Suck, chew and slurp on that drumstick

Mint

2 days ago

People who eat drumstick in their sambar fall into two camps.
The first kind loves eating them whole, soaking up all the tamarind and spices of the sambar. They suck out the softened pulp like a meat-eater savouring marrow from a bone. It is also mandatory to chew on the leathery skin thoroughly to extract every last bit of juice and flavour. What remains on the plate is a pile of fibrous scraps, not unlike the leftovers at a sugarcane juice stall.
And then there's the second kind—the bougie crowd. They want the inner flesh of the drumstick neatly scooped out and stirred into the sambar, no mess tolerated. They want the comfort of Indian food, but tidied up, Westernised. The same kind who want their mangoes all peeled and diced and served in a fancy ceramic bowl with a fruit fork.
If you don't shy away from eating with your hands, there's a repertoire of drumstick dishes in south Indian cuisine beyond the classic sambar.
Some memorable ones I've tasted include the drumstick and raw mango curry from Kerala, nuggekai huli from Karnataka, and the tangy-hot pulusu from Telugu kitchens.
And just in case you thought drumsticks had a southern bias—they're equally beloved in Gujarati, Maharashtrian, Odia and Bengali homes, each bringing to it a distinctive blend of spices and techniques.
For those who want the benefits of moringa with a hands-off approach, there's a recipe shared by the Prime Minister in a speech a couple of years ago, which he says is his favourite —drumstick soup. It's simple and is perfect for that pre-dinner something.
Drumstick also has a cheeky parallel life in Tamil cinema, especially in the old-school comedies. Thanks to its suggestive shape and its status as an aphrodisiac in Siddha and Ayurvedic traditions, it often showed up as a not-so-subtle innuendo in comedy tracks and flirty dialogues. Vadivelu declaring, 'Only if you eat drumstick will a man get his heat!" or Goundamani's trademark smirk and nudge anytime murungakkai made an appearance on screen are all too familiar examples for the Tamil audiences.
The West has discovered an even more 'sanitised" way to eat moringa, i.e. dried and powdered moringa leaves—sprinkling it into smoothies or whipped into a latte. But, the humble pods remain largely undiscovered. In Indian kitchens, though, moringa isn't just health food. It is prized for its unique flavour, which is why how we eat it matters too.
A seemingly mundane act from 2023 recently ignited a global conversation. New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was filmed eating biryani with his hands. Congressman Brandon Gill sneered that 'civilised people" don't eat like that.
The internet erupted in protest, defending Mamdani and calling out the hypocrisy of cultures that ridicule eating with hands, while happily grabbing burgers, tacos or pizza without cutlery. What followed was an overdue reckoning about what it means to be 'civilised" in a multicultural world.
So go on and eat the drumsticks with your hands. Suck, chew and slurp in that unapologetically Indian way.
KERALA-STYLE DRUMSTICK SAMBAR
Serves 3-4
Ingredients
2 drumsticks, cut into 2-inch batons
1 medium-sized carrot
1 medium-sized potato
1 small onion
1 tsp coconut oil
Half tsp mustard seeds
Quarter tsp fenugreek seeds
Quarter tsp turmeric powder
Half-cup tamarind extract (prepared from soaking a lemon sized tamarind in hot water)
1 tbsp sambar powder
Quarter tsp asafoetida powder
2 cups cooked tur dal (with liquid)
For the tempering:
2 tsp coconut oil
Half tsp mustard seeds
2-3 dried red chillies
1 sprig curry leaves
1 small onion, thinly sliced
Method
Peel and chop carrot and potato into large chunks. Peel and cut onion into thick slices.
In a small pressure cooker, heat coconut oil. Add mustard seeds and fenugreek. Stir for few seconds. Add all vegetables, turmeric, salt and tamarind extract (or 1 tsp tamarind paste whisked in half cup hot water).
Pressure-cook for one whistle. Open the cooker, add the sambar powder, asafoetida and mashed cooked dal. Adjust salt as per taste. Bring to a simmer.
For the tempering, heat oil in a small pan. Add mustard seeds. Once it splutters, add the curry leaves and red chillies. Then add the sliced shallots and stir for 2-3 minutes on a low flame until golden brown.
Transfer this over the sambar and keep covered until ready to serve, with rice and banana chips.
PM'S FAVOURITE DRUMSTICK SOUP
Serves 2
Ingredients
2 large drumsticks
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
1-2 medium sized tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
Handful of coriander stems
Quarter tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
Crushed black pepper/red chilli flakes to taste
Method
Wash, lightly peel and cut the drumsticks into batons. Place them in a pressure cooker with chopped onion, tomatoes, garlic, coriander stems, turmeric and salt. Add 2 cups of water and pressure-cook for 5 minutes.
Blend the contents of the cooker, once cooled, to a puree. Pass through a fine meshed sieve and press down to remove all the fibrous part.
You can thin the soup with some water depending on the desired consistency. Bring to a simmer, serve hot, garnishing with crushed black pepper or red chilli flakes.
Double Tested is a fortnightly column on vegetarian cooking, highlighting a single ingredient prepared two ways. Nandita Iyer's latest book is The Great Indian Thali. She posts @saffrontrail on Instagram and X.