Tea Leaves

I wake up every morning with the sunrise, and the first thought that springs to mind is, ‘What tea am I drinking today?’ When I’m in a mood to indulge myself there are the myriad thoughts of a possible breakfast drizzled with enough butter to keep Siberia warm. When I can make myself scrambled eggs with dollops of cheese, I’m the happiest. If I can manage ham, bacon or even Heinz' baked beans, then it’s a Sunday. But the tea?

Tea could be anything from the seemingly ordinary cup of Tata Life to the exotic sounding Blackcurrant with Ginseng and Vanilla, Darjeeling or even Jasmine tea. A mug filled to the brim with milky, sweet chai and I'm impy-dimpy-do with happiness. Then there are the days when it’s just Coffee or Hot Chocolate that I want but we shall not talk about those days today. The first stop for the day has to be at the tea cabinet.

Even as I toddle my way around the house trying to keep the sunlight from poking like needles in my eyes, I can smell the tea brewing. There is quite nothing like sitting with the newspaper in hand mulling over the cryptic crossword but we can’t always have what we want.

Ginger tea is always very invigorating, masala chai brings back fond memories of sitting in the balcony with friends as the cups of tea made their way from the kitchen. The everyday chai reminds me of Dad making that awesome cuppa during the weekends. Heady Jasmine is meant for those days when I want to wipe away memories in a moment of madness. Darjeeling is, of course, for those times when I want to be Holly Golightly in my own version of Noo Yawk- suave, sophisticated and unbearably charming. Then there is Numi Tea, Organic and beautiful. Numi Tea remains an expensive pleasure only indulged in when I have nothing but time at hand. Of late, Numi Tea has become a photographic memory. Who wouldn’t be fascinated when a flower blooms in the water only to infuse it with hints of chocolate and spices and other alchemical ingredients? 

These days tea is my morning indulgence and the occasional post-midnight cup of elixir. Gone are the days when I would drink cupfuls of tea by the hour and would reserve the coffee as my cup of nostalgia and all things dramatic. There was a time when the overcast skies and a light breeze blowing meant I would make myself a cup of coffee and sit back. These days it’s the tea that adds the drama and coffee that is quotidian.

Behind the ritual,
There is the spiritual

Find yourself a cup of tea; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things.

Saffron Naan Khatai Cookies

As much as baking is a stress-buster for me, it’s also a hobby that needs an audience. I hardly eat anything I bake, the process overwhelms me and I feel sated even as the smell of freshly baked goodies fills my home. Let me put this out there, I bake for others - family, friends and foes. If I didn’t have anyone to dig into my baked goodies, I would be the crazy cat lady who bakes goodies, admires them and then throws them into the trash can. 

A curious case of nostalgia for the Bombay of his childhood and I was all set to pull off a surprise on K: Nothing better than a Friday evening fading away and inspiration to work sapping away to pull out the oven mitts and get baking. I had quite a bit of saffron lying about and soon it would lose its potency and K had already sung enough paeans to Naan Khatais. And that’s how the Saffron Naan Khatai came to be. 

Saffron Naan Khatai Cookies

(Original Recipe here)

Ingredients:

View fullsize

• 1½ cups Maida/All Purpose Flour
• ½ cup Granulated Sugar (Add another ¼ cup if you’d like it sweeter)
• ½ cup + 1tbsp Ghee (or use melted unsalted Butter)
• 6 Green Cardamoms,  powdered 
• ¼ inch Cinnamon, powdered
• ¼ tsp Saffron soaked in 1 tbsp warm Milk 
• 1/8 tsp Baking Soda
• Small pinch of Salt
• Almonds for topping (Optional)

Here’s what I did:

• Pre-heat oven to 180 deg C. 
• Mix sugar and ghee in a bowl till well blended. Add the saffron soaked in milk and mix till it’s all yellow 
• In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, powdered cinnamon and cardamom and salt. 
• Add this flour to the sugar+ghee+saffron milk mixture till you can form a dough. If the dough is crumbly, add in a tsp of milk and knead till you can form a dough that holds itself together.
• Make small lime sized balls, lightly flatten into cookie shapes (or better still use a cookie cutter if you have one handy) and lightly press the almonds on top.
• Place on baking sheet with enough gaps between each cookie and bake for 12-15 minutes.
• Once baked, place them on a cooling rack. The cookies will be a little soft when they’re just out of the oven but will harden when cooled.

Best served with a cup of masala chai, an Alexander McCall Smith novel and Ulrich Schnauss playing in the background.

Completion + Cafe Mocha

I have to compulsively finish and complete things. I find deleting emails, reading WhatsApp messages gratifying - the unread count drives me nuts, makes my hands itch. I don’t experience the full pleasure of a task until I’ve checked it off my list. I have to use up the last bits of shampoo so I can quickly toss out the bottle. Saturdays are my favourite, everything draws to a close and I can put a bow on it - the dry waste is collected, laundry is done, the stack for ironing is picked up and I can plan to finish off jars of bits and pieces to create something new. Like this mocha base.

Three jars were a quarter full with cashews, hazelnuts and almonds. Tossed in some sweetener, unsweetened chocolate, instant coffee and I had a cold coffee base, ice-cream topping and nutella replacement. I don’t know what I’m reveling in right now- the giddiness that comes with creating something delicious from leftovers or the joy of just completing, using up, not having to dispose half-empty jars in my quest for completion.

Bits & Pieces that went into the Cafe Mocha Base

• 1 cup of nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, cashews) 
• 1-2 tbsp instant coffee
• 2-3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa 
• Sweetener as per pref (3-4 tbsp sugar/stevia etc to taste) 

How I made it

• Soak the nuts in water for a couple of hours, drain completely. 
• Blend everything with some warm water, shouldn’t be grainy. 
• Tada, it’s ready!  
  You can store in the fridge for up to a week.

How I use it

My favorite keto dessert is a simple chia seed pudding. The chia seeds pack in quite a punch on the C/F/P ratios: 28g of chia seeds will set me up with 9g of fat, 5g of fat, 2g of net carbs (yeah, can you beat that?). 

• 2 tbsps of chia
• 200 ml of coconut mylk
• 1 tbsp of coconut butter/coconut oil
• 1 tbsp Cafe mocha base 

Stir all ingredients together in a jar. Refrigerate overnight. 

The politics of food

With all this furore around beef eating, I’m reminded the ire and disgust I experienced first-hand around pork eating when I was all of 7 years old. Mind you, as children we are mostly clueless about the politics of food, religion and other man-made mythologies. 

In Dubai, Social Studies right up till Grade 8 involved studying about the history and geography of the UAE. It being an Islamic country there was a lot of emphasis on the halal and the haram. During this class, just before we left for lunch, we were talking about the food habits of my subcontinental classmates - Pakistanis, Indians and Bangladeshis - and pork, in particular.

We had a Muslim teacher - Mrs Suhaila - who taught us Social Studies in Grade 2 and the majority of the students were Muslim. Suddenly out of the blue, the teacher called me out and declared “Joylita is a Christian. Tell us, do you eat pork at home?” 

That was it. The class broke out into a series of gagging noises, how can you’s  and also some curiosity around how we ate it, why we ate it. Saiqa and Ahmed, my two best friends, who incidentally happened to be Pakistani Muslims didn’t let me live this down for the next week. 

We didn’t speak about alcohol, thankfully. That saved me from the horror that would have been explaining drinking wine as the blood of Christ and possibly, further indoctrination of the otherwise blissfully ignorant 7 year olds. 

We are what we (say we) eat.

What I’m Lovin’ This Week - Saffron Trail’s Breaking Bread Workshop

I spent a good chunk of my Saturday morning watching and learning from Nandita while she expertly kneaded, pulled and coaxed flour, sugar, water and yeast to come together to make pillowy soft, perfectly crusted bread in various shapes, sizes and tastes.

My maternal grandpa’s family set up one of the first bakeries in Mangalore - Pinto’s Bakery. Not one to let down the family name, I decided I’d bake bread and carry forward the legacy that had skipped 2 generations. The business of baking bread had other plans for me - it never worked. The yeast didn’t froth, I could not figure out the kneading, the dough never doubled in size. Everything that could wrong, went wrong.

Then I saw Nandita’s tweet and had an epiphany: I should just attend one of her Breaking Bread workshops. 

On the menu were five different breads that we were going to bake over the course of the four hour class. The Mumbai Laadi Pav was a bread everyone seemed to be excited about - who doesn’t love a good bhaji with some perfectly crusted pav? The pizza was to die for - the base and  the sauce were homemade and the toppings, homegrown. It cannot get anymore fresh and delicious than that. Till you meet the cinnamon rolls, the loaf of bread and foccacia, that is. 

I loved how organised everything about the workshop was - right from the email we received a day before that asked about allergies and told you what to get along (yourself, an apron and a box to take home some yummy goodies) to the manner in which the workshop itself was conducted. It was step-by-step recipes, detailed instructions about things that some would dismiss as trivial (how does one measure out 2 cups of flour?) and demystification of various processes by way of science all the way through.

Nandita is a fun teacher - patient, engaging and generous with her knowledge. Her sense of humour and the insights, tips and tricks she shares will keep you hooked. One minute she’s telling you about the Michael Pollan book she read “Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food," the next about "yeast, the living organism” and then you catch her grinning away as she sneaks cointreau into the cinnamon rolls. 

Nandita conducts these series of workshops in her beautiful house with an enviable garden full of veggies and herbs in Whitefield. This multi-tasking lady who I’ve known for about four years via Twitter and only met for the first time on Saturday is quite a wonder-woman (as all Moms are?). She’s got something for everyone in the Saffron Trail Kitchen this year and it would do you good to dip in, indulge and learn a little:

- Put your Saturdays and holidays to good use and sign up for her Saffron Trail workshops on everything from baking bread, eggless desserts to fun salads 

- There’s a spanking new Youtube channel where she does her awesomesauce thing and shares recipes and #kitchenhacks. (See what I meant about being generous with her knowledge?)

- If you’ve been living under a rock: There’s the Saffron Trail blog that is an exhaustive collection of recipes covering everything from bread to tambram cuisine.

Under the Mangalorean Sun

Mangalore looks like one giant fractal when seen from the skies. Each smaller fractal unraveling itself as we get closer to the runaway. It’s coconut trees as far as the eye can see, dried up river beds and mud roads that no one drives on.

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The menu for the week ahead has been decided on Sunday evening. Monday, stingray and dal with bimbli. Tuesday, shark. Wednesday, squid. Thursday, mango curry. Friday, shrimp. Saturday, chorizo. Sunday, pork offal. 

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Monday morning, I understand first-hand why the parents are wary of the BJP in Mangalore. At the grassroots, BJP hasn’t distanced itself from their communal agenda that’s exclusively biased towards the Hindu voter.

BJP’s local wing came around to distribute voter’s slips but ignored our house. Mom called out, “We vote as well!” The nextdoor teen who was part of this brigade came by later to hand over the slips. His macho BJP gang would rather not woo Christian voters. 

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Monday evening, there’s a light breeze but the stickiness of the Mangalorean heat never leaves. A choir of young girls accompanied by an amateur violinist are practising for the upcoming Easter mass, the hymns dotted with the staccatos of a piano being tuned. The leaves rustle, it’s the two birds that have made their nest in the shrubbery of the orange trumpet flowers coming in at the end of a long day. The air is filled with the distinctive aroma of a Mangalorean Chicken Curry being cooked. It’s an overwhelming mix of chicken fat, coconut milk and bafat powder.

In this tiny little neighbourhood, It’s hard to not drown in the “archipelago of tongues.” The incessant chirping of the birds that visit Dad’s garden only adds to this cacophony of languages.

It’s a Catholic neighbourhood there’s Konkani everywhere. Konkani is the tongue of emotion. Of love, prayer, anger, disgust, indignation and outrageous gossip. In the early morning rush of kids running to school, in the lunchtime menus and recipes exchanged over fences, it’s the evening rosary that’s a funereal wail.

Kannada is for the underlings and the strangers who deserve politeness. I can hear the househelps’ Bagalkot Kannada meet the local dialect. It’s the sound of delays in the housework, of risky propositions - clothes being hung out to dry when the sky is overcast with rain bearing clouds. It’s also the neighbourhood gossip cloaked as conversation. The polite stories of those who don’t matter are heard in Kannada. These will soon be repeated in Konkani. 

Tulu is for the overlords, the powerful and the friends from the alley when you’ve thrown back a few drinks and confidence has made way for arrogance. In its street avatar, it’s taunting and mocking. My untrained ear associates it with drunk men on the road. It’s brawn and brusque. Perhaps that’s why it’s also the language of comedies on Mangalore TV, those that are so reminiscent of PTV in the early 90’s. Its rough edges can only be softened by the kori roti that Pallavi and her Mom discuss in their sweet lilting Tulu.  

Wednesday evening, I can feel the smoke stinging my eyes before I can smell it. The neighbourhood is burning incense to ward off mosquitos. The next evening, the priest will burn it during mass and then wave it in the general direction of the crowd. Who said the Catholic rituals aren’t paganistic in their origin and intent?

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We planned to get to the polling booth at 7 am. A neighbour tells us there are long queues and these well-laid plans are promptly pushed out to a less humid hour. We make it to the booth at 10.10 am. In under seven minutes, we’ve voted, got our fingers inked and made our way back to the car. If only this efficiency wasn’t limited to the national elections…

We soon find ourselves at Big Bazaar which is giving away 10% discounts to anyone who turns up at the counter with an inked finger. Wonder how many went in to vote just so they could avail this offer.

For lunch, the mother has made mango curry. No guessing which party she voted for. The mango is sweet, the gravy thickened with ground urad dal. Are warm sickly sweet mangos to be eaten in peak summers? I know I’d prefer a cold glass of mango juice. I can’t say these things out aloud lest they offend Mom who’s relishing every last drop of that gravy.

Keeping with the tone of the debates (outrage! outrage!) on Times Now, the dinner-time conversation moves towards the controversial handouts. One Christian lady in the neighbourhood brings home 10 kgs of rice for Rs 100 from the ration store. She feeds it to her dogs. Somebody else is buying dal and rice from teachers at schools that serve mid-day meals. 

Local entrepreneurship at its worst, we’re at our outraged best. It’s been less than 10 hours since most of my family voted for the Congress.

All through the week I’ve been babysitting the grandmother. It’s an easy sell: The parents don’t have to be embarrassed by my absence at church. It’s replaced by a sense of pride, the grand-daughter is caring for the grandmother. They use the word “saakri” to describe the simple act of spending time with my grandparents.  Saakri elevates care-taking to the level of dharma and karma. It’s what disciplined people with a conscience do - it’s a good deed and penance rolled into one.

Grandpa had stories from the time of independence and I had stories about food, alcohol and travel. I prefer Grandmother’s stories to the sermons delivered by sanctimonious celibate men in church. Unlike my grandpa, she would rather not use her intelligence when deferring matters to God. But that’s ok. I enjoy her company - my time with her is peppered with coffee, loads of delicious Mangalorean food that my Mom doesn’t make and lessons in Kannada. 

By Sunday evening, I was impatient to get back to Bangalore and stuff my face with ghee cake from Cochin Bakery. It will be 3 months before I visit Mangalore again. By then it will be monsoon and the rains fix everything. Almost.

Memoirs of a Mad Cook →

Memoirs of a Mad Cook

There’s no point kidding myself any longer,
I just can’t get the knack of it ; I suspect
there’s a secret society which meets 
in dark cafeterias to pass on the art
from one member to another.
Besides,
It’s so personal preparing food for someone’s 
insides, what can I possibly know
about someone’s insides, how can I presume 
to invade your blood?
I’ll try, God knows I’ll try
but if anyone watches me I’ll scream
because maybe I’m handling a tomato wrong,
how can I know if I’m handling a tomato wrong?

something is eating away at me
with splendid teeth

Wistfully I stand in my difficult kitchen
and imagine the fantastic salads and soufflés
that will never be.
Everyone seems to grow thin with me
and their eyes grow black as hunters’ eyes
and search my face for sustenance.
All my friends are dying of hunger,
there is some basic dish I cannot offer,
and you my love are almost as lean
as the splendid wolf I must keep always
at my door.

by Gwendolyn MacEwen
from The Armies of the Moon
Toronto: Macmillan, 1972

Via loeufnoir.

Story of my life, our household.
He cooks, I eat.
I grow wider, he grows leaner.
I eat his food, I don’t eat his food.

Cupcakes - Then & Now

We had cupcakes from Cupcake Company for lunch today. Bangalore has come a long way from that day in 2010 when I had an unbearable soul-destroying cupcake craving.

I woke up on the 1st weekend of October 2010 with an unbearable cupcake craving. This was also the time I’d just returned from the Bay Area where I was spoilt almost every other weekend with Kara’s cupcakes, in all flavours, colours and sizes. K decided he was going to be the knight in shining armour and buy me cupcakes. I don’t know how many bakeries and confectioneries he called up asking, begging, pleading for cupcakes. No one had cupcakes.

Spoonful of Sugar decided they’re going to give cupcakes a shot. At 8 pm, I was presented with a box of 4 ‘cupcakes’ - 4 dense muffins topped with chocolate and hundreds & thousands sprinkles.

The next day we drove to Pondicherry and dug into some soul soothing Darjeeling Tea flavoured macarons.

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Here’s where you can find some ridiculously good cupcakes.

What I'm Lovin' This Week ~ Sufi, Koramangala

Sufi at Koramangala is our Happy Place
Located above Empire near JNC

Eating at Sufi has now taken on shades of a ritual. We seat ourselves comfortably on the diwans and order a large pot of Persian Tea and in preparation for the dessert that they always seem to run out of, ask them to keep aside a couple of bowls of Sholezaad.

Persian Tea is served in little tumblers that have portraits of the Shah and comes in a blue ceramic teapot. So Iranian. This is followed by a bowl of Haleem Bademjan with a Naan. (They don’t have the Taftan unfortunately.)

Sometimes I’m a boring non-experimental eater unlike K. I came upon the Chenjeh Kebab(Boneless pieces of lamb) and have been faithful to it for 2 years or so now. K’s standard order is the Logmeh Kebab. All of this had with platefuls of Chelo and at least 4 little sachets of Amul Butter.

Two weeks ago we had a friend visiting and that was an excuse to try out something new on the menu:

Kebab-e-Shishleek
Lamb chops and spareribs 

Kebab-e-Negindar
Grilled minced meat of beef and lamb topped with chicken

Followed by the usual order of Kebab-e-Logmeh
Juicy pieces of minced lamb 

In typical Persian style, all of these meats are skewered on swords so they come to the table all flattened out and served on blue ceramic plates.

We go to Sufi because it’s our happy place. We go there when we want our “creatine fix” or we’re craving butter and rice and kebabs or because we’re suddenly hungry at 5 pm on a Sunday.

Sometimes the charming owner Dr Karimi is around, telling us stories about Iran and India when he moved twenty years or so ago. One of those Sundays when we landed up at 5 pm and there was no one around we met a group of folk singers from Rajasthan who then went on to sing for the better part of an hour while we sat around on those diwans digging into meat.

Sublime and spiritual.

What I'm Loving' This Week ~ BiteMe Cupcakes, Bangalore

BiteMe Cupcake Company
100 ft Road, Indiranagar

I’d seen Divya’s recipes for cupcakes, had heard about Bite Me’s cupcakes and pupcakes when she started her home bakery and now that Kingsley and Divya have started a store on 100 ft Road, I knew I had to try it.

Wonsaponatime - October 2010, to be precise - K attempted to get me cupcakes. He couldn’t find any so he convinced Spoonful of Sugar to bake chocolate muffins and add sprinkles on top. That was the first and last time I ate “cupcakes” in Bangalore.

Till last night, that is.

K and I hopped over to the beautiful little store located opposite Chroma on 100 ft road. Kingsley was around, upping the geeky quotient of cupcakes? :) And there they were: Butterscotch and Blueberry and Cookies & Cream and Dulce de leche and Red Velvet and Orange Marmalade. Nope, not my helpful elves. Just little bites of yumminess. 

So! No more muffins pretending and aspiring to be cupcakes. Yay!

Moist (maybe a tad too moist?) and light, the cupcakes are delightful. The flavours aren’t overwhelming and being perfectly bite sized, you don’t have to worry about flavour boredom. They also hit the sweet spot of being well-priced - Rs 100 for 3. Is that a steal or what?!

Kingsley mentioned that they would start serving coffee soon so that’s a bonus. If you’re looking for plug-points because you want to hang out at a place that’s “startup friendly”, fret not - they’ve got it covered too.

Be warned, there’s also a downside to all this awesomeness: You start off eating one and before you know it, you’ve got fingers sticky with 4 out of the 6 flavours in the box. Many a slip between the cup(cake) and the lip and all that. Heh.

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They’re open from 11AM to 9PM every day. (Except Tuesdays, I think)
You can reach out to them on Twitter at @BiteMeCompany

Delux Coffeeworks, Cape Town

Delux Coffeeworks, Church Street, Cape Town
I thought I saw Leonard Cohen in the window.

Truth. Coffee Cult, Cape Town

Truth. Coffee Cult
They roast coffee. Properly.

“Do you want sugar with that?” asked Thomas the barista. “Would I need sugar with that?” I should remember not to reply to questions with questions. Oh well. Who takes sugar with a well-made cappuccino anyway?

Truth takes its coffee very seriously. It’s religion to them. They have irrevently named blends like Resurrection, Vengeance and Donde’s Chaos. What caught my attention is how they describe each blend with a snippet of a conversation. Their decaf is dubbed Antithesis, because you know:

“Do you have a pacemaker?” We ask. “Yes.” You reply. “Then this is perfect for you,” we say only with the slightest hint of ag-shame, “It’s coffee without palpitations, or caffeine.”

When I was there, there was a old man flitting about the place barking orders and muttering things about “customer service” while being quite dodgy himself. Spiteful managers and good coffee served by all smiles and gentle baristas, such a bittersweet way to start the day. 

I bought their House Blend quite aptly named Resurrection:

“How strong?“

“Well, strong enough to resurrect even those that stupidly chose to drink Kool-Aid.”

Exactly what I needed after encountering that slight old man so early in the day.

Grandma Food

Gabriele Galimberti pays homage to all the grandmothers in the world and to their love for good cooking, starting from his own grandma Marisa who, before the departure for his tour around the world by couchsurfing, took care to prepare her renowned ravioli. She was not so concerned about the possible risks or mishaps her grandson might face in his adventurous travelling worldwide, but her major worry was, “what will he eat?”. That is because only at home you can eat well and healthily. And above all, only your grandma (and sometimes mum) knows what is best for you.  

Aside: Why isn't Grandma Food a cuisine in itself?

With the taste of his grandma’s ravioli in his mouth, Gabriele travelled around the world and, next to thousands of other adventures, turned into a curious and hungry grandson for the grannies of all the countries he visited.  Appealing to their natural cooking care and their inevitable pride in their best recipe, common factors to all grandmothers in the world, Gabriele persuaded them to do their best in the kitchen. This means moose stake in Alaska and caterpillars in Malawi, delicious, but ferociously hot, ten-spice-curry in India and sharks soup in the Philippines. 

Crème Brûlée @ Intelligentsia, Venice

At the Coffee Shop, Dan knows I’ll order a Cappuccino and then look longingly at the Crème Brûlée with my nose pressed against the glass-case.

Let’s get this straight: I don’t know how to pronounce Crème Brûlée. I always say it softly and slowly “Crem-Bruley”. In the glass case at the counter, it’s just Custard waiting to be christened Crème Brûlée with a blow-torch. Sometimes I point at it, lower my head, mumble Crem a little loudly and then eat up the Bruley. Dan the Barista will then repeat my order and I’ll repeat it a little more confidently, ‘Crème Brûlée’. “One of those?” “Yes, Yes” and I shake my head like a puppy who’s just seen her Mama after a long day.

Till my next visit to the Coffee Shop, I say “Crème Brûlée” over and over in my head. Damnit, I have to get this right.

Maybe if I say it everyday for 21 days.

Sweetmeats

I was at MTR on St Marks Road for breakfast earlier today. While I was walking out of the outlet, the glass counter filled with sweets of all shapes, sizes and colors caught my eye.

Sweetmeats.

Remember those CBSE - NCERT textbooks that spoke of kids going to the sweetmeat shop? Moral Science textbooks, particularly. There was always a Mohan or some such fellow with a nondescript name trying to steal from Ram Kaka’s sweetmeat shop or if his moral compass was aligned right, salivating in from of the sweetmeat shop, then saving up to indulge. When I was in school, I associated the rosgulla alone with the word ‘sweetmeat’ - it was sweet and the spongy texture made it meaty.

Nostalgia, much giggling as I repeated “sweetmeats” over and over again to K and some ruminations on Twitter followed.

Aside: This is what @Subfusced had to say when I tweeted the picture from the MTR store. (I’m yet to look up how true this is and figure out how slimy intestines are converted into shiny lighter than paper silvery foil.)

@joylita Those silver foils contain intestines of animals. So “sweetmeat” might be somewhat accurate! :)

— Subfusced (@subfusced) December 2, 2012

As expected, someone from Tamil Nadu (in this case, it was a  D. Vrinda from Coimbatore) had already written to The Hindu asking about the word’s origin:

Why do some people refer to sweets as ‘sweetmeat’?

The word ‘sweetmeat’ is considered to be old fashioned; some dictionaries label it as being ‘archaic’. In the past, any sweet delicacy — candy, a piece of fruit coated with sugar, etc. — was called sweetmeat. The word ‘meat’ in ‘sweetmeat’ has nothing to do with animal flesh. In Old English, the word ‘mete’, from which we get the modern ‘meat’, meant ‘food’. All items of food, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian, were called ‘meat’. The original meaning of ‘sweetmeat’ was ‘sweet food’.

The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first print reference to sweetmeats to the 16th century

1. collect. pl. (and †sing.) †Sweet food, as sugared cakes or pastry, confectionery (obs.); preserved or candied fruits, sugared nuts, etc.; also, globules, lozenges, ‘drops,’ or ‘sticks’ made of sugar with fruit or other flavouring or filling;
sing. one of these.

The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink by John F. Mariani published in 1999 has this to say:

The ancient Egyptians preserved nuts and fruits with honey, and by the Middle Ages physicians had learned how to mask the bad taste of their medicines with sweetness, a practice still widespread. Boiled “sugar plums were known in the seventeenth-century England and soon were to appear in the American colonies where maple-syrup candy was popular in the North and benne-seed [sesame seed] confections were just as tempting in the South.

In New Amersterdam one could enjoy "marchpane,” or “marzipan,” which is very old decorative candy made from almonds ground into a sweet paste. While the British called such confections, “sweetmeats,” Americans came to call “candy,” from the Arabic qandi, “made of sugar,” although one finds “candy” in English as early as the fifteenth century.

Explains NCERT’s sweetmeats hangover. The textbooks were probably written in the British era and never reviewed!