Sweet Paan

I hate to admit that I'm being taken in by a nasty habit, but I hardly smoke cigars anymore and I find that this thrifty indulgence soothes my sometimes unruly stomach. I like the product from the old guy who sets up at Hyderabad House, and I've had a nice chew from vendors set up in the cabbie spots on Orleans, but I am looking to my Indo/Pak brothers for guidance on some of the finer points and highlights. For instance, I'm a clove man all the way, but I sense resistance (which I assume is directly related to the cost of cloves), and I lack the language skills to say what I want.

Help me out with some basic info on ingredients and such. Beyond betel leaves and nuts, rose and saffron syrups, cardamom and cloves, turmeric-infused coconut and a few other items, I'm not real sure what's going on there.

Thanks in advance.

Help me out with some basic info on ingredients and such. Beyond betel leaves and nuts, rose and saffron syrups, cardamom and cloves, turmeric-infused coconut and a few other items, I'm not real sure what's going on there.

Thanks in advance.

There are two basic types of paan
"meetha" or sweet
"sada" which translated literally means plain. In terms of pan, it references a paan devoid of things such as coconut and syrup.

Serious paan eaters tend to eat "sada" paan.
Here is a website which you may find useful
http://www.paan.com/history.htm

JeffB wrote:I hate to admit that I'm being taken in by a nasty habit, but I hardly smoke cigars anymore

I'd go back to cigars.

Pidc Pan House


Pidc Pan House
6342 N Western Ave
Chicago, IL 60659
773-465-4002

Hey Jeff,

I'm not really a paan (notice the spelling, you'll find more information if you spell it that way) expert, nor do I play one on the internet. I'll occasionally get one here, but more often when I'm in India, cause you learn a lot hanging out at the paanwallah's. I tend to go for the sada (plain) paan myself, not because I'm a serious paan eater, but because I find the rose/sugar concoction (gulkand) overpowering.

the basic prep is betel leaf (of one of three varieties - see the attached links) slivers of areca nut, and slaked lime paste(chuna), Katha (the red paste, made from the bark of a tree) topped with supari (fennel seeds, often candied)

The names of most of the other ingredients can be seen in the following web sites, which I found looking for the english names of some of the possible ingredients (I'm attaching them below)

Did you consider that the reason its settling your stomach is that it might contain tobbaco(tumbacco) which is a pretty common ingedient in meetha paan?

oh, and cloves is hindi/urdu is "long" pronounced the way it would be in english with maybe a slightly longer "O"

interesting paan websites
Really nice french website with photographs of paan cutters, boxes, use throughout asia, historical accounts

paan chewing tradition in banaras

internet seller of paan with a little on history and ingredients - may be most useful for names used in "make your paan" section

interview with a paanwallah

Thanks, Zim.

JeffB, the spelling is usually 'paan' in keeping with the pronounciation (Paa - (a as in father) + 'n' as in pneumonia ; i.e, paan rhymes with naan), although pan is not wrong.

I'm no pan eater myself, but have been exposed to the practice. The paan.com site is IMO short on details. There are probably more variations of paan than the number of times Emeril has used the B-word. Every region, possibly city, has its own 'special' type. Very broadly classified there are, as has been mentioned two types – meetha (sweet) and sada (plain). There is also a subtype which could be either sada or meetha – this contains tobacco – zarda paan (now isn't that a chew!). The tobacco itself comes in a variety of types (with saffron, 'sweeteners', spices, etc.) depending how it is perfumed; the term laced may even be appropriate sometimes.
A lot of paan used to be made at home – I would guess this is a declining practice. I remember seeing the daily ritual of paan making at my grandmother's, starting with slicing the supari (betel nut). The way this is sliced or cut in pieces makes a big (textural) difference. The paan leaves are cut as per the rolling style – there are hundreds of ways paan can be rolled and folded. The leaf is smeared with the pastes as Zim noted and then some spices and flavorings put in. These spices and flavourings (some of which are liquid, think essences) and the combinations are tremendously variable. Many paan vendors even guard their ingredients – turning away and hiding the container and their action as they pepper the leaf with a particular 'secret' masala. Then the paan is rolled and ready.
In addition to spices, there are many 'masalas' in powder form that may be added to paan. Many people have their own preference and you may be asked if you want certain masalas (as well as what 'quality'/price level) as the paan is being made. These masalas are available separately as well.

I suppose the answer to your original query about what goes in is that it is too varied.
One can also get the paan filling sans paan – as a kid, I would opt for that (sans supari too; I just liked the sweet filling for the meetha paans – this was, I will note without the rose flavouring, possibly not endemic there). Prepackaged Paan masalas have since become a big commercial enterprise. PanParag is a brand I readily recall, their blue tins are fairly ubiquitous in India (see their product line-up). Some of these are labeled and sold as mouth freshners
http://www.panparag.com/home.php

You can also get sweet paan flavoured (in a generic sense) hard candy- pan pasand is one.

But why, JeffB, why?

sazerac wrote:You can also get sweet paan flavoured (in a generic sense) hard candy- pan pasand is one.[/url]

The candy is OK in a pinch, but sazerac is quite correct in pegging it as a generic-type taste.

That said, I'm a paan novice. My parents both steered conversation away from paan whenever I asked about it on trips to the motherland.

But I still take some saunf (fennel seeds) and a little shredded betel from time to time. My dad used to do same, claiming it to be a digestive aid/stomach settler. Whether placebo or not, it seems to have a similar effect for me.

Zeeshan

IMO short on details. There are probably more variations of paan than the number of times Emeril has used the B-word. Every region, possibly city, has its own 'special' type. Very broadly classified there are, as has been mentioned two types – meetha (sweet) and sada (plain). There is also a subtype which could be either sada or meetha – this contains tobacco – zarda paan (now isn't that a chew!). The tobacco itself comes in a variety of types (with saffron, 'sweeteners', spices, etc.) depending how it is perfumed; the term laced may even be appropriate sometimes.

I'll say. There are as many varieties of paan as there are paan-makers,
really And, as you say, lots of secret recipies.

One particular paanwala in Bombay, for example (sits kitty corner
from Delhi Durbar restaurant in Grant Road - coincidentally a block
away from the "red light" district of the city) is quite famous for
his paans. His most notorious is the "Palang-Tod Paan" (Palang = Bed,
Tod = to break; bed-buster might be the loose translation). This is known
throughout the city as a quite famous aphrodisiac - and is, supposedly,
laced with cocaine-paste.

A lot of paan used to be made at home – I would guess this is a declining practice. I remember seeing the daily ritual of paan making at my grandmother's, starting with slicing the supari (betel nut). The way this is sliced or cut in pieces makes a big (textural) difference. The paan leaves are cut as per the rolling style – there are hundreds of ways paan can be rolled and folded. The leaf is smeared with the pastes as Zim noted and then some spices and flavorings put in. These spices and flavourings (some of which are liquid, think essences) and the combinations are tremendously variable

.

Yep, was a regular thing - grandmothers everywhere, cutting and
slicing their own paan regularly, every day. If you walk up some
apartment buildings in India, the walls are sometimes strained red
head-high - due to the colour of the expectorant thats been spit
on them

(In one of the early Salman Rushdie books - Midnight's Children, I
think it was - there is a famous scene of the game "Hit the Spitoon"
played by elderly men in Delhi. The Indian version of mouth-basketball -
with, supposedly, as much appreciation from onlookers for the trey
as Da Bulls-Fans had for Steve Kerr).

I suppose the answer to your original query about what goes in is that it is too varied.
One can also get the paan filling sans paan – as a kid, I would opt for that (sans supari too; I just liked the sweet filling for the meetha paans – this was, I will note without the rose flavouring, possibly not endemic there). Prepackaged Paan masalas have since become a big commercial enterprise. PanParag is a brand I readily recall, their blue tins are fairly ubiquitous in India (see their product line-up). Some of these are labeled and sold as mouth freshners
http://www.panparag.com/home.php

Paan Parag is hugely popular - ubiqutious among certain people
even in Chicago, who carry it everywhere they go. Can get it
at most Indian grocery stores too, I think.

c8w