MARKETS : Melody of India : Sweets and Spice and Everything Nice

Kumar Jawa has given America’s favorite merchandising strategy--one-stop shopping--a South Asian twist.

The appeal of his India Sweets and Spices shops is that each sells Indian sundries, music and video products as well as a wide range of Indian groceries and freshly cooked take-out foods. The nine small stores, spread throughout the Southland (and Las Vegas), are much handier for Southern California’s widely dispersed Indian community than a single supermarket would be. Because of their success, Jawa plans to open several more soon.

The fun of an India Sweets and Spices store--especially if you’re not an accomplished Indian cook--is perusing the huge selection of convenience products. These handy items can cut hours from the preparion of a multi-course Indian meal.

There are packaged seasoning mixtures that can instantly transform vegetables and meats into exotically spiced dishes. Table-ready curries, pickles and chutneys line several shelves. And Indian-style breads like chapati and naan can be found in the cooler. The breads need be heated only a few moments before being served.

The stores also appeal to people who cook from scratch. Those who insist that grinding, roasting and blending their own spices gets the best results will be as pleased with the selection as they will with the small fresh vegetable selection. Bottle gourd, baby eggplants and other vegetables you rarely see in mainstream stores are often available here.

The India Sweets and Spice stores (with the exception of the Artesia and Las Vegas branches) are equipped with kitchens for preparing southern Indian vegetarian dishes and snacks.

“Things like the masala dosa and pakoras are popular all over India, just like tacos are here,” said Jawa, who is not from South India but from Punjab in the north. He says many customers who aren’t from India come in specifically for the vegetarian items.

The stores have evolved over the years, since the first opened 11 years ago in Culver City. The tiny market offered take-out snack foods with a few audio and video items chucked randomly on the shelves. These sold so well that Jawa has decided to focus attention on them by creating a “Melody of India” section in each new store.

Jawa’s food and entertainment center concept is fully realized in several of the new shops, including those in San Diego and Duarte, and in the expanded Artesia and Canoga Park locations. The original Culver City shop, still tiny and crowded, will be enlarged.

To account for the lack of uniformity in the shops--at least for the present--Jawa likes to promote them as “independently owned.” But with the exception of the Palmdale and Las Vegas locations, the shops that don’t belong to Jawa are owned by members of his extended family. As he says, “We’re not a real franchise.”

CONVENIENCE PRODUCTS:

The assortment of spice mixes and prepared foods has grown since Indian women started working outside the home. Jawa said the different brands appeal to people from different parts of India.

Gujaratis and people from Bombay like the Ashoka and Eastern brands. Punjabis from northern India favor the super-spicy Pacharanga-brand pickles and chutneys. Shan-brand ready-to-eat dishes, made in the United States, will probably appeal to Indians of the younger generation and to the general American population.

Any reader of Indian restaurant menus will find most of these products familiar enough--chicken tikka paste, biriyani seasoning, vindaloo curry paste. But I found plenty of unfamiliar items too.

* Puliyogare mix: This was one of the mysteries. I asked Neelam Batra, author of “The Indian Vegetarian,” what it was.

“I’ve never heard of this,” she said, turning the puliyogare package over in her hands. “It’s probably something from the south or west. I’m from Punjab.”

But Batra knew exactly whom to call to get the information. “Oh, yes,” she said over the phone to her friend from Bangalore, “so it’s a sort of pilaf flavored with tamarind that’s popular in the south.”

M.T.R., the brand I bought, prints directions in English and four Indian languages (Hindi, the national language; Kannada, the language of Karnataka state; Telegu, from Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil, spoken in the southernmost Indian state, Tamil Nadu). The package lists about a dozen ingredients, including gingelly (sesame) seeds, turmeric, gram dal (garbanzos) and asafoetida. To use the powder, saute it in oil and mix it with cooked rice.

* Bisibele Bhath: Batra’s Bangalore friend also cleared up the mystery of what to do with Spiced Bhath Mix. This is the basis of bisibele bhath , a very spicy, rice legume dish. The package suggests adding such cooked vegetables as eggplant or summer squash to suit your taste.

* Dhansak Masala: Dhansak , a specialty of the Parsis of western India, is a stew of vegetables that sometimes includes meat--more or less a meal in a bowl. It may incorporate almost any vegetables and lamb or chicken, but to be dhansak it must have a pureed lentil sauce. Dhansak masala , a blend of all the spices needed for the dish, has good directions in English printed on its box.

* Prepared curries: A tiny American flag waves above the words “product of U.S.A.” on the labels of Shan ready-to-eat curries. The product line includes a chicken korma and a beef korma --mild, rich Northern-style curries laced with yogurt. There’s also aloo keema , a ground beef and potato curry.

Jaljira powder: Pulverized dried mango, mint leaves and spices make up this drink mix. It is thought to detoxify the body in hot weather. Stir the sweet-tart powder into cold water or make a masala soda by adding jaljira powder to soda water. Batra advises that a sprinkle of crushed fresh mint improves the drink.

* Dosa mix: Old-fashioned Indian cooks make crepe-like dosas by soaking and grinding rice and legumes to make a batter that is then fermented overnight. Now there’s an instant mix that eliminates the laborious and time-consuming steps. It requires only the addition of buttermilk or yogurt. Clear directions in English and four Indian languages describe how to cook the crepes on a griddle called tawa (a skillet may be substituted).

TAKE-OUT FOODS:

The take-out selection does not resemble your average Indian restaurant menu. People want to eat lighter foods now, Jawa says, so vegetarian snacks and small dishes from southern and western India have become more popular than the rich Mughlai dishes of the north. Another appeal of these lighter foods is their presentation. When a lentil dumpling or a simple pile of potatoes is surrounded with a collection of spicy-sweet sauces and chutneys, the flavor combinations can be almost endlessly varied, which is important to people who are eating beans and potatoes every day.

In addition to the take-out menu, most India Sweets and Spices shops offer small buffets of regularly changing items, perhaps a soupy lentil side dish (dal) and a curry of mustard greens or eggplant. And don’t overlook chat . It’s a sort of Indian salad of potatoes, beans and crisp garnishes, swirled with various chutneys and sometimes a yogurt sauce.

* Idlis: These fluffy steamed lentil-and-rice cakes are eaten at any time of day in southern India, but especially for breakfast. Idlis and their crepe-like relatives called dosas are so popular that there’s a cookbook devoted to them, “South Indian Tiffin: Over 120 Varieties of Idlis, Dosas and Chutneys.” Among its recipes are idli “bergers” and cocktail idlis served on toothpicks like appetizer franks.

But Jawa keeps things traditional. The stores’ idlis are offered simply with bowls of spicy sambar , a pale green coconut chutney and a chutney based on smooth peanut butter spiked with chiles, which bring life to the subtle flavor of these rather bland cakes.

* Sambars: The mainstay of the southern Indian diet is soupy bean or lentil dishes known as sambars . They accompany the region’s host of dumplings, fritters and savory cakes and come in many variations, some blast-furnace hot, others only mildly spicy. At the Canoga Park shop, the sambar is dotted with chunks of vegetables, and it’s quite mild, as sambars go.

* Uttapham: With its topping of sliced tomatoes, onion, potatoes and herbs, the combination uttapham resembles a pizza. But the soft crust, a blend of bean, farina and rice flours, is more like a spongy pancake. The plain uttapham has a simple topping of onions. Both come with the customary sambar and chutneys.

* Dosas: Masala dosa , the most popular version of these wafer-thin rice and lentil crepes, comes rolled around a filling of spiced potato. Whether filled or plain, dosas are supplemented with sambars and chutneys. Rava dosa, also served stuffed or plain, takes the same crepe-like form, but its main ingredient is semolina. As it cooks, the thin batter is sprinkled with onions and cashew nuts, which give the pancake a lacy texture and delicious flavor.

* Aloo Tiki: Sold on street corners all over India, these Indian-style potato pancakes get their considerable kick from the fresh green chile that flecks them. Some simply eat aloo tiki with chutneys, others order the more substantial tiki chana , for which the pancake is cooked extra-crisp and served with a rich garbanzo curry as well as chutneys.

* Vada: These little fried snacks are doughnut-shaped but otherwise as unlike a doughnut as you can get. They’re made from the lentil-like Indian bean urad dal and get their heady savoriness from cumin and fresh ginger.

If served Northern style, immersed in a seasoned yogurt sauce with tart-sweet tamarind chutney, they’re called dahi vada . In the South, they’re usually accompanied with the eternal trio of sambar , coconut chutney and chile chutney.

* Rasmalai: Many Indian desserts are sweeter than most Americans like. But in rasmalai , the sugar is tempered by lightly sweetened milk sauce and a bland cheese. Indians of my acquaintance are always surprised to learn that I love rasmalai for breakfast; I find all that protein in the cheese a very sustaining way to start the day.

GROCERIES AND PRODUCE

* Panir: This is the simplest sort of fresh cheese, just clabbered milk with the whey pressed out. Because it’s made without salt, it’s extremely versatile--turning up in everything from desserts to gravy and curry-style dishes like palak panir and matar panir , in which cubes of this cheese are cooked with spinach and peas, respectively. The Canoga Park store keeps panir refrigerated, usually out of sight, so you must ask for it.

* Parval squash: These tiny squash look like midget watermelons--the ones that stick to refrigerators on magnets. They’re a summer-type squash with many uses. Toss them into curries or soups or cut them lengthwise and stuff them with seasoned meat or potato. They even show up as a dessert, simmered in a syrup and stuffed with khoya , which is milk cooked until it’s thick and creamy.

* Papdi (in Hindi, sev ki phali): Also in the produce section are what look like pale green string beas. “When they’re young, you just cook them like ordinary string beans, adding any seasoning you want,” Batra said. If they are older, shell them like peas and boil the seeds with garlic and ginger to use in hot dishes or salads.

* Amchur: This sharp, tart powder, made from green mangoes, is a favorite seasoning in Northern India. It introduces a little kick and balances the warm, mellow flavor of roasted spices.

* Mustard oil: In Bengal, where there are extensive mustard fields, mustard oil is the flavoring--and sometimes the cooking medium--of choice. The Bengalis are so mustard-oriented that they make a mustard-leaf curry seasoned with mustard seeds and cooked in mustard oil. Another Bengali staple is fish fried in mustard oil.

* Jaggery: In the Canoga Park store, rough-hewn five-kilo blocks of this crumbly textured dark brown sugar are piled near the door. It’s made from sugar-cane juice or palm tree sap, boiled down but scarcely refined at all, and it’s what gives Indian sweets and chutneys their characteristic musky aroma.

* Urad Dal Flour: This flour, ground from a small Indian legume, shows up in many savory items. It’s the basic ingredient in vadas , the crisp, paper-thin wafers called pappadums and an array of South Indian fritters, crepes and pancakes.

* Besan: The protein in this tremendously versatile ground chickpea flour enhances the grain and vegetable protein content of Indian vegetarian food. Vegetables dipped in besan batter are deep-fried to make pakoras . Besan is made into sev and gathia , two deep-fried noodles that turn up in all sorts of Indian snack mixes (several of which are made and sold in India Sweets and Spices shops). You find besan in assorted dumplings, fritters and even sweet cookies. The English term for besan is gram flour, and you might see either name on the packaging.

* Asafoetida (hing): Theoretically at least, this gummy resin relieves gas and soothes the digestive system. Raw asafoetida has a somewhat unpleasant aroma, but when it’s sauteed in a little oil, it imparts a rich, shallot-like flavor to vegetarian dishes. Once the package has been opened, asafoetida should be kept in an air-tight jar.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Where They Are

India Sweets and Spices No. 1, 22009-11 Sherman Way, Canoga Park; (818) 887-0868.

India Sweets and Spices No. 2, 9409 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles (Culver City); (310) 837-5286. India Sweets and Spices No. 3, 14441 Newport Ave., Tustin; (714) 731-2910.

India Sweets and Spices No. 4, 18191 S. Pioneer Blvd. Artesia; (310) 809-3191. No hot food.

India Sweets and Spices No. 5, 1208 Huntington Drive, Duarte; (818) 357-6899.

India Sweets and Spices No. 6, 9474 Black Mountain Road, San Diego; (619) 271-7976; closed Mondays.

India Sweets and Spices No. 7, 3500 Ming Ave., Bakersfield; (805) 397-1135. Closed Mondays.

India Sweets and Spices No. 8, 533-0 E. Palmdale Blvd., Palmdale; (805) 273-7339.

India Sweets and Spices No. 9, 953 E. Sahara St., A-20, Las Vegas, Nev.; (702) 892-0720. No hot food.

The next store, scheduled to open in October, 1995, will be in Lake Forest.

* Business hours; 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily, except where noted.