Month: November 2014

Rather busy week but with a patient in the house, have been thinking up invalid diets. Soups are definitely life’s saviours where invalids or weight watchers are concerned. 

When we were growing up, the only ‘soup’ we were familiar with was the tomato soup at a “hotel” . Restaurant was a fancy word which came into our vocabularies later in life. Till then any eatery – be it the humble idli-dosa joint called Maaruthi Vilas round the corner or the fancier Annapurna on Nampally Station Road where we had the tomato soup, they were all hotels – with a long “ho” and a very short “tel” – “ho-tle”- pronounced the Indian way! 

Back to our tomato soup – this was a bright orange-red concoction – of a hue designed to make any tomato blush 😉 filled with happily deep-fried croutons, this was our idea of “haute cuisine” as was “Hotle” Annapurna our idea of high living! As we grew older and the rites of passage of “going out with friends” were passed, Chinese joints entered our domain and “sweet corn” soup and the even more exotic “tom yum” soup made us feel truly cosmopolitan! 

Much, much later and many years of travel later, I got to the point where i now believe that Punjab was the best thing that happened to Chinese cuisine!! I think we Indians are definitely a bit chauvinistic when it comes to food and even if are eating a “molecular gastronomic experience” (phew!!), secretly there is a little voice (strongly resembling your grandmother’s!) telling you this is a great dish – all it needs is a pinch of jeera, a hint of asafoetida, a smidgin of garam masala or sambar powder, a spoonful of chili and a dollop of ghee! 

Over decades of “mindful cooking”, I learnt  (much to the chagrin of the grandmother’s voice!) that one area where we really cannot improve on another cuisine is the very humble soup. The rule of thumb with soups is – the simpler the better. The fewer the ingredients, the clearer the vegetable sings!

Here’s one of my own – with truly one of the humblest of vegetables but one of the sublimest of soups – presenting the

CHOWCHOW SOUP

(chayote/ bangalore vankaaya/ bangalore kathrikaya) soup

• Chowchow – 1 large – peeled and sliced
• Shallots or onions – chopped – 2 tbsp
• Butter – 1 tbsp
• Cashewnuts – 6-7
• Salt
• White pepper powder – 1/2 tsp
• Coriander  -chopped – 1 tbsp
• Milk – 1/2 a cup

Saute the onions along with the butter in a saucepan ona  very gentle flame till translucent, Add the chowchow, coriander and the cashewnuts and a cup of water and bring to the boil. Cover and simme for about 15 minutes till vegetables are super tender. Cool and blend to a very smooth puree. If the puree is not smooth enough, strain through a sieve. Add the salt, pepper and enough water to make a medium thick soup – spoonable but not droppable. To serve, pour 2 tbsp hot milk into a bowl and top with the soup. C’est tout!! Das ist alles! Ash-tey! Avulodaan! Ante! or in my favourite Hyderabadi patois – itna eech miyan!

” One more plate coming up…”

A few minutes later… “and anooother… “

And so on it goes one lazy Sunday afternoon we’d spent with a bunch of friends playing rummy… At about four, I’d altruistically (i have the excuse of being very young!!) offered to make samosas for all of us – there were five of us – husband, me, my brother-in-law and a couple of bachelor friends of his. Since we were among the few married couples in the group, these card sessions were usually at our place. 

Growing up with two brothers with rather LARGE appetites, i was quite used to churning out the very large quantities of food they seemed to need to sustain them ( i remember one marathon poori making session where we made close to two hundred pooris for just three of four of them – one brother and couple of friends – the sight of a poori made me sick for weeks afterward!)

And so started the samosa session – kilograms of potatoes and peas, seemingly a granary of flour and many dozens of samosas later, i threw in the towel!! No more – if you’re still hungry, eat thayir saadam (curd rice or if we were in pre-Revolution France, the equivalent would have been – fill your tummy with bread!) – was the threat! While the rest looked suitably abashed (not one samosa left for me, btw and if i hadn’t been smart enough to take a sneak preview, i would have been the one eating thayir saadam – only!), the biggest eater of them all, Chandru – looks disappointed – “but I ate only forty”!!

With all of us becoming diet conscious in our later years, samosas appeared less and less frequently at teatime – the decreasing frequency  being attended by increasing guilt pangs! One of these occasions was when my daughter decided that she’d had about as much as she could stand of a corporate career – after spending four months with a consulting firm!!! – and decided to quit to pursue her love of running and fitness. Last day of work – and she wanted something really special for the rest of the poor sods (in her opinion!) who had to continue. Decided to rustle up “kajjikayis” (karanjis), the D-shaped stuffed sweets that we could die for and quickly start kneading dough. As I start mixing the stuffing, find that the copra (dry coconut) has gone “off” and I need to do something in a real hurry with half an hour to go. Whirling like a dervish, microwave potatoes and peas, make the masala, roll out the pooris, stuff and fry the samosas – and collapse after packing a couple of dozen samosas for her co-workers.

The rest of the day is spent basking in the complimentary sms-es that keep flowing in but I am convinced now that samosas in particular, need something like adrenalin flowing in to start the job! 

Here’ s what you do once the adrenalin flows in:

 SAMOSAS

• Maida – plain flour – 1 cup (makes about 15)
• 1 tbsp melted butter
• Potatoes – 4 large – boil and peel
• Green peas – 2 tbsp – boil or microwave on high for 3 minutes with a tsp of water.
• Carrots – 2 – peel and microwave for 3 minutes
• Onions – 1 large – sliced fine
• Green chilies – minced – 2
• Ginger – minced – 1/2 tsp
• Red chili powder – 1/2 tsp
• Jeera – cumin seed powder – 1/2 tsp
• Chaat masala or kala namak (pink Himalayan salt) – 1 large pinch
• Asafoetida powder – 1 large pinch
• Salt
• Turmeric – 1 large pinch
• Juice of half a large lemon
• Chopped coriander/mint – 1 heaped tbsp
• Oil to deep fry

Mash the potatoes and carrots together. Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a pan and fry the onions, chili and ginger. Mix in the powders and salt. Switch off, add lemon juice and coriander / mint. Let cool.

For the covering

Mix the maida with 1/4 tsp salt. Pour in the melted ghee and mix till the mixture is breadcrumb-y. Add water a little at a time and knead to a medium soft dough. Divide into marble sized balls and roll out into thin, very thin pooris. Place a little filling – about 1 tsp in one quadrant of the circle and roll the poori in half and then half again – till it forms a sort of puffed up triangle. 

Deep fry on a low flame till crisp and golden and serve with tamarind sauce / mint chutney/ ketchup – or plain!

My guest blogger for today – my younger daughter Kanchana!

– – – 

So in a recent blog post, my mother mentioned that BOTH her kids love eggs as much as she does. Uhh, not cool Amma.

Firstly, as Arch so emphatically stated in her ‘guest blog post’, my mother didn’t let either of us develop food preferences when we were growing up. Secondly, when either of us did – accidentally – manage to develop a preference either way, it apparently got ignored completely!

One such preference that I secretly, sneakily, stealthily manage to develop was my dislike for eggs. (Note to Amma: next time you blog about either Arch or me, please verify your data about what foods we like).

I’ve never been a big fan of eggs. Eggs in whichever form – whether scrambled, omeletted, boiled, buried in cheese, whatever. Having been a vegetarian athlete, I was never allowed to go without eggs, as protein sources are hard to come by. While throughout my years at school I found a way to twist, break, find a loophole in pretty much every role enforced by our teachers, I was the complete opposite when it came to training. So when my coach told me to eat X number of eggs a day, everyday, I shut up and did it.

Naturally, I kept trying out different ways to disguise the eggs I had to eat. One recipe that I recently stumbled upon is Egg Akoori. I first tasted this rather fantastic Parsi dish at Bombay’s famous Leopold’s Café and tried to recreate it at home. 

Here’s what you’ll need: (recipe makes 4 eggs)

AKOORI

1 pod garlic

1 green chili

½ large onion sliced

1 tomato chopped up

1 large pinch of : turmeric, jeera, dhaniya, chaat masala, chili powder

Heat butter in a pan. Add in ingredients in the order above. Cook them up, then add in the eggs and scramble up.

Garnish with coriander. I like eating this with hot rice.

Basically, scrambled eggs-Indian style!

(Picture courtesy: Internet)