Ferment nation: Chai, Cheese, and Chocolate

We wouldn’t be drinking tea if it wasn’t for fermentation. Alright, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but how tea drinking in India is linked to fermentation is still an interesting piece of fact. In a recent Instagram live session where we discussed the history and culture of fermentation in India, filmmaker and food documentarian Shubhra Chatterjee told me about this fermented tea of the Himalayas that she stores in her kitchen and drinks regularly. It is this fermented tea that could be credited for India becoming a tea-growing and tea-drinking nation.

Fermentation. Illustrated by Gowri Suresh, Visual Storyteller by ThisDay

The story goes back to the 18th and 19th century when the British East India Company relied on China for their tea imports; they illegally smuggled opium into China to meet the costs. There were attempts made by the company to find an alternative source for tea. Multiple attempts were made to smuggle tea seeds from China and plant them in one of their colonies, India. But none were successful.

In 1822, Robert Bruce, a Scottish merchant and ex-major in the Bengal Artillery, arrived in Assam to learn about the indigenous plants of the region. During his research Bruce discovered a local variant of tea consumed in the Ahom kingdom of Assam. The local tribes would ferment the tea and then brew these fermented leaves to make a beverage. This discovery led to Assam becoming a tea-growing region and eventually India becoming a tea-drinking nation.

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“We ferment everything,” says Chatterjee. And as we took our discussion further this statement became more apparent. I start to look at my kitchen shelf and immediately spot the everyday fermented foods that I consume — a packet of dried curd-filled fermented chillies I bought on my trip to Kochi earlier this year, a glass jar of pickled shallots that I keep making every few days, an earthen pot of milk sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be turned into dahi, and a jar of lime pickle made by my mother.

Pickles in North India are made using two methods — preserving in oil and fermenting. Pani ka rai wala achaar and rai ka sookha achaar have been regular fixtures in my home. My mother would ferment a variety of vegetables — carrots, potatoes, broad beans, cauliflower, turnips, radish — either dry or in water, adding powdered mustard to both. The mustard helps accelerate the fermentation process.

In the previous articles in this series, I have written about the fermentation of rice, lentils, millets, vegetables, and meats across India. We ferment dairy too, curd being the most common form. In the Himalayan region, the nomadic Gujjar tribes ferment dairy to make a local cheese known as kalari. Gujjars are shepherds by profession and being a nomadic tribe, they did not have ways to store the excess milk they had, and so they started converting this milk into cheese. Kalari has the stretchy quality akin to mozzarella and it’s grilled on a pan and eaten with some salt. In Jammu & Kashmir, it is also sold as street food sandwiched between slices of kulcha.

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Our Instagram live session ended with a fascinating discussion on one of the emerging fermented products in India — chocolate. For the uninitiated, chocolate comes from the beans of the cocoa fruit and relies heavily on fermentation to achieve a rich flavour. The fruit begins to ferment as soon as it is harvested. After controlled fermentation, beans are dried, roasted, conched, and then turned into chocolate.

Cocoa is not native to India. But farmers in the southern region of the country have been growing it since 1960, first for the industrial chocolate makers and now for the homegrown craft chocolate brands. Indian chocolate has come of age now and there are close to 50 big and small chocolate makers in the country. There are also an equal number of kombucha and kimchi brands, signalling a new phase of fermented foods in India.

However, the next time you think about consuming fermented foods, remember that they do not have to necessarily come from the supermarket or a farmer’s market. They’re right there in your kitchen, in the form of the chhaas you drink on a hot summer’s day or that dosa you order every alternate day.