Month: December 2014

Very rarely do “star couples” last. Something to do with the amount of adulation/ attention they get used to – methinks. In the very “me, me” world that they live in, where the clamour for attention is so strong, how much space is left to accommodate a “we”?

Even in non-star pairings, there is usually (not always!) a more outgoing partner and a quieter soul – making great matches! One needs more attention, the other is happy to be left alone or maybe has learnt the fine art of pretending to listen while absorbed in his or her own thoughts! What is VERY important here is the strategic placing of the hmmm’s… (thoughtful), the Is that so’s? (invitation to carry on since I don’t know what the heck you are nattering on about!), tsk, tsk’s (indicating you are completely at sea about the topic in the air but this is a fence you can jump off on either side!) and the best – “let’s talk about this later. This is too important to talk about while driving/eating/sleeping/whatever” (subtext here is I’VE HAD ENOUGH. JUST STOP. GIVE IT A REST AND I HOPE YOU FORGET ABOUT IT BY TOMORROW)!! All these to be used judiciously in the course of conversation.

Some very successful pairings are when the partners take turns to be the “star” of the piece/day/event – helps if you are good at very different things. It will NOT do to get competitive – “my biryani is WAAY better than yours” or “not a bad effort but you took the second curve TOO fast” (racing couple!) or a “a cupola HERE?? Are you mad – it’ll look like a strawberry mousse, not a house!!” (architect couple, in case you’re wondering what a cupola is!)

So, there having now expounded my theories of pairings (based on close to thirty years of marriage and watching many other marriages!), let me get to the crux of the matter – far more important than all those small disagreements above – FOOD PAIRINGS!

One of those marriages absolutely made in heaven – I’d go so far as to call it a Gandharva marriage – the highest form of marriage as per the Vedas – is that of Sir Pongal and Lady Vada. The lady is undoubtedly the star of the piece but there are times like when you are tired/ill/just had too much – when the knight comes to the rescue – rather like those times when nothing but the frayed nightdress will do – and you’d KILL anyone who tried to give it away!

Vadas – of two kinds – have had their place in this narrative but now comes the turn of the quintessential comfort food for most South Indians – Pongal – to take its place centre stage – a dish so perfect it has a WHOLE festival named after itself!! Here’s a challenge – name any other dish which has this distinction – imagine a festival named mutter paneer or chocolate cake – even America does not have a festival called apple pie!

PONGAL /VEN PONGAL:

• Rice – (raw rice, not the parboiled variety) – 1 cup
• Moong dal / pesara pappu / patham paruppu/ green gram dal – 1/2 cup 
• Ginger – 1″ piece – minced
• Cumin seeds/ jeera – 1/2 tsp whole + 1/2 tsp crushed
• Peppercorns – 1/2 tsp
• Green chili – minced – 1
• Turmeric – 1 pinch
• Salt
• Ghee (very important – no substitutes!) – 2 -3 tbsp
• Cashew nuts – broken into halves – 2 tbsp
• Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
• Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Asafoetida – 2 generous pinches.

Heat half a tbsp of ghee in a pressure cooker and fry the washed moong dal for 4-5 minutes. Add the rice, ginger. minced chili, turmeric, salt, crushed jeera and 5 cups water. Pressure for 4-5 whistles. Open when the cooker has cooled off – do not force open. Mash well with the back of a ladle.

Heat the rest of the ghee in a small pan (popu garita / thaalchi kottra karandi – what a mouthful!). Add mustard seeds. When they pop, add the pepper, jeera, curry leaves, asafoetida and cashewnuts and fry till nuts turn a golden yellow – about a miute.

Pour over the pongal.

Serve with pacchi pulusu (thin, watery sweet and sour gravy with tamarind and jaggery and flavoured with pepper, jeera, green chili and ginger). Of course, if your yin and yang are in perfect harmony, let it reflect on the plate – with BOTH  pongal and vada! 

 (pic-courtesy internet – sorry – still travelling!)

“Amma, can i have a saturdegg today instead of a friedegg?”

“What?”

“This is Saturday, no? Can I have a saturd-egg instead of a fried egg??”

“So what’s a saturdegg, Arch?”

“You know when you make a mish-mash of it and put things in it, like tomato sauce and stuff? And then you make a sandwich of it? That!”

Ah, NOW I get it – egg paste sandwiches and the ‘satur-degg’ (that’s how she said it – like ‘degg’ was the operative word – was a five-year old’s attempt at humour!

Considering in what all forms Arch liked to consume eggs, this was a perfectly acceptable request. There was a time, when she was about three, that she used to carefully nibble the white of a hard boiled egg, place the yellow on her plate and proceed to mash it up with her fingers (and most of herself!) into a paste with strawberry jam – it HAD to be strawberry jam only- no pedestrian stuff like mixed fruit jam would do for her “gourmet” tastes (!) and proceed to eat the resultant yellow-pink mess with great and evident enjoyment! 

With great restraint, I let her be, hoping she’d grow out of this weird taste – and she finally did – after a few months – to everyone’s relief!

I think if I were to audit this blog, the number off egg recipes would probably outnumber everything else – that’s how much we love our everyday ke ande! When I was in a student hostel for a couple of years (and our hostel, unlike the general run of student hostels) had excellent food – in variety and quality – I ate an egg breakfast EVERY single day for two whole years – despite the calls of masala dosas, idlis and vadas!

And so, here’s to much experimentation and many egg inventions with a classic 

EGG PASTE SANDWICH

• Boiled eggs – boiled for 7-8 minutes till soft but not runny – 4
• Tomato sauce – 2 tsp
• Mustard paste (the best way is to stone grind 1 tsp of mustard seeds with a few drops of water into a rough paste) – 1 tsp
• Mayonnaise – 1 tbsp
• Grated cheddar – 2 tbsp OR 2 cheese slices OR 2 tbsp cheese spread
• Butter – 1 -2 tbsp
• Pepper – 1/2 tsp
• Green chili – 1 – minced
• Salt
• 1 or 2 tbsp hot milk
• Lettuce leaves – a few – for the sandwiches

Peel the eggs while still hot – if you use a kitchen towel to hold them, you won’t have to hop around as you burn your hands!). Mash up with the rest of the ingredients into a knobbly paste – using  a fork. The eggs can stay in little pieces. Add the hot milk a little at a time to make a not-too-wet paste. Sandwiches with multi-grain bread or whole wheat bread or burger buns are the best with this paste.

 And, NO – jam, even strawberry jam, is NOT a good idea if you want to tweak this recipe!

FB, on its feed, popped up a photograph of a college friend – Sandip – posing with Steffi Graf! Brought back some priceless memories for me too – of my daughter Archana’s very early years…

With a tennis and cricket-mad father, it was inevitable that Arch’s attention should very soon turn to both these. At the height of Steffi’s career in the early 90’s. Arch figured out the sports page in the paper – she couldn’t read but learnt to recognise pictures and questions would be asked about news of Steffi that day while she’d clamber on to her Appa’s lap and demand to be read snippets of news she jabbed her finger at! Since she insisted on holding the paper during this process, often upside down, it was a very patient appa who read out the news squinting at the paper! She would also insist on ‘reading’ out news herself sometimes. “So what’s in the paper today, Arch?’ was always met with a news item – snippets that she made up like “one man found a thotholoath (cockroach!) under his house today” or “one thidel (tiger) came to one house” – all of which had to be met with suitable expressions of horror from parents as she went off into gales of laughter at having successfully fooled us!

Back to the sports page. She was drawing, with intense concentration, a picture of a girl. Asked who, the answer was “Theffi Dhaff” (Steffi Graf) – having just heard that Steffi had won a match. A couple of days later, she was crossing out her carefully drawn masterpiece. Asked why, the answer was ” Steffi Graf chacchipoyindi” (SG is dead!). Puzzled, I inquired further. Turns out that her heroine had lost a match and Arch thought she had died!! (didn’t know the difference  which is maybe like how Steffi felt that day too!!)

On another occasion, her appa was reading out a piece about the South African cricketer Kepler Wessels and she turns her face up with a puzzled look – “Appa, Wessels? His name is ginnelu?” The word ‘ginnelu’ is Telugu for “vessels”! Occasional confusions of a multilingual household, i guess!

There was no confusion, however, with one of her favourite snacks – then and now – “murukulu” in Telugu being the Tamil “murukku” of which she demanded a supply from her ammamma (grandmother) whenever she visited.

Here are the famous “MURUKULU” – the best in the world!

• 1 cup chana dal
• 1 cup urad dal
• 1 cup moong dal/ green gram dal
• 1 cup putani / putnala pappu/pottu kadalai / roasted gram
• 4 cups rice
• 35 gm butter
• 35 hot oil
• Salt
• Red chili powder – 1.5 tsp
• Omam / ajwain/ caraway seeds – 1 tbsp
• Sunflower oil or groundnut oil to deepfry

Wash the chana dal, urad dal and moong dal togther nd spread out on a large sheet to dry for a few hours – in the shade. Ditto for rice. DO NOT wash the roasted gram. Then dry roast the dals and cool. Ditto for rice separately. Grind all the dals and rice into a fine powder. If doing at home, sieve out the coarser stuff – can use it to thicken soups later. 

Mix the chili powder, ajwain and salt into the flour. Pour in the hot oil and butter. Add water a little at a time to knead into a semi soft dough. 

Using a muruku gottam (mould) – the star shaped one, squeeze out over hot (NOT smoking hot) oil into a circle with several spirals. The oil will foam up and subside. Turn over after a minute to fry on the other side, lowering the flame. Remove when golden brown on both sides. Repeat. Store in a steel tin. 

And Sandip, you can offer some to Steffi from one of her youngest (then) fans!

 (And pls excuse the quality of the pics – am traveling and these were taken with a phone cam)

Kanch comes back home from work super-excited. “Guess what A (her boss) lent me today?”

With Kanch, my experience has been that the ‘guess what’ question could have answers ranging from a virus to a ragi biscuit to an elephant – all equal sources of excitement! So I don’t dare hazard a guess – yesterday’s source of excitement could just as easily be today’s “oh, that’s so lame” – rather difficult to keep up with, to say the least!

So the rest of us have developed a coping strategy – “WHAT, WHAT, WHAT, what??” in equally excited tones is the way to get a coherent answer and to share the latest rage! She thrusts out a book and I read the title “Enter the Kettlebell”… any of you who knows without reading this post what a kettlebell is merits a 3-course meal at home – you can pick what you want from my blog and I’ll make it for you, I promise! And if you’re working in the fitness industry, sorry that automatically disqualifies you! 

Back to the book – like it was a serious glossy book by a guy to improve strength and sub-titled (i am NOT making this up, i swear!!) “Strength Secret of the Soviet Supermen”. Like, wow!! and WOW!! Giving me ideas for books like “Come, Rediscover the Joys of the Tava” or “Enter the Wok”!! Why not?? Soliciting feedback from my viewers here, please…

Back to the kettlebell contest. Kettlebells – as I learnt a few months ago – are a sort of advanced free weights used to build strength. Get that? Well, I didn’t either – till saw the thingummies – and so, am including a pic up there in the images section for you to figger! Ok, Kanch is peeking over my shoulder as I write this and falling over herself with giggles so let me get the ‘correct’ dope from her! I quote “It’s a type of weight – an alternative to barbells or dumbells  with which you can do ballistic movements”. Duh? Superman kinda stuff, i’m guessing??

With an athlete and a swimmer to nurture and an aunt who’s a nutritionist, the quest has been to make meals as nutritionally balanced as possible. Tough task when all the yummy things seems to be bad for you!! But with a daughter who just doesn’t snack – no samosas, no chips, no masala peanuts and get this – NO VADAS (makes me suspect that she has no Nemali genes at all)!! – i still have to provide up to six square meals a day for her!! While slow food has been the order of our lives all these decades, I do need shortcuts once in a while. Here’s something I came across – healthy, quick and nutritious – meeting all of Kanchu’s requirements!

THE SCOTTISH SKIRLIE

The quantities are basically andaaza – meaning make ’em up as you go along but am giving some idea here.

• Onions – chopped – 1/2 cup
• Oats – 1.5 cups
• Paneer or cottage cheese or any crumbly cheese – feta would also do – 3/4 cup – grated
• Spinach – 1 cup – chopped
• Eggs – 2 or 3
• Salt
• Pepper
• Water – 2 tbsp
• Cooking oil or butter – 1 or 2 tbsp

Heat the oil or butter in a saucepan and fry the onions till translucent. Toss in the oats and toast till golden and aromatic.  Add one or two tbsp of water to soften the oats.Now add spinach and stir till it wilts. Salt it, pepper it, spoon it into bowls and top with a LOT of crumbled cheese. If you eat eggs, fry one or two for each bowl and serve on top. If not, add a few halved cherry tomatoes along with the spinach. See pic.

Serve it with a thin shorba or soup for a light but filling dinner. 

(Pics courtesy internet)