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To every Indian idlis are more than just food, they’re a culture onto themselves - a way of life. So it probably comes as no surprise that when the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced a manned mission to space one of the priorities was keeping its astronauts well-stocked in their favourite earthy comfort foods.
It all began when Indian astronauts on an Indo-US seven-day space programme titled ‘Mission 61 I’ set to launch in May-June 1986 reported that among the things they missed the most were buttermilk, pickles and yoghurt. The job of rocket-proofing meals fell to Dr K Radhakrishna, additional director of the Defence Food Research Laboratory (DFRL) in Mysore. Given the nature of space of course, simply brown-bagging lunch won’t cut it.
Palatable food has been an integral part of manned missions since the very beginning. Initially Radhakrishna had a misguided belief about what space-food even meant, “I had this idea that astronauts consume some sort of specially potent pill which satisfies their hunger, but I realised when we worked on the Indo-Soviet mission that it is all a myth,” he says. When the DFRL was commissioned to provide for the requests, they had 14 months to meet the expectations. Radhakrishna rose spectacularly to the challenge and created as many as 17 dishes including chicken pulao, peas pulao, lemon rice, chicken masala, something called peas cheese, chapatis with yeast, kheer, sooji halwa and three types of juice, thirteen of which were approved by NASA.
Ultimately they discovered that the best way to go about it was to dehydrate the ingredients, the idlis were cooked and dried using infrared radition at 700 degrees centigrade and the sambhar and chutney were reduced to a powdered form that could be activated by adding water. The dehydrated idlis shrunk to a mere 12 grams but after rehydration swell to 25 grams, and aside from a slight decolouration, are every bit as good as the original.
Radhakrishna has also been working on the idea of space rasgullas that would be dehydrated by the same method “Rasgullas are ideal for space. They have a beautiful texture that doesn’t disintegrate easily like other sweets. It is compact. In space, it won’t do to have bits of food flying around. Remember, it is zero gravity,” says Radhakrishna. Again, the process is heavy on the science, with the cottage cheese balls being freeze-dried at around –20º to –40º, which preserves the integral flavours. It’s then vacuum packed and served with powdered sugar to be dissolved to make the essential sugar syrup.
Amidst these numerous creations they consider their innovation of space youghourt their crowning glory. The very nature of dairy is that it’s teeming with macrobiotic life, a totally unacceptable addition to a hyper-contained space mission. The hacked the cosmic dairy issue with the use of pulsed electric field technology where short electric bursts are passed through fluid food, rendering the microbes inactive but still living. A process Radhakrishna described so aptly as ‘beautiful’.
For so many years we’ve heard the tales of Tang in space, which eventually brought it a cult status that spanned decades. These new processes have opened up a whole world of possibilities for the whole industry. Though of course we expect it to be a staple on all Indian manned missions, we can’t imagine anyone turning down a taste of this South Indian love affair. This thoroughly underrated organisation has bringing hungry astronauts a taste of home for so many years and their constant innovation should be an inspiration to food lovers across the galaxy, and beyond.
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