipes, from farmers and indigenous communities. 

What are some of the perspective-shifting foods he's discovered? Young sweet-potato leaves in Meghalaya, Atam (sour-fruit) from Goa, Thaavu (wild fern) from Chalakudy river basin in Kerala, and fire-ant chutney in Jharkhand! 

Thankfully for us, this chef's discoveries are being presented online: The  Locavore - a platform for spotting sustainable food practices around India!

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Seth, Udbhav (2024): 'My trips taught me more than cookbooks ever did', Indian Express Eye, 7 Jan., 2024, URL - https://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/chef-thomas-zacharias-indigenous-ingredients-9098402/ 

* The Locavore - https://thelocavore.in/ 

That Hing Thing

Asafoetida (Hing) - resin chips and powder

If you want to make popadoms you need asafoetida, aka Hing.

This bit of trivia caught my attention while watching an edition of National Geographic's "Food Factory" featuring the famous women's cooperative - Sri Mahila Grih Udyog - makers of the iconic popadom brand, Lijjat Papad. You might say that this is nothing noteworthy. After all no Indian kitchen would be complete without a tiny plastic bottle containing what is perhaps the most pungent powder conceivable. In South India perhaps the most popular brand is LG - not the Korean conglomerate but a staid company started by Laljee Goshoo in Mumbai. You just cannot make Sambaar curry, or Rasam, or Dal, without a pinch of asafoetida.

A popular Indian brand

The interesting point is that all the asafoetida sold and consumed in India is imported! Lijjat Papad uses Hing (asafoetida) imported from Afghanistan. Other companies like LG import the product in raw form, mix it with gum arabic, and rice-powder / maida and sell it as "compounded asafoetida" which contains less than 50 percent of the actual stuff. Even in this adulterated form it is an expensive spice - 50g packet sells for INR 75 which comes to about INR 1500 (USD 22) for a kilogram.

Another curious thing is that asafoetida is not officially considered a "spice". For some reason it does not even figure on the Indian Spice Board's list of spices imported into India. The Ministry of Commerce lists it under the category "resins and gums" (ExIm HS code 1301-9013). Most of the asafoetida in the Indian market is imported from Afghanistan and Iran. There are two main varieties of asafoetida ie. Hing Kabuli Sufaid (Milky white asafoetida) and Hing Lal (Red asafoetida). Tajikistan too is now emerging as an important supplier of quality asafoetida.

The earliest know reference to asafoetida comes from an ancient Sumeran medical recipe dating back to 2100 BCE. So it hardly surprising that this resin figures prominently in the Ayurveda treatise - Charaka Samhita - compiled in circa 300 BCE.  According to this source, the Bhagavata Purana compiled in the 10the century, notes that the Hing plant grows in the abode of Shiva. Considering that the plant grows in cold mountainous regions of Iran and the Western Himalayas, it is surprising how a steady supply of this resin has been reaching all corners of India over the past three millennia..

Asafoetida is extracted from the Ferula plants (esp. Ferula asfoetida) which have large taproots, 12.5-15 cm in diameter at the crown when they are 4-5 years old. Just before the plants flower, in March-April, the upper part of the living rhizome root is laid bare and the stem cut off close to the crown. The white sap that extrudes from the exposed stem-base is then collected, dried and sold to traders. The plant grows only in arid, cold areas and efforts to cultivate them in Himachal, Ladakh and Kashmir are yet to succeed.

Farmers in these states would certainly be pleased to see the efforts succeed. After all, there are only a few plants that grow with little care and yield such high prices in the market.

Exports from Afghanistan

For some reason, the FAO-UN does not list asafoetida as a noteworthy export from Afghanistan, but independent research suggests that this is indeed a significant export item from Afghanistan. In 2014-15, the country exported red asafoetida worth USD 21,940,223 (312.281 tons) and white asafoetida worth USD 12,259,302 (218 tons).

Is USD 33 million worth of exports insignificant? Certainly not if you consider the fact that the top export item from Afghanistan is raisins (red, black, big, abjosh) and its total value is just a bit more at ~ USD 36 million. Other famous dry-fruit or spice exports - Almonds and Cumin is worth just USD 26 million and USD 1.6 million respectively!

So why is it that asafoetida fails to get mentioned in the trade charts?

I don't know. Yet.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

> https://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/amazing-lijjat-papad-story-rs-80-rs-800-crore-130350826.html
> WIPO article - https://www.wipo.int/ipadvantage/en/details.jsp?id=3619
> Lijjat Papad -  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shri_Mahila_Griha_Udyog_Lijjat_Papad
> https://www.thedollarbusiness.com/magazine/from-afghanistan-with-love/46065
. India imports 25% of the world's asafoetida
> http://gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com/engl/Feru_ass.html
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3459456/
> https://www.indianetzone.com/1/asafoetida.htm
> Plants mentioned in the Bhagavata Purana (600-1000AD) -  https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/118519/21/21_glossary%20of%20plants%20found%20in%20the%20text.pdf
> Afghanistan - Commodity Exports - http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#rankings/commodities_by_country_exports
- Hing does not figure in the top-5 exports by value -- the only spice that figures here is "Anise, radian, fennel, coriander" -- USD 26million (2016)
- Top export item by value was Raisins - 19T for USD 56million
> Spices Board -  http://www.indianspices.com/sites/default/files/Major%20Item%20wise%20Import-2016.pdf
> Import Policy - ExIm HS code 1301 90 13 --  http://dgftcom.nic.in/exim/2000/itchs2017/chap13.pdf
> Afghanistan Exports - https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/afg/
> (2015) Paper - India-Afghanistan - Overview of Economic Relations - http://www.renupublishers.com/images/article/1461872860AEV2N2d.pdf

* Oldest Medical Document - Sumeria 2100 BCE - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC200079/pdf/mlab00211-0009.pdf
* Shah NC and Amir Zare (2014): Asafoetida (Heeng): The Well Known Medicinal Condiment of India & Iran -  http://www.thescitech.com/admin/includes/abstractpdf/2014-10-0453469a75d73f8.pdf

Microwave Ovens and WiFi Routers

I never cease to wonder about the electromagnetic spectrum. Much of it is invisible to our senses, and yet, we have reached a stage when it is quite impossible to survive without it.

The microwave oven in out kitchens sends out waves at around 2.45 GHz (2,450,000,000,000 vibrations/second!), heating up food at the molecular level. The ubiquitous WiFi that keeps us connected to the internet - and the rest of the world - are "harmonized" worldwide in the 2.4 and 5GHz bands. Even without getting into the world of electronic waves that send signals across great distances (radio, satellite and space probes), getting a grip on regular household devices seems complicated enough!

Both the equipment's - the microwave oven and the WFi router - produce signals in the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) bands that have been allotted by ITU for non-communication purposes. There seem to be 12 frequency ranges in the ISM band that ranges all the way from 6.78 MHz to 245 GHz. Out of this, home equipment like ovens and WiFi routers use the frequency range 2.45-2.5 GHz.

Since a licence is not required for equipment produced in this range, the part of the spectrum is also crowded with radio-communication services, including amateur satellite services. Thanks to this dual-use, the WiFi equipment you purchase from one country country is likely to interfere with the microwave oven imported from another country. So, if you are heating a mug of coffee in your microwave oven, your internet connection may get disrupted.

International standards - especially IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n - tries to deal with this problem:

• 802.11a supports bandwidth up to 54 Mbps and signals in a regulated frequency spectrum around 5 GHz. More expensive, usually used by businesses. Higher frequency makes it difficult to penetrate walls, so its best for open areas.
• 802.11b supports bandwidth up to 11 Mbps, comparable to traditional Ethernet. Usually for home networks.
• 802.11g supports bandwidth up to 54 Mbps; uses the 2.4 GHz frequency for greater range
• 802.11n is an improvement on 802.11g in the amount of bandwidth supported by utilizing multiple wireless signals and antennas (called MIMO technology) instead of one.

It is still mind boggling to think that we have actually figured out ways to precisely control devices that produce more than a trillion vibrations per second! How do we do it? And why is it that microwave ovens need chunky magnetrons to produce the same kind of signals that are produced by lightweight WiFi routers?

In an emergency, can I rig up my WiFi router to heat up a mug of coffee? :)

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LINKS

ITU - http://www.itu.int/en/Pages/default.aspx
http://www.itu.int/itu-t/recommendations/rec.aspx?

https://www.howtogeek.com/171869/why-does-running-my-microwave-kill-my-wi-fi-connectivity/

Wireless Standards - https://www.lifewire.com/wireless-standards-802-11a-802-11b-g-n-and-802-11ac-816553