Month: September 2014

 

Gutti vankaya koora – variously known as ennai kathrikayi (Tamil), something badnekaya in Kannada – ok, I’m having a senior moment here and can’t remember- is inseparable from the heart of a true blue Telugu. If you call yourself a Telugu (note how carefully i am avoiding the Andhra-Telangana question!) and do not like this curry, I suggest you get your gene pool carefully analysed!

 

I hated this vegetable as a child – in common with a million other kids, most likely! Refused to eat it when my mom tried to disguise it in various ways – all right, mom was NOT a good makeup artist! As kids, we were allowed to have such privileges – as saying no to any food – only for so long. Soon enough, it dawned on my dad that right under his very nose, one of his kids was growing up to be – in very colloquial Telugu – “raanu raanu Raju gaari gurraalu gaadidelu avutunnayi” literally ” as the days go by, the Raja’s horses are turning out out be donkeys”!! Therefore, in the interests of only daughter not turning out to be a donkey, said daughter had to be taught a lesson.

 

Matters were taken in hand and over dinner one day. Vankaya (eggplant, the hated vegetable) was the curry. I refuse. Dad asks why. Because I don’t like it (see how fast the transformation to donkey was happening!)

 

Dad : Are you hungry?

Me : Yes (duh…!)

Dad: You want food?

Me: Yes (by now far gone in donkeyness)

Dad: This is food. Eat it!

Me: No.

 

So who do you think won? The king in question or the donkey? Big DUH! I got sent to bed with no dinner and learnt to shut up and not just eat eggplant but to relish  it – it appears on my table at least twice a week and i can eat any which way! So here’s one of my two favourite ways:

 

 

1/2 kg firm, purple brinjals (or eggplants)

1 large onion – grated (optional)

1 green chili – chopped

Koora podi (curry powder – recipe below) – 4 tbsp

Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp

Curry leaves – 2 sprigs

Turmeric – 1/2 tsp

Salt

Oil – 1 tbsp

Tamarind paste (1/4 tsp) mixed with a tbsp of water

 

Wash eggplant and remove the stalks. Slit brinjal from top and bottom – making transverse slits upto half it’s length, i.e. each slit is perpendicular to the other. Mix the curry powder, turmeric, green chili and salt together and stuff this mixture into the slits. Can also mix the onion into the mixture or fry it separately.

 

Place these in a microwavable bowl, cover and microwave on high for 5 minutes.

 

In a separate pan, heat the oil and season with mustard and curry leaves. Also add onions if you haven’t used them in the stuffing already. Drop the eggplants into the oil and sprinkle tamarind water on top. Cover and cook, turning over  (them, not self!) occasionally – about ten minutes – till tender.

 

Serve with hot, white rice, a big dollop of ghee (yeah, yeah, okay, you’re watching the calories), but the curry itself has only ONE tbsp of oil, remember?! And plain boiled tuvar dal with salt (aka mudda pappu)!

 

 

Tuvar dal – 1 cup

Chana dal – 1 cup

Udad dal – 1 cup

Red chillis – 1 cup

Asafoetida – 2 pinkie nail size lumps

Coriander seeds – 1 tsp

 

Roast separately and powder together – this is a very useful powder which I use for a lot of dry vegetable curries – potato, carrot, chowchow etc.

 

 

 One very small child  – about two years old, hanging on for dear life to the sides of a planters’ chair – for those of you who have forgotten what this is – it’s like an easy chair with extended arms for the ” planter” to put his drink on of an evening! – and trying desperately to look over but not quite making it… what she could see, though, was the goodies being made for her and all the other little kids in the grandfather’s (the occupant of said chair – a teetotaler btw!) lap for evening tea.

 

Soft, white bread, brilliantly red jam and white butter made from that day’s milk – kiddies heaven! That is my very first memory because my grandfather died that year and i have no more memories of him. Why i am sure it’s a memory is because of the remembrance of perspective – i couldn’t see over the side!

 

A grandfather to be proud of – who earned a medal for gallantry in the Indo – Afghan conflict of 1931- i never even knew about this war till i came across the medal in my dad’s papers. A man of such integrity  – please bear with me – i just have to tell you this story. Grandfather – Chenji Padmanabha Rao – was posted in Rangoon during the 1930s. 3 kids – two daughters and my dad. One day the kids were playing, they found a 4-anna coin in a sandpit. Come home in great excitement – after all, 4 annas those days was riches to a child – and showed it to the dad. He told them to go around the colony asking if anyone had lost it. 4 hours pass and back traipse the kids – no one has lost it, so now, anna (that’s what they called the father), can we keep it? No, says the man, if you haven’t earned it, it never can belong to you so go put it in the temple ‘hundi’!! What a lesson in honesty – my eldest aunt – Bajjama – kid no.1 of the 3, related this story to me some 65 years later…

 

Thus began my love affair with bread – soft and white back then, multigrain or wholewheat now…the smell of bread baking drives everyone crazy!

 

 

1.5 cups whole wheat flour

1.5 cups plain flour

1 sachet – 7gm yeast

1 tbsp – milk powder

2 tbsp – sunflower oil or if you insist on sinning, butter!

Salt – 3/4 tsp

Sugar – 2 tsp

Water – about 1.5 cups

 

In half a cup of warm water (from the above 1.5 cups), prove yeast. For newbies, this means sprinkle the yeast on the surface of the water and let it sit for about 5-10 minutes. A scummy, pale coffee yucky looking thing will form 😉 – yay, our yeast is proved – i.e, it is alive and kicking! If this doesn’t happen, throw out and go to the shops to get fresh yeast. Add the sugar, salt, milk powder and oil and mix. Add the flours and mix till the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the water a little by little and knead well till you get a soft dough. Turn out on to a floured surface and knead it till it cries mummy – at least ten minutes. The longer you knead, the better the bread. Cover and let it double in size – should take about an hour but in Madras, it gets done in half the time! Knock it back and shape into the kind of loaf / rolls you want. Don’t knead at this stage. Let it rest for another 15 to 20 minutes till it doubles again. Brush with milk and bake in a preheated oven at 190 C for about 1/2 hour till golden brown on top and it sounds hollow (like how you are beginning to feel  by now!). Switch off and let cool or if you are TOO hollow, eat!

 

Someone had taught my mother how to make tomato jam – boiling and straining out pulp and seeds etc. but my mother decided that since skin and seeds won”t kill us – let’s leave them in – and thus was born the simplest, yummiest tomato jam ever.

Tomato jam: – Boil together 6 ripe tomatoes , 10-12 spoons of sugar and 4 cloves till jammy!!! Dat’s it. folks!

 

 

It’s funny how so many memories of great food seem tied up with childhood summers, isn’t it? While i’ve grumbled ad nauseum about Madras, it’s also Madras which has introduced me to foods that are among my favourites today.

 

One summer, many long years ago, my mother had come with us on a holiday to Madras – usually only the kids were packed off – from many households across the country to ONE aunt and uncle whose job it was to look after us for the summer. The parents who got to do the packing off must have danced celebratory jigs on returning home from the station while the ones on whom this phalanx was descending might have also had one last celebratory dinner before kids started coming out of the woodwork for the next month or so!

 

And so, one morning, mom decided that we haven’t seen anything till we saw the beloved Marina of her childhood and shook us all out of bed at the unearthly hour of 6 o’clock to take us to the beach. Many hours of fun, frolic and trailing tonnes of beach sand home and being hosed off en masse on the porch before we were allowed to step in through the back door, hunger was at unprecedented crescendos. The aunt with whom we were staying – Kalyani pinni of the legendary hospitality – had anticipated hungry mouths and made a mound of adais over 1 ‘ ( that’s right, one foot – you’re not misreading it!) high with many chutneys and things to accompany it!

 

The locust swarm descended on the table and in  5 minutes flat, there wan’t an adai in sight and definitely none left for the ‘big people’ who made do with bread and butter!!!

 

I never grew very fond of them till i started making them myself and now, the combo of adai and avial is definitely of the ilk of Lay’s – no one can eat just one!

 

The perfect diet food – high in protein and fibre, low on fats and carbs and very filling in the bargain – load up guiltlessly – the diet gods are watching and applauding!

 

 

Toor dal – 1 cup

Chana dal – 1/2 cup

Whole urad dal – with skin if possible – 1/2 cup 

Rice – 1 tbsp ( i add a tsp of any other millets

– jowar or bajra or barley – for added fibre)

Salt

2 green chilies

2 red chilies

1 pinch of asafoetida

2 sprigs of curry leaves

Onions 2 – finely chopped

Sesame oil – about 2 or 3 tbsps

 

Soak the dals together and the rice/millets separately for about 4-5 hours. Grind together to a knobbly rough puree along with the chilies, asafoetida, salt and curry leaves to a thick, spreading consistency.  Let it rest for about an hour. Add chopped onion.  Letting it rest for too long will probably make your teeth go unpleasantly ‘ping’!

 

Heat a flat dosa pan, preferably non-stick unless you’re a purist! Spread one ladleful of the batter into a thick dosa and pour a few drops of oil around. Make a small hole in the centre and pour in a few drops of oil there. Cover and cook on a low flame for 2-3 minutes. Peek under one edge to check if it has browned. Turn over and cook, uncovered, for a further 2-3 minutes. Ta-dang!

 

Keep making – what did i just tell you – no one can eat just one!

 

 

Drumstick (the Indian vegetable, not the chicken spare part!)- cut into 3 cm lengths – 1

Green plantain – 1 – cut into 1 cm long thin pieces to match above

Carrot – 1  – ditto

Beans – a handful – string and snap

Pumpkin – 1/2 cup each of white and yellow – cut like above

Grated coconut – 3 tbsp

3 green chilies

Cumin seeds – 1/2 tsp

Sour yogurt – 3 cups – whipped

Curry leaf – 1 sprig

Coconut oil – 5-6 drops (yes, that’s it!)

Turmeric – 1 pinch – optional

Salt

 

Cook the vegetable together with about a cup of water. Grind together coconut, chilies and cumin into a fine paste. Add this to the vegetables. Add another cup of water and salt and cook till vegetables are done. Switch off, let cool for a few minutes and add yogurt and mix. Smear the curry leaf with coconut oil and drop into the avial.

 

Enjoy one of the simplest, tastiest dishes to come out of God’s own country!

 

 

Hungry kyaa? Pizza kha… ya Maggi kha… ya chips kha….

 

More and more choices, less and less nutrition… What happened when parents 20 or 30 years ago heard the perennial, “Mom, I’m hungry” cry? Trying to think back and I’ve got as far as murmura, chikki, fruit or just a “wait till dinnertime, it’s a few minutes away” (seemingly hours to tummies reaching a crescendo of hunger). Of course there was always the bit of leftover rice that could be had with a pickle or curd or a… podi – my favourite! For some weird reason, i loved podi rice with ghee and … hold your breath… soggy appadams! Something about trying to hold up flagging crispness was manna to my tongue!

 

Down the lane from where we grew up, there was an old (she might have been anywhere from 30 to 70 but anything above 20 was ‘old’ to 10-year old eyes!) widow who supported herself and her son by making appadams and podis – known to us only as the ‘podi mami’. I wonder how many thousands of such women lived by the skill of their cooking back then – brave souls. My mother was one of her biggest customers – particularly for “menthikootu podi” – with 3 perpetually hungry kids and a phalanx of relations always visiting, the podis ran out as fast as they came in! My brother Anand was one of the biggest depredators, as I remember…

 

For years after we moved away, I used to dream of this podi (I did, really – how the heck could any diet have a chance of surviving with me???) My mother’s culinary skills, such as they were, did not extend to this piece of art and no one else seemed to know or care even, about it. Till about two years ago, when I was talking about it (that’s step 2 after dreaming, btw) and my youngest aunt – Indu – said she made it all the time! Talk about traveling the world to find the pot of gold in your own backyard!! Since I said I wanted it RIGHT THEN, Indu aunty obliged me and gave me the recipe for it!! Strike 2!

 

Here’s my pot of gold – really looks like powdered gold too, btw!

 

 

Chana dal – 2 cups

Asafoetida – 1 cm piece

1/4 cup coriander (dhaniya) seeds

4 red chilies

Cumin seeds – 14 cup

Rice – 1/4 cup

Wheat 1/4 cup

Turmeric powder – 1 tsp

Mustard seeds – 1 tbsp

Fenugreek (methi) seeds – 1/4 cup

Salt – about 1 tsp

 

Roast each of these (except turmeric) separately and powder together along with the turmeric into a fine powder. Cool and store in a bottle. Mix together 1 tsp with a handful of rice and 1/2 tsp of ghee to serve as an appetiser or an any time snack.

 

You can also mix 2 tbsp of the powder with 1/2 tsp tamarind paste and 1 tsp jaggery to make an instant no-cook ‘pulusu’ or gravy.

 

 

“Never, never, never am I ever going to Madras in the summer again!!” My vehement declaration at about ten years of age after one particularly gruelling summer holiday spent with my aunts in Madras. Drawing into Chennai by train, the first thing that greeted visitors was the foetid smell of Basin Bridge followed by the dank undergrowth smell of Egmore, the acrid dustiness of Nungambakkam – i swear till today that I have an olfactory map of Chennai!

 

The gods of Madras must have been listening and plotting vengeance because here I am today, having spent all of 26 years in this city, moaning and grumbling through every summer!

 

As a child,coming from the dry dust bowl of Hyderabad where one never sweated, it was particularly agonising – how was it humanly possible that one could sweat through one’s bathwater???! so did one actually apply soap with bathwater or sweat – these seemingly trivial questions occupied many hours of childhood!

 

What made summers here bearable was the fun times with cousins – and there were MANY of us!! The pillow fights, card games, vast quantities of yummy food provided by generous aunts, unending sessions of carom and the piles of new Enid Blytons, Williams and Billy Bunters there were to devour. 

 

One summer’s night, i was deeply engrossed in an Enid Blyton – my fourth for the day! – and just a vague feeling that there should be more noise in the background and why aren’t people coming in to dinner… After what seemed like many hours, a bunch of aunts and uncles who’d been chatting in the garden troops in. What on earth ARE you doing still awake? It’s past 11! Being rather shy, it took me some courage to ask aren’t we going to have dinner. Well, not unless you want another one because you’ve already had it some four hours ago was the answer – i had completely forgotten! Was unceremoniously sent off to bed and woke up a few minutes later thinking i was at the bottom of sea! Well, all that had happened was there was a power cut and we all woke up bathing in a sea of sweat…

 

There was no question of being able to sleep so we sat around in the moonlit garden till someone had the bright idea of plucking mangoes from the tree above our heads – well, Madras began to seem not such a  very bad place after all!

 

Madras has also taught me to search out recipes to beat the heat – recipes from around the world… one from our own backyard – the Punjab… is the divine aam ka panna – raw mango juice.

 

 

2 medium sized raw – very raw – mangoes – pressure cooked in one glass of water.

4 glasses of water

Sugar – 1/2 cup – this will vary depending on how sour your mangoes are – taste and adjust at the end

Roasted cumin (jeera) powder – 1 tsp

Kala namak (black or Himalayan salt) – 1/4 tsp

Salt – 1/2 tsp

Cool the cooked mangoes, peel and collect the pulp. Use a spoon to scrape off the flesh sticking to the inside of the skin. Cooking mangoes with the pulp instead of peeling them ensures that you retain much of the essential oils which lie just below the skin.

 

Add water and all the other ingredients and whiz with a blender till smooth. Pour into a jug – this is a concentrate and can be diluted in 1:1 proportions to drink. If you want to keep it for a week in the frig, just add water, sugar and salt to the pulp and whisk. Then boil it up again. Add the cumin and black salt at the end and bottle this concentrate – lasts for over a week in the frig. 

 

Cool off!!! Airconditioners help! Power cuts don’t! Use the power cut time to meditate and become philosophical about things you can’t change – like living in Madras!