Anu Chenji

I know, i know… I have a well-deserved reputation for putting my foot in it – so much so that my husband says I take one foot out only to put the other foot in! My only defence is that he’s got a lot more fun out of life thanks to me than he would have otherwise!

Yesterday, I was reading one of those lists on facebook (the very best way to waste time!) which add nothing to your knowledge but oh, so much fun to your afternoon! A list of “oops” moments and sympathising exclusively with the “oops-ers” (the doers of oops moments) as opposed to the “oops-ees” on whom the oops moments are perpetrated!

Some of my own bloopers came crowding back… like this one time, when we were waiting at the kids’ school to pick up my daughter after an excursion. We are chatting with a bunch of other parents. Guy rides up on a scooter and parks under a tree. Familiar face (see where this is going?). I smile at him vaguely, not quite sure of his name but recognising him as a dad. Puzzled smile back. Ah… now I get who this guy is! I have met him on work!

I announce grandly to my husband and the rest of my audience, “You know who that guy is? He’s Mr AK. Owns one of the largest software companies in India.”

Hubby laughs – “And he’s riding a scooter??!”

Me: “You don’t know – he’s a very simple man. Comes from a very ordinary middle-class background and look at the company he’s built! How amazing he’s still stays so humble!”

Hubby knows it is useless to argue and lets me meet my Armageddon!

I saunter across and say hello. The gentleman gets off his scooter and says hello back but with a slightly puzzled look on his face – the have we met before look.

So then I ask, “Mr AK, isn’t it? We met at your office last month? I am… ” and then start blabbering as his bewilderment increases and I figure I’ve put my foot in it – yet again!

But never mind, I apologise and we chat for a bit before I trail back to the other tree under which the rest of the gang is waiting – with barely suppressed merriment! But I do have a repartee – “So what if he is not Mr AK? I have  a NEW friend!”

On another occasion, I am interviewing someone at my office and he keeps giving me puzzled smiles. I am equally puzzled – just who is this? Then he introduces himself… “I am X, your daughter’s tennis coach.”

Ah, now I get it! Also why he looks familiar but am not able to place him… the thought is no sooner thunk than it is said! “Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr X, I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on!!“

Having only seen him in his coach attire of tennis shorts and T-shirt, the gentleman in a suit bore no resemblence (in my eyes at least!) to the athletic guy I was used to seeing!

FIM syndrome (foot-in-mouth) is now a well-documented chronic illness with no known cure… sadly…

I, of course, prefer food-in-mouth, like this…

BEAN AND VEGETABLE SOUP

• Fresh kidney beans or red soya beans( these are now available in most veggie shops through the year) – 2 cups
• Carrots – 4 -chunked
• French or cluster beans – snapped into 1″ pieces – 1 cup
• Potatoes – scrubbed and cubed – 2 medium
• Ash gourd (white pumpkin) – chunked – 1 cup (optional)
• Tomatoes – 3 medium – chunked
• Capsicum / bell pepper – 1 – chunked
• Green chilies – 2 – minced
• Garlic – minced – 1 tsp
• Onions – chopped – 1 medium
• Mixed herbs – 1 tbsp
• Butter or ghee – 1 tsp
• Salt and pepper
• Milk to serve – about a cup (optional)

Heat the butter or ghee in a pressure cooker (easiest way to do it). Add the onions, cover and sweat for ten minutes. Sweat the onions, I mean, though if you live in Madras, both you and the onions will sweat!

Add garlic and green chilies and saute. Add everything else except capsicum, 3 cups water, salt and pepper.

Pressure cook for two whistles and reduce heat and cook for 5-7 minutes more. Turn off, let cool till pressure is reduced. Add capsicum and cook for two minutes more.

Add 1 or 2 tbsp of milk to every cup you serve out. Great hot or cold. Plus this is an all-in-one meal – with all the food groups. If you want to reduce the carb content, just omit the potatoes or substitute with yellow pumpkin or sweet potatoes.

Put food in your mouth, not the other thing!

Thinking back to a time when I first started writing stories. I must have been about seven years old and till then was quite happy to tell stories – many stories – tall stories, short stories and everything in between to my pals at school. Snehalata, my best friend back then, was my favourite and only audience much of the time – listening with great interest all the time and making appropriate appreciative noises at the right time! We used to walk home together from school every evening – taking about an hour to dawdle a distance of less than half a kilometre!

Then there came a time when I was ill with something or the other and out of school for three whole weeks. Then I discovered a new and equally appreciative audience – our cook Shanmugam! Shanmugam came from somewhere in the deep south of Tamilnadu and liked to listen as much as I liked to talk! At least I thought so but maybe he had different ideas because at the end of my three weeks at home, S decided he was missing his hometown too much and left… never to return…

By now, I was hooked – to the storytelling. My audience however, was not! After listening patiently to a particularly long and painful story about a tiger and human sacrifice and some bloodletting and a remedy requiring tiger’s milk (bloodthirsty creature I must have been!), my dad has a eureka moment. Why don’t you write your stories instead? And send them to Chandamama (a much loved children’s magazine which also published contributions from children!) instead?

I am dumbstruck ( a rare occurrence, I promise!) with the sheer brilliance of my dad’s idea! Also  visions of seeing my name in print dance before my eyes. I finish dinner in a hurry and pore over the rules in the last issue of the mag. There is something about the stories being typewritten but I reason that my handwriting is pretty good and they’ll never know the difference if I take extra care! Then something else about writing on only one side of the sheet. Seems like a waste of a perfectly good side of the paper but well, I can do that!

And so, with the singlemindedness of a seven-year old who has a lot to say – so much that it’s difficult to get it all out before it disappears from my mind, I sit down and write eight foolscap sheets (only on one side) of my tiger and milk and blood and gore story and carefully seal it in an envelope, reverentiallly making a trip to the post office and mail off my masterpiece… to be rewarded with a rejection slip a week later! Never having thought of the possibility that my story could be rejected (more of my mom’s genes which come with a sublime confidence in one’s own abilities!), I am once again dumbstruck – twice in less than a month!

But then I reason to myself that Chandamama has missed out on publishing a masterpiece – well, too bad!

I go back to school, all is forgotten and I continue to tell tales to my pal…

And write off and on… till last year when the words refused to be contained any more and this blog was started… with a little help from my friends… thanks to Shruti Nargundkar who encouraged me and Narayan Kumar who designed the whole thingummy and provided much grist to my mill!

And with thanks, here’s a dish for them! Oops, just remembered that SN does not like brinjal but I’ve already written this and made it… so…

VANKAAYA KOTHIMEERA KHAARAM (brinjal cooked with a paste of green chilies and fresh coriander)

• Small, tender brinjals – the pinky-purply ones – 250 gms
• Fresh coriander – 1 cup
• Green chilies – 3-4
• Ginger – grated – 1 tbsp
• Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
• Asafoetida – 1/8 tsp
• Turmeric  1/4 tsp
• Tamarind paste – 1/8 tsp
• Salt
• Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Urad dal – 1/2 tsp
• Jeera/cumin seeds – 1/4 tsp

Grind the coriander, ginger and curry leaves into a rough paste.

Slice the brinjals lengthwise into thin pieces, dropping them into water with a pinch of turmeric in it as you cut.

Drain after cutting (use this water for the garden!) and mix the coriander paste and tamarind paste thoroughly into the pieces.

Heat oil and splutter the mustard, urad dal and cumin seeds. Add asafoetida and turmeric and immediately drop in the brinjal.

Cover and cook till half done. Add salt and mix throughly.

Cook for a few more minutes – 5 or 6 till pieces are tender and the pieces are coated well. There should be no water left.

Serve with hot rice and mudda pappu (plain cooked toor dal with salt) and ghee.

You don’t need any help from your freinds to polish this off!

“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)