Anu Chenji

Am in shock!

TOTAL SHOCK!

Idly opened my webpage and looked for the recipe to my very favourite, TOP-of-all-the-pops dessert, sure that I must have blogged it early on in the blog and find I HAVEN’T! Omg, OMG! What’s rasmalai going to do to me in revenge? How could I have forgotten?

Better sense prevails – rasmalai is too sweet to do anything to me in return, except maybe look at me reproachfully! All I can say in my defence is that rasmalai has been responsible for at least half the superfluous pounds I carry and therefore my subconscious must have blocked it out! And kudos to the subsconscious too – having come back from Amreeka with excess  baggage that I didn’t have to pay for since I was carrying them strategically positioned on the nether end and the tum (and no, you may not know exactly how many!), i have put myself on a diet and now I just have to go make rasmalai! Never mind, I’ll be extra good for the rest of the week… famous last words?

The love affair with rasmalais has lasted me my entire adult life – which is when I first tasted them and I am sure that you will find a rasmalai-shaped hole in my heart when I die!

Kolkata, you may have a Black Hole, you might need a bath more often, you may have inflicted an incomprehensible music genre on the rest of India (apologies to Robindra Sangeet – the fault is totally mine for having the most unmusical ear in the world!) but… and  it’s a VERY big but – (please refrain from making obvious comparisons with another similar sounding noun which refers to the result of many years of putting away Bengali sweets with gusto!)… but… all is forgiven! Your genius in creating this most delicious of all desserts (whether you did or Odisha did can be settled at another slugfest!) has ensured you a place in culinary paradise forever and ever amen!

There are those (forever consigned to the Hades!) who have attempted to re-work this piece of perfection by flavouring it with strawberries and even, horror of horrors – chocolate! To those I say, repent while you are still alive! Salvation is nigh – if only you will go back to the Goddess of Bong sweets and swear that you will never again interfere with its perfection of cottage cheese dumplings in cold thickened milk and saffron… wait, let me go make some before I perish of want!

Here’s how.

RASMALAI

• Milk 2 litres + 2 litres for the rabdi
• White vinegar 40 ml
• Plain flour/maida 2 tsp
• Cornflour 1/2 teaspoon
• Sugar 1.2 kilograms + 6 tbsp
• Milk 2 tablespoons
• Saffron strands – a few
• Slivered pistachios and almonds – 2 tbsp

Bring 2 litres of milk to the boil. Add the vinegar and 2 cups of cold water and stir for a minute. Switch off.

Let it settle for ten minutes and then strain through very thin muslin. Discard the water (or freeze it in cubes for kneading roti dough later!) The water should be completely removed.

Knead together the chenna (the cheesy stuff that you’ve just strained out) with 1 tsp of maida and the cornflour. Knead to a very smooth dough.

Divide into about 25-30 balls and roll till the surface is smooth. Press slightly to flatten them a bit. Set aside.

In the meantime, start another an with the other two litres of milk in it. Reduce milk, stirring frequently till it is reduced to about 1.5 litres.

In another pan, bring the sugar to a boil along with 1 litre of water. Boil for a few minutes, removing the scum as it rises.

Make a slurry of 1 tsp of maida and 1 cup of water and add to the syrup.

Gently slide the chenna discs into the syrup and boil for fifteen minutes, drizzling a few tbsp of water down the sides every few minutes to keep the syrup from getting too thick.

To test, take out one and press with your finger or a spoon (recommended!). If it is spongy and springs back, its done!

Let them soak for ten minutes then squeeze out and slide gently into the rabdi.

Dissolve saffron in 2 tbsp of milk and add.

Cool and then refrigerate.

Serve in bowls with the rasmalai sitting prettily in the middle of a some rabdi and slivered nuts on top.

Do obeisance to the woman/man who invented this!

(Pic courtesy internet)

“How was your day at school today, Maarut?” asks my friend Viraja of her three year old grandson who has just started school – that day!

“It was okay” – phew they learn young, don’t they – that “it was okay” is a statement which covers everything- and nothing!

“But what did you do?” she persists.

“Oh, I beat up my friend,” said with complete nonchalence!

“And what did he do?”

“He cried” – he offers in the rather cutely gruff voice that the little boy has – the attitude and the voice are a positive invitation to merriment! We restrain ourselves, however and continue down this path which now seems fraught with possibilities!

“And then?” we ask, waiting with bated breath to hear what the teacher did!

“He beat me up” – phew!

“And then?”

“I cried.”

“And then?” – this tale is bidding fair to rival even “Die Hard” for suspense!

“Then I came home. And here I am!!”

I am by now in love with this little Dennis and William rolled into one combination!

Am also reminded irresistibly of his mother D, my friend’s daughter, thirty years ago. I walk into their house, proudly showing off my brand new pair of high heeled sandals – with gold lace and all. D, who is about two years old and very fond of pretty things, is promptly smitten!

I take off my sandals at the door and Divya promptly slides her tiny feet into them and proceeds to give me a serious sales pitch. “Anu aunty, these are lovely! Don’t they look pretty on my feet? Can you give them to me? Ask your mother to buy you one more”...the chatter goes on as she clomps around the room and I chase her – terrified in case she should trip and break something – a bone maybe!

She doesn’t trip and nothing is broken. The nonchalance is unimpaired even thirty years later and her love for pretty things is still intact! Quite amazing the things our kids inherit from us!!

And equally amazing the dish that she served for lunch… the very, very Andhra delicacy…

AAVAPETTINA PANASA POTTU KOORA (Quite a mouthful but it’s basically raw jackfruit curry flavoured with ground raw mustard seeds)

• Raw jackfruit  chopped – 2 cups (you get this canned in the US – would you believe it?? Here in India, you buy one whole fruit and spend an hour and a half cutting and cleaning it and then another hour and a half getting the sticky bits off your hair and your nose (you try not to scratch that itch on your nose as you’re cutting!)
• Tamarind paste – 1 tbsp
• Green chilies – 6-8
• Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp for tempering
• Oil – 3-4 tbsp
• Turmeric – 1/4 tsp
• Asafoetida – 1 pinch
• Red chili powder – 1/2 tsp
• Salt
• Chana dal (Bengal gram dal) – 1 tsp
• Urad dal – 1 tsp
• Ginger – 1/2 ” piece – chopped
• Cumin seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Curry leaves – 2 sprigs

AAVA PASTE

• Mustard seeds – 1 tsp
• Red chili – 1
• Water – 1 tsp – grind together to a rough paste in a mortar and pestle.

Wash the jackfruit pieces well and drain. In a heavy pan, add 1/4 cup water and the jackfruit along with the tumeric. Cook, covered, stirring occassionally till tender – 8-10 minutes. (or microwave on high for 8 minues, turning over once). Cool. Squeeze out the water.

Grind the green chilies and ginger to a rough paste.

In another saucepan, heat the oil. Add 1/2 tsp mustard seeds, chana dal, urad dal, curry leaves, asafoetida, red chili powder and cumin seeds. Saute for a minute till golden.

Add the green chili – ginger paste and saute for two minutes more..

Add the tamarind paste and the jackfruit pieces along with the salt. Stir to coat completely.

Cover and cook for 2-3 minutes more.

Add the mustard-red chili paste and switch off. Mix well and serve with hot rice and ghee.

Died and gone to heaven yet??!

(pic courtesy internet)

“Ladki hai ek, naam Rajani hai

Rajani ki ek yeh kahaani hai… 

Rajani, Rajani, Rajani… “

I know, I know, I can’t sing a recognisable version of it so here’s one – more recognisable, not to mention more musical one! YouTube link.

…thus goes the jingle for a very popular serial aired in the eighties. The story is that of a woman – played by Priya Tendulkar (may she RIP) – a crusader for social causes – who simply cannot lie down under any injustice, any time, any place. She carries her many flags as stylishly as she wears her saree and was a huge inspiration to me in my teens.

Corrupt government bureaucrats, errant auto drivers, rude bus conductors, unfair school practices… whatever the cause, Rajani was bound to be there, wading in without a care to the consequences. I think this was what attracted me to her first – that devil-take-the-hindmost attitude. Already keenly alive to the many unfair practices in our country – from the time I was first unjustly punished by a school principal at the age of ten (yes!) for something I was completely innocent of, the sense of unfairness rankled deep within my soul.

Rajani showed me how to fight – though I must credit the first inspiration for this – my aunt – Malathi Mohan – who was a bit like the John Wayne of toilet papers – she’s rough, she’s tough and she don’t take no s*** from nobody! (That’s a BIG compliment, Pinni!)

Of the many such fights that I was involved in, one I remember  – a telephone conversation with a transport official – went something like this:

Me: Hullo, hullo… 

Transport chappie (hereinafter called TC, to make it short and pithy!): ullo, ullo… 

Me: (very politely): I am calling for information on the bus service to J.Hills. Could you list the timings of the buses from “X” stop to J.H between noon and 3.00 p.m. please?

TC: One minute, madam. (I hear paper being shuffled (this is the early ’80’s, remember and computers haven’t made an appearance anywhere yet)… and reels off some eight or nine different timings…

Me: Do you have any inspectors on this route?

TC: Why, madam?

Me: Because (and I take a deep breath before launching my tirade), I have just waited THREE whole hours for a bus and not ONE b…..d bus has turned up! 

I then proceed to give him several pieces of my mind, my opinion of the entire transport department and their ancestors who, I am positive, do not know the names of their fathers etc. etc.!

My dad, who’s been listening in on this and many other similar ‘coversations’, dubs me Rajani after my favourite TV character of the moment!

Well, I may no longer be so forceful in my expression of disapproval but the spirit of Rajani is still very alive in the soul!

Well, the spirit of the crusader still has to be fuelled! By the ‘correct’ kind of nutrition, right?!!

Like this awesome and unusual Gujarati dish called khatta moong…  (recipe courtesy my sister-in-law – Kalpana. Thanks, Kalpu!)

KHATTA MOONG

• Green gram (moong) – 1 cup – soaked for two hours and drained. Pressure cook till soft but the grains are still separate.
• Sour yogurt – 2 cups
• Gram flour or besan – 2 tbsp
• Sugar or jaggery  1/2 tsp (optional)
• Red chilli powder – 1/2 tsp
• Turmeric pwd – 1/4 tsp
• Grated ginger – one inch piece
• Sunflower or any cooking oil – 1 tablespoon
• Cumin seeds – 1/2 teaspoon
• Green chili – 1 minced.
• Asafoetida – 1 generous pinch
• 1 sprig of curry leaves
• Fenugreek or methi seeds – 1/2 teaspoon
• Salt to taste
• Chopped fresh coriander to garnish

Whisk together the yogurt and besan along with 1.5 cups water. Add the salt, sugar,turmeric, red chili pwd and asafoetida.

Heat the oil in a saucepan. Add mustard seeds. When they crackle add jeera, ginger and green/red chili. Add curry leaves.

Add the cooked moong and cook, covered for a couple of minutes.

Add half a cup of water and gently pour in the yogurt-besan mixture.

Cook for about four minutes and switch off. Garnish with coriander and serve with hot phulkas or jeera rice.

P.S: I doubt any of the saas-bahus of today’s TV viewing will serve as inspirations to any young woman! Long live Rajani!

“Look at this orange. I’ll cut it… thus… how much is there?” She proceeds to cut an orange into two pieces.

“One piece for each of us… but, but what will the other brother do? He won’t have any orange at all?!”

“Don’t worry about that! Just tell me what you see in each of my hands… this is… this is… ” prompts my mother…

Blank stare from pupil (aka self)… how can she think it doesn’t matter if one person doesn’t get at least half an orange?? And besides, why only half? There’s a whole basket of oranges behind her??! And why on earth is she cutting them? That is NO way to treat an orange – the juice runs out and goes waste – everyone knows THAT! Plus that smell is making my mouth water – I have to have that orange now!

Oh, I get fractions all right, I just don’t know what she wants! I’ve been out of school for three weeks, thanks to a bug and my mom is “helping” me catch up on stuff that I missed and insists on the orange routine to introduce fractions to this third-grader.

Now, if she’d tried introducing fractions through potatoes or onions or even better, karela (kaakarakaaya/paavakai/bitter gourd/bitter melon – the bane of every kid’s life), I probably wouldn’t have cared and would have figured out the minutest of fractions – in the hope that she’d be so pleased with my quick learning that she might let me off with a really tiny piece of the bitter curry at lunch! Or maybe even a zero portion!

Why does it even have to be food anyway? And fruit that too?? Couldn’t it have been anything else? Like a bug or a beetle? (Ok, in my defence, this was before I knew bugs had feelings!)… I did a little research among my contemporaries and found out that all of them had been subject to the same treatment – orange cutting or apple (for variety!) cutting – to be taught fractions by struggling parents!

Lesson one to all parents – please refrain from using desirable food items – fruit, chocolate bars etc. all fall under this category – to teach any child anything about maths! You are permitted to use stuff like paper (unless you have a very hungry child!), bitter gourd (even the hungriest child would rather go for the paper!) to teach halves and quarters and thirds! It is sheer cruelty!

Lesson two t0 all parents: If you have more than two children, teach thirds before you teach halves – you don’t want to teach them unfairness, do you?!

Lesson three ditto: Feed them first before you sit down to a lesson – you do not want them thinking of aloo cutlets as you cut potatoes into pieces! Also might be useful to teach them that potatoes are to be boiled whole for cutlets before peeling and cut potatoes are not good for cutlets – only curries!

And you thought you were teaching them fractions?

Better still, just give them whole fruit – do not cut – a philosophy I learnt from my mother – though I never did learn fractions from her! For the longest time, I thought everyone ate like us – one mango served along with lunch at each plate. You were free to cut it (though you ran the danger of being called a sissy!), tear the skin off with your teeth and bite into the flesh, squeeze the livin’ daylights out of it and suck out the resultant gooey juice or any which way you chose. The only processing that was done to that mango was washing it! Imagine my shock when I was served mango in a bowl – actually peeled and neatly cut with a little fruit fork to pick up the pieces with – at a friend’s home! God, how many fractions must have been taught in that home!

So feed them (the kids I mean) cutlets or oranges and apples and then have this healthy low cal whole finger food for yourself – you don’t want to teach yourself  fractions, do you?! This is inspired by Madhu Yerramsetty’s starter at a family dinner in California last month – thanks, Madhu!

CUCUMBER-ZUCCHINI-TOMATO STARTERS

• Cucumber – 1
• Zucchini – 1
• Tomato – 2-3
• Sprouts – 1 cup – steamed for 3 minutes (optional but desirable!), cooled and mixed with 1/2 tsp of cumin powder, 1/4 tsp chili powder, salt, 1 tsp lime juice, pinch of sugar, 1 pinch of chat masala
• Guacamole – mash with a fork – pulp of 1 large avocado, chopped onion, green chili, salt, pepper, lemon, 1 garlic clove, 1/4 tsp of sugar, red or green pepper, juice of 1/2 a lime.
• Chopped fresh mint to garnish

Slice the vegetables into thick-ish slices – about 1/4 cm thick.

Place a dollop of the guacamole on top. Spinkle half a tsp of sprouts on each and top with mint.

Serve immediately.

You don’t need to cut these into halves or quarters or eighths or whatever – just pop ’em whole into your mouth!

Kanch listens to me with round-eyed seriousness –  unusual for a child who’s usually happier to be running and jumping rather than sitting down and listening!

“But I also want to give something. Can I take it out of my Bank Account?” (Bank account is usually capitalised at that age – six or seven – because it’s such a ‘grown up’ thing!)

I have been talking to the children about the Kargil war between India and Pakistan and how many families on both sides are suffering. One of the stories – about an orphanage – touches their hearts deeply and Arch promptly decides to send everything she has in her account (attempts to teach them about saving!) to a relief fund. She seriously takes out her passbook, examines it and figures she can donate every bit of the eighteen hundred rupees she has in it!

Kanch is inspired by the older sister’s generosity but has no clue about money – not much anyway! Rupees and paise are rather nebulous entities in her world… commerce and economics are not even words! So she thinks up a sum she wants to give – a fabulously large amount – “Can I give ten paise?!!” she asks. It is as much as her sister and I can do to keep our faces straight and explain that maybe, just maybe, ten paise is rather small and we should think in terms of rupees!

Her passbook is duly hunted down (being Kanch, it is bound to be lost!) and we figure out that she has all of three hundred rupees in her account. Ten paise or three hundred rupees – there isn’t much difference in her mind about the figures – and so a cheque for the whole amount is duly made out and posted…

One swallow does not a summer make, however and it takes a while for the idea of money to sink in…

On another occasion, the kids have been talking about Christmas at school and how Santa will come to give them all presents… the what do you think I will get, Amma – speculation goes on till I decide to take matters in hand. A lecture on what Christmas is all about – giving rather than receiving – is delivered and obviously goes in deep! They decide to buy presents for the children of our faithful domestic help – Vasanthi – a top favourite with both!

This time Kanch decides she will do the volunteering and bearing the previous Kargil donation experience in mind (vaguely – the rupees and paise bit is still a bit of a haze!), she grandly volunteers to buy a present – for thirty paise! (one small candy costs about one rupee – a hundred paise!) This time the laughter refuses to be held back – but Kanch, ever ready to laugh at herself, joins in quite cheerfully!

Another lesson on rupees and paise has be sat through before it begins to sink in.

I find myself thinking of this while traveling in America – converting everything quickly in my mind to  rupees from the dollar values and thinking, oh my god, this is too expensive… at lots of shops till I visit an Ikea outlet and am tempted to buy everything in sight!

Much like this dal/curry which costs very little but is very rich in nutrients…

MOONG DAL CURRY

• Moong dal/whole green gram/pesarlu/pachaipayaru – 1 cup – soak for 3-4 hours
•  Onion – 1 cup – chopped
• Tomatoes – 1.5 cups – chopped
• Tomato paste – 1/2 tsp – optional
• Ginger – 1 cm piece – grated
• Green chilies – 1 – chopped
• Garlic – 2 flakes – optional – minced
• Kasooti methi – 1 tbsp
• Jeera powder – 1 tsp
• Dhaniya powder – 1 tsp
• Garam masala – 1/4 tsp
• Chili powder – 1/2 tsp
• Turmeric – 1/4 tsp
• Salt
• Sugar – 1/2 tsp
• Oil – 1 tsp
• Juice of 1/2 lime
• Chopped fresh coriander to garnish + chopped raw onion

Heat the oil in a pressure pan or cooker and add the green chilies and onions. Saute till golden yellow.

Add the tomatoes and all the dry spice powders. Saute for three to four minutes.

Add the soaked dal, salt and sugar. Add two cups water and pressure cook for two whistles. Switch off and let the pressure reduce.

Mix in the kasooti methi.

Garnish with lime juice, fresh coriander and raw onions and serve with rotis or tava toast (pan toast) or rice. All it needs is a raita or a salad to make a complete meal. You could also add a few microwaved and crushed curry leaves on top for added flavour and nutrition – remember that thing about black hair and curry leaves?!

No one will call you a cheapskate either!

Key: student level easy!