Whether you call it vadam, sandige or vadiyalu, these beloved, addictive rice crispies have long staked out a spot at the South Indian table, writes Vidya Balachander.

When I think of summer, my mind automatically rewinds to the years I spent in Ratlam, a hinterland town in Madhya Pradesh forgotten by time. An unrelenting heat beat down over Ratlam in April and May, wicking away moisture from the plants in our garden and sinking the adults in my maternal grandparents’ home into an exhausted stupor. Ironically, it is this parched season that I associate with some of my most fertile food memories.

The bone dry summers of my early childhood were perfect for an activity that remains, in my mind, indelibly linked to the brood of feisty women who raised me. On the most scorching days, my mother, grandmother and grandaunts would spread tarpaulin sheets on the terrace and lay out a spread of vadams or rice papads ─ made of a fermented and lightly cooked rice gruel ─ to dry. Moist and delicately flavoured with omapodi or carom seeds and a hint of green chilli, the vadams were delicious enough to be eaten raw. The few that survived our initial onslaught would take no more than half a day to dry, after which they would disappear into airtight jars. They would reappear unexpectedly at mealtimes, having puffed to twice their size and acquired a crisp buoyancy after a brief dalliance with hot oil.

Vadams may serve mainly as a textural counterpoint in a South Indian meal, but in many families like ours, the technique of vadam-making was handed down like an heirloom. It was an integral summer ritual, designed to make the most economical use of simple ingredients, using plentifully available sunshine as a preservation technique. To my young mind, it may have seemed like a cherished family secret, but vadams ­─ also known as sandige in Kannada and vadiyalu in Telugu ─ have been a part of recorded history since at least 1000 AD.

In his encyclopedic book, Indian Food: A Historical Companion, Dr K T Achaya quotes the Bhavissayattakaha, a 10th Century text that mentions vadams as an accompaniment in the royal meal of King Shrenika, the ruler of the ancient kingdom of Magadha. After describing a procession of courses, the text states: “Items such as parpata (papad) and vartaka (vadam) were common.”