Month: July 2015

“Could you run out and buy some bread and eggs, please? There’s nothing for breakfast!” says the harried advertising executive/wife/mom all rolled into one.

“Mmmm… zzzzz… grunt… hummpphh… zzzz… “ goes the also advertising executive husband, obviously not quite as harried, as he turns over and pulls the pillow over his ears! Where’s the need for an early breakfast at 11 o’clock anyway on a Sunday morning??!

But there’s a little kid in the equation and soon, he is made to roll out of the bed by the simple expedient of having the sheets and pillow pulled off, thereby landing with a thud and an ouch on the floor! He is an equitable guy and doesn’t protest, merely dusting himself off and rubbing the ouch-y part and dragging a brush through his long hair (ah, yes, meet our old friend, the advertising honcho, whose exploits have featured so prominently in these chronicles!) and another brush, not the same one, across his teeth! We are particular, you see! The long hair has not yet been washed (it’s only eleven o’clock, remember?) and there is no pesky towel wrapped around the head to lose sight of – this time!

Secretly also quite happy to go… because you see, we have just become the proud owners of a new car (back in the 80’s, this was a BIG deal!) and are quite happy to saunter off, jingling the keys of the new Maruti in the face of anyone who has to, poor soul, take out a motorcycle, or even poor sod, a Lambretta – the very auntieji of scooters!

Off we go to the nearest supermarket, where, as we walk past the counter, on the way  in, we see a message board – the kind that supermarkets allow customers to put up personal ads on. This message board is quite a magnet – who knows what we might be able to pick up there? Anything from a vintage sewing machine to country eggs laid by wild country hens rather than then well-bred poultry farm types to well… like I said, who knows??! And sure enough, the little distraction is rewarded – by seeing a little paper tucked away in a corner – for a Bose music system!

Now, if you, like many here, happened to have grown up in licence raj India, you knew just how exciting a discovery this was to a music lover. Good music systems were not available for love definitely and a lot of money was involved – more than most of us could afford, anyway – unless you had a rich uncle (Ambi maama?) who hadn’t married and was likely to slip you a hundred buck note rather than a 5-star candy… and of course, pigs might fly…

Off goes our pal, hot on the trail of the music system, carefully detaching the little paper from the board when no one was looking. The address is reached, system inspected, bought and an advance paid with a promise of the rest of the money as soon as the bank opens in the morning (no ATMs either, those pre-historic days!), packed with great care, tenderly placed on the passenger seat and cushioned with all the stuff available in the car (ah, that is where the towel went!) and driven with greater care than any post-operative patient coming home from the hospital!

But all this takes time, right? And so, our pal breezes back into the house at one o’clock, wearing the beatific smile that only someone sure he’s done the right thing can wear! To be met by one hungry kid and one angry wife! Where are the eggs and bread? Figuring there is no escape, he carefully places the hair-towel wrapped LARGE and heavy parcel in her outstretched arms!

Has he bought a whole poultry farm? Naah, wrong shape! She opens it. Only in a family as music-mad as this one could the unforgiveable be forgiven! All is forgotten. What is in a few eggs anyway??!

Let’s celebrate the family with this very special koora (curry) from my home state – Andhra…

 AAVAPETTINA ARATIPOOVU KOORA (Banana flower curry in mustard paste)

• Arati poovu/banana flower/vaazhaipoo – 1.5 cups – 1 flower – slightly painful process – pulling out the flowers and removing the stamens and pistils – the dongalu (thieves) and pillalu (children) – not kidding, this is what they’re called in Telugu!
• Turmeric – 1 tsp + 1 large pinch
• Chana dal – 1 tsp
• Urad dal – 1 tsp
• Mustard seeds – 1/4 tsp + 1/2 tsp
• Cumin seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
• 1/2 ” piece ginger + 3-4 green chilies – minced together
• Koora podi – 1 tsp (see http://anuchenji.com/blog/feeling-right-home-piku-and-toilet for recipe)
• Tamarind paste – 1/2 tsp
• Sesame oil – 3 tsp
• Red chilies – 1 or 2

Grind half tsp of mustard and red chilies together with 1 tsp water to a rough paste. Set aside. This is the final paste which is added AFTER the curry is cooked and gives it it’s characteristic pungently mustard-y flavour.

Soak the banana florets in water with a tsp of turmeric added for 10 minutes.

Wash the florets in 4-5 changes of water and squeeze dry.

Cook the florets along with 1 pinch of turmeric and 1/4 tsp salt and a little water till tender – about 4-5 minutes.

In a pan, heat the oil and temper with 1/4 tsp mustard seeds, chana dal, urad dal, minced ginger-green chili paste and curry leaves. I prefer to microwave the curry leaves on high for a minute till they are crisp and crush them with the fingers over the curry. That way, no one spits out the leaves! Plus of course, your hair will grow black and you will get a hundred in your Math exam!

Add the cooked florets, tamarind paste, curry powder (koora podi) and salt.

Cover and cook for two minutes.

Add the mustard paste and mix throroughly. Switch off.

Serve with hot rice and plain pappu (dal).

You will be forgiven forgetting your entire grocery list if you feed your family this curry!

P.S.: the pic today is only of the florets because I haven’t made the curry yet. Will add curry pic tomorrow!

With all the travel we’ve been doing for the past few months, I somehow missed out on one of those must-see movies of the year – “Piku”!

Being the kind of movie goers who see good movies because someone recommends them and bad movies to figure out why they’re bad, we were feeling really deprived – not just of watching what everyone said was a good movie but also the extra-large bags of popcorn that each of us gets – strictly no sharing!

Finally get to see the movie today, sitting at home (no popcorn – on a diet… sigh… ), watching a movie built around the theme of… constipation! Liberating to say the very least!

With Nemali blood in the veins, is it any wonder that for most of my growing up life, the jokes we found funniest were fixated around this bit of daily unmentionables??! It was only after getting married and moving away from home that I found that other families were not like ours and that bathroom humour could produce raised eyebrows rather than the wholehearted merriment I was used to! And so… I proceeded to develop different sensibilities!

But… but the genes don’t go away and a trip to California to reconnect with cousins brought all the latent genes to the fore again as gales of laughter erupted over all the old, rehashed scatological jokes from childhood, while the husband sits on the side, his ears turning quite red!

No, no, I am not going to tell you any of those –  this is a family blog like I said and I am sensitive to other families as well so we shall stay strictly kosher!

Though I do seem to have passed on the genes to my own children and nephews… I remember when my younger daughter K and my nephew Parashu were both below five years and made up one of those poems related to the nether parts. They were at the lunch table (food never seemed to interfere with the jokes about where the food finally ended up!) and gleefully suggesting rhyming words to finish their poem while laughing so hard that Parashu actually fell off his chair on to the floor – it must have been painful because considering his size, the fall was some distance, but neither of them missed either  a beat or a cackle!

And don’t blame me, blame my grandfather… who, while he was mixing dal and rice and ghee into a really soft gooey mass, exactly the way we loved it, would regale us with stories of what it reminded him of (and no, you don’t want to know)!!

But today’s recipe is not about rice and dal but one of my favourite vegetables to accompany it and it has the added advantage of not having any uncomfortable associations!

CHOWCHOW WITH KOORAPODI AND COCONUT 

• Chow chow/chayote/Bangalore vankaya – 2 medium ones – cut into small cubes
• Koorapodi (1 measure each of toor dal, chana dal, urad dal, 1/2 measure of roasted gram dal (putani), 1 measure of red chili powder, 1 tbsp of coriander seeds and 1/4 tsp of asafoetida – roast all the dals, coriander seeds and asafoetida and powder everything together and store) – 3 tbsp
• Fresh coconut grated – 3 tbsp
• Green chilies – 2
• Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
• Coriander leaves – 1 tbsp
• Salt
• Vegetable oil – 1 tsp
• Pepper – 1 pinch
• To temper – 1/2 tsp mustard, 1/2 tsp urad dal, 1/4 tsp jeera/cumin seeds

Pulse the coconut, green chilies, coriander leaves, curry leaves and koorapodi together for a few seconds till crumbly. Set aside.

Heat the oil in a saucepan and add the tempering ingredients. When they splutter, add the chopped chowchow.

Cover and cook till almost done – 5-6 minutes. Add salt and cook for 2 minutes more.

Spinkle the coconut mixture on top and mix well.

Serve hot with dal and rice.

Very simple but the koorapodi lifts it to a different level of enjoyment – completely away from baser stuff, I promise! The koorapodi (Andhra style curry powder) can be made for a month and stored and used for flavouring almost any vegetbale dry curry – eggplant, potato, snakegourd, okra, beans…

If music be the food of love… my family would have starved to death long ere this blog was thought of, leave alone initiated! As far as I’m concerned, the food of love is carbs, proteins and minerals or to put it more earthily – annam, pappu and koora (Telugu for rice, dal and vegetables).

…but… and here’s the thing. I’ve always hankered after the the more poetic version of what constitutes nourishment for the heart… and thus many, many attempts have been made to learn how to create the other kind of food. Music classes have been attended, violins have been bought, vocal lessons have been painfully sat through (painful for my teachers, that is!), practice, practice, practice has been carried out with the kind of single minded dedication that only someone with zero ability but infinite desire can do!

Many of my “experiments with music” have already featured in these chronicles. As always, it is some experience with food that brings forth these memories… like my recent serious immersion to Mexican food in America and then back in India. It was love at first sight and deep commitment at first bite as far as the burrito was concerned!

Like all marriages which start off like that, I knew I could improve on the original (made by mother – -in-law ;)) and have continued to experiment with it to make a “new, improved” version! I bet all husbands reading this are nodding wisely – they know the “improving” experience!

But back to memories… as I perched precariously on a high stool at a Chipotle bar, watching the lady deftly add a bit of this, a lot of that, a smidgin of this and douse the whole thing with various sauces, creating a veritable smorgasbord of tastes, it reminded me of my first exposure to the raagamaalika (medley or literally “garland of raagas” – different raagas to which various segments of one composition are set).

With my kind of musical ear, identifying one raaga was a challenge… with about a dozen guesses being hazarded before I hit on the right one – largely by accident! But my kind teachers, wanting to encourage this musical – ahem, genius ! – always clapped or made other encouraging noises – ever notice how parents encourage young ones during potty training – “yay! well done! big boy (or girl)! superman!” making the kid feel he’s built a bridge to the moon, at the very least!

Encountering a song I really liked, MS’s Bhaavayaami Raghuraamam, I was so carried away by the beauty of the lyrics and the music that I made the mistake of asking my music teacher at the very next class to tell me what raaga the song was in! (Oh, Google, why were you not born then??!)

She, excited at having detected what she mistook for some signs of musical intelligence in an alien species, explained what a raagamalika was and then led me on one of the most painful journeys of my life – identifying the six raagas that form the background of this song! I do not know which of us was more exhausted by the end – though I suspect it was her – she had her reputation as a teacher to maintain – I had no such pressure!

So here’s a veritable raagamaalika of a dish… the recipe is long but it’s mostly just a matter of chopping and mixing.

HEALTHY PITA POCKETS WITH RAAGAMAALIKA FILLING!

FOR PITA

• Whole wheat flour / atta – 1/2 cup
• Jowar ka atta (millet flour) – 2 tbsp
• Soya flour – 1 tbsp
• Plain flour/maida – 2 tbsp
• Yeast – 1/2 tsp
• Salt – 1/4 tsp
• Oil – 1 tsp
• Sugar – 1 tsp
• Milk – 1 tbsp

Knead everything together with enough warm water to form a soft, pliable dough. Knead really well – imagine you’re banging away on those piano keys! (Oops, that’s not what you’re supposed to do???!)

Cover and set aside for an hour to double in size.

Knock back and divide into 6-7 lime-sized balls. Roll out into circular rotis – 2 mm in thickness.

Cover and set aside to puff up again.

Heat a tava and roast on both sides, pressing with a rolled up napkin till it puffs up and is cooked.

Cut each into halves and separate the layers to get two semicircular pita pockets from each.

FOR FILLING

• Shredded cabbage – 1 cup
• Red, green, yellow capsicum/bell peppers – chopped – 1/2 cup
• Chopped red onion – 3 tbsp
• Boiled garbanzo beans/kabuli chana or black beans – 3 tbsp
• Steamed broccoli – optional
• Boiled sweet corn – optional
• Pepper – 1/4 tsp
• Salt
• Crisp fried potato fingers – 1 cup (optional)

Mix everything except the potato fingers together and set aside

FOR SALSA

• Semi ripe mango – shredded – 1/2 cup (Thothapuri variety or any sweet and sour variety is great)
• Papaya – finely chopped – 2 tbsp
• Crunchy apple – chopped – 2 tbsp
• Green chilies or Malaysian red chilies (pandu mirapakaayalu) – 2 – minced
• Mango-ginger (maanga-inji) – 2 tbsp – shredded (optional) or use 1 tbsp plain ginger – grated
• Chopped fresh mint – 4 tbsp
• Salt
• Juice of 1 lime
• Sugar – 1 tsp or more depending on the sourness of the mango

Mix everything together and set aside.

OTHERS

• Grated cheddar or crumbled feta (if you are the cheesey type!) or hummus if you’re vegan – 1/2 cup -(optional)

 TO ASSEMBLE

Mix the potato fingers into the cabbage mixture.

Mix the salsa in and fill the pita pocket.

Line with 1 tbsp of cheese and reheat in the microwave or the oven for a few seconds till the cheese begins to melt.

Do not overheat or it will become soggy and the salsa will be rather sad!

And you will be able to sing in many raagas – which i cannot identify!

( Pic: courtesy internet)

“It’s called shabdkosh in Hindi. What a pretty name!” announces my friend, reading out from a website she’s checking out.

We are in a shop with interesting and unfamiliar products and there’s something called “seabuckthorn juice”. We live next to the sea but haven’t ever heard of this and we’re googling to figure out whether it’s called something else in any of the languages we are familiar with.

There are three of us and the other two stare at her in disbelief… for a few moments before erupting in laughter! She has hit on a Hindi to English dictionary (shabdkosh!!) looking for a translation of seabuckthorn and is reading out the title under the impression that that is the word she is looking for!

Even funnier because all this is in India and the English poses no problem – only the Hindi bits! Most jokes about language tend to be centred around translating stuff from any Indian language into English (like this classic translation of a Mulk Raj Anand line “there is something black in the lentil soup” for daal mein kuch kaala hai meaning “something fishy is afoot”!! )

But translating from English to Hindi – like my pal did above or from one Indian language to another can be just as hilarious. Or trying to speak in an unfamiliar tongue. Like this gem from my uncle, who had just shifted to Hyderabad from his native Bangalore. He tells our man Friday (those were the days when such a species still existed!) to run to the shop and buy him two goats for ten paise! (Shop ki poyi padi paisalaku rendu mekalu theesukuraa, he explains.

Our man Friday is a villager. He scratches his head… yes, things were cheaper back then but two goats? For ten paise? (For comparison, ten paise would buy you one small square inch chikki (peanut brittle)!

Two goats, even one, is a tall order! Dorakadu, saar (you won’t get it, sir), he finally answers.

“I only need to hang my shaving mirror on the wall,” he protests! How much does it cost to get a nail?

Aha moment and the mystery is cleared up. My Kannada speaking uncle has used the Telugu word for goat (meka) instead of the word for nail (meku) – just one little vowel sound but we could have ended up celebrating Eid on the wrong day! Goat biryani, that is – if anyone was up to slaughtering a goat!

Being a vegetarian, however, we’d probably have had something involving no slaughter… maybe just some translation, like the village milkman, when asked by a visiting American to explain what “curd” was, scratches his head and explains, “Milk sleep in the night, early morning tight!!”

Like this very simple, almost forgotten “tiffin” item called…

MOR KALI

• Rice flour – 1 cup
• Sour buttermilk – 3 cups (1 cup yogurt whisked with 2 cups water)
• Oil – 2 tbsp (preferably sesame oil)
• Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Mor milagai/majjiga mirapakaayalu/green chilies soaked in buttermilk and sun dried – 3-4 (substitute with red chilies if you can’t get these)
• Urad dal -1 tsp
• Asafoetida – 1 large pinch
• Curry leaves – 2 sprigs

Whisk the rice flour, buttermilk and salt together.

Heat the oil in a apn and fry the mor milagai for a few seconds till crisp. Take out, cool and crush with the fingers.

In the same oil, pop the mustard seeds, add urad dal, curry leaves and asafoetida.

Lower heat, add back the fried mor milagai and pour in the buttermilk mixture, stirring constantly.

Cook for 7-8 minutes till it forma a ball around the ladle. Take a little between your fingers and press. It shouldn’t be too sticky.

Spread it on to a greased plate and cool.

Cut into pieces with a knife or if you want it to look exciting, with a cookie cutter!

Serve plain or with coconut chutney.

Who cares what it’s called in any language anyway – food is a universal lingo!

“Betty doesn’t act like Veronica and Charlie Brown doesn’t act like Lucy!” said Tom Moore.

Don’t recognise the name? Well, you should – he brought happiness in enormous quantities to a generation of 50’s, 60’s and 70’s kids who pored over his drawings  – of Betty, Veronica and of course, the boy everyone wanted/wanted to be – Archie! What exactly was it that made these characters so attractive to teens the world over? Why did we take sides, strongly partisan in favour of one of the two main girl characters in the comics? Indian girls, brought up in the cloistered environments of those days, were strongly like Betty but wanted to be Veronica! Ronnie was the top of the Maslow need-fulfilment triangle!

Being barely aware of psychology as a science, Maslow was completely unknown to us then. And so we hankered innocently after everything that seemed so easily available – teens with cars (so what if it was only an old jalopy? Most Indian cars of those days made Archie’s falling-to-pieces steed look glamorous in comparison!), easygoing teachers (well, we had a couple of those but they were still “Sirs” and “Ma’ams” and exotic adults, demanding respect if not downright obeisance!), X-ray vision glasses, bullworkers and above all, Hostess cupcakes and Twinkies (these last few being the ads on the last pages of comic books over which we pored with serious concentration!)

Most of us couldn’t afford to buy all the comics so these were carefully hunted down – from friends (begged, traded, borrowed on promise of everlasting friendship!), filched from libraries (with the library’s purple ink stamp being carefully erased with whatever was doing the rounds then as “the best/only way to get the stamp off” brigade – ranging from lime juice to yogurt to Erasex fluid – the bottle being passed around for rapturous sniffing – who knew it  was supposed to be an addictive psychotropic substance??!). Having erased (or so we fondly believed!) all traces of iniquity, these were then given for “binding” – and the proud owner of said bound volume was definitely cock of the walk! And would condescend to lend his bound volume to “select” friends. Or, if he happened to be your older brother, would hide it carefully from untrustworthy younger siblings who, in the spirit of being cock of thing the walk themselves, might lend it out to their friends – woe betide the younger sibling who got caught – he/she ended up envying the early worm which got caught!

Ah well, Betty stayed Betty and Ronnie continued on her heartless journey – no identity confusion there, for sure – one of the things which was so attractive about those characters – they were reflective of our own simpler selves – free from modern angst!

After all that drooling over Twinkies in the comics, when I finally saw them in American stores, they looked most  unappetisingly artificial! And anyway I was craving Indian stuff by then – khatta, meetha, teekha – all the familiar hot, sweet and sour balances of Indian chutneys… like this incredibly simple and completely irresistable, zero fat chutney…

RAW MANGO & CORIANDER CHUTNEY

• Semi-ripe mango – thothapuris are the best for this – 1 medium sized – washed and chopped any which way. Don’t bother to peel
• Fresh coriander – cleaned and chopped – 2 cups
• Green chilies – 1 or 2
• Tomato – 1 – chunked
• Jaggery or brown sugar – 1 tbsp
• Salt – 1/2 tsp
• Cumin/jeera seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Lime – optional – depending on the sourness of the mango – 1

Just grind everything up!

Makes a super chutney for dosas or a dip for vegetable sticks or a sauce for frankies or wraps or a sandwich spread.

Or even on Jughead’s hotdogs!