Diwali sweets
lighten up
By Pieta Woolley
Publish Date: October 12, 2006
After a childhood spent cooking rich Diwali sweets alongside her mother at Golden, B.C.'s Sikh temple, Roman Bains was out of her element in the Art Institute of Vancouver's culinary diploma program. Spices, the 21-year-old learned at school, are to be precisely measured, not experimented with. The dhal and samosas the students made in the Asian cooking course were unrecognizable to her.
“If I wanted to make something Indian-ish, they weren't very supportive of that,” Bains told the Georgia Straight. “At the AI, you learn professional techniques. But the women in Golden, their cooking tasted better because they adjust everything for flavour.”
On the eve of Diwali, which falls next Saturday (October 21) this year (see www.vandiwali.ca/ for citywide celebrations, which begin October 16), Bains argued that it's regrettable Vancouver doesn't have an Indian-style culinary school. Sweets for Diwali, she said, are about to undergo some major changes. Most urban families leave the labour-intensive barfi and gulab jamin to restaurants, she said. And they taste different in Canada.
“Milk in India is thicker and creamier—it has a completely different taste,” she explained. “Also, we make sweets on a stove, and they [women in her family's hometown of Mahilpur, Punjab] do it over a fire.”
Because more chefs are immigrating from India, Bains said, the style and ingredients here are closer than ever to traditional fare. But these are hardly exciting changes compared to what's possible, she noted. Finally graduated and free to experiment as a new member of Vancouver's culinary vanguard, Bains can't wait to fuse English ice-cream techniques with Indian kulfi.
But will her Diwali-sweets vision come too late?
Newly published cookbook author Jini Aroon (Ethnic Pleasures, $15.95, available at www.jinisethnicgourmet.com/ethnic_pleasures.shtml), who lives in Delta, told the Straight that Diwali sweets are slipping in popularity, due to a new health awareness. She still makes a modified cashew barfi, in small amounts, for her family. But she has outlawed gulab jamin, jalebi, and ladoo from her home. In fact, her husband came home one day to find the deep fryer on the curb, waiting for the garbage truck.
“People have the sweets as a symbol, but I don't think they really eat them that much,” Aroon said. Instead, the Sri Lankan–born Buddhist tosses Indian flavours into healthier desserts. This Diwali, she's experimenting with a cardamom-and-rose-water-flavoured baklava.
There's no need to abandon traditional sweets completely, said UBC cancer researcher Bharat Joshi. Though he doesn't let ghee or sugar into his home most of the year, Diwali is a time to indulge, he said. Joshi warned against substituting Splenda for sugar in Diwali sweets, as such a high volume is not healthy, he said.
“One day of sweets will not make you fat,” he told the Straight. “Eat! Enjoy! And commit yourself to burning off those calories. But keep the tradition going.”
Kamal Mroke, who on October 3 was frying tubs of gulab jamin in his India Bistro kitchen on Davie Street, agrees. As a chef, however, he feels stunted by North Americans' weak metabolism when it comes to sweets. Unlike in India, where richness rules, even Canadians of Indian descent can't handle the volume of sweets that those in Southern Asia can.
“In India there's sweets on every street corner,” Mroke told the Straight. “Any traditional food is the best food, whether it's Indian, Japanese, or Canadian. But we're living in the modern world.…Now the upper classes bring dry foods and fruit to each other instead of sweets. But traditional Diwali is beautiful where it's still traditional.”
This Diwali, Mroke plans to cook traditional sweets to give out to his India Bistro customers. Joshi, who would ordinarily enjoy a rare piece of buttery barfi, said he'll be preoccupied because he and his wife are expecting their first child. With her family, Aroon plans to make offerings to Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of plenty, and modestly enjoy low-fat sweets. Bains, though, will head to temple, intent on revelling in a traditional blowout, barfi and all.
To Bains, Golden is the Xanadu of Diwali sweets. Of the 40 families with Indian roots that live there, most mothers don't work outside the home, so perfecting home-cooked sweets is a year-round job. She admitted that her “arms are dead” by the end of cooking with her mom, but said it's a labour of love.
“After I went to the AI, I realized we never recognized how much our moms do. They're really good cooks. I just respect her so much more, and I want to learn about traditional cooking more.”
To that end, Bains is considering a culinary internship at a castle in Rajasthan. She'll bring her Canadian recipes and formal AI training. Perhaps Diwali sweets will never be the same.