sooran ka achar or zamikand ka achar | pickled elephant yam

I keep saying we are not a pickle consuming family but we do appreciate a good pickle once in a  while. And sometimes when someone mentions a pickle that was made back home with much ostentation, I feel like making that pickle just for my memory's sake.

This sooran ka achar was one of those pickles that I made after my brother was remembering this pickle made my our grandmother.

We used to take second and third helping of this pickle whenever it was placed on the table. I remember this was one of the pickle that was used to show off the varieties of pickle that my parents used to hoard. And we were lucky to have a grandmother who used to find great pleasure in seeing such pageantry around the food she made.

Making sooran ka achar is not difficult once you get the vegetable grated and ready. A food processor or a handy house help and you can easily breeze through making this Elephant yam pickle. Peeling the muddy skin and grating this hard tuber is the most difficult thing, but once it is done you just have to toss it like a salad.

Salad? Do we have salads in India? Check this article I wrote for my column in Indian Express.

Coming back to this sooran ka achar, it is actually a balanced mix of the yam, ginger, garlic, chillies and of course the pickling spices. It looks more like a chutney and tastes somewhere between an Indian tart chutney and a pickle resplendent with pickling spices. Ginger plays a very good role in this pickle.

ingredients 

300 gm peeled, rinsed and grated sooran
200 gm cleaned and grated fresh ginger root
100 gm garlic peeled and minced (or chopped roughly if you like the bite)
50-60 gm dry red chilly powder (coarse preferably)
150 gm salt
100 gm pickling spice mix
50 gm turmeric powder Or 100 gm fresh turmeric root grated
200 ml pure cold pressed mustard oil (a little more to top up)
1/4 tsp hing (asafoetida)
100 ml vinegar of your choice (I use home made jamun or apple cider vinegar)

procedure 

Take care to clean the chopping board and grating equipment thoroughly. Grate and chop the ingredients as required and mix with salt and turmeric. Keep aside for an hour or so. No need to sun dry anything.

Heat the mustard oil, add the hing powder and wait till it froths. Add the remaining spices at once and take the pan off the stove. Add this infused oil along with the spices in the sooran mix and give it a good stir.

Add the vinegar, mix well and immediately fill into a sterilized jar, press it down to remove air gaps. Pour some additional mustard oil if the pickle looks too dry, the top layer should be submerged in a thin layer of oil.

This pickle will be ready to eat in 2-3 days and keeps well for a whole year. The taste keeps getting a little more tart as this pickle ages.

This sooran ka achar is great as a condiment for Indian meals but do try it as a spread for sandwiches sometimes and see how it replaces your regular mustard.

Sooran is also known as Zamikand, Oal or Ole in other parts of India but this pickle is probably a recipe belonging to eastern UP and Bihar. I haven't come across this sooran ka achar in any other regions till now.

sooran (zamikand) ki chutney | a raw chutney with Elephant foot yam

Chutneys are a great way to bring some tangy flavours in a meal, a condiment much needed when the meal is otherwise plain. Some people take pride in serving several types of chutneys in one meal but it is possible for me only when I have made a few chutneys over the week and have cleverly stocked them all in the fridge.

I can't make fresh chutneys for all meals although I try and have our raw salad like batons of cucumber, carrots, radishes, tomato slices or onion slices on the side to make up for the vegetable intake in every meal. This is how everyday meals are served in the traditional way too, some subzi, some sauteed greens (saag), some daal, roti and rice, few chutneys (both sweet and savoury type) and some raw slices of salad vegetables. The combination will be the same even if there are non veg dishes on the menu but nuclear families don't bother to cook the whole hog. Chutneys come handy when the meals are simpler, they don't make you miss a spread on the dining table. Pickles also do the same.

I had never known about this sooran ki chutney, neither had I known about raw sooran being edible. Sooran or zamikand is one of those vegetables with so high Oxalic acid content that it itches the skin wherever it comes in contact with it. Even after cooking it itches the throat and the whole palate if the Oxalic acid crystals are not neutralized by some acidic addition like lime juice, tamarind etc. to the curry. Eating it raw would be scary I thought when I first saw my sister in law making this chutney with sooran. But then we kept taking small helpings of sooran ki chutney over the next few days it was so tasty. But more than being tasty, this chutney has a lot of medicinal value, good for digestive tract, great for inflamed (rheumatic) joints as well as for blood purifying.

The other ingredients used in this sooran ki chutney help in the overall benefits of this corm vegetable. Chilies, ginger, garlic and tamarind are all known as anti inflammatory and this chutney would be good for everyday meals. Tamarind also works for neutralizing the Oxalic acid in sooran and you don't feel any itching in the chutney. Even if the chutney is freshly made, this was a surprise even for me.

ingredients

a cup of cubed sooran (cleaned and washed nicely)
2 tbsp thick tamarind paste or pulp made using about 30 gm tamarind or more if you wish
1 tbsp lime juice
4-5 whole dry red chillies
1 tbsp finely chopped ginger root
3-4 cloves of garlic
1 tsp yellow mustard powder
salt to taste
drizzle of mustard oil (cold pressed)

procedure

Pulse everything together in a food processor to make a fine paste.

Empty into a clean glass or ceramic jar.

Drizzle a tbsp mustard oil and serve as required.

This chutney keeps well in the fridge for 2 weeks. I like to have a tbsp of this chutney with my meals 3-4 times a week.

The chutney doesn't change much with time regarding taste but the colour becomes a little dull after 2 weeks or so. If you use a little more mustard powder in this recipe you can use it like mustard sauce for your sandwiches and dressings.

You can also use fresh green tender tamarind if you get those. I have tried this sooran ki chutney with green and brown tamarind both and it tastes great both ways.

Adding some fresh coconut to this sooran ki chutney makes it a chutney suitable for idli and dosa as well. I was actually surprised to see how well sooran blends for a chutney. Please feel free to do your own experiments but take care to add enough sour agent like tamarind or lime or both.

ry it once and see if you would like to make it frequently during sooran season. I remember my grandmother used to make a very nice sooran ka achar with grated sooran, lot of ginger and chillies, All of us used to love that pickle. Now that I am posting sooran recipes on the blog, I must ask my mom about the recipe of sooran ka achar that used to last the whole year.

Tell me if you have heard about sooran ka chokha. The recipe will be shared soon as I am now buying sooran whenever I spot a nice and fresh corm in the market.

sooran ki subzi for diwali : the tradition of eating sooran on diwali

Sooran is also called Zamikand or Zimikand in Hindi, Oal or Ol in Bengal or Elephant foot yam in English. There are many names in other Indian languages you can check here as I don't have a picture of the whole raw yam. This is an ugly looking tuber (actually corm) that doesn't look very appealing on supermarket shelves or even at the neighborhood subziwala, but if you have had a good curry cooked with it, you would hunt this vegetable like crazy. I have seen many people including my dad hunting for sooran whenever they don't get it. We had once grown a lot of sooran in our backyard long back but that variety was the one that causes itch. Although it was edible and super tasty when cooked rightly.

Yes, sooran or suran as we call it, itches a lot if it is the desi variety. Desi sooran has many small bulbous outgrowths from the surface while the other variety is called 'bambaiyya' (meaning Bombay sooran) which has minor itchiness, bambaiyya sooran has a smooth outer skin. The itchiness in this tuber is due to a high concentration of oxalic acid that can be neutralized by washing it well, boiling it and marinating it with lime juice or tamarind juice. One needs to wear gloves or apply mustard oil while cutting sooran as it itches really bad when it does. If the itchiness is not treated well even the cooked curry causes a bad itch in the throat but I am not telling you to scare you, this information is just to let you know that this vegetable needs to be treated well before cooking. Especially if you are using the desi sooran.

There is a tradition involved with sooran and it is considered auspicious on the day of Diwali. Sooran ki subzi was a must on Diwali at my parents place and I saw the same with Arvind's family as well. They probably had adopted the tradition of Banaras to eat sooran on the day of Diwali. Sooran is considered auspicious because it is a vegetable that grows by corms and some small corms remain in the Earth even after harvest and it grows in the next season by itself and spreads really fast. Diwali is a festival to grow and preserve wealth and this quality of sooran is considered auspicious, hence the tradition of eating sooran on Diwali.

This sooran ki subzi is exactly like the one that was made at my parents' home. I sometimes cook the sooran ke shami kabab or sooran ka chokha when I am not in a mood for a spicy curry but this curry is one of the best recipes that has not changed a bit even in my hyper experimental kitchen. This sooran ki subzi has survived the test of time and enthusiasm of a mad experimenting cook. Some tastes are so comforting you want to bring back from past repeatedly. This is one of those.

My mom and dadi (grandmother) used to treat sooran differently depending on what variety of sooran was brought from the local market. The desi one needed a longer marination in lime juice and sometimes they used a paste of Harad (a dry herb, a seed) or even a mix of amchoor, lime juice and tamarind sometimes. Some varieties of sooran are that dangerously itchy. But those who love this vegetable do anything to get the taste.

Luckily now we get the bambaiyya variety of sooran more, but the bad thing is that the desi variety might get lost. Anyway, sooran would survive as the Diwali tradition ensures. Eating a particular green or vegetable on a certain festival has ensured many native varieties to survive and be available at least in the designated time.

Coming to the recipe, this recipe is for the bambaiyya sooran that is not itchy at all. You would get the idea while chopping the corm if it is itchy so add lime juice, tamarind juice or a little vinegar after chopping the sooran and let it sit for a day before cooking if it is too itchy. Or an hour's marination is good. Harad is used in the form of spice paste and is ground along with the spices (1 harad for about 250 gm sooran), and gives the curry a darker hue. But the taste is great in any case.

This recipe is a Jain recipe (without onion garlic), was made after the Diwali puja and we have always liked it this way. But I cooked this curry with some onion and garlic paste added and it tasted great that way too. Feel free to adapt the recipe if you are not looking for the real eastern UP version.

ingredients
(5-6 servings along with other side dishes)

sooran cleaned and cubed 250 gm

for masala paste

chopped ginger 2 inch piece
whole coriander seeds 2 tbsp
whole cumin seeds 1 tbsp
whole black peppercorns 2 tsp or a bit more
tejpatta scissor cut 3-4
whole dry red chillies 3-5 as per taste
black cardamom 2
green cardamoms 5
cloves 6
cinnamon sticks 2 inch piece broken in small bits

large ripe tomatoes 3 (or tamarind pulp 2 tbsp)
salt to taste
home made amchoor powder 1 tsp (use 2 tsp if store bought)
mustard oil 3-4 tbsp

procedure

My mom used to deep fry the sooran cubes and I tried it that way a few times, it takes longer to get softened in the curry I noticed. Later I saw sooran being cooked straight away in watery medium (gravy) in some Kerala style curries and adapted my recipe to be cooked directly and not deep frying and it worked well. Though you can deep fry and proceed as per this recipe.

I used the soorna cubes raw, added them after bhunoing the masala paste nicely before adding water and simmering it for a long time. Slow cooking is the best for such curries so don't be in a hurry for this please. Although pressure cooker gives close results but you never know how long the avaialble variety of sooran would take to cook.

Make a wet paste of all the spices listed for paste, adding about 1/4 cup of water. Make a paste of tomatoes too in the same blender. Keep aside.

Heat the oil in a deep and thick bottom pan and tip in the 1 tsp cumin seeds. Pour the masala paste as soon as the cumin splutters and stir to let it cook. Keep stirring and bhunoing on medium flame till the oil separates. Now add the salt and tomato paste and bhuno again till oil separates.

Now add the cubed sooran, mix well, add about 2.5 cups of water and let the curry simmer for about 35-40 minutes on very low flame. The gravy would become thick and will be of coating consistency. Add amchoor powder and mix well. Garnish with dhaniya patta if you wish but I like this curry in it's own flavours and aromas.

Serve hot but this curry tastes great even on room temperature. This sooran ki subzi keeps well in the fridge for a week, make it a large batch if you like it. It can also be frozen successfully without changing the texture or taste. Note that if you find this sooran ki subzi itchy in the throat after cooking it, you just let the subzi rest for a couple of days in the fridge. It will get better as the souring agents used in the recipe will get time to work on sooran..

We enjoyed this subzi for 3 meals along with other green vegetables and salads but this subzi is not heavy on the tummy at all, it was not itchy sooran luckily. Sooran is considered very good for GI tract and for many other health conditions. Will write about that aspect some other time as this sooran ki subzi significance on Diwali write up has already become quite long.

Don't wait till the next Diwali to make this sooran ki subzi, get some sooran and cook it this weekend and enjoy the  subzi whole week if you like this. I am going to get more sooran for sure. I have already made a chutney this season and have to experiment with a sooran ki subzi I tasted in Mysore. Will definitely share those too. Enjoy this recipe and others form this blog till then.