The Ancient Art of Making Gurrha

I got back last weekend from Pakistan, and now you remind me of the gurrh that I should have tried!!! Actually, the oranges in Pakistan were sweeter than any gurrh this time of the year. And the roses were humungous, the flowerbeds brilliant and the sweet-peas on rope trellises at the edge of sunny, green lawns announced that all was well with the world. (I get poetic sometimes).

Wonderful zeejah. I heard somewhere that you are also the undercover author of the social butterfliy diaries in Friday Times. If you are, I must tell you that those articles have VERY often pulled me through rough exam weeks.

Anyhow, I liked the fact that you called it ``gurrhA`` instead of gurr. The pathan pronuciation, and I should say teh REAL pronunciation. :)

YEAH PUKHTUNWALI!

Thanks again for the article. Took me home for 5 beautiful minutes.

cheers

Haniya

hey where`s my reply i posted this afternoon????

Reply : Urstruly & shirin

I remember the time when i didnt like mangoes either. I would eat falsas, bairs, jaman, kachay amruds everything but not mangoes (God knows what was wrong with me???)But now i am actually looking forward to summers and mangoes and water melons and `Rauh`...After reading all these ramblings about gurr from all these ppl, i feel as i have missed out on something good in my life yet again (first being mangoes)so gurr here i come...!!!

URSTRULY #

Uff ! yeh key Kar To Aap Ney Hamain Pareshan Kar Diya ! Chalein Bhijwaien Phir Aam Detroit Sey ...

sa:)

Shirin

No mango-hater or even one who is indifferent to them can by my friend. Hamari aap ki nahiN ban sakti ji :)

bakait - i intend to try it this weekend : )

aicha

hmmm this sweet trip dwon memory lane has made everyone forget the after-affects of gurhh-indulgence

aicha

Reply #: 13 ,aicha

Gurh fried in ghe is one of the tastiest things I have ever come across. The trick is to make ghee hot and then dip pieces of gurh in it for a short time.

In my part of india, especially in the villages, it was rude to serve water to a guest without a piece of gurh..... and fried gurh was for an especially honoured guest.

Bakait

Pankaj #21

No denigration intended really! :-)

But visit Bengal (whichever side) in winter and ask for `khajur gurh`. Once you taste it, I shall effortlessly rest my case. :)

RE: Urstruly & mangoes !

Shoot me if you want , but I guess I am the odd ball who does not have a passion for mangoes any more! There is a reason behind it .As a child and in my growing up years I loved mangoes.In fact when we lived in Bangladesh , in the cool evenings of the mango season, the mangoes would be immersed in a huge tub, with ice cold water , and blocks of ice , and all of us parents and kids, would spread around on the daree in the garden, and just eat mangoes till we almost regurgitated.Any guests who came would join in. When i moved to karachi, somehow with life`s faster pace this tradition was very quickly forgotten. Come mango season , there were everyone`s favourites in the fridge , but somehow I missed the ritual of the earlier days , so the enthiusiasm was slowing down. However then there was another ritual .In Ramazan, just a little before Iftar, my father would come into the kitchen, ask ``Abdul `` [ our man Higgins ] to slice the mangoes , and get the blender and all ready for him. By the second day, this art had been fine tuned to precision, and Abba would go into the kitchen and make tall glasses of mango shakes [ we called them mango fool for some reason ] I loved my mangoes now in that form , I guess because their was a personal touch to the process .Well we all grew up, and everyone started watching their waist lines, so the mango shake fervour just sizzled out. When I got married , my husband never liked mangoes , and like the saying goes `` Aam to bahut sey honae chahiyae aur bahut meethae ] ! well that theory did not hold good anymore in my house , and so slowly and gradually mangoe buying was restricted til my fruit wala literally begged me `` bajee aaaj to ley jain. ab to mausum bhee janae wala hai ``.So I would buy a few , and they would just lie around , till i decided to make trifle out of them , so that they did not land up in a gulloed form in the trash can. My kids are also not mangoe freaks , so I guess over time I do not like mangoes any more, or maybe just have beEn weaned of them. So maybe that is the reason i did not mention mangoes in the list of my favourite fruits. To top it all the variety we get here in canada , has put me off more ! and the price for the junky imports.

Well the entire atmosphere has to be there to having mangoes .It is not like a cup of tea `` jo jaldee mein karhae karhae pee saktae hain ``.

Cheers ,

Shirin

Neptune

C`mon buddy, dont you tell us the gurrh from sugarcane is of lower quality :-) Where do you get gurh from date palm.

Cheers

Shirin! I will never forgive you for not mentioning mangoes even for once. How could you miss that? Did you know that Adam was expelled from heaven because he couldnt resist eating mangoes. I think Pakistan should be nick-named as the ``mango country``. We are blessed arn`t we. One of these days I will go to Pakistan in July, which I havent dared since I came here. In our part of Punjab the temperatures go upto 55 and 58 C. The things we do for love (of mangoes).

The best gurh I believe comes not from Sugarcane but from the date palm tree. The sap is tapped from the stem and boiled to yield three distinct grades of the gurh:

1) The liquid first boil - the consistency of honey and bursting with unbelievable flavours. Notoriously unstable but a part of the must-have delights of the winter.

2) The version after the second boil - thick and viscous - still packing a big punch in the flavours department.

3) The solid `patali` - This is the solid end product. Sold as discs of fragrant gurh, this has been immortalised in the movie `saudagar`.

I believe, wherever the date palm version is available, the sugarcane gurh is usually looked down as the poor cousin in the flavour department.

Dear Urstruly # 16

That was great to read ! Being a through and through Karachite, I guess I have missed out on a lot of fun happenings in the Punjab countryside. However ``Beir `` .. uff !! my favourite . the small red wrinked ones , were God`s gift to earth for me !even the green ones were nice , but the red ones are still my all time favourite.Along with that jamuns, falsas, green kacha amruds, ohhh , this is becoming painfully depressing as I cannot get them here !sometimes we can get the green kacha amruds from china town , very occassionally though , but the rest is just a dream now ....

When we were growing up, we used to visit my Uncle`s lands in Badin [Sindh] very regularly .However the atmosphere was very different .Sugar cane was grown there , but then just cut by the Harees [ workers on the farm ] and sold to the sugar factory [Fauji Foundation ] The Gurrh episode was bypassed .However another beautiful site was the `` sarsoon `` planted for miles and miles .Did it look pretty glistening in the morning sun. We cousins would all go for bullock rides , and swim in the afternoons in the single ``nehr `` muddy water which well served for the swimming pool .

For lunch the harees would pluck fresh sarsoon, and we would have ``sarsoon and sag `` with hot naans off the tandoor .Usually as a feast a few chicken would be sacrificed , so there was `` murghee ka salan for the main Entree !

In the evening after it got dark, the women folk would all come in their very trendy backless , colorful ajrak cholees and ghagras , and do a wonderful dance while their men played the drums .This was the highlight of the day for me , as I watched these graceful ladies dance in their colorful hip attire.....

I wish canada did not have such strict policies of bringing in food !

does anyone like ``Bakar khani`s`` with their morning cup of tea ? another great one ....

now let me roll back to Gurrh !!

Cheers ,

Shirin

Actually Urstruly, i was going to say the same (almost) about the chowk editors who mangled the article ... or do i write so jerkily?...:)

GURR AND BAIREE

Zeejah!

Khuda aap say samjhe. Why did you have to write this article? As an avid Gurr lover it not only brought back some “sweet” memories but it also caused my mouth to water. I miss nothing more than Gurr in this country. In Detroit the only Gurr that is available is Indian and it is better to eat a fist full of sand from Lake Huron than to eat it. They make godaweful gurr.

I remember going to my Khala’s (aunt) village when I was a schoolboy, during vacations-sometimes in winters and sometimes in summer. My favorite was the sugarcane season (Nov to Feb) when temperatures in our part of the world are milder and wind just becomes so intoxicating. The Gurr making “plant” was set up at the Dera. A Dera is usually a very small collection of houses-four to five- away from the village where usually watchmen and tube-well operators live with their families. Whenever I would visit my Khala, my cousins and I would go to Dera and live a couple of days there. We would usually get there on horses. My cousins had two and then their friends would bring one or two more and all of us six or eight guys would go together. I used to be a lousy horse rider-still am. I would always refuse to ride with them ‘cause they would always make their horses stand on their hind legs whenever I was sitting with any one of them or they would make it run like hell and scared the living day lights out of me. So there was a mare reserved for me whose name was “Maasi Museebtay”. This mare was just what I needed. It had brakes but no accelerator. It was called Maasi Museebtay ‘cause it would just stop somewhere when it felt like it and no matter what you tried it wouldn’t move. That was the museebat part. One of the farmers then discovered that if she was offered Gurr she would move.

Dera used to be fun. We could play cards all night and smoke Huqqa and cigarettes without any fear of Khaaloo Ji, all night long. Sometimes we used to stake out and shoot pigs and boars, which would invade sugarcane fields in hordes during night. In the morning our first ritual used to be to take a bath at the tube-well. There is no feeling like standing in front of a five-inch diameter pipe spewing water with a thrust that would throw a grown up man feet away. No one used to care about wearing any underwear except me; I would always take bath in my shalwar. The only mission in the lives of my cousins in those days used to be to strip me off my shalwar. They would usually mow me down on the ground together and strip me naked. I wouldn’t mind that much but then they would always throw it on top of a Bairee tree. Bairee is a tree that yields a fruit called “bair”-also called as poor man’s apple. The tree has an inch long spikes on its branches and would trap anything. Usually it is a miracle if a piece of cloth stuck in it comes back in one complete piece. So the fun part (theirs) used to be the part when I threw stones and jump naked to get my shalwar off the tree.

The crushing of sugarcane and making of Gurr used to start early in the morning. They had a small old-fashioned flour-mill at the Dera which used to run with a diesel engine and made the typical “kook” “kook” noise when it ran. The breakfast was usually sweet rice cooked in gurr or a sweet corn bread also sweetened with gurr. Some used to drink milk with that, some “roh” sugarcane juice, and yet others lassi. A special bowl of tea was always made specifically for me and everybody considered me a freak of nature. Those were the worry free days when only worry on my mind used to be the shooting grass, flies, and mosquitoes negotiating with my behind when I used to go in a sugarcane field early in the morning for you know what.

Re: scout

``I miss chewing on fresh, cool, juicy sugarcanes in the summer.``

You can get some in the Caribbean stores in New York but they are usually old and have a funky taste.

Venki#11

I tried a few more variations of this recipie. Like boiling rice with fresh sugarcane juice in open pot till the whole mixture thickens. Put some resins, cashewnuts etc as garnishing. It is too sweet but what the heck, I like it. I wonder if you have spent the whole night beside the concrete container or ``bhatthi`` as called in N. India, where sugarcane juice is boiled to gurh, enjoying roasted potatoes with salt and chatting.

Sweet memories of childhood!

Cheers

Very sweet article. I think I have read it somewhere else too.

In S India distribution of gurhh, sugar, dessicated coconut - signifies a happy occasion. Dont know if it is the same elsewhere. I remember coming home(remorsefully) many a time with god-awful report-cards only to face my wicked mother grinning away - ``gurrh/shakkar baanto, lagtha hai bacchi phir-se distinction se pass hui hai``. baahhh horrible thing to do to a child!!!

ba-kait - ``gurh fried in ghee``

-- But wont taht caramelize/treacle`ize it? And is it tasty?? Interesting !!

aicha

Amazing . . . pongal dishes from Madras featured at chowk. Neat!

My memories of sugarcane being turned into ``gur`` involve (in Iran as well as in India) one part of the process being slightly different:- producing a deadly brew, often called ``Laal Pari`` (Red Fairy) . . . this was the sugarcane juice mixed with all sorts of ``accelerators`` (honest, that is the name given to a concoction of chemicals which turns the juice into booze in about 12-24 hours, I am told it is made of rotten banana peels) while hot, then stored in ``matkaas`` (earthen pots) buried underground on slow fire for a day or so. Then pulled out and consumed.

Another interesting fact: during the `71 Indo-Pak war, sugarcane juice was used, mixed with diesel, in army trucks. On both sides.

Good for gurrah!! Hurrah for gur.

The most flavorful sugar you can get in the US goes by the trade name Sucanat. It is expensive and is available probably only in natural food stores and the like.

It is simply solidifed and crystallized sugar cane juice. Almost better than the raw stuff I used to love (called ``Karuppatti`` in Tamil for black slab) in my childhood.

re: Post #4 Scout

Hey I thought I was the only one that found the fruits bland in NorthAmerica. Good to see someone else shares the view.

Zeejah, good article, brings back lots of memories!

--cheers

Lyahus

Now if only I could find some Gurh in Ottawa :-(

There are few smells as heady as the smell of freshly made gurh and nothing like a tall steel glass of tea with a lump of gurh to go with.

Been years since I had gurh fried in ghee....

Thanks Zeejah for this tasty thing.

This was very sweet!

Ras

Zeejah ,

That was a very informative , though lethal article ! Thanks for enlightening us on the process !Sounds like a wonderful family activity !

And all this while my kids were quite happy going to the pumkin farms, choosing the largest pumpkin , and carving it with me, and their priceless sculptures were admired by us till next Haloween ! how boring that sounds after reading this !

Good for you Zeejah !You are a Great Grandmother !

God Bless !

love,

Shirin

does anybody know how to make gurrkh key chawal

nice one Zeejah.... I`d never heard of this process. Thanks for sharing it with us.

I miss chewing on fresh, cool, juicy sugarcanes in the summer.

These Amreekan fruits like bland apples and bitter grapefruits don`t compare to what we have back home.

(ok, I`m expecting someone to ask me, what the hell are you doing here if you don`t like the fruits)

:)

Now this has thrown me back 20 years... and here am I, 12 yr old sitting in front of the veillna pushing those juicy sugarcanes in to be squeezed into rauH.

As for as I know 20/25 years ago Nov to January/February was the guRh season and farmers were busy cutting their sugarcane, cleaning it, sqeezing the juice(rauH), boiling it in the big bowl(called kaRaaha in our part of the world) untill it beocomes semi-solid into the guRh. This semisolid guRh was then cooled in tre big tray made of wood or earthren pot, shaking with ramba until it turns into solid guRh.

Our part of the Punjab was not very good at growing sugarcane and most farmers used to grow enough for their own use and some more that they can sell in the local market only. So our extended family(of 5 nucleus families) used to share one Veillna. It was a spot in the middle of our farms set aside only for this purpose. A heavy weiight veillna, a big chulla, kaRaha, and other accessories were available for all to use. Nov to Feb is a very easy going season for the farmers in Punjab as nothing else is going on. So it used to be also a meeting place for all the guys and kids during all these 3, 4 months. I remember my grand father and his two brothers and about 8 sons and another 20 grandsons participating in this activity.

Usually one kid will run after the bulls to move the veillna through a geared mechanical action and a long lever(gaaRhi) pulled by a pair of bulls, another kid would push the sugarcanes into the veillna, another few would be pushing the dried sugarcane fibres to fuel the big chulla. That was usually one of our favourite assignments in those cold winters....to be pushing fuel into the chulla. It used to take about 2/3 hours to boil juice and make guRh, dry it and then make balls of it. 8 or 10 of us adults and kids would be present their all day working, joking and making fun of each other. Coming home aftr school, first thing we would do was throw our heavy school bags on the floor and run towards veillna.

Mornings would start with drinking rauH(sugarcane juice) by mixing it with freshly made lassi, some black pepper and salt.

During the busy season, sometimes this process will countinue 24 hours and people will work by taking turns. During nights, we used to light some laaltains(later light bulbs) and when younger kids will go home to sleep,and grandfathers were forcefully requested to go home and have some rest,our adult uncles and older cousins will start cracking their dirty jokes. During my late teenage years, this used to be favourite part to go their in the late night and listen to all these ``experienced`` guys impart their adult wisdom on the younger ones. Now that I look back most of that was their boasts of stuff they probably never did:-).

What amazes me looking back is that in those winter days we used to drink so much ice cold rauH and still survive. I remember one time I was 10-12 yr old and sick of fever for days and did not go to the Veillna. When third day I went their brother of my grabdfather, whom we used to called Nikka Bappu(waDDa being the other one, third one for some reason we did not call Bappu but Bhaoo, a Punjabi slang for brother/or anyone elder), asked me what is wrong with me. I told him I had bukhaar for 3 days. He gave me a very big gaali and got up and filled a big glass of cold rauH, offered it to me and challenged me ``drink this rauH. bukhaar bukhaar laiyee ay...this cold rauH will kill bhoots inside you. what is bukhaar in front of it?``. In fact after drinking it I was fine by evening. No wonder I never saw those old souls ever get sick.

Now things have changed so much in last 10/15 years. We have plenty of sugar mills almost every 30/40 miles. I observed during my last visit that my cousins are growimg lot of sugarcane and shipping it to Sugar Mills. They now have electric veillnas which they hardly use other than for making some rauH and guRh for home use.

Kids are not interested in hanging around their elder cousins and uncles for entertainment, they rather spend their time in front of the TVs. I was looking forward to spend the night at the veillna and impress them with my tales from my years spent in US but those majlis`s are long gone.

World is changing faster than we can observe.

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Zeenat:

Before writing this response have already called home to find out if we have some gurrh....and yes....would be having a rare treat....doodh-patti with gurrh after supper...even though those grim professionals with whom I talk mostly when un-dressed keep reminding me to avoid anything remotely sweet .... but how can I?...with so many sweet friends around:)...share a Mahajirzadeh recipe?...add almonds to molten gurrh and let it solidify...ummm...

love

temporal