The Impeccable Crunch of Breakfast in the Hills
The Impeccable Crunch of Breakfast in the Hills
Himachali Gachcha in Shimla
A stroll down the pedestrian-friendly Mall Road in Shimla on a chilly October morning comes with its own set of rewards. In the distance, the crests of the mountains are slowly emerging from a thick blanket of mist, while close by, the hints of soft sunlight falling through the wisps of the leaves of the deodar trees make for some enthralling sights.
Once one has soaked up these striking vistas, one cannot help but notice that breakfast seems to be a serious affair here. Nattily dressed men—both young and old—throng the legendary Indian Coffee House down the Mall Road. Others make a beeline for the 70-plus-years-old paratha shops that dot the steps leading to the Lower Bazaar. Strollers take a break to enjoy the just-off-the-griddle kachoris and tikkis, watchful of the monkeys that lurk around. There is an air of congenial repartee, and everybody seems to be having a good time.
Walking towards the post office, I come across a vendor selling what at first glance, appears as a knoll of nuts and dried fruit—akin to debris—all covered with a flimsy piece of net. The vendor, a wizened old man, stands at the cusp of the gentrified stretch of The Ridge and the comparatively chaotic Lakkar Bazaar, on the eastern end.
Upon asking, he tells me it is the traditional Himachali gachcha, a light eat that essentially doubles as breakfast when had with tea. In Hindi, gachcha literally means “cluster.” It is a mixture of pieces of broken walnuts, groundnuts, cashews, and dates, all dry-roasted, crushed, and then mixed in hot sugar syrup so that the blend acquires a slightly sticky yet grainy consistency, until all the fragments clump together to form a cluster, as the name suggests.
If you haven’t eaten it, think what a rustic and coarser—albeit fresher—variant of a factory-made, packaged granola bar would taste like. The gachcha has a slight hint of smokiness that adds to, rather than vies with, its sweet-salty flavor. On rummaging through the mixture, I also come across a few stray slivers of freshly grated coconut. Pair the gachcha with a steaming hot cup of tea from the several itinerant vendors down The Ridge, and you’ve got yourself a breakfast that is an almost perfect foil to the cold.
The vendor sells the gachcha at a mere 20 rupees for three and a half ounces, weighing it on a battered pair of scales before wrapping it in little newspaper bags. My package is made from the front page of the local Hindi daily, Shimla Kesari; the headline heralds the news of last evening’s rather momentary and fleeting snowfall in Shimla and the neighboring towns. While the vedor tells me the walnuts and groundnuts are sourced in bulk quantities from the agricultural tracts of the Mandi region, about 100 miles from Shimla, the remaining ingredients are bought from the local market.
I revisit the vendor during the same week, before leaving for Bombay, and bring back home about two pounds of this underrated find. It retains its impeccable crunch even after a month, and certainly tastes of a holiday well spent in the hills.