Koozh & the art of fermentation

Much too much, I think, gets said about pickling as the iconic art of preservation in India–so much so that we forget it’s equally a sophisticated and precisely regulated methodology for fermentation. Likewise, much too much gets said about dosa and idli batter (batter is “maavu” in Tamil) in India as the iconic art of fermentation that we forget about pickles or even daily curd-setting or really any other equally sophisticated traditional fermentation practices out there.

This post is a little about displacing these things–pickles from the story of preservation, dosa maavu from standing in for all other traditional ferments. Koozh, which is a simple millet-rice porridge, helps expand the story of fermented maavus in Tamil cuisine.

It feels wrong, at first blush, to put pickles together with ferments in a single post; after all, one really seems about extending shelf life while the other seems a controlled spoilage. But saying it that way is already indicating the overlaps though: extending shelf life is a method of controlling spoilage. The truth is that both are connected, at least in Indian culinary systems; both are instances of anaerobic fermentation (a redundancy: fermentation is by definition anaerobic, not needing oxygen). Pickling, as any good pickler out there will tell you, need not involve fermentation at all & the difference between a non-fermented pickle and a fermented pickle may lie in whether you are the one adding the acid–or whether the (lactic) acid is being generated in the curing process itself. In the case of Indian lime or sour mango pickles, it might be both: there’s an acidic environment to begin with, but the salting and resting and sun-heating processes are facilitating lacto-fermentation, which is just less apparent because it’s slow. Tightly sealed jars, the use of oils as physical and chemical barriers, a huge emphasis on dryness and non-contamination–all these indicate that we’re willfully keeping some bacteria out, while allowing others to work on the sugars of the subjects being pickled.

There’s also the role of human hands in all this, which likely deserves a post of its own. For pickles, this is anathema. The microflora present on even clean human hands, however, are welcome in mixing idli batter, which was once ground on aattukkals or stone mortars by hand; these days we mimic that process by using hands to mix batters vigorously before leaving them to rise. At base, in both pickling and maavu-making, you’re keeping out some bacteria and/or yeasts either by manipulating ingredients or processes or both, and trying to let others do their work.

This said, rice-and-dal-based batters that give us idlis and dosas are far less strictly controlled than pickles because here the intent is not so much to preserve (rice and dal do just fine on shelves for extended periods when dry!) but to encourage a fairly fast souring–which is about leavened texture and flavor development. Plus readiness for breakfast tomorrow morning, not next month! [There’s a nice piece on the chemistry of the dosa which you can read here.] And here’s where we forget that the microflora for fermentation can come from many sources. The most common are rice-dal-fenugreek combinations (think: idli-dosa-paniyaaram and that whole family of foods). But also: millets (koozh), raw or cooked rice itself (morkali, pazhaya sadam or old rice), aided by additions of yogurt, coconut, panampazham, toddy and more (think: appams, panampazham cakes and such like). A world of maauving maavu possibilities!

So then you see the larger constellation of fermented foods in which this one dish called koozh sits.

Koozh is both a millet porridge and a word to describe a thick, somewhat gelatinous porridge-like texture. The dish itself is commonly prepared in Tamil homes, which is perhaps why the word “koozh” stands in for all textures of its kind, fermented or not.

Koozh is a rural food, often also a vendor-prepared food which agricultural workers would pack and carry to fields because its nutritious, filling, tasty, and cheap. It’s unique for going through two stages of fermentation: the first typically before cooking, with either kezhvaragu [கேழ்வரகு] or ragi, (which is the recipe presented here) or kambu [கம்பு] or bajra flour (or both); the second after cooking along with (usually) a rice slurry. Rice acts as mortar for the otherwise hard-to-shape cooked millet flours as well as a sugar source, though kambu/bajra koozh can be made without it. The rice-ragi mixture thickens as it cooks, and is shaped into balls (called “kali”)–which are easier to apportion, when it comes time to serve (and sell). These are left overnight, submerged in drinking water.

The process takes 24 hours. One imagines that the first fermentation starting in the morning, allowing the cooking to happen in the evening and the second ferment to take place overnight (in clay pots, to ensure optimal temperatures). This sequence ensures the koozh is ready exactly the next morning, which is likely when street vendors would need to carry it out and start serving. Koozh prepared this way would last without refrigeration through the whole coming day, by which time, presumably, it would have been both sold and consumed. [Read more on vendor-prepped koozh in the chapter by Antony et. al. “Ethnic Fermented Foods and Beverages of Tamil Nadu” in Tamang ed. Ethnic Fermented Foods and Beverages of India: Science History and Culture, 2020]

The final dish is thinned with buttermilk and served with condiments–usually pearl onions, sometimes pickles. In this, it’s a little like pazhaya sadam or “old rice”; what the Odias venerate as “pakhala” and build sumptuous spreads around.

There’s a lot to say about koozh, its humble origins, its ingenuity in transforming difficult-to-digest ragi into a food that’s both light and filling, its rich nutritional profile, its play on texture and binding, its intimate understanding culturing processes, its precision (the use of clay pots for instance), its widening out of taste spectra. And yet as I’ve indicated, the maavu (flour, batter) that makes koozh is far less celebrated or acknowledged than the ones that produce dosas and idlis. Why? I’m guessing here’s where it matters that we think of pickling as preserving and but batters as souring–though, in fact, as I’ve said already both are in fact souring at different rates and in different ways, with different taste results, but evoke different perceptions of ageing.

Goes to confirm the old pickler’s adage, that all pickles are likely ferments–but all ferments are not necessarily pickles!

Souring things are salvaged in utappams and such, but the point is that they’re thought of as on their way to spoilage. That’s one perspective on ageing. The threshold for souring in pickles is a lot higher than for batters, and batters start to feel “old,” while pickles age oh-so-gracefully and so, culturally, the one is valued in a way the other is not. It hardly helps that there are communities and families who will not tolerate old food: pazhaya sadam, too-sour curd (which, again, is deployed in mor-kuzhambus and the like, anything to consume fast), fermented koozh. The “fresh” and the “new” are quite simply valued more.

Thinking of spoilage, koozh also challenges a little of what I’ve learned about food from Levi Strauss’ famous “culinary triangle,” with raw, cooked, and spoiled food at its three points. Koozh is in fact neither raw nor cooked no rotted, and it’s hard to say if it’s been transformed more by nature (natural spoilage) or more by culture (cooking and processing). The method by which it’s made and its almost-certain status as endo-cuisine do make it seem as though it’s an ingenious salvage operation, rather than a sanctified preservation. Never mind that the rice-ragi balls left to ferment in water can stay as they are, at ambient temperatures, for a week and longer if refrigerated–an extension of shelf-life, if I ever knew one. [Though koozh has never lasted that long at our house, truth be told. It’s quickly finished by growing-boys-seeking-mid-morning-snacks.]

Finally, I do want to insist also that koozh is not a “lost” or “forgotten” recipe. If a recipe were truly lost, we’d not be able to find it on vendor carts, would we? Koozh belongs to a category of foods that are “lost” only to those of us who advance and prosper in urban, global, multicultural worlds and who seek quick fixes over slower, more attentive, older ways of doing things. For many others, koozh has always been there—normal, staple, cheap, easy, available, profitable, delicious. So much so that the Ammas who suddenly see us paying attention and taking photographs of it laugh: really? They are amused; you’re interested in this ordinary stuff?

Koozh reminds us that we’re now “recovering” what others have known and done all along—a bit like Columbus “discovering” the Americas, or the West suddenly awakening to “moringa” [sorry, but it’s murungai or முருங்கை & I’ll keep the original Tamil name rather than wake up one day and be told that Madras is being renamed Chennai, which it really always was for us]. I, for one, never want to forget that.

Two kezhvaragu koozh recipes that I thought were especially well documented in the blogosphere & helped me understand the process better: Kirthana’s from @theblurrylime & Vijayalakshmi’s from @gospicyofficial Wanted to give those a shout-out, too!

Ragi koozh recipe is in the video below — you don’t need an Instagram account to view. Kambu or bajra koozh recipe follows in my next post.

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