The array of fresh produce available in the vegetable markets is quite amazing and it’s all seasonal!
So strawberries when they are ripe – perfect for your frozen Strawberry Daiquiri, but that’s another story! The market gardens around the town of Mahabaleshwar are filled with produce and hawkers line the streets each evening selling their wares. Most of it, though, gets driven out on local trucks and bullock carts to markets in Pune, Mumbai and Goa.
As a complete aside, Freddie Mercury was at boarding school just up the road from the town!
In every market there is also a complete range of spices for sale; most homes have a favourite mix that forms the base of the masala which is used in most dishes.
Then there are the chillies, the peppers spread to Asia by the Portuguese traders – they were introduced into India towards the end of the 15th century. In the markets throughout India, you will see the sellers sitting behind piles and piles of different varieties of dried chillies.
The onion, that simple everyday allium, is puréed, sautéed, eaten raw and is in every Indian kitchen, used at just about every meal. India is one of the largest growers of onions in the world and they are famous for their flavour. In October of 2019 a shortage of onions became a crisis that was the talk of the Indian government. It is a staple of all indian cooking and in the autumn of 2019 the price skyrocketed, very similar to the fuel issues we have today. In August onions were £0.29 a kilo and by October they had risen to £0.91. The onion is an absolute basic vegetable of many diets but especially so for the poorest of the population. In Maharashtra, if there are no other vegetables or you can’t afford to buy them, people eat ‘kanda bhakari’ – onion bread. So onions are crucial. This humble vegetable is so much more than the one that brings a tear to the eye; in India the phrase ‘onionomics’ was coined showing just how important the onion is to the country!
