Posts

Posted on

Of how NOT to plan weddings!

jeedipappu koora
“Paaam… paaam… pa… paaaaAAAMMMM,” goes the shehnai, rising to a crescendo as it signals the end of the wedding ceremony.  It is a really hot August day in Hyderabad and the silence comes as a blessing.
I heave a sigh of relief. It is two o’clock in the afternoon and I’ve been sitting, standing, bending, touching feet, generally doing various ritual things from six in the morning! Oh yes, I forgot to mention that it’s my own wedding!
I have come back from the hostel on a few days’ break to get married. When I had left home to pursue a postgrad course a couple of months previously, wedding preparations had just started and the understanding was that the guest list would be about 600 people – a reasonably medium-sized wedding by Indian standards! I came back a couple of days before the wedding to find that 1800 invitations have been distributed and my parents appeared to have gone completely berserk!
Obviously I ask who’s been invited and get to see the list.
Here’s a sample:
• The owner of the corner store where we buy groceries
• The owner of one more corner store (boodha shop) where we used to live earlier and where we bought groceries for years – after all, he’s seen me grow up and he’s helped with the growing up by keeping me supplied with chikkis (peanut candy – my fave!) for decades!
• Son of said corner store boodha (old man) – he’ll feel bad if we leave him out!
How could we not invite all these guys? You get the picture?
I am surprised the list is only 1800. And I am not wrong – finally we end up with 3000 guests! Talk about planning disasters! But my parents were completely nonchalant about the whole thing – their whole take on it was, “Ah, small glitches… but we’ve just found one way that things don’t work! And everyone was happy so it was fine!” Phew!
And so back to the afternoon when the wedding ceremony itself got over.  After many, many rituals over many hours on an empty stomach, mind you, the pujari finally says we can go. We look around. There are a few people – me, newly minted husband and five pujaris! C’est tout – that’s it! Everyone else has disappeared soon after the main rituals are done!
We’ve no clue what we’re supposed to do now… and we’ve a reception (our own!) to attend in a few hours time… we want food… we want nap, well, at least I want a nap!
Am dressed in much wedding finery so can’t even think of walking back home – though it’s barely a stone’s throw away. Plus, in the middle of all the rituals, my slippers seem to have gone a walkabout- I can’t walk barefoot on the road!
Hubby and family and friends have rooms in the hotel itself. So I say bye, see you in the evening and make my solitary way to the car park. Recognise one of the cars hired for the wedding and recruit the driver to take me home.
I reach home. Everyone has disappeared! Much puzzled, I ring the doorbell several times. Door is finally opened – by two of my uncles who have elected to (thankfully!) not go on a shopping trip with the rest of the family– parents, in-laws, cousins, aunts, uncles – the whole jimbang lot of them have traipsed off to Charminar! Having many flowery things braided into my hair, it’s difficult to figure out how to change. My two uncles, god bless them, cracking many jokes the whole time, sit and patiently pull several dozen pins and flowers out of my hair! I get my nap 🙂
That was a nutty Hyderabadi wedding – to the core!
Just like this devil-may-care-for-the-calories…
CASHEWNUT CURRY (recipe again courtesy Shreesha’s mom – she’s a treasure of unusual recipes!)
  • 1 cup cashew nuts – soaked for 3-4 hours – wash three times and squeeze dry lightly.
  • Onions – 2 large- chopped very fine
  • Green chilies – 3 chopped fine
  • Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
  • Tomatoes – 4 – chopped
  • Ginger garlic paste – 1 tbsp
  • Jeera/cumin seeds – ½ tsp
  • Turmeric – ¼ tsp
  • Red chili powder  – ½ tsp
  • Dhaniya powder – 1 tsp
  • Garam masala – ½ tsp
  • Salt
  • Drumsticks – 2 –cut into 2” pieces – optional – boil with a ½ tsp salt
  • Oil – 2 tbsp
Heat oil in a pan. Add cumin seeds and chopped green chili.
Add curry leaves and onions and fry till golden brown, adding ginger garlic paste halfway through.
Add turmeric, red chili powder and dhaniya powder. Saute.
Add  tomatoes and fry for 3-4 minutes.
Add cashewnuts and salt and pressure cook for 3-4 whistles. Switch off and add the drumsticks (if using) and garam masala and bring to boil again.
Serve with plain hot, steamed rice.
And please don’t plan a shopping expedition on the day your kids are busy getting married!
Posted on

Of yet to be developed technology!

coriander chutney

So we’ve got this spanking new car and are driving out of Chennai for a holiday. Before a car-lover decides to pillory me, by the way, let me add that I am of that breed which refers to cars by their colour. “I left my keys in the red car” or “I left my specs in the blue car” – the important thing being leaving something somewhere. I once had to get out of the car to check which car I was driving – the red one or the blue one because I couldn’t identify it from the inside! That is who we are and the car and gadget freak that hubby is, has had to lump it!

Sometimes this vagueness can go a little too far though. As it did on this occasion. So there we are, all happy – new car, new complicated music system and a blissfully, brilliantly cold a/c – the latter is all I care about really, in this hot city I’ve lived in for the best part of my life! The girls are in the backseat, hanging over to the front, examining every knob and button and scary looking array of gadgets with interest. (Note: How does anyone below the age of twenty automatically know these things? I have to practise several times before I remember that this knob does this and that button turns the other thing on – and even then don’t always get it right!) Thankfully I am still the better driver so I can occasionally take the high ground!

So back to today’s ride. “Amma, can you put on the John Fogerty album?” asks daughter A from the backseat.

I look for a CD or something I can recognise. Nada.

“Yes… but how? And where is it?” I query.

“See the pen drive there. We’ve loaded everything in it.”

Ah, I get it – this car does not even have a CD drive! Wow, technology – I’m impressed.

I look carefully at all the knobs and buttons. Nix. No port.

“So where do I put it in?” I am puzzled.

“See that square thing on top? Just press it. It’ll open and you can chuck it in”, comes the response.

Ah… aaahh – serious stuff – I am maha impressed!

I press the top of the square thing as instructed. A little door swings down. Technology is even more advanced than I thought. I duly “chuck it in” as instructed (we are obedient parents!), it lands in a corner of the cavity and I shut the door.

Shocked silence from the driver’s seat. Thundering silence from the back seat.

“What did you DO????” rise three voices in unison…

My turn to be puzzled – “Why, I chucked it in as you told me to,” I protest – none so indignant as the righteous who know they’ve followed instructions and if the dang thing doesn’t work, it’s not my fault!

“But… but… you’ve to insert it into the port – it’s inside the square thingummy!” in tones of how-can-anyone-be-so-dumb!

“Well, I thought this was a very advanced car and if I just chucked it in as you said, I thought there’d be a sensor or something,” I protest.

I am still living down that one, by the way! So much for technology!

Not much technology required to make this delicious chutney I had at the home of a dear friend in Hyderabad – Shreesha. Said friend being somewhat inept in the kitchen (I can hear the protests – so I will say this – she sure can make a mean chocolate cake!) I turn to her mother for the recipe.

Bringing you straight from deep Andhra, this yummy…

KOTHIMIRA CHUTNEY (Coriander leaf chutney)

  • 1 large bunch of fresh coriander – cleaned and roughly chopped
  • Urad dal – 3 tbsp
  • Jeera/cumin seeds – 1 tbsp
  • Green chilies – 4-5 or more
  • Tamarind paste – 1 tbsp
  • Jaggery – 1.5 tbsp
  • Salt
  • Sesame oil – 1 tbsp

Fry the urad dal, jeera and green chilies in the oil. Grind in the mixer. Then add everything else and grind again! Howzzat for simplicity? Easier than Apple??? Yummier too!

Posted on

Of the colour of livers in our family…

banana chips
“Has that “thing” got him? Is it over? Is he dead? Is there blood? Is “IT” eating  him? Omg, omg… OMG! Yeeaaaa… aaaAAAAGGHHH!” and my cousin Sunita, who’s been hiding behind the sofa and has just popped her head out to stare in horror at the screen with one eye as she shrieks these questions, dives back underneath quicker than my brother Arvind can eat a laddoo and THAT is saying something.
I don’t exaggerate 😉 so I will refrain from saying things like speed of light etc. but I assure you sound wouldn’t have anything on it!
While I laugh at Sunita’s antics, secretly there is a part of me that is wanting to hunker down behind that sofa alongside her rather than do what we – a bunch of us school friends and Sunita who’s staying with us for the summer, are doing. What we are doing at another friend’s house is watching a horror movie called “The Evil Dead” and it IS seriously horrifying. Nightmares and “day” mares await – I can feel it in my bones!
I have always had a problem with horror movies, seeing precisely two of them and am not sure that one of them would even qualify as horror (I was assured by my college friends that “Poltergeist” was a funny movie – well, I guess watching someone cowering in their seat can be termed ‘funny’!)
Why did I agree to go then? One does many things in teenage one regrets later to appear “cool”! Since I wasn’t succeeding at that either, that was when I decided to put my foot down and say I wouldn’t watch any more of these – no matter how ‘uncool’ I appeared. And suddenly found what ‘cool’ really meant – talk about serendipity!
I have serious respect for those who can watch these – two of my aunts voluntarily paid money to buy tickets to watch “Rosemary’sBaby” voted the most horrifying horror film ever and lived to tell the tale!
But now for a flashback – (I am absolutely loving this writing business where I am producer, director, scriptwriter and lyricist all rolled into one!) – to when I was in class 10 and preparing for the “BIG PUBLIC EXAMS”.
The house we were living in then had only two bedrooms so my bed was at the end of a long, narrow dining room, right next to a window. Note this architectural feature – it plays an important part in my tale. Because some friend thought I was working too hard (wasn’t!), they gave me a book to read – the newly minted tale of horror called “The Omen”. I read it one afternoon while home alone, my eyes popping out right along with my heart, my liver (it was an interesting very-bright yellow liver!) and my spleen… till my parents came home.
After that, the only time I left my mom’s side was when she had to go to the loo! She slept next to me for ten days, on the window side of course  – because otherwise THAT THING would come and get me – what about HER, you ask? Well, I already mentioned the colour of my liver so what were you expecting???!
Sunita was just as bad – making her two tiny two-year old twin sisters sleep right next to her on each side so she’d be safe in the centre! No wonder our family coat of arms is a proper jaundiced yellow! Jus’ kidding, we don’t have a coat of arms – which of our lily-livered forebears would have the courage to bear arms, I wonder? – going by our personal inclination, that is!
And thus we honour them and all the other poltroons of this world with these yellow – coloured…
KERALA STYLE BANANA CHIPS
  • 4-5 large green plantains – the slim ones are the “chipping” variety. The fat ones are for steaming and making podimas
  • Turmeric powder – ½ tsp
  • Salt – 1 tsp dissolved in ¼ cup water
  • Pepper or chili powder to add heat
  • Asafoetida – 1 generous pinch
Peel the plantains and immerse them in cold water to which turmeric has been added – for half an hour
Heat coconut oil in a frying pan – use one that is large enough to hold the chips of one plantain and then has generous room for splattering.
Take one plantain out of the water, pat dry and drop a bit into the oil – to test for heat. If the piece rises up and froths immediately, the oil is ready. Slice the plantain directly into the hot oil – be VERY careful!
Fry, turning over constantly till yellow and crisp.
Now, very carefully sprinkle about a tbsp of the salt solution over the chips – they will splutter (I would be indignant too if someone tried to give me a salt bath!) mightily! Keep stirring and then remove with a slotted spoon onto paper.
Finish all and then add the asafoetida and mix well. Cool completely before lidding.
(Pic courtesy Internet)
Posted on

Of octopus eggs and other tentacle tales!

okonomiyaki

“You have to eat at least one Japanese meal before you leave Japan,” insist my hosts – good friends, Krishna and Lakshmi. We’ve been in Japan for almost three weeks and have basically been eating home food – pulihora, naans and curries and dals and sambars and the whole paraphernalia of Indian cooking… not so strange… except we are six thousand kilometers from India! Talk about Indians and how attached we are to our food!!

We are a bunch of classmates who are holidaying together with families at the home of two of us (two classmates married to each other – i.e!) in Japan. There are twenty four of us altogether and therefore meals are highly orchestrated with teams of two or three taking over the cooking of each meal – hailing from all parts of India and living all over the globe. The meals are varied and interesting and loads of fun to cook as teams!

There are about a dozen vegetarians in the group – eating out is not so easy because Japanese cuisine (well, this was over ten years ago) does not offer much for veggies, not to mention the fact that our group varied in age from seventy to one and a half years of age!

So it’s basically been home food. Then one day, we decide to try out a Japanese meal and our host comes up with the idea of an okonomiyaki meal. For all the Japanese I knew – extending to two words – konnichiwa for hello and sayonara for goodbye (the latter I picked up from an old Hindi film song shot in Japan!), it could just as well have been octopus eggs I was eating (if octopi lay eggs, that is)!

And so off we go to this teppanyaki restaurant. We find a table. We sit down. I sigh and lean my elbows on the table – only to jump up again like a scalded cat – exactly what I was then! Never having been to one of these before, I hadn’t realised that what I thought was a steel table top was actually a huge hotplate!

Pushing my chair away, I warily keep a distance from the table. The guy sitting next to me has already placed his order and the waiter brings over his stuff. It is long. It has little round things. Wondering what new kind of vegetable this is that has swum into my ken, I discover it is literally a swimmer – an octopus, to be precise! Or rather, one tentacle of said octopus! And it is fresh – very fresh – still moving – I have an epiphanous moment – the tentacle is waving to me for help! I brush epiphany aside and await my dish with some inner quaking. My friends assure me that it is indeed vegetarian. But it’s going to be cooked right here, where probably many an octopus has been cooked earlier, I want to say… but better sense prevails… when in Japan etc… 

And our waiter, a pretty and extraordinarily polite young girl (this politeness is rather an epidemic amongst the Japanese, i must say!) comes over and starts to assemble our okonomiyaki at the table. There’s lots of cabbage, there’s mayonnaise, there’s egg, there’s soya sauce and loads of other things – I cannot believe that such seemingly disparate flavours are going into one dish! And finally we end up with what looks like a huge, fat cabbage-y pizza or oothappam! I taste a little. Interesting – is the thought. A little more – also interesting. But I cannot eat so much! My daughter K thankfully is by my side and finishes off hers and mine!

Came back home and decided this was a dish worth making again  – but in miniature!

So here goes my version of okos…

VEGETARIAN MINI – OKONOMIYAKI

For 4 mini okos, you will need:

  • Maida/plain flour – 1/3 cup
  • Water of veggie stock – 2 ounces –  60 ml
  • Salt
  • Baking powder – 1/2 tsp

Mix these into a batter and set aside.

FOR VEGGIE FILLING

  • Cabbage – shredded – do NOT chop into tiny pieces – the oko will break apart easily if you do – 1.5 cups
  • Capsicum – julienned – 1/4 cup
  • Green chili – 1 minced (I am Indian after all!) or 1/2 tsp of wasabi paste for bite.
  • 1 egg
  • Grated cheese – cheddar is fine. Use a smoky cheese if you want added flavour – 2-3 tbsp.
  • Oil – 2 tsp

Mix the flour and everything else, except the oil together. Do not overmix.

In a heated pan, pour a few drops of oil and dividing batter into four, make 4 small “pizzas” in the pan. Pour a few drops of oil around each.

After 3-4 minutes, it should have set on one side. Flip over and continue to cook for a further 3 minutes till completely set.

FOR DRIZZLING

  • Mayonnaise
  • Ketchup
  • Soya sauce
  • Sweet chili sauce
  • Green stuff – spring onions, coriander

Drizzle and sprinkle over lavishly while still in the pan.

Flip out and serve.

Watch out for that tentacle reaching out to you from the next teppan!

(pic courtesy internet)

Posted on

Further lessons in music and vows of silence!

chocolate custard cake
“Saaaami… ninneee koriiiii… ” And beautifully the melody comes out of my music teacher’s violin.
Saami… squeak… moan… ninee… groan… koreee… oww…!” goes my violin right behind the teacher’s, valiantly attempting to follow but stumbling over the obstacles posed by the various “gamakams” (quavery notes!) along the way…
“Try again,” says my teacher, one of the most renowned violinists in India. So what is she doing with me as a student, you’re wondering, right? Well, she also happens to be related to me and can’t say no to my mom and to cut a long story short, there we are – she attempting hard to teach and me attempting even harder to learn!
And so I try again… and again… but I don’t get it!
“Set aside the violin for a minute and sing it,” she commands.
“Whaaa? Are you sure? I can’t sing – I mean like at all”! I protest.
She waves aside all protests – anyone can sing – she proclaims! (By the way, is this a common belief amongst all music teachers, I wonder, having gone to three who professed exactly the same beliefs??)
“Okay, her funeral,” I sigh to myself, not knowing how close I am to bringing her to the actual thing!
And start off… ”Saaami… ninneee… koreeee… yunnaanuraaaaa,” the last note wanders off into the wide blue yonder searching for a nesting place… after all, all the notes leading up to this have gone, to use an Aussie term, “on a walkabout” and now want to come home to roost! Alas for the last note, like parallel lines, destined to meet only at infinity, never in the real plane, it’s still wandering somewhere out there, maybe right alongside the Mars Orbitor mission, waiting to come home!
My guru has her eyes closed – she seems to be listening intently… the note limps to a halt… I wait… she must say something… the silence is deafening… is she alright?… I am about to get up stealthily to check if she’s still breathing when she opens her eyes… and I realize that she is all right… just about!
“Let’s try the violin itself,” she says and my heart sinks. “Maybe another song?” she suggests. “Practise  this one at home and we’ll try it again.” I am nothing loth and jump to it with alacrity!
In all fairness to self, I think that this ragam – Sreeragam – is a rather tough one to crack!
I go back home, practise – really, really hard, much to my cousins’ disgruntlement (I am staying with them). They protest vociferously. I am not responsible for their gruntlement though – and I need to get this right! Two days later, I am back in class and sail though the raga!
My teacher, though, hasn’t recovered yet from the previous class – she gestures to me but does not speak a word – she is on mouna vratam (a vow of silence!).
That was the violin but I promise you that this is a real symphony! This is…
ULTRA CHOCOLATE-Y CHOCO-CUSTARD CAKE (adapted from a recipe for Brooklyn blackout cake)
FOR CAKE:
  • 100 butter(I used table butter)
  • 80 ml sunflower oil
  • 300g sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1.5 tsp baking powder
  • 280g plain flour
  • 50 gm cocoa
  • 200ml milk
  • 1 tbsp coffee mixed in a  tsp of milk

Cream butter and sugar together.

Beat in the eggs one by one.

Fold in sieved flour + maida + cocoa mixture into the batter till incorporated, adding milk as you mix. Add vanilla essence and coffee and mix.

Bake at 190C for about 40-45 minutes till done.

Cool and slit along the waist. (this cake will necessitate you slitting all your pants at the waist too!)

If you have any bumpy bitsin the cake, slice off and whizz to a crumble in the mixer.

FOR CHOCO -CUSTARD CREAM FILLING:

  • 500 ml milk
  • 4 tbsp custard powder (I used vanilla)
  • 1/2 cup cocoa
  • 75 gm dark chocolate – broken into bits
  • Cream – 50 ml
  • Sugar – 1 cup
  • Butter (again i used table butter)

Mix the custard powder into about one-third of the milk and set aside.

Mix the cocoa powder and sugar into the milk and heat.

Add the custard powder milk into this and stir continuously till you get a thick custard.

Drop in the chocolate and continue to mix. Switch off, add butter and incorporate (lots of elbow grease required!)

Lastly fold in the cream.

Let cool, stirring frequently.

TO ASSEMBLE:

Sandwich the two halves with generous slatherings of custard cream.

Pour over the top. Any of the crumb left?

Stick it all over so it looks sort of sandy.

With this in your mouth, mouna vratham (vow of silence) is the only way out!