Cooling off with Koozh along the NH75

 

  Cooling off with Koozh along the NH75    

Long drives are a pleasure as you pass through the countryside with a nostaligic music album or a good book playing on you car audio. 

Our national highways are overloaded with eateries, with many offering 'free toilet' if you embrace being their customer. 

But there are some 'no frill' eateries that appear along the way who are unable to offer you the perks like 'free toilet' and yet can offer you the best fare as you embark on the long drive. 

As soon as you pass a village or a crowded town along the NH75 a series of handcarts appear along the side of the highway. 

“Koozh” inscribed in Tamil script.  This Tamil word can be roughly translated as porridge in English. Not all the handcarts carry the inscription. However the hungry and travel weary customer who knows what ‘Koozh’ has to offer is sure to notice them.  

They are spread out in a series so that as soon as you spot one you could slow down your vehicle, cross lanes if necessary and catch up with another such cart a few hundred meters away.

 Lorry drivers, cleaners, informal workers and daily wage laborers flock to the cheapest but the most nutritious and arguably the tastiest cuisine on offer all along the national highways in Tamilnadu from early noon for a couple of hours during lunchtime or till their stocks run out. 

 

Koozh is essentially considered a summer beverage. The keppankoozh with buttermilk is what you have in summer and the kamban Koozh is what you have in the well … not so summer days in this geography where the sun blazes above the thirty degree mark all throughout the year.        

Keppankoozh is prepared with the Ragi millet and harvested in summer whereas Kambankoozh is the bajra millet harvested around the winter months. 

There can be other variations as well what with a variety of, millets that the farmers grow locally. The beverage is prepared from any locally available millets and is as versatile as it is popular. 

Light on the palette, it fills your stomach and unlike rice and wheat varieties it does not release the kind of carbohydrates that could make you feel drowsy and sleepy while you are expected to keep your eyes and other senses on the road. 

Safe is the driver on the national highway who prefers a lunch at the roadside eatery with the humble  ‘Koozh’ compared to the one who stops by at the eateries who lure them with the promise of the 'free toilet'. 

Not for him / her /they the rather oily and spicy idli-dosa-vada-pongal or the sumptuous ‘south indian meals’ that the big brand eateries serve that are all dotted along the highway with their ‘Meals ready’ sign board.

The rather bland ‘Koozh’ is usually accompanied by a couple of tangy, sweet, sour, spicy and occasionally crispy accompaniment.  There would be a variety of these accompaniments to choose from, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. 

The fermented Koozh itself is stored in a cool earthen pot so that it does not over ferment in the road side heat.  A small quantity of fresh buttermilk is added to it from another earthen pot. It is served in a stainless steel mug locally known as the ‘Sombu’ and the accompaniment is usually spread over a banana leaf or a peepal leaf casually plucked from a nearby tree. Although just a ‘Sombu’ of Koozh is enough to fill one’s stomach, the accompaniments seduce your taste buds to guzzle another one for the road. In Tamil Nadu along the road sides and small towns, it is one of the cheapest foods available, making it a staple for informal workers, travelers, laborers, truck drivers and domestic workers. 

Koozh is normally made in small batches at home by cooking the millet flour and water till it attains a semi solid consistency. The fermentation process takes a day. It is then diluted with water and buttermilk before serving with accompaniments, such as onions, coriander, mango chutney, lime, chilli,fried turkey berry (sundakkai), fried guar beans (Kothavarangai), fried papad, fish, crab, eggs and chicken, to name a few. Each vendor has his/ her own recipe and the taste is different every time you have it. The accompaniment is never a standard recipe. It is the surprise element of the accompaniment that entices you to overdo when you have already had more than your fill. 

Driving is a pleasure when you are not overstuffed with the oily & spicy soda laden food served in larger and branded eateries. 

With ‘Koozh’ you avoid the rush of carbohydrates and yet your stomach is gently filled and your taste buds are gently tickled as you drive on rekindling your taste buds to the after taste of the bitter and crisp fried turkey berry (sundakkai vaththal) or the tangy fiber from the sun dried spicy mango pickle stuck between your teeth whose olfactory senses refuse to leave your taste buds long after your have driven past the ‘Koozh’ cart. 

A well travelled and wise driver would bargain for a small pouch of the accompaniment wrapped in an eco-friendly leaf to be packed for the road, as a compliment, when they part with 20 or 30 rupees for the sumptuous meal that they have had.

 

P:S : If you are skeptical about hygiene, especially the quality of water used in the buttermilk and other aspects involved in the preparation of Koozh or its accompaniments and are afraid of how your highly sanitized belly would react to a ‘Sombu’ of this highly nutritious and yummy beverage, use your discretion and avoid the Roadside Koozh. 

In that case you can head straight to the next Adyar Ananda Bhavan, Murugan Idli shop, the umpteen versions of "Hotel Saravana Bhava' or even the Mcdonalds.   

Oh well … you know not what you have missed out.