Month: November 2014

Living in Madras for the past 25-odd years, I’ve sort of grown used to the dosa-idli-heat, Tamil is the oldest lingo chauvinism, Rajni vs Kamal debates, the DMK -ADMK-PMK political scrambles, sundal-on-the-beach stuff… just noticed too that my list up there both begins and ends with “food items”! The stuff that makes most places bearable! Sometimes though, nostalgia does overtake the here-and-now dosa-chutney combo and makes me want to go back to my mirchi-ka-salan, khatti dal combos of Hyderabadi friends-ke-tiffin-dabbe!

Maybe it’s the Nawabi influence but even the poorest households in Hyderabad have men and women with fantastic “kairaasi” – the ability to turn humble ingredients into dishes fit for a – Nawab! In fact, the best baghara baingan (eggplant gravy) i’ve ever tasted has come from the household of an office boy in my brother’s studio!

I have written some stories of this baghara baingan in one of my earlier posts but as always – there are more!

At my wedding reception at a hotel, my most-hospitable-but-not-the-best-of-organiser parents had sent out hundreds of invitations without really keep track of them. The result – the crush at the wedding reception was over 3000!! The hotel , having been informed that there would be about 1800 guests to dinner, threw up their hands by the time they crossed the 2000 mark! More guests were streaming in and food was fast running out! My brother decided to jump in to the rescue – organising a bunch of his friends and family and herding them into the kitchen to make – baghara baingan – a dish that requires long and careful preparation! Reasoning that a bunch of hungry Madrasis ( husband’s people!) would probably not know a baingan from an anda (eggplant-egg – back to our egg saga of the last few days – AGAIN!!), they proceeded to boil up – yes, boil up – some eggplants and throw them into a rudimentary gravy and serve it up as baghara baingan!  Result : the numbers of Hyderabadi guests at the table declined drastically but the hapless Madrasis soldiered on! Must have wondered why so much was made of this Hyderabadi dish!

Today was about nostalgia for another favourite – closely related to the baingan – presenting

MIRCHI  aur TAMAATAR KA SALAN

• Large green chilies – washed, dried and slit leaving both ends intact – 10
• Tomatoes -2 + 1 – chunked
• Onions – sliced – 2 large
• Garlic – 10-12 flakes – peeled
• Ginger – optional – 1 tsp minced
• Peanuts – 3 tbsp
• Sesame seeds – 2 tbsp
• Dry coconut – copra – 2 tbsp
• Poppy seeds (khuskhus) – 1 tbsp
• Dhania – coriander – seeds – 2 tbsp
• Jeera – cumin – seeds – 1 tsp
• Red chili powder – 1.5 tsp
• Turmeric pwd – 1/2 tsp
• Oil – 3 – 4 tbsp
• Lavang – cloves – 2 – optional
• Tamarind paste – 2 tbsp
• Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Curry leaves – 2 sprigs

Dry roast the dhania, jeera, peanuts, sesame, poppy and coconut separately. Grind togther with the cloves to a fine powder. Set aside. Heat one tsp of oil and fry the onions, garlic and ginger till golden brown. Grind this along with one tomato to a very smooth paste. 

Heat the rest of the oil and fry the chilies for a minute. Set aside. In the same oil, fry the ground onion paste till golden brown. Add the ground masala powder, turmeric and chili powders and fry for a few minutes more. Add the tamarind paste and 1.5 cups of water and stir well. Bring up to the boil and simmer for ten minutes till the raw smells of tamarind and tomato disappear. Add the fried chilies and cook for 7-8 minutes more. Add the two chunked tomatoes, cover and simmer, adding more water if needed for a medium thick gravy – for 3-4 minutes. Serve with hot rice and nothing else 🙂 – even the Madrasis will drool!

[vc_row][vc_column first=”true” odd=”true” width=”2/3″][vc_column_text font=”normal”]A small child trails disconsolately clutching a piece of paper in her hand, taking about an hour to cover a distance of some 200 metres to a music teacher’s house. Halfway through, she rebelliously opens the note which her mother has given her to be given to the music teacher – who also happens to be her aunt… the note seems to weigh her down even further… the mother (mine) has asked the aunt, who happens to be a brilliant singer, to start her daughter (me) on Carnatic music lessons. Growing up with two brothers, i thought that stuff like music and dance were “sissy” things done only by girls! Me – i wanted to be a boy – to the extent that i did NOT like wearing the frocks which were considered “suitable” for girls back in the 60s and only wanted to wear my brother’s shorts and shirts – T-shirts had not yet been invented! 

Therefore, to be made to go to paata class (music lessons) was nothing short of insulting! Also, i must have had some inkling, even way back then, that singing and me were likely to be very ucomfortable bedfellows! Later, i grew to love music but music never ceased to hold my initial reluctance against me and persisted in making my “sa” come out like something between a “ree” and a “ga”! 

The longest of journeys has to end, i guess and i finally reached my aunt’s house. The very kind lady asked me to sit down and sing something – anything – i knew. Sensing a chance to sabotage my mom’s plans to teach me music, i said didn’t know any songs. “They must have taught you something at school”, she says. I shake my head – no song! “A nursery rhyme?” Doing my best moron interpretation, i look blank. “At least the national anthem?” she asks. I hadn’t seen this one coming! Not being able to figure out how to wriggle out of this, i slowly stood up and – belted out the worst rendition of the “Jana Gana Mana” my aunt and her equally musical husband had ever heard! They sat patiently through it and i sat again while she tried teaching me the basic seven notes. Class ended, she gave me a note to be given to mom. As soon as I was out of sight of her house, I sneakily opened the note which suggested gently, very gently, that perhaps, just perhaps, it would be a good idea to teach me a musical instrument rather than singing! Joy lending wings to the selfsame dragging feet , i flew home faster than even my sprinter daughter could have! 

 I read later that eating anything round before an exam ensured a “ZERO” result – must have been the eating of so many eggs that ensured a zero in music! Being in an eggy mood – here’s yet another egg curry – a Moroccan one that’s one of our favourites and is known in our family as “ammamma’s egg curry” (referring to my mom)!

AMMAMMA’S EGG CURRY (SHAKSHUKA)

• Eggs – 6
• Onions – sliced very fine – 1
• Tomatoes – 5 – chopped
• Green chilies – minced – 2
• Jeera powder (cumin) – 1/2 tsp
• Dhania (coriander) powder – 1/2 tsp
• Garlic – minced – 4 pods
• Ginger – miinced – 1/2 tsp
• Red chili powder – 1/2 tsp
• Chopped parsley – 1 tbsp
• Chopped mint – to garnish
• Turmeric – 1 pinch
• Sugar – 1/2 tsp
• Pepper – 1/2 tsp
• Salt
• Oil – 2 tbsp

Heat oil in a large saucepan and add the green chilies and sugar. Add the onions and garlic and stirfry till golden brown. Add the coriander, cumin and red chili powder and ginger. Stir for a couple of minutes more. Add the tomatoes, pepper and salt.  Bring to a boil and then simmer for 5-7 minutes more. Carefully crack the eggs into the gravy and cover. Cook for 5 minutes if you like them a bit gooey or for 7-8 minutes if you like the yolks set.

Sprinkle parsley and mint all over. Serve with soft white pav bread or rice or rotis.

photo courtesy : internet

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” Happy Mother’s Day, Amma”!!

I rub my eyes open blearily to the sight of two absolutely cherubic faces, beaming from ear to ear and carrying with extreme care a tray with a steaming cup of tea, a saucer with two rusks, flowers in a little jar and a napkin! Even now, the memory of it brings a warm, fuzzy feeling – imagine how i salted the tea with my tears back then! The two who created this treat for me were 7 and 3 years old respectively, with Kanch taking her fingers out of her mouth long enough to give me a grin that said – “i supported my akka through this ordeal – i woke up soooo….early – see!”

There had been much whispering the previous evening and a thickly veiled attempt at finding out my preferences – “how much sugar do you like in your tea, amma?” with the cover up following- ” how much sugar does one normally take?” so i wouldn’t get suspicious! 

Many hugs and kisses followed with Kanch wanting to give me a thousand kisses (she could count up to ten so many repetitions had to happen!). Arch, being the “cool” older sibling, had to be more restrained but watched me with an eagle eye as i sipped my tea – oops!

“Very nice, bubs, how much sugar did you put in?”.

“Like you said, Amma, three quarter teaspoons – so i put in three and a quarter teaspoons”!!

I drank the rest of it heroically – it really was well made – except for the sugar! Smelled the roses and the curry leaves they had been decorated with to make a posy (aren’t they pretty, amma? – well, of course – they were the most beautiful things in the world – next to the kids!) and admired the ironed napkin. 

Today, they definitely make the best tea in the world – next to my husband – who really makes THE very best tea and has been doing it for the past coming-on-to-thirty years every morning!

Here’s his contribution:

THE BEST TEA IN THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PS

For one cuppa:

Boil one cup water. As it’s boiling, add 1/4 tsp BOP (Broken Orange Pekoe). Switch off and add 1 tsp Orange Pekoe leaf. Cover and let brew for 3 minutes. Strain into a warm cup. Add three quarters of a teaspoon of sugar ONLY! Add a few drops of warm milk till the colour is like a muddy river on a rainy day and …enjoy!!

Just read a hilarious post on “15 things you experience when you have a South Indian friend” posted by my nephew Parshu on Facebook – clearing up popular misconceptions about South India that North Indians hold. I have one more to add to this – in my five decades so far, I have yet to meet a North Indian who doesn’t absolutely LOVE tamarind rice  (aka pulihodharai, pulinchaadam, pulihora) and am constantly being asked to make it for potluck lunches… one Punjabi lady told me that no matter what she does, her sambar ends up tasting like rajma and as for tamarind rice – this has completely flummoxed her – how do you make something so tasty without onions and garlic and… ‘tamaatar’?? The one exception to this is my sister-in-law – Shipra- who makes absolutely brilliant South Indian food despite hailing from the other end of the country – all the way to Jammu!!

There really is something about cuisine though, that is tied up with our genetic heritages – if an Italian were to be deprived of his pasta or a Bengali of his rosogulla and a South Indian of rasam and sambar and pappu, i think each of these would just shrivel up over time and… die! Dissenters to my theory are bound to be below 25 years of age and I’ll wait for you to grow older before arguing with you!

The tamar-e-hind – or date of India as the Arabs called it – grows all over the world, apparently and the USA is the second largest grower after India! Hmmm…. wonder whether anyone in America has ever thought of a tamarind- flavoured apple pie or a spaghetti with tamarind balls? urrr… One interesting fact about this fruit is that it is unique in the fruit world in having significant amounts of calcium!! Brown tamarind toothpaste for strong,white teeth… i think i’ll patent the idea!

 A few years ago, I was invited to judge a cookery contest at a school, the participants being about 13-14 years old. There were some horrendous things to taste and some halfway decent stuff but there was one kid who actually ventured to make tamarind rice. Never mind that it was semi-raw – i gave her full marks for trying to make something other than an omelet! 

Having poked much fun at my mom in these columns, I have to give her credit where it’s due – she really does make the best tamarind rice in the world! 

Here it is – Tamarind Rice – as mother makes it 🙂

•  Tamarind – 1/2 cup – soaked in one cup water for half an hour and juice squeezed out. Do this a couple of time – to get about 1.5-2 cups tamarind water.
• Sambar powder – 3 heaped tsp
• Cooked rice – 4 cups ( the rice shouldn’t be very soft. As soon as it’s cooked, spread it out on a plate to dry after mixing in one spoon of sesame oil)
• Turmeric – 1/2 tsp
• Methi (fenugreek seeds) – 1 tsp – dry roast and powder.
• Red chilies – 5-6
• Asafoetida – 1 very generous pinch
• Mustard seeds – 1 tsp
• Chana dal – 1 tbsp
• Urad dal – 1 tbsp
• Groundnuts (optional but i love the textural contrast) – 3 tbsp
• Separately roast and powder  together – 1 tbsp sesame seeds, red chilies – 2 -3 , asafoetida – 1 large pinch
• Curry leaves – 4-5 sprigs
• Sesame oil (only!) – 3 tbsp
• Jaggery – 1 lemon sized lump
• Salt – 1.5 tsp
• Mustard seeds – 1.5 tsp – soaked and ground to a paste with 1 tsp water (OPTIONAL) and fried ginger juliennes – 2 tbsp

To garnish:

Fry cashew nuts and curry leaves till crisp and pour over the top at the very end.

To start:

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the peanuts and fry on low heat truning over occasionally till crisp. When they are almost done, add the mustard seeds and let pop. Add the chana dal, urad dal, red chilies, asafoetida and curry leaves. Fry for a few seconds. Add the sambar powder and turmeric and as soon as they sort of go “bussss” in the oil – add the tamarind water. Add the salt and jaggery and bring to a boil. Add the methi seeds powder and let it simmer for about 15 – 20 minutes till the raw smell of tamarind is gone and there’s a saliva-indusing smell! Can add a little more water if it’s drying up too soon. The final consistency should be quite thick , not quite a paste though. Switch off and let cool a bit. Mix it in with the cooked rice along with the sesame seeds powder. Don’t overhandle the rice but mix in lightly with your fingers till all the grains of rice are fully coated. 

Optional – if you want a more “Andhra” pulihaara, add the mustard paste and ginger juliennes. You could also add the ginger to the tamarind while it’s cooking. 

Let the pulihaara sit for at least an hour before serving. Make lots because it tastes waaay better the next day. 

Serve with chips or appadams for the quintessential South Indian travel meal.