Kala Khatta: Creating Mumbai's slurpy summer cooler at home

Mumbaikars love eating off the street. Well not literally, but we do see, every day, people hooked on to the vendor's stalls from dawn to dusk stuffing their faces with tangy chaat or sipping Mumbai's special energy drink -- spiced cutting chai.

Come summer, people gather at their favorite Khau Galli (in Marathi, Khau is a food treat and Galli is lane, or street. So Khau Galli means Treat Street, or Food Lane) like bees round a pot of jam to suck and sip on chilled lemonade or the perennial favorite, Kala Khatta.

All you need is these natural ingredients to create your own ice gola with this simple recipe of jamuns and kala namak (black salt). 

Why does it work? Jamun, the black berry-like fruit is an incredible coolant for the body, a digestive and also a natural medicine to control diabetes. Kala namak is a mineral salt which helps replenish what you lose sweating it out and also improves eyesight, so they say.

Ingredients for one glass of Kala Khatta:

10 jamuns / Indian blackberry

1 tsp fresh lemon juice

1/4 tsp black salt/kala namak

1/2 tsp sugar

Pinch of ground pepper

Preparation: Remove the seeds from all the jamuns and grind the fruit to get a coarse paste. Strain the mixture by sifting it through a sieve. Add lemon juice, sugar, black salt and stir well.

You can either drink it after adding some sparkling or chilled water, or to sip it 'gola style', you can make your own cup of shaved ice at home.

 

Ingredients to make an ice stick:

Ice block (freeze water in a cardboard container like a Tetra Pack)

Grater

Ice cream stick

Preparation: Use a grater and grate the ice from the corner of the block. This will help to shave the ice faster. Plug the shaved ice to the stick and keep on adding more ice around the stick to make an ice stick. Now dip the ice stick in a glass of kala khatta paste. The ice soaks the juice and it's ready to slurp!

Prajakta Remulkar Mathur blogs at Spice Up Your Soul.