Sattva : Issue 09
Ingredient spotlight on ketchup | Make your own banana peel enzyme | Practice of just sitting and more
Sattva (सत्त्व) is a beautiful Sanskrit word that has many meanings—spirit, true essence, good sense, wisdom, quality of purity, energy, consciousness and mind, among other things.
Through this fortnightly newsletter, I want to bring to you all things good, which will make your life better. My focus will be on topics such as mindfulness, productivity, slow living and sustainability, accompanied by genuinely useful recommendations of products, books, music, links to read, and of course food and recipes. Through these, I hope to instil some Sattva in your life.
Ingredient spotlight: Ketchup
How did a foreign food like ketchup manage to nudge popular Indian condiments like chutneys and pickles, and become no.1 sidekick to samosas, pakodas, cutlets, noodles, sandwiches, omelettes or kababs? Or even get fussy kids to eat parathas, idlis and dosas?
Ketchup is probably the only ingredient in the world to have all five taste sensations—sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami; all of these combined in the perfect proportions make for the most delicious taste experience. That’s how a squirt of ketchup makes any bland food instantly palatable.
In the case of street food, no refrigeration and tropical weather conditions make chutneys spoil rather quickly. Ketchup can stay without refrigeration for some weeks and it is a practical choice. Almost every home fridge has a bottle of ketchup and it is instantly available, unlike a chutney that has to be prepared fresh to serve as a condiment with snacks.
I tried looking for the entry point of ketchup into Indian markets. Kissan, the company was launched in 1934, but I could not find any results for when ketchup itself was launched. What I did come across was this interesting comparison of all the popular ketchup brands in India (a 2013 report) where they were checked for safety parameters but also general criteria like price, packaging, physico-chemical tests and sensory tests, scoring each brand on all these criteria. Heinz came on the top with best combined scored and Kissan was the best in terms of sensory experience.
Volfarm ketchup TVC in the 80s had a very catchy jingle. This ad is pure nostalgia!
Thoda ketchup try karo (Try some ketchup)
Ketchup hota kaddu bhara (Ketchup is full of pumpkin)
Isme kaddu nahi zara (This one has no pumpkin)
Lagta ghar ka bana hua (Tastes like homemade)
Pumpkin was commonly used to bulk up tomato ketchup to keep costs down. This ketchup had an anaemic look unless of course red food colouring was added to it. Due to strict labelling in current times, the bigger brands cannot sneak in pumpkin. However, the lesser known brands catering to bulk purchases from street carts and small shacks continue to use pumpkin.
Commercially made ketchups usually have 20-30% tomato solids and the rest of the ingredients are water, onion and garlic powder, salt, sugar, thickeners, acidity regulators and preservatives. In India, the terms ‘tomato sauce’ and ‘tomato ketchup’ are used interchangeably. The ingredients are also mostly the same. I wonder why brands like Kissan and Maggi sell both sauce and ketchup. Like a commenter on Quora said, you’ll ask for ‘sauce’ when you’re eating street food and ‘ketchup’ in a posh cafe :D
Check out two recipes using ketchup featured in my column in Mint Lounge this month.
Ketchup and sustainability
A recent post on Reddit opened my eyes to the problem with ketchup sachets, the ones you get with most home delivered pizzas or snacks. These plastic sachets are a landfill problem. They cannot be recycled due to ketchup residue sticking to the pack and the fact that they cannot be washed well.
We must use the option to refuse cutlery and condiments when we place our food orders on apps to avoid sending more of these packets into landfills. Keep a bottle of ketchup at home and use that instead. Ketchup brands need to think of a more environment friendly design for these packets such as small plastic tubs that can be washed well and recycled
Banana Peel Enzyme
Banana peels are very rich in potassium. Making an enzyme from the peels that would otherwise be discarded is an excellent way to reduce food waste going out of our kitchens. Of course, they can be composted too, but I think it is wonderful to be able to create your own plant tonic.
I learnt about making banana peel enzyme from Meenakshi Arun on Instagram. She is an avid kitchen gardener for over a decade and has tons of practical knowledge on improving plant growth and natural pest control methods.
Here is the recipe for the Banana Peel Bio Enzyme and details on how to use it in Meenakshi’s own words.
Banana enzyme is an excellent liquid nutrient for your plants that are in the flowering or fruiting stage. This is one of several methods to use banana peels or overripe fruit as a garden input.
How to make
Take equal quantities of whole overripe bananas or banana peels, whatever you have. Chop up into small pieces with a clean dry knife. Measure the volume of chopped fruit and/or peels. Take an equal quantity of powdered jaggery. Now fill a clean, dry, air-tight plastic container with the chopped banana and jaggery layering as you go. Don’t fill it to more than two thirds capacity. Shut the lid tight and let this sit for a minimum of 21 days in a cool spot, away from direct sun. Do not open the container during this period. You can occasionally give it a shake.
At the end of this period, check if there is a sweet, slightly alcohol-like smell. The mix should look as in the picture. This enzyme can be stored upto 6 months at room temperature.
How to use
Always use a dry spoon to mix this enzyme. The ratio for foliar spray is 1 to 2 teaspoons of the enzyme diluted in a litre of water. Mix it in a bottle then filter into your sprayer with a cloth or tea strainer to avoid clogging. Apply in the late evenings or early mornings to your plants. For soil application use 50 ml in a litre of water.
Benefits of banana enzyme
This is an excellent fertiliser to boost flowering, promote strong healthy flowers and good quality fruiting. Use it for flowering plants (roses, hibiscus, jasmine, geranium, etc), all vegetables (gourds, tomatoes, brinjals, chillies etc) and fruits The process creates a highly concentrated nutrient with a long shelf-life that delivers many required nutritional elements to your plants at a critical stage of their lifecycle. It is a potent addition to your fertiliser collection!
In addition to this enzyme, there are simpler ways to using banana peels in your garden. Sun dry the peels, crush them to a powder and sprinkle around ½ tsp per plant.
Soak the peels in a bottle of water, cover with a cloth and rubber band and keep aside for 2-3 days. The resultant brown coloured water can be diluted in 1:1 ratio and used as foliar spray or added to the soil.
The practice of just sitting
I read about the ‘practice of just sitting’ recently and I could not wait to share it with you. In Soto Zen, the art of just siting is called shikantaza. It is a practise of sitting in a comfortable chair or position and doing nothing.
You may ask how different is ‘just sitting’ from meditation. Meditation is focussing on something. Sitting has no objective or goal.
The verb of the sitting, the substance of its activity starts and ends there: sitting. No point. Nada. It achieves Nothing. It seeks Nothing. Got no direction. Got no outcome.
It is radically non-constructive and non-destructive. You don’t need to do anything. Just bring all your feelings and your self to the chair or the cushion and sit on it. In these times when the mind is constantly racing, and we are multitasking until we can multitask no more, sitting quietly on a chair for a set length of time seems to be a practice we can follow and love. It helps slow us down and embrace the slow side of life.
The quote in this paragraph is from this beautiful long read - Private Practice: Toward a Philosophy of Just Sitting by Antonia Pont.
Podcast
I spoke to Karthik of The Filter Koffee Podcast on my book Everyday Superfoods, and also on influencer marketing, my current favourite food content and more. You can listen to the podcast here.
New posts on blog
Savoury waffles with potato and cheese
If you are new to Sattva, do check out the earlier issues.
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Books: Everyday Superfoods | The Everyday Healthy Vegetarian
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None of the product mentions are sponsored unless explicitly mentioned. Thank you :)
Loved the pics , the arts in ijnthis article , will try banana peel enzyme... thank you... Art of sitting is so difficult, mind immediately wanders and pick up mobile, for example, now I got free ,picked up phone and read 2 issues. Will have to try art of sitting ♥️♥️