Anu Chenji

 

For anyone who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, the culinary scene was very exciting because it was the time that the world of world cuisines opened up to us even in India. Pizzas happened – maybe this had something to do with Sonia Gandhi – the controversial B-f-rs deal being sweetened by pizza chains??!

Chinese was not world cuisine, not by a long shot – Chinese was Indian, for heaven’s sake! Punjab was probably the best thing to happen to China’s food!

I remember a Chinese origin friend from college (his family had left China so long ago that he’d have felt like a foreigner there, I’m sure!). So, one day, we – some dozen of us, decide to bunk college and go for a “picnic” (feeling a bit like a dinosaur when I use this word – does anyone ever go for a ‘picnic‘ now??!) Much food from many homes are packed (budgets are tight, restaurants in picnic spots are unknown and even if they did exist, am pretty sure we couldn’t have afforded them, ergo home food!) and we set off to one of those many places we used to go to – Jubilee Hills lake (now known as Madhapur lake, i think) or some poultry farm somewhere on the outskirts of Hyderabad. Why these poultry farms were such popular picnic spots is still a matter of mystery to me – considering how smelly they tended to be!

Lunchtime arrives – earlier than normal – well, we have taken two buses to get to the spot so… and everyone watches like a hawk as each dabba is opened. All dabbas are opened with great expectations and all are greeted with enthusiasm – as I mentioned earlier, we are a very polite bunch in Hyderabad! Then this Chinese-origin pal opens his, let’s call him KP (no, not short for Kung Pao chicken!!) we’re all waiting with serious expectations – we love Chinese food – and the dabba has… idlis! With a tamatar ki chutney! Expectation turns to disbelief, then someone giggles and then the whole bunch erupts as KP tries to pass it off as Chinese chutney!

The first time I encountered a – vegetarian omelette – I had a similar reaction – it was an eggless omelette! A Gujju friend introduced me to this delight in school – only a Gujarati can turn old sayings like “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” on its head. Patel bhai says you can! And he does!

It looks like an omelette, smells a bit like one but… and here’s where the resemblance stops – doesn’t taste anything like one! But, and here’s the thing – stop thinking of it as an omelette and that’s when you’ll begin to appreciate the beauty of this dish…

KHANDVI

• Besan or gram flour – 1/2 cup
• Buttermilk – 1 cup
• Salt
• Turmeric – 1 pinch
• Chili powder – 1 pinch
• Oil – 1 tbsp

Mix everything except the oil together.

Heat the oil in a pan, add the batter and cook, stirring continuously so the batter stays smooth, for about 7-8 minutes. The gram flour will stop smelling raw.

Pour out one ladleful on a greased thali and spread thin – a little like a dosa. Repeat till the batter is over. Let it cool. Cut into 2-inch strips and roll carefully into little packets. Lay out on a plate. Sprinkle coconut and chopped coriander over.

FOR TEMPERING

• Oil – 2 tsp
• Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Sesame seeds – 1.5 tsp
• Grated fresh coconut – 2 tbsp
• Green chilies – 2 – minced
• Curry leaves – 1 sprig
• Chopped coriander – 2 tbsp
• Asafoetida – 1 generous pinch

Heat oil, add all the ingredients with the sesame seeds being last and pour over the prepared khandvi.

This is a great summer dish because it can be made ahead and is best served at room temperature or lower.

You definitely can have your “omelette” and stay veggie too!

“Abbey, ek aur plate biryani la, na? Aur is baar pieces aur hone do”! (hey, bring me another plate of biryani and this time get more ‘pieces’ – – mutton chunks!), floats a voice in from the road, just outside my bedroom window.

I am supposed to be (supposed being the operative word here!) studying for my public exams. It is May in Hyderabad and everyone knows just how hot that can be – the thermometer climbs to over 43C on an everyday basis! Airconditioners are almost unknown except in the houses of the very, very rich (like the Birlas or Tatas!). Aircoolers are just appearing on the scene but not yet in our home. We make do with fans and when the power fails – as it does often, we have more baths and fan ourselves with the ‘vistaraaku’ – palm leaf fans which have existed in India from the days of the proto-Dravidian man, I think! Am sure if you stay quiet enough, you’ll catch an occasional simian ancestor of ours – fanning themselves with these!

The temperature has been hovering at 44C and studying in the daytime is impossible so I decide to sleep – waking up at eleven in the night to the realisation that the exam is barely hours away and I still have some eight chapters to get through – even if I leave out four in “choice”! This funda of choice – something every kid who’s been through the examination system in this country is very familiar with – actually is a great outfitter for life itself!

It works like this – we have, say, twenty chapters to study for the exam which is just hours away (if you are one of those nerds who starts preparing two months earlier, please go away! This is not meant for you – you are ill-prepared for life – our life at least!).

So, unlike today, where you have a zillion multiple-choice questions to get through, you had the either/or questions for some twenty marks each or you had the “answer any three of the following five questions” thingy. Now anyone who’s done class 2 level maths will figure out that if you have five chapters, you need study only three to max the exam (whatever your level of max-ing is, that is!), presuming that only one question will be asked from each of those chapters. Thus saving valuable time to cater to the really important things in life – of which there were two -listening to cricket commentaries and Binaca Geet Mala – on the radio!

The real trick here was to figure out, if you had twenty chapters and only six questions in the exam to answer, which to leave out in         ‘choice’! It took real intelligence to do this! Hubby interjects here – objection he says! Everytime he left out stuff in ‘choice’, he says, eighty percent of the questions would be from the chapters he left out! Having had exactly the opposite experience, but feeling too sorry for him to let him down, I can only nod (the Hyderabadi shake of the head which to the rest of the world means ‘no’ but in our unique land, means ‘yes’ and ‘no’ or ‘whatever’ – all at the same time!) pityingly- he’s proving my point! And that, my dear, is how we figure out the really important things in life – by leaving out stuff in ‘choice’!

But I have digressed much from my original biryani story. There is a Youth Congress dharna going on and since our house is at the junction of three roads, they pitch their tent right outside our window. The dharna is in the form of a ‘hunger fast’! The ‘leader’, fashionably dressed in an embroidered yellow shirt, bell-bottomed jeans and a denim jacket (Youth Congress – he has to make a statement!), sits receiving his ‘chelas’ during the day, when he fasts and other chelas during the night – secretly feasting on mutton biryani – with many ‘pieces’! Of course, the dharna was a success!

Did I mention earlier – hum aiseech hain! Aur aise hee khayenge bi! Tere ku kya hua?

(We are like this only.We will eat like this only. What’s it to you?!!)

We are unique…like this dish of ours…a one-pot wonder..

HYDERABADI QABOOLI BIRYANI:

• Basmati rice – worth buying the very best quality) – 2 cups, wash well and soak in 4 cups water for half an hour
• Bay leaves – 2
• Star anise – 2
• Chana dal – 3/4 cup – wash and soak for half an hour. Cook on a high flame till done but still separate (you should be able to squash it between your fingers). Strain and reserve the liquid.
• One large onion – finely sliced
• Ginger paste – 1 tbsp
• Garlic paste – 1 tbsp
• Green chilies – 2-3
• Red chili powder – 1/2 tsp
• Turmeric – 1 pinch – optional
• Caramelised onions – 3 tbsp
• Biryani masala – available everywhere! – 1 tsp
• Yogurt – 1 cup
• Oil and ghee mixture – 3 tbsp (half and half)
• Saffron – a few strands – soaked in 2 tbsp milk
• Salt
• Chopped mint and coriander leaves – 1/2 cup each

Heat the oil-ghee in a saucepan. Add the onions and salt, fry till golden.

Add the ginger – garlic pastes and continue to saute till brown.

Add the tumeric, red chili powder, green chilies and chana dal. Mix well.

Add the beaten yogurt and continue to cook, stirring frequently till the yogurt is incorporated well and drying up.

Sprinkle the biryani masala and the herbs on top.

Cook the rice (preferably in a rice cooker or a large saucepan with a lid) with a couple of bay leaves and star anise till almost but not quite done. Strain. Put back in pan.

Drizzle the saffron milk on top. Spread the chana dal mixture on top of the rice.

Cook for about five minutes more till done.

Sprinkle the caramelised onions (and fried cashew nuts if you like) on top.

Serve with a raita.

n.b – you can replace the chana with boiled chickpeas.

(This is a layered biryani in the original but at 44 c? Seriously??!!)

I just went through the recipe and realsied I’ve left out the water we used for the dal – well, use it in something else!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“‘ullo… ‘ullooo…’ulloo… good evening, Ma’am. This is Adil from Pizza XYZ speaking. What can I do for you?”

“One large veggie pizza with everything you’ve got on it, one very garlicky wedgies, one totally non-garlicky wedgies (otherwise poor hubby gets none – being the non-garlic type of person!), blah, blah…”

“Your address, ma’am?”

“12-2-275/1/A/567/B2… Prem Nagar, naale ke andar, nal ke paas” (inside the culvert, close to the public tap)!!

“Yes, ma’am, I know”, says the genius at the other end. And sure enough, the pizza turns up within the thirty minutes they promise it in! And once again, I salute the Hyderabadi delivery boys/postmen/courier chappies/ambulance drivers who, dealing with probably the most difficult and irrational system of addresses in the world, manage to get it right, day after day, year after year!

I bet that when the Allied Forces broke the Axis powers’ code Enigma in 1944, a decisive factor in the Allies’ victory a year later, they employed a bunch of Hyderabadi postmen to do the job! And I bet it was child’s play to these postmen too. All they probably demanded in return was some Hyderabadi biryani and haleem as compensation – pizzas didn’t exist outside of Italy and NYC those days!

I read in the papers today that Hyderabad is planning to rationalise its address system and go the way of the rest of world – door number followed by street name or number. Now most Hyderabadi streets don’t have names… so we’ll start with that first. Or naming streets could become controversial – the usual irrationalities of India – religion, caste and that rubbish will interfere, so decide the powers that be… so let’s just give street numbers. House number 34 on Street number 48 should be pretty straightforward, right? But wait, House no.34 is subdivided into eight little “portions”, as they are called – A,B,C,D…

So we’ll get to 34A, 34B and so on… But there’s a little gulley between houses 34 and 36 (35 is across the road, of course, did you expect it to be between 34 and 36, you poor sod?) So we account for the gulley with another alphabet – 34/H / 1… (1 being round the corner in the gulley!) Makes total logic to the Hyderabadi!

And on this scene comes a poor sod from another state in India – let’s say a Madrasi 😉 Desperately clutching on to a piece of paper in one hand, he’s looking for the erstwhile 12-2-275/1/A/567/B2, now rationalised and re-numbered as 12-2 (we can’t do away with the first two numbers because we don’t know what they originally stood for and what if we lose a lot of valuable information with these??!). So, 12-2- 36H/ 1/38A (the house in the gulley between 36 H and 38 A!). Perfectly logical, right? We’re just following the street and giving you directions at the same time! We are, in fact, being very helpful here!

And so our Madrasi comes up to the roadside chappie (there are always these guys hanging around whose only job in life is to help people with addresses – get this – they don’t get paid – they don’t get tips – they are in fact, providing a very valuable service for free!), spies the number 12-2-275/1/A/567/B2 and gives a cry of joy “ayyappane swami!” expecting that B3 – will be next door. But ah, you see, the end number is not the house number – it’s the middle number! Plus, Sir do you have the old address??!

The Madrasi collapses – with shock and exhaustion and sheer frustration! But our roadside chappies are very helpful – they revive him with strong tea and escort him to the house he’s looking for, “Arre Saar, pehle bolna tha (you should have told us earlier), – you’re looking for Mani maama’s house, na?!”

I think the Municipal Commissioner will meet with a lot of opposition!… All the way to America… where…

…a certain John Smith, looking for a friend (a certain John Denver… in San Jose, California… stops the first guy he sees – a Hyderabadi, of course and asks him for help with the address. Our pal looks at the address, scratches his head and finally shakes it sadly (we Hyderabadis hate saying no!), “Sorry, Sir, but there are no foreigners living here!!!”

Hum aiseech hain, miya!

Aur ham aiseech khaayenge! (This is how we are and this how we shall eat.) And feast on…

TIL KI CHUTNEY

• Sesame seeds/til/nuvvulu/ellu – 1 scant cup – about 100 gm
• Ginger – grated – 1 ” piece
• Garlic – 5 cloves
• Green chilies – 4
• Red chili powder – 1/2 tsp
• Onion – sliced – 2 tbsp
• Coriander leaves – 1 cup
• Mint leaves – 1 cup
• Tomatoes – 2 – chopped
• Tamarind paste – 1/2 to 3/4 cup
• Oil 1 tbsp
• Salt

Roast the sesame seeds, cool and powder. Set aside.

Heat the oil, add tomatoes and fry till softened.

To the tomateos, add the ginger, garlic, mint, coriander, green chilies, red chili powder and salt. Saute for a few minutes.

Cool and grind to a very rough chutney along with the tamarind paste and sesame powder.

Add the sliced onions to this chutney – the raw onions and sesame are a very yin and yang combo!

Temper with 1/2 tsp cumin seeds and curry leaves in one tsp oil – optional.

Serve with a khichdi and yogurt on the side. Or idlis. Or dosas.

Can’t find the address or a roadside ‘helper’? Jus’ eat it yourself!

The jackfruit is one of those things you either love to pieces or hate to death! I have yet to meet a guy who’s got a let’s-take-a-middle-path attitude to this one fruit. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Buddha’s teachings did not really penetrate in a major way to this part of the country – most associated with the jackfruit – Kerala… the middle path was unknown!

Of the guys who hated it, the most famous was the Mughal emperor Babar – who by all accounts was a fruit connoisseur, introducing melons, grapes and pomegranates into India because he missed them so much – far away from his native land! In the quest for a melon, as he described it to one of his “Hindoo” cooks he had to put up with, he described the fruit and the cook – probably from Kerala, had a eureka moment!

Big, yellow, smelly and sweet? But of course, Ind has it, Sire! And with great trouble, he transported one to the court of the great Mogul (they hadn’t changed their spelling to Mughal then!). Took trouble to cut it open, laid it out on a silver plate and proudly carried it to the emperor’s morning room. As the smell of the fruit wafted in, the emperor turned pale and feared that one of the dastardly diseases of this hot and miserable land (the big B – the original guy, not the Bacchan – hated the rich land he had conquered!) was about to strike him dead and began to invoke the ninety names of Allah – hoping that the camel would whisper the hundredth in his ear before he died…

…and then he thought he had died and gone to jahannum (hell) for having conquered Ind! With fear and trembling in his heart, he opens his eyes and finds… what he describes (when he figures he’s not dead!) as… “sheep’s stomach stuffed and made into haggis!” 

But, ah, we have to take this one man’s poison with a large sackful of salt… how much is his opinion really worth when he goes on to describe a mango thus: “When the mango is good it is really good… In fact, the mango is the best fruit of Hindustan. Some people praise the mango to such an extent that they prefer it to all fruit except the melon, but it is not so good as to warrant such praise.”

Fond as I am of the melon and all fruit in general, I would willingly stuff the great Mogul into a sheep’s stomach, stitch him up and bake him or whatever they do to make haggis – for daring to denigrate the sacred mango thus! Also the jackfruit!

When I was expecting my second child, I had this overpowering desire for jackfruit. Terrified to buy the cut stuff they sold by the roadside (having already had a bout of Madras belly!), I bought a full fruit – weighing some six or seven kilograms! Tucking my tummy in carefully, I sit down on a low stool in the balcony and cut it open (have watched my dad do this many times so I know how it’s done!) and over the next three hours – with breaks every now and then, proceed to disembowel (dat dratted Babur is still on my mind!) the fruit of some 150 of the golden-yellow tonalu as they are called in Telugu. Which is probably why Kanch hates the fruit so much today – she must have had an overdose!

Me – i love it! Love the ripe fruit by itself, love the appalam made out of it, love the chips and I absolutely adore the payasam/kheer made out of this.

One more of the dishes that I’d never eaten till I got married, the chakkai pradahaman as it’s called in Malayalam, was a revelation…

CHAKKAI PRADHAMAN /JACKFRUIT KHEER

• Jackfruit pieces or tonalu – 12 – deseed and remove the white ‘placenta’!
• Jaggery – half a cup
• Coconut milk – fresh is best. Otherwise one 200 ml pack is enough.
• Dry coconut pieces (not desiccated coconut – break open a nut and let it dry overnight in the frig) – cut into small pieces about 1/2 cm long thin slivers – 2 -3 tbsp – roasted in ghee
• Water – 3/4 cup
• Cashew bits – 2 tbsp
• Salt – 1 pinch
• Ghee – 2 tbsp

Pressure cook jackfruit peices, cool and grind to a rough puree.

In a large pan, boil the jaggery and water together to make a thin syrup.

Add the ground jackfruit paste and simmer for about 5 minutes – adding a couple of tbsp of water if it’s too thick. This payasam is not too thick.

Add the coconut milk and bring to a boil. Allow to boil for 4-5 minutes on a low flame.

Fry the cashew nut pieces and coconut pieces in ghee and pour over the payasam. Add the pinch of salt.

Serve, hot, cold, warm – whatever – it tastes just as good!

Don’t waste it pouring it on Babur’s head when it’s hot – even if you are tempted to!

Another easy way to make it is if you can get hold of readymade jackfruit jam – then all you need to add is the coconut milk and garnishings!

And oh, Babur did find something good about Ind… “The one nice aspect of Hindustan is that it is a large country with lots of gold and money.” Harrumph!

…so this friend of ours – a very busy advertising honcho, running a very busy ad firm, with a very busy schedule… you get the idea? Very busy guy… comes out of his flat on one very busy morning, hands and shoulders aweigh with lunchbag, camera bag, briefcase… his mind buzzing with… what else, very busy thoughts of the meeting ahead… with a very busy client… He gets into the lift and then as the lift makes its way down, notices a not-quite-so-busy guy, also in the lift, giving him weird looks…

Ignores him at first, then the looks get weirder, driving all the serious business of being busy out of our pal’s head – quite a task! “So what is this guy staring at? Smut on my nose?” and stares into the polished steel surface of the lift wall. No smut visible. Tentatively looks down to see if he’s got my daughter’s disease (blogged earlier – please see http://anuchenji.com/blog/yet-more-foot-mouth-tales) of missing shirt, etc. All in order. The busily creative mind is now seriously puzzled! Ennada idu? What on earth is this guy’s problem? Maybe I’m in the lift with a psychopath? Omg! All other busy thoughts are gone as he squeezes himself carefully into a corner… watching the other guy out of the corner of his eye for any sudden movements, in which he can quickly fling his lunchbox at him!

Then he wipes his glasses – on his shirt sleeve, of course. Were you seriously expecting a glasses wiper? And stares again intensely at the lift wall. Chin? Check. Nose? Check. Eyes? Check. Ears? Both in place. Specs? Sitting correctly on said ears. The gaze travels upwards. OOOOOooooh! Towel tied around head after washing LONG hair? Check! Definite OOPS moment!

Doing his best to give the impression that this was exactly the look that he had intended to convey all along and buster, you’d better watch out – thorthu (Kerala’s justly famous thin towels!) are going to be the next fashion statement, man, he nonchalantly gives his head a shake and pulls off the towel with a flourish. Thirty years in advertising have not been for nothing, right?

Sadly, the effect is slightly, just slightly – ruined by the towel getting stuck in the hair at the back of the neck (problems of waist-long, curly locks!) and eliciting an ouch from self! Also by the spray which splatters the other poor guy – whose turn it is now to shrink into the corner!  Thankfully, the lift has reached the ground floor by now and our man manages to swagger off confidently – like I said, advertising is not for nothing!

Carrying off stuff is basically the name of the game – these things happen because you planned it so! According to my husband, this is the only lesson they teach you at B-school! My response is that engineers, poor chaps, don’t have the panache to carry things off! Of course, he’s an engineer!

The queen of coverups, of coure, was my own heroine – Julia Child. She drops a turkey that she’s slaved over for hours just before serving it – at the dinner table where a bunch of guests are waiting – for Thanksgiving dinner and… picks it up and announces, “Oh thank goodness. I’ll just bring my spare turkey in!” before whisking it off to the kitchen, doing some cosmetic stuff to it and bringing it back gaily to the table! Vive la Meryl Streep!

Though there are some disasters that it’s difficult to cover up, no matter how much panache you can summon up! Like this once, when K wanted to make a fancy tomato shorba for dinner for the parents to welcome us home after a holiday and the mixie exploded! We were scraping tomato puree off the ceiling for weeks!

Here’s how to make and eat your shorba without having to lick it off the ceiling!

MINTY TAMATAR KA SHORBA (TOMATO SOUP – INDIAN STYLE)

• Very ripe tomateos – 8 large – chunk.
• Garlic – 3-4 flakes
• Bay leaf – 1
• Mint leaves – 1 tbsp + 1 tbsp to garnish
• Coriander- chopped – 2 tbsp + 1 tbsp for garnish
• Sugar – 1 tsp
• Cloves – 2
• Cinnamon – 1″ stick
• Dried coriander seeds – 1 tsp
• Red chili pwd – 1/2 tsp
• Salt
• Ghee – 1 tsp
• Jeera/cumin seeds – 1/2 tsp

Cook the tomatoes with the garlic, dried coriander seeds, 2 tbsp coriander, bay leaf , cinnamon, cloves and chili powder.

Once tomatoes are softened, let cool. Puree in the mixer to a smooth puree.

Strain out the puree. Shorba is best served silky smooth so pips and skin need to be removed.

In another pan, bring back to the boil, adding sugar and salt. You may need to increase the sugar if the tomatoes are very sour.

Heat the ghee in a small saucepan, add the cumin seeds and let them splutter. Pour over the shorba. Serve in bowls, garnish with coriander and mint leaves.

And if there’s any mess, clean it up with the thorathu that you were using to dry your hair!

P.S: This is very thin soup – just like all those excuses we made above!