Avi

Is it awkward to admit that I’ve had numerous adult conversations around the art of flirting? Truly a skill, and one I don’t have, which will only come to mind when I interact with the occasional cute bartender or striking cashier. One of the last times I saw Avi, we shared drinks in the center of the bar while people watching how normal people flirt. I don't know if we learned anything. Avi identifies as Indian American/North Indian. I met her at some point in high school - the exact moment is not lucid for me, but reconnecting with her years later is. She was in my Food Chemistry course when I defected and briefly went to the school down the street. We reconnected again during the pandemic when we happened to log into the same virtual networking event. Small world experiences don’t happen to me often but when they do they happen online apparently, and she was actually one of the first people outside my immediate Oakland friends that I told Heritage about.

These were a fun dumpling to prep for because Avi gave me SO MUCH to work with. I ended up searching for an Indian grocery store in the area, thinking I could find most of the things that I had never heard of – and I was right! I didn’t really have a cohesive idea for her dumpling until after shopping and evaluating my haul. How can I cram as many things in this dumpling as possible? 

I don’t purport to know anything about Indian food because there are so many dals, I'm overwhelmed by it. Thankfully Avi specifically narrowed it down for me to chana dal with fennel. So step one was to make a pot of chana dal with toasted fennel seeds (and onion/garlic, turmeric, cumin, chili, amchur - I don't know, I was just kind of making it up after scrolling through a couple recipes). I did add as much ginger as I could before it would considered obscene. Avi's family is literally obsessed with ginger, eating "vast quantities of it all day in various formats" to the point where she probably doesn't even notice how much it's in everything they cook. So it felt true to form to sneak in half a jar of grated ginger into the dal.

That would be the filling.

For the wrapper, I ground up a couple bags of magic masala chips and subbed its weight into the dough for part of the flour. And reserved another bag for snacking of course. Apparently they used to include temporary tattoos in the bags of chips to appeal to the kids (as if potato chips didn't already appeal to kids on their own). Avi remembers a catamaran trip to Goa where she lived off these chips and ended up tatting herself up. I'm literally picturing little Avi covered in nonsensical temporary tats on her face and along her arms. Snack flavors (and toys) are really way more exciting not in the US.

Apparently the chips pair very well with Limca soda, a refreshing limey Indian soda. It tasted reminiscent of Gatorade to me, which didn't immediately inspire, but I had them. I also had a couple bottles of guava juice. Selected because guava (when it's sweet and not to hard or seedy) is one of Avi's favorite childhood fruits. I agree with her that the grittiness from the seeds adds a wonderful texture to a guava juice. But I definitely ended up cooking out that texture when I decided to make a guava... chutney of sorts by reducing down the juice with sugar, some lemon juice, a bit of ginger, a pinch of salt, and some chili flakes.

And the Limca, we just drank on its own. I guess I could have made a cocktail as an add-on of Heritage services. Hmmm, considering this...

Added bonus ingredient was the Amul cheese slices I found. To paraphrase from here: Amul specializes in a range of dairy products including butter, yogurt, ice cream, and of course, cheese. Its products are made from Indian buffalo milk and are ultra processed to be distributed to smaller cities around India that didn't necessarily have access to refrigeration. They don't necessarily... identify... as a category of cheese - just a "good good unlabeled white block o'cheese product," as Avi says.

Their canned cheeses last for nine months or so. The concept of canned cheese is so mind blowing to me. It's supposed to be creamy and buttery, saltier than you'd think, and slightly sour and funky from the buffalo milk.

Listen, I know describing any food item as "processed" gets a lot of hate these days, but 1. we generally have to process food to eat it (i.e. with fire) and 2. there's a time and a place for everything and processed cheese has its place. Sometimes you just need a perfectly smooth, salty hit that isn't going to separate into an oily mess. Processed cheese is cheese product that's been blended with oils, emulsifiers, preservatives, colors, salt, and/or sugar to create a shelf stable and consistent product. The emulsifiers are key to getting that perfect melt. Have you ever noticed that when you try to melt unprocessed cheese it either.. doesn't melt at all, or it does and then oozes out all that fat and the cheese mass congeals into a protein lump? Yeah, this is why making fondue or other cheese sauces is such a finicky process. Emulsifiers like sodium or potassium phosphate, tartrate, or citrate, basically work to hold the tiny fat globules in place in the cheese so that it doesn't pool on the surface when heated. 

E m u l s i f i e r s is like a magic word in the food industry - the "mitochondria" of biology or "eutrophication" of environmental science, perhaps. I swear like 80% of my food career has been centered around principles of emulsions and emulsifiers. Preventing the natural separation of oil and water is more important than some would think - it's not just for salad dressings. Because emulsifiers have both portions that like water (hydrophilic) and portions that like oil (hydrophobic), they are perfect ingredients for stabilizing oil/fat in a watery system (like processed cheese!) or the converse, water in an oil/fat system (like butter!).

Anyways, I didn't get that inventive with the cheese. Simply cut the slices into smaller squares and stuck a piece in the rolled out wrappers before filling. But they added a perfect salty, melty, ooey gooey component, especially when juxtaposed with the crispy dumpling bottoms.

Things I'd do differently: almost nothing, maybe pack more potato chip into wrapper? I received word that they were Grandma approved and Grandma doesn't usually like dumplings, so I think that's the highest praise :).

Avi's complete list (with commentary):

kaju barfi - I don’t know how I used to eat so much of this stuff, just cashews and sugar and the silver foil but sooo good. Never as good in America as in India at an outdoor wedding situation

Indian pizza -  I recall the pizza in India tasting much better and looking forward to it a lot more as a child . But I won’t turn down pizza now still probably let’s be honest

masala dosa - South Indian food is a destination restaurant if you live in North India. there was this South Indian restaurant close to our home in Delhi where I remember we used to walk to and eat and pass a permanently parked blue punch buggy car with a dead wasp inside on the way

limca

magic masala lays chips

chocolate cake -  I was basically an obese junk eating child. They somehow served us (eggless) CAKE every day at my new age-y Indian-equivalent-of-Montessori-y preschool which is a lot like wacky cake or depression cake and I still have such a strong inclination for it always and make it a lot now for the mems

egg white - APPARENTLY as a toddler I liked egg white, so I’ve been told . Mostly just Trying to think of something healthy lol

salad... maybe? except the coleslaw in preschool

amul cheese

maggi ketchup -  it’s spicier and tangier than US ketchup and gets good when it gets all dehydrated and viscous in the screw cap bottle

peanut butter - was not a common staple in India but I remember trying it for the first time and being fascinated while on the bus with my mom and brother. Whatever that Ish was was definitely tastier than the US peanut butter which did not hold the same magic

dal, esp chana dal with fennel - a classic staple to this day. Not sure if I had strong feelings about it as a kid but there are like 100 dals and some are definitely better than others and I am definitely partial to dal now.

ginger

guava

consistently mint chocolate chip ice cream

jell-o pudding cups, esp the vanilla and butterscotch ones

lime & basil in chapel hill - my first official favorite restaurant after we moved from India to Durham to Chapel Hill - love the pho and vegetarian curry