Author: anuchenji

Mistresses of jugaad – that’s what most Indian housewives  of my mother’s generation are! No one in the world could possibly have polished this very fine art of making do as the Indian woman has done!

In my mom’s case, she started her culinary career rather late in life – having refused to get married and finally being persuaded into it at the (for her generation!) ripe old age of twenty seven, my mom had very little idea of  the mysterious processes that went on in the kitchen to produce food! My dad was waaay ahead of her at this stage and between the two of them, they managed to not starve!

With two demanding professions however, a cook was called for and after a few hit and miss efforts, one arrived – all the way from Udipi! Now, Udipi, as everyone knows, is the undisputed capital of vegetarian cuisine – the guys there have polished this whole affair of vegetarianism to a fine art of sheer perfection! But. as everyone also knows, there is an exception to test every rule… and he arrived in the form of Narayana, our beloved cook from Udipi – who couldn’t cook even to save his life!

Between the two of them, my mom and he managed to satisfy their palates. My dad resigned himself to a life of undercooked/overcooked/slightly burnt and can be swallowed with a lot of water/very burnt and has to be chucked out-meals till they learnt how to cook – with an occasional injection of help from my grandmom who taught both mistress and cook how to cook! We… what did we know??!

Over the years though, my mom became quite accomplished at a few dishes though her approach to cooking has always smacked of something like Don Quixote tilting at windmills – we can beat this if we keep at it! And if we can’t, well, we’ve invented a new dish!! Ta-da!

This Ugadi, for instance, I call my mom to wish her. Ask if she’s made Ugadi pachadi – the sweet-sour-bitter-astringent combination of jaggery, raw mangoes and neem flowers that is supposed to signify all that the year ahead is going to bring us . She said “Yes, but I couldn’t get the neem flowers because you know, the flowers were too high and I can’t climb a tree. The boys (her grandchildren) came home late and I can’t expect them to climb a tree at eleven o’clock, can I?” she asks perfectly reasonably, as per her lights! Did I mention that my mom is eighty three?!

“So then, what did you do?” I ask.

“Oh, I just decided that this year, we needn’t deal with any bitter stuff so I made the Ugadi pachadi without any neem flowers (key ingredient btw!) and it was yummy!” she responds blithely!

Jugaad? She’d rewrite Indian history if she could!

All that Ugadi talk reminds me of this delicious pachadi which I had in my aunt’s house (thanks, Manju aunty!) – so simple, made of such a humble vegetable and so utterly delicious!

 SORRAKAI PERUGU PACHADI/BOTTLE GOURD OR OPA THAYIR PACHADI/YOGURT CHUTNEY

• Bottle gourd (see pic) – peeled and grated – 2 cups – boil without a lid so that the water evaporates, along with a pinch of turmeric and a pinch of sugar till done – about 5- 6 minutes. Cool.
• Thick yogurt – 2 cups – whisked

Mix together and add salt.

MASALA

• Green chilies – 2
• Ginger – 1 cm piece
• Fresh coriander – 2 tbsp
• Coconut (optional) – 2 tbsp
• Jeera/cumin seeds – 1/2 tsp

Grind together to a smooth paste and mix with the other stuff.

Temper with mustard seeds, urad dal, one red chili and curry leaves.

Serve as a side with any mixed rice – like tamarind or tomato.

Want jugaad? Don’t have bottle gourd? Make do with ribbed gourd. Don’t have that too? Or any vegetable at all? Do without! Have leftover pacchadi? Dunk some vadas in it for a healthier dahi vada!

And that was the most memorable school day of them all… at LFHS… where my brothers went to school…

My brother had put himself down for plenty of competitions – from painting (at which he excelled) to singing (despite our genes!) and a fancy dress competition! No one could ever accuse us Chenji kids of being chicken hearted – we were as immune to the “slings and arrows of fortune” as we were to the hoots of derision which greeted us whenever we tried to sing!

And so, the afternoon programme at the boys’ school starts with the fancy dress competition. Remember with a very busy mother who had a more-than-fulltime profession, we kids were very often left to our own devices. So to get Arvind ready for the fancy dress comp was… let’s put it this way… a full-on sibling effort! We had to figure out first what he would go as – we were just then full of one of the Tarzan tales so a Zulu warrior was the unanimous choice.

Now came the all-important question – what did they look like? With no computers invented yet (or none at least that we had heard of!), much less Om Google-aaya namaha, we had only the vaguest of ideas. The dark skin was easy – Cherry Blossom shoe polish to the rescue! We had a feeling that maybe Zulu warriors wore a grass skirt (obviously mixed up with Hawaii!). How to make our very short grass into a skirt was definitely beyond us. My skirts wouldn’t fit either.

So we thought and thought… we thought very hard… and the eureka moment (which has never let us down so far!)  happened. I had just started taking tailoring lessons. I’d had just one lesson but nothing loth! You can’t make a grass skirt out of just nothing, can you?

So we dug around (thank goodness for working moms who can’t ask you unanswerable questions!) and found a sari of Mummy’s that we thought would do. It was a pink (strawberry ice cream pink, as a matter of fact) nylon sari. Nylon, in the form of a weird product called “644 Nylon” had just come into the market and someone had given my mom one. We didn’t think much of it and decided our mom would be better off without it!

We strung a nada (pyjama string) between two door handles, carefully laid the sari over it, halving it’s breadth, just as carefully made pleats and with my newfound tailoring skill, I ran large stitiches through it from end to end – voila – Zulu skirt!

All it needed now was for Arvind to blacken himself, tie “pink nylon grass skirt” around waist, smear chand (red bindi paste) on his lips (Zulu warrior in drag??!) and set off to school. The boys had to go earlier than the rest of the family so the full glory of the Zulu hit my parents right there – on stage! I don’t remember whether he won a prize or not, but he should have – for sheer effort and effrontery!

But that was not the end of the story… the singing competition followed on the heels of the fancy dress comp. With no time to change, we had a ten-year old Zulu belting away Yaadon ki baaraat lustily and tunelessly!

I think my dad needed a stiff one that evening!

Arvind, I am sure, would have revelled in this unusual pink dish.

BEETROOT AND FETA RISOTTO

• Arborio rice – 1.5 cups
• Beetroot – 1 – grated with a few small pieces reserved.
• White wine – 1 cup
• Onion – chopped – 1/2 cup
• Milk – 1 cup
• Green chili – minced – 1 (ok, I’m Indian!)
• Garlic – 1 flake – minced
• White pepper  – powder – 1/4 tsp
• Rosemary – 2 fresh sprigs or 1/2 tsp dried
• Feta or soft paneer / cottage cheese – crumbled – 1 cup
• Vegetarian stock or water – 2 or more cups as needed.
• Salt
• Olive oil – 1 tbsp
• Butter – 1tbsp

Fry the green chili, onions and garlic in the oil plus butter mixture till the onions turn golden yellow.

Add the arborio rice and stir well till the oil coats the rice.

Add the grated beetroot plus the pieces and wine and cook till the wine is absorbed. Add salt.

Add water/ stock and milk a little at a time, stirring continuously till the rice is no longer chalky but rather – chewy. Add the pepper and mix well. Crumble feta/ paneer over, reserving a little for garnish.  Cover and let it rest for a few minutes. .

Serve garnished with feta and rosemary. One beetroot will make this deep pink. If you’re keen on strawberry  pink, use half!

I’ve written earlier about my mother’s attempts to send me to what were called “vocal music” classes – all abortive. But these efforts of my mom’s were not all in vain – they instilled in me the overwhelming desire to learn music somehow! After listening for years to MS, Kishore, Balamurali and the like, I was fired with zeal – fed by the hopes of false prophets – in the form of various music teachers – who insisted that everyone could learn music! All I learnt over the years was that these people sometimes LIE!

Somewhere thereabouts of my fourteenth year of life, someone – must have been one more of the false prophet ilk – suggested to my mom that if Anu can’t sing – (understatement of the century ), why don’t you teach her an instrument?! Perfect, decided my mother, having rosy visions of me accompanying Pandit Ravi Shankar (even to talk of the two of us in the same breath is sacrilege – so I’m saying this very sotto voce!) maybe!

So we cast around and decided (visions of Vivaldi maybe?) that the violin it would be. Found a teacher close by and thus began a four year odyssey – to Armageddon! The teacher insisted I could play. I could – if someone else tuned the violin for me – I was near finger-perfect!

Distinguishing a “sa” from a “pa” was however a whole different matter altogether. The teacher would play and I’d stare at her intently, hoping her face would give away the note she was playing. She’d repeat the note again… and again… and again… I’d close my eyes in concentration and will myself to hear it, open my eyes and tentatively venture a “pa” or a “ma”, barely breathing out the syllable so that I could quickly turn it into something else depending on her facial expression – extreme pain to extreme shock was the range – sometimes it came out as a “sss… mmm… pa?”

It  was the teacher’s turn to close her eyes, to pray to the Buddha to give her both patience and compassion, I’m sure!! I may not have learnt much music but she became an evolved human being, thanks to me! I also became pretty good at reading people’s faces!

There were many repercussions… my room, where I practised diligently every evening, shared a wall with my mom’s clinic. High up on this wall was an architectural feature of those days – a little window… thanks to which my “music” practice sessions wafted in clearly and cruelly to the ears of the patients and their attendants! My mom shut down the private practice soon after that – it dawned on me decades later that maybe i contributed to it… in some small part??! The patients were too polite to say anything, but must have prayed fervently that there wasn’t a long waiting line at Doctor-gaaru’s clinic! My brothers, on the other hand – were loud and vocal – “Why can’t you stop those lessons??! I’m going to fail my exams, thanks to her!!!”

There are a many more stops on this musical journey of mine – but I’ll keep those stories for later!

Right now, all I’m going to say is that if the parents had had the sense to invest in sending me for culinary lessons rather than music lessons, who knows, I might have become the Adriano Zumbo of desserts!!! Like this quick and easy, yummy but healthy…

MANGO AND OATS KULFI

• Full cream milk -preferable – 4 cups
• Instant oats – powdered in the mixie to a smooth powder – 5 tbsp
• Sugar – 6-7 tsp or substitute – I use 3 -4 sachets of Splenda
• MTR instant badam milk mix – 4 tbsp
• Saffron strands – a pinch
• Slivers of badam/pista (optional) – 1 tbsp
• Mango puree – 1 cup

Mix everything together (except saffron and mango) and heat for a few minutes till the oats are cooked. 4-5 minutes at the most. Or microwave on high for 3 minutes, stirring once in between.

Add the saffron strands, mix well and cool, stirring constantly – otherwise milk gets that yucky skin (meegada/edu) on top. Add the mango puree and incorporate.

Pour into kulfi moulds and set overnight in the freezer. You can use silicone muffin cups too. Or and this is the cheat’s way – just freeze it in the bowls in which you intend to serve it!

And voila, your quick, low cal (well, at least as far as desserts go!)  dessert for the summer!

“Avuna, Daddy?”, and three heads swing in my father’s direction as we ask him for confirmation. “Is that really so?”

My mom’s already answered the question – these questions are in the nature of – “If an elephant and a crocodile fight, who would win?” or “If a tiger and a crocodile fight, who will win?” or “Who is the more powerful god – Vishnu or Indra?” and so on it went – the very serious concerns of childhood, which could take a whole summer to settle and then spilt over – unless we forgot! Or moved on to the next weighty concern!

Mom would have considered the question and said something like, “If the fight is on land, the tiger will win. If in water, the croc” –  or something eminently sensible like that. But was it enough? To have our mother arbitrate on such weighty matters? No way – it needed a dad for that! And therefore, the constant turning to him to ratify what Mummy had answered – like an appeal to a Supreme Court! And based on my dad’s response, we would then take the fight to the outside world – fighting with anyone who dared dispute this almost Constitutional ruling! After all, “my  daddy’s strongest/brightest/best” has been true in the eyes of children all the way from Cain and Abel to my generation! It seems to have changed though and the tables are now reversed – at least in my home – much to my husband’s disgust!

My parents read – constantly and eclectically – the classics –  in English and their own languages, modern fiction, travel books, poetry, news magazines and these were constant subjects of discussion at the table. My mother used to read to us every evening – I remember nodding off to Pickwick Papers for several months before sobbing away in distress at Oliver Twist’s and David Copperfield’s plights. When Dora, Davey’s first wife dies, I was shattered!

This also meant that I could always shut up friends who disputed my dad’s opinion on anything – by pointing to the books lining every shelf and empty space in our home and telling them that my dad  had read every one of these… so there!!!

“Avuna, Daddy?” was a constant refrain through childhood. When my dad was away traveling on work, Mom would sometimes get fed up and tell us to ask Dad after he came back. So questions were saved up – with great solemnity and trotted out at the first dinnertime he was back! Have swung the whole pendulum from my parents don’t know anything (in my teens) to, in my fifties, wishing I could sometimes turn around and ask, “Avuna, Daddy?”!!

Food memories of my dad are always tied up with how fond he was of sweets and thick, “set” yogurt (his great joke went something like this: So an American comes to India and asks what “curds” is – our name for yogurt. So the Indian bhaiyya scratches his head for a while and eureka, comes up with this brilliant explanation: “Milk sleep in the night, early morning tight!!”)

While all sweets were grist to his mill (it’s a wonder he never got diabetes) I’m devoutly hoping, going by my brother’s and my own proclivities in the dessert direction, that we’ve inherited his genes!!

One of his favourite sweets was this very simple…

SHAKKAR PAARA

• Maida/plain flour – 1.25 cups
• Ghee – 1/2 cup
• Salt – 1/4 tsp
• Sugar – 1/3 cup (more if you have a sweet tooth)
• Water – 1/2 cup
• Oil for deep frying

Make a syrup of the sugar and water – a one-string syrup. Add ghee and salt. Let cool.

Add the maida and knead into a smooth dough.

Divide dough into balls – 3-4. Roll each out into a very thick chapathi – about 1/4 inch thick.

Cut with a knife into diamonds – about 1 cm each side.

Deep fry till golden brown and drain.

Are these better than biscuits? Ask your Daddy!!

And continuing our Palghat sojourn… it looks like a speckled dosa, it feels like a really hard biscuit… you chew and chew and your jaws get tired-er and tired-er… but you are hooked on to it! It’s called a verum arisi adai (an adai with only rice). Adais are normally a mixed-dal kind of pancake with a bit of rice to make them crunchy but this one is like… well, chewy and hard and totally addictive for some reason! Maybe humans, like dogs, have an innate need to gnaw and the verumarisi adai is the perfect answer to this need!

Andhras tend to rely more on upmas of various kinds for morning breakfast or afternoon “tiffin” and the dosa and idli are basically Sunday items… at least that was how it was in my mom’s place when I was growing up. Dosas had to be accompanied by at least two kinds of chutney, potato curry and sambar – a serious amount of work for the cook!

Now, at my in-laws’ place, dosa and idli and adai were everyday dishes – one after the other – for breakfast or dinner! I found out that it was possible to eat these accompanied by nothing more than molaga podi or any of the leftovers from lunch – and found just how convenient they were! That, of course, came after getting used to not having our Hyderabadi brekkers of eggs and parathas or a full meal! The very idea of eggs with paratha was met with something akin to horror by hubby who thinks that eggs belong with toast and butter and marmalade – only on the breakfast table!

On one occasion in Bangalore, my brother-in-law who had come to visit me at the hostel and I decided to pick up a couple of old friends and go out to dinner. Unfortunately we got lost and finally reached their house only by about 9.30 in the evening – to find they had already had dinner and cleared up! The two of us must have been looking pretty ravenous – as we were – considering we’d spent close to two hours searching for their house! So his mom-in-law takes pity on two hungry young people and rustles up some absolutely delicious omelettes for us – with toast!

I am happy – FOOD!

B-i-l less so. Eggs for dinner?? Kaliyuga has arrived – says his look! If you haven’t figured out already, let me explain here that he shares his brother’s aversion to eggs outside of the breakfast table… or breakfast time! 

The good lady leaves the dining room (which is not the breakfast room now though that’s what it seems like to my b-i-l whose world has turned topsy-turvy! Quick as a flash, his omelette lands on my plate and he makes do with toast. I am delighted – with my extra omelette!

I was still a student and in hostel and hadn’t encountered the ‘verumarisi’ yet so these very strong antipathies were something of a puzzle. Being brought up by parents who were very strict about eating whatever was put on our plates, this catering to many likes and dislikes of the palate struck me as rather….weird (told y’all earlier I was polite!)

Hubby, after thirty years of commando-style training 🙂 – has learnt to eat new foods and not just the half a dozen dishes that he thinks are food! But it’s always easy to please him with these…chewy,,,,gnaw-y….but rather yummy….

VERUM ARISI ADAI WITH MURUNGELAI (RICE ADAIS WITH DRUMSTICK LEAVES):

• Parboiled rice – 2 cups
• Methi/fenugreek seeds – 1 tsp 
• Salt
• Grated fresh coconut – 1/4 cup (optional)
• Tender drumstick leaves – see pic – 1/2 cup

Soak the rice and methi together for at east 3-4  hours. Grind with salt and coconut (if using) to a smooth batter. Set aside to ferment for 5-6 hours.

Add the drumstick leaves – whole and mix well. The batter for this is pretty thick.

Add a little water to the batter and pour a ladleful on a heated dosa pan. It takes some skill to spread this.

Small holes will form as you are spreading. Make another larger hole in the centre. Pour a tsp of oil (preferably sesame) around the adai and in the centre. Cook for a few minutes on a low heat and turn over and cook again – both sides should have golden brown spots.

This adai is high in iron – the drumstick leaves are “iron bombs”!

Serve with butter, any pickle, jaggery or my own personal favourite – sugar (white, refined, unhealthy and evil… but oh, so delicious!)

And as you chew, watch that double chin melt away as your jaws get more exercise than they’ve had since you had a pacifier in your mouth!