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Why can't jhola gur become an international product like maple syrup?

Vikram Doctor, ET Bureau Jan 18, 2013, 02.59AM IST
(Jhola gur,obtainable only…)

How many stories must there be of Indians ruining their luggage with improperly packed food?

There are stories of pickles oozing vicious orange oil that inevitably stains the owner's best white shirts. Or of fried snacks packed in multiple layers of paper, yet the grease seeps through to leave large blotches on saris. Or bottles of fruit syrup that seemed quite solid yet unaccountably shattered in transit, soaking everything in stickiness that reveals itself ominously when you pick up your bag at the conveyer belt.

I have to admit I have contributed to this with my passion for jhola gur. This is the sweet date palm sap that is cooked into light syrup and which is only obtainable in Bengal in winter and all my efforts to find a source in Mumbai failed.

This means I have to arm-twist any friends going to Kolkata in winter to bring some. "You owe me for three blouses," my colleague Bachi Karkaria yelled last winter, as she handed me a tell-tale sticky jar.

This winter I have had better luck. Another kind colleague took the precaution of asking the man selling it, who told her to buy a special plastic bottle which he filled with the syrup and sealed tight, and it didn't leak a drop.

But even better was the friend who managed to find jhola gur packed as it is in the villages where it is produced, in small earthen jar with the lid sealed on with mud (and it even had a little straw ring on which to stand). It was so well sealed in fact that I had to chip the mud hard to get it off and some of it inevitably fell into the syrup inside, but that was a small price to pay.

The first jhola gur that I got (in the plastic bottle) was the kind I was used to - a thick dark syrup that doesn't seem that sweet at first, then seconds later hits you with a rich toffee taste. It is totally addictive and I didn't think it could be bettered until I tried the earthen packed kind.

And I really think these pots should come with warnings attached because the taste was so insanely good I almost dropped the pot and I don't even want to think about the waste if it had broken.

This second syrup was lighter than the first one, both in colour and consistency, so had evidently been cooked less. And the taste, after that split-second not-so-sweet moment, was not as darkly caramel, but instead had an exuberant nuttiness that lead into the light, fragrant toffee taste.

Unlike many syrups it was not cloying, and there was a very a definite danger of finishing off the whole thing at one shot. I had to restrain myself from calling my friend to ask if she would be going back to Kolkata this winter.

Jhola gur comes from Phoenix sylvestris, the silver date or wild date palm. It is closely related to the Arabian date palm, P.dactylifera, which gives us the dried fruits we are familiar with. P.sylvestris also produces sweet edible fruit, but their quality is not as good, but the writer Chitrita Banerji tells me that when Bengali Muslims could not afford expensive imported dates, they have eaten these, for example during Ramzaan, when the fast should be broken with date. She also recalls a chutney made these dates, dried plums and raisins, but the main value of the tree is clearly for its sap.

Chitrita has written in her wonderful book Life and Food in Bengal about her first taste of the fresh sap, on a winter morning in a village in Barisal: "It is the most natural and uncloying sweetness I have encountered."

  She notes how it ferments very fast into liquor, which is one main use for it. But for gur it must not ferment, which is why it is only made in cold weather, and even then, early in the morning when the pots in which the sap collects are taken down from the trees and the sap cooked at once.

Wild date palms grow across India, but in most places it is just used, as with similar juice from palmyra and coconut palms, to make toddy, which is why this sort of liquid gur is not more common. In Sri Lanka the juice of the kithul, or fishtail palm is used, which is supposed to be even better.

The other reason jhola gur is not more common is because, even in this form, it will soon ferment, so it needs to be stored in the fridge. This is why it is usually cooked further till it solidifies when cooled, into the patali gur that has a melting fudgy texture and a near chocolaty taste(and has already featured in this column long back).

This nolen, or fresh, gur is made into sweets that have some of that taste, and the liquid form too is used in sweets but most Bengalis I have asked have a vague conviction that this should only be eaten by itself, poured on hot luchis or rotis. Having tried this, I can only agree (though I might add that pouring it on plain dahi is also pretty good).

Most Bengalis will also automatically quote the last lines of Sukumar Ray's poem Bhalo re Bhalo in which he lists all the things he loves in this world, but ends by saying "Sobar chaite bhalo/Pauruti aar jhola gur" (best of all is liquid gur eaten with bread).