Afshan Mariam on her family’s generational knowledge of sun-drying and how to eat more attentively in an increasingly warming world.
The rituals around Bakrid last for three days. On the first day, we receive the sacrificed meat (Khurbaani ka gosht) from the mosque and divide it into portions according to Islamic customs: one-third for the family, one-third for relatives and one-third for charity. On the second day, we distribute the meat and receive guests who come by to give us our share and stop for some tea before heading to the next home. On the third day, we cut our hair and nails and prepare the meat to last us for as long as possible.
Ammi would separate the meat—mutton and beef—that had been gifted to us, keeping the pieces with a bit of fat clinging to them aside. These cubes of meat would be marinated in salt, turmeric, and red chilli powder. A mattress needle strung them along a rope which hung from one end of the yard to the other. My brother and I would stand sentry to chase the crows and ants away.
Every evening, the meat would be brought in, and every morning it would be strung again, its colour changing slowly from a wet yellow to a deep, leathery brown. Once the cubes were hard to bite, they would be stored in steel containers and kept at room temperature for the year. When we did not have meat in the house, these little sun-dried kebabs were fried in smoking hot coconut oil and served alongside curd rice. The ones with a bit of fat had a chewy resistance, while the lean pieces crisped up, their sun-soaked savouriness maturing—changing flavours from salty to smoky, even sweet at times—with every bite.
The sun was an essential companion to the culinary processes in my mother’s kitchen, which extended onto the backyard. In the nineties, our family lived in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, where courtyards, backyards, even fruit trees in front of the house were part of the architecture. The sun poured into these pockets of open space where thin muslin cloths would be covered in a moving mosaic of ingredients: everything from chillies to soap nuts. Before ovens became common in middle-class homes and spice blends arrived in supermarkets, sun-drying was the most trusted technology.
This long, slow process entailed more than preservation: It was a ceremony of care. We were the only Muslim family on the street and spoke Dakkani, a dialect of Hindustani spoken in the Deccan. Our food practices were a blend of Tamil and Hyderabadi cuisines, underpinned by culinary practices reminiscent of the trading Islamic communities that travelled along the Indian Ocean. We rakishly dipped rotis into filter coffee and scrambled eggs into Idiappam (rice vermicelli). Ammi would grate raw mango (kizhi mooka or totapuri were the preferred variety) into a sweet and spicy pickle that our Tamil neighbours would eat with much surprise. Even the sun-dried spices and condiments that showed up on our plates were a syncretic combination of various geographies; so, sun-drying was a way to preserve the nuanced flavours of our family, our particular food practices.
The sun was an essential companion to the culinary processes in my mother’s kitchen, which extended onto the backyard.
The sun-dried kebabs would, though, remain within the privacy of our home, while the recipes for pickles and papads were passed between our families and neighbours over walls and terraces through observation, hand-held wisdom, and brisk instructions.
As my family moved towns, homes, and land, these sun-drying practices evolved. We moved to Chennai after I graduated from school, and quickly adapted to living in apartments with balconies. The kitchen was now just a room in the house. However, my mother found squares of sunlight in balconies and terraces to dry chillies and coriander seeds because she could not bring herself to trust the quality of spices in the market. Relatives who continued to dry meat would bring us a portion when they visited us, inoculating us against the nostalgia. On the other hand, struck by the ease of the market and urban opportunities, I tried everything in the aisles, looking up recipes on how to use furikake and celery salt.
We had changed, our worlds had changed, and so had our relationship with the sun. Balconies and terraces came at a premium, and the heat had started to become a source of discomfort. Last summer, I stood looking at the rising temperatures in news reports, the numbers breaking records month on month, and I wondered: Could I return to a more attentive way of eating in an increasingly warming world?
It had become so easy to depend on the supermarket for every spice, from biriyani masala to Ras El Hanout, that I had given up my preferences for what was more easily available. With limited space and time, and distance from seasonal labour, I had forgotten the attunement that culinary practices required of me. When I would visit my parents, my mother would squirrel away seasonal produce in my suitcase: dried moringa leaves before the rains started, hyacinth beans in October, and butter beans in the winter. When I would cook with them, the fragrance of these ingredients—the taste of season, soil, family, and care in each bite—moved me to want to continue this practice in my home. I knew where to begin.
“Ammi, how do you dry chillies?”
“Kyaabi nai, Afshan. Mirchi ko accha sukha. Voh karraak aavaaz aana. Usko lagad ko dekh. Maloom ho jaanga”
”(“Nothing to it, Afshan. Dry the chillies well. A ‘karraak’ sound will come. You rub it and see. You will know.”)
This response was typical of most recipes and instructions my mother sent me through WhatsApp voice notes. It always starts with a breezy Kyaabi nai (nothing to it) followed by a complex process requiring three degchis or large pots used to slow cook meat, and 20 ingredients, success dependent on your culinary compass and patience. But, perhaps my hands and ears could still remember.
Thankfully, sun-drying is still part of the Goan landscape, a place I now call home. I live in a small village in North Goa, hugged by the hills on one end, with the land sloping towards the Mapusa river on the other. Between the constant hum of the cicadas, globes of mangoes drop from the trees in a heavy swoon onto hot clay-tiled roofs. The sweet smell of dried coconut being pressed in the mills brings the sun into a clear bottle of oil. It is also a season for fisherfolk, salt gatherers, and cashew farmers to process their produce that would tide them over the quiet monsoon season. Shrimps dry by the sluice gates flanked by mangroves, while larger fish, from skatefish to mackerel, are salted and dried over days on sandy beaches, later piled onto baskets and carried to the local markets.
Last summer, I dried anything I could get my hands on. Every morning, I would lay out clean muslin cloths on a small patch of the terrace and dry chillies, orange peels, moringa leaves. Colanders and tea strainers shielded them against the birds. By dusk, I would bring them indoors so that dew would not settle on them and repeat this ritual, looking and listening for signs of readiness. While the chillies dried perfectly, getting the ‘krrraak’ sound when I rubbed them, my rice crackers succumbed to mould due to a lack of air circulation. The orange peels, meanwhile, continued to sit shrivelled in my fridge as I had not had the time to think of a way to use them yet. But all was not lost.
Last summer, I dried anything I could get my hands on. Every morning, I would lay out clean muslin cloths on a small patch of the terrace and dry chillies, orange peels, moringa leaves. Colanders and tea strainers shielded them against the birds.
I used the chillies to make spice blends such as the ‘Coastal Kaaram’ (Kaaram, in Tamil, refers to spicy), which consisted of dried shrimp, sun-dried tomatoes, and a mix of Aldona, Naga, and Guntur chillies. It had the right amount of savouriness, while the mix of chillies left a soft tingling on our tongues instead of a booming heat. Another batch of chillies was blitzed with dried lemongrass and ginger to make hot honey, which paired well with ripe mangoes and charcoal-roasted sweet potatoes.
For the last few winters, we had been noticing more jellyfish and sargassum along the shores: a sign of warming seas. We would swim with ropes of seaweed winding around our legs. Could we not find ways of eating them? We dried them in our balcony, green braids that carried the smell of fish, salt, and shell. These were blitzed with dried curry leaves, chillies, hemp seeds and, finally, orange peel. We named this one ‘The Japanese Wife’ after a Bengali film.
While the process took a long time, the abundance of possibilities, flavours, and playfulness kept me going. It brought a sense of sovereignty into my kitchen. I could decide what to put into my spice mixes and how to use them. It also connected me to the people who have been drying the chillies, shrimp, and berries for generations. Aunties selling chillies in the market invited me to their homes to show off their 30 or more chilli plants that they had inherited from their grandparents, which they continued to nurture and preserve for the people who asked for them.
While helping a lady carry a jackfruit home, she described her evening chores to me, “I have to peel the jackfruit so that I can dry the seeds before the rains. We make a Khat-Khatte (a Goan dish made with a mix of tubers and seeds in a coconut curry) with them.” Her yard was heaped with empty pods of Alsande (cowpea). A blackened pot bubbled with the evening bath water on the open fire, dried coconut shells piled on the side to feed it.
When I came across moringa leaves or lemongrass growing by the road, I scrambled over to gather what was in abundance, striking up conversations with neighbours or curious onlookers. My dependency on the market began to loosen as I started to dry herbs and spices, blending old and new knowledge into my recipes.
Evenings were spent documenting recipes on how to make vadagams—dried balls of shallots, lentils, mustard, and spices, tempered and used in kuzhambu or curries—shared by family and friends. Hearing of my interest, friends passed on their recipes and small batches of podi, pickles, and papadums. My pantry had started to resemble an edible biography: Kanchana auntie’s Karuvaipillai Podi (curry leaf podi), Induakka’s Takkali Thokku (tomato chutney), Ammi’s Naarangai Oorgai (citron pickle).
As the summer rounded off, my pantry looked more diverse and nuanced. These jars of food had been made from scratch, gifted, and exchanged. We had, through some sleight of hand, jumped across the uniformity of mass consumerism and found a way to start a conversation, share a memory, and a meal. In a time when climate grief often feels paralysing, this practice brought me back to something enduring: that the sun would always come up, there would be acts of care nestled in the hands of people, and that there is resilience in creating something with what remains.
Afshan Mariam is an educator, writer and researcher whose work weaves together storytelling, ecology, and pedagogy. Rooted in questions of people, place and interdependence, she finds meaning in designing learning spaces that centre respect, reciprocity, and responsibility. When she is not reading with her cats, she is found walking through the many wild places she calls home.
Inside My Kitchen
Every kitchen has a unique story to tell. Attempting to capture some of these stories from across India, Inside My Kitchen is a series that examines the relationship between the kitchen and the people who inhabit it.
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