Jalabis
A fact about India is that even the
smallest village will have a shop that
sells tea and makes a wide variety of candy called the halwai. My favorite confection is jalabis. As I close my eyes and imagine the taste it
is more like imaging heaven, warm, sweet, crunchy, just the right lingering
hint of sourness from the fermented dough and the stale fat where the jalabi
was fried, the sugar syrup running down my chin, to my hand and even down my
arm to drip off my elbow. Total
immersion in deliciousness.
Any pilgrimage back to India
involves the plan to find and eat jalabis which is no small feat. My Aunt Ann declared on her first trip back
in 45 years that she was going to find a halwai and order a kilo of jalabis and
eat them all herself. Her enthusiasm
amazed me, I thought I had a corner on the craving but she was obviously as
passionate about jalabis as I was.
The trick to finding jalabis is to
be at a shop when they are being prepared – if they are cold or having been
sitting with flies on them they are not edible.
Each shop has a specific time of day for making jalabis, either early
morning or just at dusk. As you walk through the bazaar or drive through
villages you keep an eye out for the halwai, squatting beside his huge wok, the
flames leaping up on all sides, his wrist move in quick spirals as he squeezes
the dough in pretzel shapes into the bubbling oil. Once the pan is filled with rows of the
jalabis he deftly flips them over one time, and then tosses the batch into the
waiting sugar syrup. That sight makes my heart sing – fresh
jalabis.
I love the surprise on the shop
keepers face when my white self asks in Hindi to please sell me 200 grams of
those fresh jalabis. It is a paltry
order but it is perfection – I will eat every one, exclaiming “yum” and
“perfect” as I polish them off.
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