Block printing on fabric

With the decline in income from raiding other kingdoms and making off with their booty, the maharajas had to promote other sources of income. A number of the regions turned to textiles as one of their three main industries.

We visited a textile co-op in Jaipur and learned, among other things, about block printing on fabric. At this site, they emphatically used only vegetable-based dyes and natural fibres, asserting that these combinations (only) are guaranteed not to run, bleed or fade. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to grill the guide on the sources of the dyes, but recall neem plant (for green), indigo (blue) and henna (reds). Yellow could be gotten from turmeric, more reds from madder, and dozens of other sources, I'm sure.


Hint: they don't do it like this:

The printers weren't working when we turned up (lunch time), but the site's guide plus a printer came and gave us a demonstration.

The first block provides the outline.

Elephant print wood block - layer 1

Peeling the block off after printing layer 1

Outline (layer 1) done

The next two layers were done too quickly for me to get step by step photos, but you get the sense. The subsequent blocks look like gibberish, but have key points which need to be carefully lined up with the outline when printing.

Layer 1 on left (brownish), layer 3 on right (goldish)

Applying layer 2

Inking the layer 3 block

Layers 1, 2, and 3

One of the boys was invited to do the next layer, but declined, so El did.

Layer 4 woodblock (on right)

El carefully placing layer 4

All four layers applied

Kind of explains why all the bits of the elephant/camel/flower don't always line up perfectly - they've got to get every layer perfect, every time, without the fabric stretching or moving between prints.

Now comes the really magical part. Normally, the print would then be left to dry in the sun for two days. The sunlight oxidises some of the dyes, changing their colour. Given we didn't have two days to hang around to watch this happen, they used a dilute nitrite solution to replicate the effects.

So the print went from this:

Before oxidation

to this:

After oxidation

And was then rinsed in water

Rinsing the oxidised print, to wash out the nitrite fixer/oxidiser.

El got to take the sample home, and I'll add a pic of it when she gets back.

El looked at a number of tablecloths, made of a beautifully lustrous silk/cotton mix which are also supposed to be machine washable, and managed to buy only one (for some stupidly low price):

Tablecloth comes with napkins

Here are a few more woodblocks for you to ooh and aah over

Camels AND horsies AND nelliphants! With people!

Random bits of blocks

More random bits of blocks

One of the samples cloths, displayed behind the printing tables

Cardamom growing and processing

Cardamoms are those small pods, about a centimetre long and triangular in cross-section, which make you screw up your face when you accidentally bite into them. They have a bunch of small black seeds inside them. And they infuse your food with a most glorious flavour (except if you're Jos, and you associate the smell of cardamoms with being sick with gastro). Cardamom seasons many foods and drinks in India, but particularly curries, desserts and tea. It is also used as a medicine.

Green and brown cardamoms. Pic from Wikipedia

There are two plants referred to as cardamom, one (Elettaria) producing green cardamom pods (beige when old or over-dried), the other (Amomum) producing larger, dark brown to black pods. We saw the growing and processing of green cardamom. Wikipedia reports that it is the third most expensive spice in the world, beaten only by saffron and vanilla.

The cardamom plants we saw were grown in Kerala, near Casa del Fauno, not far from Munnar.

Cardamom plants

Strings of pods (panicles) 

The ripe pods are picked by hand and brought to the estate's processing centre. During the peak harvesting season, they would collect several hundred kilograms a day. The fresh pods can last up to four days before being dried (unless they get wet/washed, in which case, they rot fairly quickly).

Fresh (undried) cardamom pods

Until fairly recently, the pods were spread over wire shelves, and the room heated by a wood-fire heated heat exchanger. Each batch would take fifteen days to dry (if I recall correctly).

Now they are dried in a fluidised bed dryer. Which is still heated by wood-fire. But it takes less than a day to dry a batch.

(Fluidised bed: hot air is blown in to the bottom of the dryer (light green), through a bed of cardamom pods bouncing around in the air above a wire shelf. The hot air comes out the top and is recirculated, with additional heat and oomph added by the fan (dark green/teal).

The batch size is 200kg of fresh pods; when dried, those 200kg leave only 1kg of spice - the rest is water vapour and a bit of dusty stuff. Which is probably one of the big reasons why cardamom is so expensive.

Dusty stuff (stems and the like) left over after drying cardamom pods

When dried, they look like this

When stored in large hessian sacks in a small room, the effect is overpowering. Throat-constricting, eye-watering, somewhat naphtha-smelling, run-out-of-the-room-gasping-for-air overpowering.

The smell in the small entry hall to the storeroom, by contrast, is deliciously redolent.

But as they haven't invented smell-o-vision, you'll just have to take my word for it. Or better still, go to India and discover it for yourself!

Mutton Curries, by Brijraj (recipes)

Brijraj (pronounced "bridge-raj") was our guide in Jaipur. He recited these recipes as we jiggled and bumped over the dusty dirt road on our way back from Dera Amer, and I scribbled them down. Here's my best interpretation of what he said/what I wrote. Again, we haven't made these yet - I will update when we do.

Note "mutton" is widely used in Indian curries, together with chicken and seafood. The significant Muslim population, especially in the north, and the predominantly Hindu population throughout means that pork and beef are rarely served outside of western-oriented restaurants. Mutton may or may not be older sheep, it may also be goat, which is much more highly sought after (and flavoursome). Mutton is actually very difficult to get in Aus - most sheepmeat is lamb (less than 18mths old, generally), but most "lamb" in the US is mutton by Australian standards.

T = tablespoon (15ml in Aus, 20ml in US, ?? in India); t = teaspoon (5ml generally)

1. Chop 1 kg boneless mutton into pieces roughly 2" x 1" x 1/2". Pound or tenderise them.
2. Combine ½ kg plain unsweetened yoghurt with 5T garlic paste, 1T ginger paste, 4T onion paste, some salt, 3t red chilli powder and 1½t turmeric. (Paste ≠ minced. Here are links for garlic paste, ginger paste, and onion paste.)
3. Marinate the tenderised meat in the yoghurt mix for at least four hours.
4. Combine 10 cloves, 20 peppercorns, 15 green cardamoms, 5 black cardamoms and 4 large bay leaves.
5. Heat around ⅔ cup of your preferred cooking oil. [Peanut oil has a high smoke point - Ab]
6. Add the combined spices to the hot oil, and fry until they pop. Don't get burnt!
7. Add 4 finely diced medium sized onions to the oil & spices, and sauté until golden/translucent.
8. Next, add the marinated meat and yoghurt to the oil/onion/spices.
9. Cook over a high heat until the sauce thickens [Brijraj says experience will tell you how long, but when pushed, suggested ballpark half an hour.]
10. Once thickened, drop to a low heat, and cook until very thick and dry, and the oil separates out. [Ditto, but possibly in the order of an hour or so.] If it gets too dry and the meat still isn't tender, add a little water.
11. Shortly before the curry is ready, you need to prepare the garnish. Fry three diced onions until golden, then dry on absorbent paper to crisp.
12. To serve, transfer curry to a wide shallow plate. Sprinkle the crisped fried onions over the curry. Each spoonful of the curry should have the crisp onions with it. As a dry curry, I would probably serve this with roti/naan rather than rice.

This might be a cousin of Rogan Josh. Note that cows milk yoghurt may separate (unlike buffalo milk) - to reduce this you may choose to stir 1½t of cornstarch through the yoghurt first, per this site.

Brijraj offered an alternative recipe, based on the above, which adds a smoky flavour to it. It's after the jump.

Jet lag sux

India Standard Time (IST, GMT+5.5hrs) is five and a half hours behind Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time (AEDT, GMT+11hrs).

For those of you with daylight savings, you know just how much losing that hour of sleep hurts. Getting up at 7am when your body is grumbling loudly that it's only 6am, bugger what the clock says.

Well, it's like that, but five and a half times worse.

Each day, we have forced ourselves to get up an hour earlier - the alarm is going off at 8am tomorrow (not least because I have to be in Queenscliff by 9am) - so the 6:30am alarm on Monday will not seem any more unreasonable than it usually does. Just really bloody glad we had the better part of a week to recover before heading back to work.


And as a quick aside, BlogPress, my preferred iPad/iPhone blogging app, has now issued updates, so it works again. (Hooray!!!) I am typing this on my iPad while watching the Djokovic/Murray semifinal on telly (Murray won the third set, just, but Djokovic is 4-0 up in the fourth).

Amber Fort - part 4

Fourth courtyard

The fourth and final courtyard is also the oldest. It is also the least restored. It was initially the whole palace, but when the palace was expanded, it became the women's quarters. Again, I'll let the signs speak for me.

The courtyard has twelve separate apartments, although they are interconnected by a series of labyrinthine corridors and stairways and antechambers. Which, with up to twelve wives and other significant women (eg the king's mother and unwed sisters), leads to plenty of intrigue.

In times of frequent wars and hundreds of competing kingdoms/princely states, there is a pragmatic argument for a king to have multiple wives. Firstly, with the rather high toll of war on menfolk, the male: female ratio was a bit skewed, particularly among the ruling classes (as they were the ones who led the armies into battle). Secondly, marriage was an opportunity to create alliances between kingdoms and other powerful families. And thirdly, more wives means (generally) more children, and sons in particular. Therefore if the king and/or older sons are killed in battle, there are still heirs and successors safe at home.

The pavilion in the centre was built a little after the rest of it, as evidenced by the different arch styles.

These large simple arches are centrally placed along each of the four walls bounding the courtyard

The more decorative arches of the pavilion

The pavilion is centred on the two axes (N-S & E-W). 

 An overview of some of the courtyard - if you peer, you can see some of the frescos along the west wall have been restored/repainted

Balconies and pavilions and colonnaded halls, and more.

In the NW corner of the fourth courtyard, upper level

On the north upper wall of the courtyard

Seems reminiscent of the Suhaag Mandir, but is less richly decorated

As mentioned previously, the Amber Fort is/was linked to the Jaigarh Fort by a series of tunnels and paths.

Water collection and storage

There are underground chambers used to collect and store water. Given this area is arid or semi-arid (i.e. desert) much of the year, with an unreliable monsoon in July-September, water is crucial.

The very bottom (three or four stories down) of the water tank in the Man Singh Palace

The water is collected at surface level by a series of drains and chutes which empty into this tank from all corners of the courtyard

A central manhole lets in light, and (presumably) some form of dipstick to assess the water depth when the tank could not be entered.

Few other miscellaneous pretty and/or interesting pictures

I mention Tulsi in an upcoming post (about Kerala spices and crops), and give its other name of Holy Basil. Here's a little more information about the plant and its significance.

On significant occasions, the palace would provide a grand feast for all the villagers. You need big pots when cooking for that many people.

A different style of safety chain? This is the bottom of the door, and the latch is recessed into the floor.

Women (but not men) really do carry big bowls on their heads!

And finally, finally, it is time to leave. If nothing else, Indo-Mughal architecture has some beautiful corridors of self-echoing arches.

Exit. The end.