The clove bean is fondly known as mookuthi avarai in Tamil, an ode to its nose-pin-like appearance. Clove bean belongs to the same family as the morning glory, perennial fast-growing vines that are known for their brightly coloured flowers, and is not a true bean species.
Once a common vegetable in south Indian kitchens, clove bean now remains immortalised in S Meenakshi Ammal’s iconic cookbook Samaithu Paar (Cook and See in Tamil), first published in 1951.
Today, clove beans are a rare, if not an impossible sight in vegetable markets and seem to have completely disappeared from India’s culinary landscape. However, in one small farm in Bengaluru, landscape architect, natural farmer and founder of Hariyalee Seeds, Prabhakar Rao, continues to conserve the seeds of this and other long-forgotten vegetables.
As Rao walks around his farm’s undulating land, pointing to heirloom vegetables like the Yerengere white long eggplant or various tomato varieties, he laments how vegetable markets today are dominated by hybrids. There was a time when the Yerengere white long eggplant was the only brinjal variety that went into the making of vangi bath or brinjal rice, says Rao.
“People are all eating the same few vegetables, and the loss of vegetable biodiversity has not received a lot of attention. Why would it? Every vegetable that...