Author: anuchenji

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Lime mint cooler: Lemonades and imposters and a business idea!

“Rasam, rasam, rasam…”, cries out the server at an upanayanam function for my cousin in Bangalore. The food so far had been uniformly hotter (chilli hot) than our taste buds were used to at home and tongues were on fire.
“Rasam, rasam…” We – my brother an I – call out hoping for a sweet juice – preferably lemon – of which we  were inordinately fond, being able to down a jugful in a few minutes flat. “Rasam” in Telugu meant juice and being seven and eight years old, respectively, we had no clue that it meant anything else in another language! Imagine our chagrin, when instead of something long and cool to quench the fire on the tongues, what we got was a ladleful of hot, VERY HOT – chaaru (Telugu equivalent of the Tamil rasam) poured onto our rice. Neither of us was particularly fond of chaaru and to add to our woes, we had to chase this runny imposter all over a leaf. Sequel: We – and our clothes – needed a good rinse after!
My mom, being a kind-hearted sort of person, managed to keep her amusement in check but not the rest of the cousins – who had a field day hooting ‘rasam’ after us!
“Juice”, particularly lime juice, remains a favourite to this day and there is no better way to make it than the lime-mint cooler that i learnt from the chef at the restaurant chain “Sangeetha”.
Lime mint cooler
Lemons – 2
Fresh mint – 1 tbsp
Sugar (or substitute) – 4-5 tsp
Salt – one pinch
Ginger – 1/2 cm piece
Ice – 6-8 cubes
Water – 3 cups
Chop the lemons into 8-10 pieces each – DO NOT remove seeds or skin or anything – most of the essential oils are in the skin and you get a real lemony hit.
Put all the ingredients above, reserving 2 glasses of water, into a mixer and whip on high speed – for 2-3 minutes. Strain out (don’t press the residue – the juice will become too bitter) and add the rest of the water. Drink immediately. If you leave it and drink later, the juice turns bitter. Drink immediately – and you are in lemonade heaven! If you have guests coming, just get everything ready, including chopped lemons, in the mixer and leave in the frig till you are ready to whip – it, not the guests!
Oh, and btw, congratulations – you are now ready to open your first business venture – a lemonade stand!
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Poritha kootu: Kootus and philistines, Madras and exam fever!

Growing up in a household where nutrition was god and taste was considered a poor second to “healthy food for growing bones” meant that till I was about 16, my ideas of culinary glory was ‘mudda pappu’ (boiled dal), ghee and whatever was the dry vegetable of the day! I still could live on these btw!
At 16, I moved to live in my aunt’s house in Madras for a couple of years and was introduced to many foods I hadn’t even heard of – vatha kozhambu, poritha kootu (or porcha coots as i thought of it!) and other stuff which I found initially very weird. I used to get strange looks from the cook – who was a master of his art and probably thought his skill was wasted on a such a philistine. But then again, he (Sankunni Menon) became very fond of me – okay, this kid may eat only mudda pappu but she sure studies hard (I did!) so let me take her culinary education in hand. and so, slowly, my unsophisticated tastebuds learnt the difference between sambar and vatha kozhambu (psssst… till then I’d thought of vathaks as a yuckier form of sambar!)
Sankunni was the reason i did well in the 12th standard exams too – I used to study till late in the night and again get up very early – Sankunni used to make a large flask of coffee for me last thing at night so that I’d have coffee as soon as I woke up – god bless his kindly soul!
One of the dishes I learnt to love was poritha kootu (or porcha coots as i prefer!) and when I went back to Hyderabad I pestered my mom to make it for me. She never was one to say no – even when she didn’t know how – so we ended up with a very strange, gritty dish which effectively put a stop to all further desire for porcha coots! It was only after I set up home of my own that I learnt just how simple this dish was. Here goes podalangai (potlakai or snake gourd) porcha coots:
Poricha kootu
Snake gourd – 1 tender long one (don’t buy the short ones – they’re only masquerading as potlakais!) – chopped into 1 cm pieces – (ashgourd, pumpkin, round yellow cucumbers – dosakais- are all acceptable as a substitute)
Cooked green gram dal – 1 cup
Grated coconut – 3 tbsp + 1 tsp
Red chilies – 2-3
Pepper corns – 4 or 5
Cumin seeds – 1 tsp
Turmeric – 1 pinch
Chili powder – 1 pinch
Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
Asafoetida – 1 pinch
Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
Oil – 1 tsp (preferably coconut oil)
Salt
Boil the snake gourd with a pinch of turmeric. Grind together the 3 tbsp of grated coconut, red chilies, pepper corns and cumin seeds adding a little water. Add this paste together with the dal to the vegetables and salt and bring to a boil. Switch off. To season, heat one tsp oil in a small pan, add mustard seeds and let splutter. Add 1 tsp grated coconut and let it roast a few seconds till reddish brown. Add chili powder, asafoetida and curry leaves and pour over the kootu.
This goes really well with either rice or phulkas. For the Iyer in my house 😉 – plate with poritha kootu, avial, appalam, vadam and majjiga mirapakayalu, taamara kazhangu – can he ask for more??
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Hyderabadi kurma / qorma: Of wordgames and growing up in Hyderabad

 

The queen of Hyderabadi khana – Ameenakkayya!

I haven’t mentioned her earlier but Ameena Nemali was my inspiration to learn to cook! Anything she touched turned to culinary gold – even the humblest ‘mamidikai pappu’ (raw mango dal) which is the month-end, budgets-are-over staple in every Telugu household, tasted divine when she made it.

I have spent many, many lazy weekends, reading and playing wordgames with cousins and generally gassing away till the lunch or dinner call came. Everyone else would chatter as they filed in but to me – a foodie in the budding even then – the table needed to be approached with a feeling of sanctity; anything less was a desecration to the lady’s art!

Her repertoire seemed limitless – Andhra cooking to super-thin dosas with chutney and please-can-I-have-more sambar, Kayasth cuisine to bakes and finally what she was most famous for – at least in my eyes (!!) – Hyderabadi khana! The memory of her pakoda kurma with fried rice still makes my eyes water – imagine what the actual stuff did to the salivary glands of a ten-year old! I shall always regret not writing down more of her recipes…

Tried for years to reproduce her kurma – with no great success till finally, i think i made the breakthrough quite recently!

Have substituted the pakodas with vegetables for a low-fat version but for those of you who can’t touch your toes anyway, what does an extra pakoda or two matter 😉

Hyderabadi kurma

2 cups of assorted vegetables cut into large chunks – potatoes, cauliflower, carrot, beans, peas and even the humble knolkhol!

2 large tomatoes

2 large onions (i know American onions are enormous – these are Indian onions! Should be slightly larger than a large egg.

4-5 cloves garlic

Ginger – 1/2 ” piece

2 green chilies

Chili powder – 1 tsp

1 tsp poppy seeds (khus khus)

2 tbsp cashew nuts

Dry coconut (copra) – 2 tbsp – if you don’t have this, try roasting fresh coconut for a few minutes on a very low heat.

2 black cardamoms – badi ilaichi – these will give you that ‘smoky’ flavour

4 cloves

1 ” piece cinnamon

2 green cardamoms

1 cup thick curd – whipped

Oil – 1 tbsp

Ghee – 1 tbsp

Grind to a fine paste the onions, garlic, ginger and green chilies. This is paste 1.

Heat the poppy seeds on a low flame for about 3-4 minutes – there’ll be a slightly ‘nutty’ smell hanging around NOT emanating from you. Switch off and let cool. Grind together with a little water the poppy seeds, cashew nuts, copra and black cardamom with a little water. This is paste 2.

Heat the oil and ghee in a large frypan and drop in the cloves, cinnamon and green cardamoms – ouch – don’t stand so close! They splutter!

Add paste 1 and keep stirring till onions no longer smell raw. If the paste keeps sticking to the pan, add a few drops of water and keep stirring – this is the only part of the recipe which needs a bit of patience – even an Indian student in Amreeka can make it! Add the chili powder and fry a bit. Add about 1/2 cup yogurt one tbsp at a time and fry till it is incorporated into the gravy.

Then add paste 2 and two cups of water and stir about. Now add the vegetables. If using cauliflower, let everything else half cook before you add – otherwise the caulis will overcook and generally taste yucky! Add salt, cover and cook til vegetables are almost done.

Chunk the tomatoes – i usually cut each tomato into just 4 pieces and drop in. Cover and cook for 3-4 minutes more. Switch off and add the rest of the  whipped yogurt. Voila!

 

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Tofu rice: America – here I come! Armed with recipes, no less!

Tofu Rice
I think I’ve “arrived”!  Am now getting requests – 5 so far – to ensure that this species gets fed and doesn’t get tooooo… homesick!
So, America-bound students, we’ll start with a  recipe so it doesn’t get too boring and then do a NRI student cooking in America # 101.
Thought back to my own early days of learning how to cook- I must have been about 7 years old. We were “between-cooks” at the moment and my Mom was squeezing in some time for sambar-rice in between intensely grueling bouts of work at the hospital – those days everyone seemed to be multiplying soooo fast – an ob-gyn’s life was spent in trying to catch a breath between the breech in bed 7 and the C-section in bed 9, taking time to peek at the gory innards of bed 8!!! All this proliferation of our species must have been boy, they sure did miss TVs and video games 😉
To come back to our story, mom was stuck at the hospital and my dad was away on “tour”. I was 7, Arvind a year older and Anand 2 years over him – obviously without the faintest idea of cooking! 7 pm, rumbles in three tummies reaching a crescendo of cacophony…along comes saviour – in the form of 14-year old Anil next door – who grandly announces that he knows how to make rice!! Remember the setting is not AD but the dark ages before the advent of gas stoves and pressure cookers! Being too short in general to reach over the stovetop, the stove ( a kerosene-guzzling short, squat little monster) was brought down to the floor. Rice was washed and placed in a round brass ‘gundu’, water measured with almost ritualistic attention and poured over the rice, finger stuck in- nobody told us the measure was up to an adult hand’s forefinger so we must have fallen short! Then, with bated breath (I don’t think I’ve watched even a James Bond movie with so much suspense), we sat around and watched the rice cook! To cut a long story short, we had rice and curd and bananas and Anil went home covered in glory! Cooking lessons with mom started the next day 😉
From there to an easy – meal in a bowl tofu rice – truly anyone can make it!
Basmati rice – 1 cup – washed and soaked in 2 cups water for about 15 minutes. Cook the rice so that the grains stay separate – by occasionally fluffing up with a fork. Let cool. abt 7-8 minutes.
1 cup of tofu (cotton tofu if possible) – cut into large pieces – tip: tofu does have much taste on it’s own but what it does contribute is a lovely chewy texture. Keeping the pieces large – about a cm square, ensures they retain the texture. Rinse cubes and if cold (not you, the tofu), soak in warm salt water for 10 mins. If you’re cold, you obviously don’t live in Chennai!
½ cup peas
½ cup mixed carrots, beans, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, capsicum – whatever is available
1 tsp schezwan paste
1 or 2 flakes garlic – chopped
½ tsp ginger – juliennes (thin strips)
¼ cup chopped spring onions
Chopped coriander  and/ or mint to garnish
Salt – 1/3 tsp and sugar a large pinch.
½ green chilli – chopped
Sesame seeds – roasted – 1 tsp – optional topping
Method: Heat 1 tbsp oil in a wok, add green chillies and chopped spring onions. Add garlic and ginger and stir fry on high for a few seconds. Add the veg and peas. Continue to stir fry on high, sprinkling water as it begins to stick. Add the Schezwan paste, salt, sugar and tofu. Mix till everything is coated with the sauce. Add 2 tbsp water, spread the cooked rice on top, cover and cook on sim for about 3-4 mins. Switch off, mix everything, add mint/ coriander, sesame seeds and serve. If you’re a normal appetite type of person, this should last you for two hungry lunches. If you’re hungrier, add a couple of eggs and scramble. Or mushrooms.
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Karepak podi or curry leaf powder: Of black hair and a centum in Maths

Eat it up! It’ll make you hair grow. It’ll make your eyes bigger! It’ll prevent your hair from growing white when you’re older! It’ll make you get a centum in Maths!
Good genes, right? for all this?? Not if you’re an Indian kid growing up in a middle class Indian household – the “this” refers to Karepak / Karuvepillai/ Kadhi patta ? Yes, the humble curry leaf which was capable of performing miracles that we couldn’t dream of, leave alone verify! There must have been some brave kid out there, right, who actually listened to all of this and then turned around and asked his greying mom – then how come yours is??….errrr….THAT much courage was a bit TOO much courage, methinks!
And then we grew up telling our kids,’ it’ll make your hair white…errr… black etc. etc…i think it was just payback time, folks, – after all, why should we be the only ones forced to eat this yucky thing – let other kids also have a taste of our medicine!!
Yep, all that till we grew up. Now i convert it into karepak podi – my grandmom’s staple cure for all ailments from the hair to the toes, including ailments of the heart and soul!
Here’s my ammamma’s recipe – the best karepak podi in the world. I still have her recipes which she wrote down for me in her spider-crawled-out-of-the-inkpot Telugu handwriting!
Karepak (curry leaves) – 4 cups – wash well and dry on a kitchen towel in the shade. Either microwave them on high in batches – 3 batches of 3 minutes each or roast them in a tawa till dry but still green. I’ve done both and trust me, the microwaving a sight easier!
Coriander seeds (dhania) – 1 tbsp
Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
Red chillies – 2
Pepper corns – 1 tbsp
Jeera – 1 tbsp
Chana dal – 1 tbsp
Urad dal – 1 tbsp
Asafoetida – 1 small pinkie nail size lump 😉
Salt to taste
Turmeric – 1 large pinch
Heat a few drops of oil in a kadhai and drop in the asafoetida. When it swells, add the mustard and let it start spluttering. Add the coriander seeds and the red chillies and fry till that nothing-can-quite-replicate-it aroma arises out of the dhania. Empty the kadhai into a plate, and roast the rest of the ingredients except turmeric, individually till each smells great. Add the turrmeric to the roasted ingredients. Let the whole caboodle cool and powder together into a fine powder. Add salt and run the mixer again to blend in salt.
This is a very versatile podi (powder) – you can eat it with hot rice and – if you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know what comes next – yep, ghee! Or else use it as a garnish on roast potatoes or roasted green plantain curry or yam curry. .. and watch your hair turn black and your Math marks go through the roof and your eyes grow bigger and all the rest of it 😉