I’m no chef but as far as my food knowledge goes, a crunchy side dish is always a great idea to balance the otherwise soft and moist food. For instance, salad is a necessary accompaniment for a meal because it adds the crunch factor to it, specially onion rings which go really well with curries and meats. Now, this could be my personal preference but then let’s admit it, we have all had a plate of papad on our side sometime or the other.
Papad, for those untouched by the phenomenon (and I request you try it if you haven’t), is a crispy, flat bread made with certain lentils and spices. It is called by a variety of names across the country, from poppadom to appalams or simply papad. A slight tweak in the recipe and each region makes it their own. Little did we know that the journey of this humble side dish started way back in 500 B.C. The earliest mentions of the term can be found in Jain literature, making it an almost 1500 year-old practice.
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The traditional recipes trace the use of urad, chana and moong dal for preparing these crispy papads. Ramana Maharishi, a sadhu even went on to compose a poem on something as simple as papad to compensate for the fact that he couldn’t help out his mother in making appalams because of his meditation. In fact, even today, a lot of Bollywood movies set in small towns showcase the concept of making and drying out papads on the terrace in the sun. While this practice is fast-losing its significance due to the large availability of packaged papads, the idea of enjoying a crispy papad with your meal still hasn’t lost its charm.
From the Great war of 1915 to the premier air services, papads have played a major role in several areas of life. I still remember my maternal aunt stuffing up a separate bag, full of papads and achaars for my cousin who was going overseas for higher studies. Different versions of papad have come up in various regions like Maharashtra’s kurdayas (wheat noodles which are fermented and don’t exactly look like papad), the urad dal Sindhi papad or the Bengali saucy papad (they add tomato sauce to the crushed papad). South Indians have their unique way of preparing the sun-dried appalams which differs from the spicy Amritsari options.
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Today, Lijjat Papad is a connoisseur in the area of manufacturing papads. The model of this women cooperative of Gujarat not only reflects a smart business plan but also a social and cultural space for women to become independent from the comfort of their homes. Today, people have experimented with this crispy dish to come up with things like papad ki sabzi and honestly, we can’t blame them.
Though this deep-rooted connection with papad might be hard to explain but the one thing we know is that the love for it is not dying out anytime soon.