Anu Chenji

“An-dradha. Will you be my best friend for tomorrow?” says one of my many school friends. I am quite happy to agree to anyone who asks me to be their best friend – after all, one can always be many people’s bf or bfftw (best-friend-for-the-week!), right?

Then during the short ‘interval’ in the morning (the morning school break), two more girls come up with the same request. I don’t have a suspicious nature so I nod happily. By the time lunch break is over, I’ve received no less that eight requests! Now even with my unable-to-smell-a-two-week-old-dead-rat-at-two-feet nature, something smells – rat-ty!

The thing with self-deluding natures is, you see, that you think that everyone loves you! It is not a bad thing to figure out – as I did in my late thirties (did I claim in an earlier story that I was quick on the uptake? – I was lying!) – that sometimes what they love is in your cupboard!

What was in my cupboard then was our annual class trip to a local “place of interest”. Nine times out of ten, this was the Coca-Cola factory in Hyderabad! A classmate had an uncle who was a big bug at the factory and obviously the good sisters at our convent school took the easiest way out! So what if we’d seen the factory four times already – the kids enjoyed it! Plus – and this was a VERY BIG plus indeed – they got free Coke!

We were warned about being on our best behaviour – say thank you nicely, DO NOT ask for a second bottle, do not wander out of the line and so on… we were a generally polite bunch of kids so these warnings were really redundant. But then adults have to have some occupation, no?

But none of this explains why I was suddenly so popular during the week leading up to this trip…

…..you see, I’ve always had a problem with fizzy drinks – I sip them slowly through a straw – as one is expected to – but there is an unexpected fallout – in about two or three seconds. Warm Coke or Fanta or Bovonto or whatever it is I’ve imbibed, flows gently out of my nostrils! I can only tell you that it is a most unsettling experience – if you’ve never experienced it yourself! This happens even if the Coke is cold – it’s like there’s a little processing plant plant in there which is spitting out effluent (as you can see, I haven’t been married to a process engineering guy for thirty years for nothing!)

…and so, since everyone knew that I wouldn’t drink my bottle of Coke, it automatically meant that my best friend for the day would get my bottle also – and be heroine for having wangled two bottles!

Now, if only my school had taken us to a samosa or vada or masala vada factory, I’m sure I’d have been on everyone’s hate list for trying to pinch their samosa/vada/masala vada!

Or these…

KUNUKULU (LITTLE DEEP FRIED ADAI VADAS)

• Toor dal – 3/4 cup
• Chana dal – 1/2 cup
• Urad dal – 1/4 cup
• Rice- 1/2 cup
• Putani/putnala pappu/pottukadalai /fried gram – 1/4 cup
• Chopped coriander – 3 tbsp
• Chopped onions – 1 cup
• Asafoetida – 1/4 tsp
• Salt
• Red chiles – 5
• Green chilies – 2
• Peppercorns – 5-6
• Curry leaves – 2 sprigs – chopped finely
• Oil for deep frying

Soak all the dals and rice except the putani for about an hour. Drain and grind to a very knobbly, rough, thick batter adding everything else. At the end mix in the onions, curry leaves and coriander.

Heat the oil, break off bits of the batter and deep fry till golden brown. Don’t shape them into smooth balls – the rougher the edges the crisper the kunukus!

For a healthier version, add shredded cabbage to the mixture.

I swear everyone will be your bff if you serve them these!

“Put on your pants before you come out of your room!” I yell at my 7-year old daughter who has a habit of wandering out forgetting various articles of clothing! It is a source of constant tension to check to see if she’s properly attired before we leave for school and office in the morning. Now, everyone knows how that works – the pre-eight o’clock period of the morning – you barely have time to check if you’re still breathing before you have to hustle self and everyone else out of the door!

Then you cross the halfway mark, just negotiated horrendous Madras traffic and that horrible stretch of road still under construction (they do know how to choose their time, don’t they??!) before a small voice piped up from the backseat, Amma… I think I forgot my pants/shirt/pencil with an exam on today/lunchbox/that assignment which is overdue by a week and the teacher has given her an ultimatum – today!… any of a number of things!

K, being K, would have been perfectly happy to go to school with any or all of these missing, except the all-important lunch box! That was something for which she would want to turn back for! The rest of it I considered important and would turn back for – just a matter of differing priorities!

Back to our missing pants tale. There is a shocked silence for a minute at the other end of the line. “But… but… how did you know I wasn’t wearing any?” whispers a friend’s voice! I had dialled a friend just before K came out of her room half-dressed and without realising that the line had been picked up at the other end, yelled out the pants-on-fire bit! Shocked friend, embarrassed self, both with a funny bone equal loads of laughter and a tale that I haven’t lived down even twenty years after!

There is something about our one-track minds which is rather unmindful of anything in the environment except the thing we are focusing on at the moment – which invariably leads us into trouble!

I’d have yelled out an instruction, “Be sure to flush after you’re done” at a cinema or a restaurant or something without realising that the kid being given said instruction was behind a closed toilet door but there was a large-as-life co-theatre-goer/diner standing right in front of me till I got a funny look and the other lady scuttled off as fast as her legs would carry her, to get away from this keeper-of-public-morality!

Oh well, one lives but one doesn’t always learn!

One then consoles oneself and the embarrassed kid and maybe even the co-diner with food items! Like this…

 BANANA CHOCOLATE MUFFINS

•  3 very ripe bananas – mash well
• 100 ml vegetable oil (sunflower or any odourless oil)
• 3 tbsp yogurt
• 2 large eggs
• 100 grams demerara sugar
• 200 grams plain flour/maida OR a mixture of half and half whole wheat flour and maida
• 4 tbsp cocoa powder (sifted)
• 1 tsp baking powder

To the mashed bananas, add oil, eggs, yogurt and sugar. Mix well.

Mix all the dry ingredients together and working really fast, mix the wet and dry ingredients together.

Spoon into muffin cases (about 15) and bakle in a preheated oven at 200C for 15-30 minutes till done. These muffins are dark brown and simply delicious!

You really will enjoy taking your foot out of your mouth for one of these! 😉

So… the other day, I was at my regular supermarket checking out stuff. Most of the sales and counter staff know me by sight as I shop there every week almost. She checks in some item and then pulls out a Kitkat bar from a basket, shows it to me and says, “Ma’am, this is free with… (some other product that I’ve forgotten now – I am an advertiser’s nightmare – never remembering what comes free with what. I might remember the free thing but I cannot, for the life of me, ever remember what it came free with – thereby defeating the whole point of the ad campaign!!) And if certain advertising industry pals of mine are reading this, you can pay me for a free tutorial on brand recall, advertsing effectiveness and so on… 😉

Back to my story… so I say thank you very nicely (having been brought up with proper manners and so on). Then I notice that she is looking rather bloated and has a load of bangles on each arm. She’s also looking rather hungry – it is lunchtime almost… and so… i put two and two together (like any good MBA would) and come up with… forty four (also like any good MBA would). Remembering my own very long ago pregnancies, the seemantam bangles and the almost insatiable hunger I used to feel while doing my sales calls, waiting for lunchtime, then snack time, then tea time… was inspired…

So I hold out the Kitkat to her, tell her my whole family is off chocolate (lie!), so why don’t you have it instead? She protests a bit, then accepts it shyly. Billing is done. My bags are loaded. And by way of goodbye, I ask her casually, “So when are you due?” (You can skip this bit if you’re Indian – you’ll understand! But for everyone else, that is an Indian’s unobtrusive way of asking, when is your baby due?) She looks puzzled. “What, ma’am?”

No one ever accused me of being slow on the uptake. “Oh”, I wave airily. “You know. When is your summer break due?”

Then before she latches on to just how lame a save that was, give her my bestest and most brilliant smile and walk off  – pretending to be jauntily unconcerned! I don’t fool her for  a minute!

Come back home and relate this edifying tale to my family. Hubby, of course, sighs the defeated sigh of a long suffering husband with a wife who, according to him, takes one foot out of her mouth – only to put the other foot in! “But she did look pregnant,” I protest weakly…. my daughter very kindly points out to me that since this is the fourth time I’ve done this (in her memory and god alone knows how many times before that!), maybe I should contain my friendliness to sales girls. Even weaker protest from me… (daughters have that effect on one, you know!)… “she looked hungry… soooo… ” and then decide that it is better to beat a dignified (as dignified as I can muster under the circumstances, that is!) retreat… then I’ll live to fight another day! To ruminate on favourite pregnancy foods…

One of which was this…

TOMATO PULAO

• Basmati rice – 1 cup – wash well and soak in 2 cups water for half an hour at least. Cook till almost but not quite done.

FOR MASALA PASTE

• Ripe tomatoes – 4 large – chunked
• Ginger – 1/2 “piece
• Dhaniya powder – 1/2 tsp
• Jeera powder – 1/2 tsp
• Red chili powder – 1/2 tsp
• Garam masala – 1/2 tsp
• Turmeric powder – 1/4 tsp

Grind tomatoes and all the powders togther to a knobbly puree. Set aside.

FOR TEMPERING

• Oil – 1 tbsp
• Ghee – 1 tbsp
• Cardamom – crushed – 1
• Cinnamon – 1 ” stick
• Cloves – 2
• Bay leaf – 1
• Sugar – 1  scant tsp
• Onion 1 large – sliced fine
• Green chilis – sliced
• Salt
• Pepper – 1/2 tsp

OTHER INGREDIENTS

Boiled peas – 1 cup

Heat the ghee and oil. Add sugar. Let it caramelise. Add the whole spices and the onions and fry till onions are golden brown. Add the tomato paste and cook for about ten minutes till reduced to a thick paste. Add the rice, boiled peas, salt and pepper and mix gently together. Cover and cook for five minutes more till rice is tender.

I serve this with nothing except a cucumber salad and plain yogurt and if you’re felling in the mood for some calories – potato chips!

And when you put this is your mouth, you’ll have to take both your feet out!

“Can’t we have rajma or chole or paneer or something instead?”asks the eight-year old daughter of a friend. Why boring bisibele and stuff?”

Her mother is planning the menu for a dinner party and the child in question is of the opinion that South Indian food is… well, boring! Am first horrified, then amused… as I realise that what the kid is objecting to is everyday food. All the North Indian dishes are ‘special’ in her mind because they are eaten mostly in restaurants and not really much at home. The lure of the exotic, the grass being greener on the other side, or in our own more graphic Indian languages poruginti pullakoora/pakkathuveettu pulichakeerai/ghar ki murgi dall barabar – the neighbour’s food is always tastier.

So the poor mother tries to explain that bisibele is a very special dish, made only for festive occasions… but the child is having none of it. The mother gives in and rajma replaces bisibele on the menu! Both are happy – the mom because it lets her off the far greater effort that bisibele takes to make!

On another occasion, have been invited to a North Indian friend’s house for lunch and she’s made the inevitable rajma-chawal (which I love btw!), some aalu, some paneer and then as I compliment her on how good everything is, she says she always finds it tough to plan a menu for vegetarians! I look surprised… she explains… “See when i have to plan a  non-veg meal, i just put together a combo of chicken/fish/mutton and a salad and I’m done. With vegetarian food, I can’t think beyond the rajma-chawal, chana-puri combo!”

So then I ask her about stuff like lauki (bottle gourd), tori (ribbed gourd), baingan (eggplant) and the millions of vegetables I can think of. Her turn to look aghast. “But.. but… “, she splutters, “that’s not food“!  I collapse with laughter! I guess, in this case, the ghaas-phoos on the other side of this fence was not greener!

As a child, I too definitely preferred the rajma-rice in Neeroo’s house to the sambar in mine! And she the other way around. There were occasions when she’d be tucking away into the sambar at my place while i slurped down her mom’s brilliant rajma at her place! Another Punjabi friend who told me that no matter how hard she tried, her sambar came out tasting wrong – like masala-fied and not unlike rajma!

As a generation though, today, with the very urbanised kitchens we run, I really think we’ve bridged the divide – rajma in my South Indian kitchen tastes like rajma should and not like a masale-wallah sambar! So much so that the quest now is to go back to the villages and discover forgotten grains, pulses, methods of cooking and even cooking vessels, implements and fuels! We’ve come full circle… or maybe that’s just my five decades speaking!

The decades in my bag lead me to get excited about the very traditional stuff like this…

UNDALA MAJJIGA  PULUSU OR URUNDAI MOR KOZHAMBU or as the redoubtable Meenakshi Ammal calls it

“Pulse ball buttermilk stew”! ROFL!

FOR UNDALU:

• 3/4 cup toor dal + 1/4 cup chane ka dal – soaked for two hours (or just half an hour in the Madras summer!) and drained
• 2 sprigs curry leaves
• 2 green chilies
• 2 red chilies
• Asafoetida – 1 large pinch
• Coriander – chopped – 1 tbsp
• Jeera/cumin seeds – 1 pinch
• Coconut – 2 tbsp
• Salt

Grind the soaked dals with the chilies, asafoetida, coconut, cumin, and salt to a coarse paste, adding the curry leaves almost at the end so they break apart but don’t get ground up. Mix in the chopped coriander. Shape into small marble sized balls.

Set two or three balls aside.

Steam the rest for about 10-12 minutes till tender and spongy.

FOR MAJJIGA PULUSU

• Sour yogurt – 2 cups
• Turmeric – 1 tsp
• Coconut – 3 tbsp
• Cumin seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Red chilies – 3
• Green chiles – 2
• Asafoetida – 1 pinch
• Jaggery – 1 tsp
• Salt

Grind all the ingredients except yogurt along with the reserved  dal balls to a very smooth paste. Whisk this paste to a smooth mixture with the yogurt adding 2 cups water.

In a large saucepan, cook the yogurt mixture on a low flame till the raw smell of yogurt disappears. Add the steamed ‘undalu’and continue to cook for 4-5 minutes more.

TO TEMPER

• Mustard  seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Urad dal – 1/2 tsp
• Jeera seeds – 1/4 tsp
• Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
• Coconut or sesame oil – 1 tsp

Heat oil, add mustard. When it splutters, add everything else and fry for a few seconds. Turn off and pour over the pulusu.

Serve with hot rice (or cold in the summer!) and a roast potato or green plantain curry!

And no, I assure you it will NOT taste like rajma or kadhi even! The answer to chicken from this side of the fence!

And then there was this annual school trip – the BIG one – each trip being planned by the powers that be at my school with more enthusiasm than skill or knowledge! Unconfirmed tickets (for a journey of over a thousand kilometres from Delhi to Hyderabad!), unscheduled stops, natural disasters, missing cooks, stolen luggage, inadequate arrangements to stay, toilets – everything that could possibly go wrong usually went wrong on these trips! But the unkindest cut of all, as far as I was concerned was the inadequate food! Too spicy, too late and almost all the time, too little of it!

Nothing seemed to faze the good sisters of the convent where we studied and plans were made for even more elaborate trips year after year! Of course I hated missing them! Who liked missing the fun of endless bus trips with tuneless (and endless) antakshari games? The giggling, the sleeping together squashed with inadequate covering, four to a bed meant for two – you fell off if you so much as turned over! The bedbugs, mosquitoes and on one memorable occasion, a hole in the roof through which the rain actually poured down on us – didn’t even have the decency to drip decorously into a bucket! Of course we had to go!

One trip stands out in my memory – the trip made in the month of November , 1977. The year the worst ever cyclone to hit India hit the entire state of Andhra and the neighbouring states. The year the school decided to take us on a bus trip of the South of India! It rained, of course. Incessantly. Our suitcases which were loaded on top of the bus were soaked though. Clothes developed fungus! After several days (or what seemed like it) the good sisters finally saw sense and decided to cut the trip short – turning back from somewhere close to the halfway point. Being about thirteen years old, we didn’t really care much! Also, we’d just finished with Kerala where most places we could afford to eat in had only red rice and coconut-ty accompaniments. Our very Andhra stomachs had quailed, worked up courage, tackled the food and then, quietly lain down to die! We were secretly rather relieved at the prospect of going home!

And so we drove back. And the bus started to cross a bridge on a river. Halfway point. There was a sudden flash flood. Water rising up to almost window height. The teachers, some of whom had brought little children along, started praying to every god they knew for succour. Our cook and his assistant were more practical – they promptly clambered on to the roof of the bus – if we had to get washed away, at least they’d be the last to die! I notice a fish – a rather large two-foot specimen – swimming just below my window and excitedly call everyone else to look at it. The bus teeters perilously to my side and then rights itself as everyone screams and rushes back to their seats!

We – i think everyone in the bus below the age of about fifteen – thought it was the most hilarious thing that had happened to us! There was no realisation of the danger we were in…

Luckily, the bus had got stuck in the middle of the bridge in a large pile of sand. A few hours later, some brave villagers swam across and harnessing the bus with ropes and things, pulled us across to the other side… the only discomfort we felt was in not being able to go to the loo!

A couple of days later, we were safely, if rather stinkily (remember the fungal clothes? – we couldn’t change!) back home… after, as far as we were concerned, yet another fun trip!

I learnt to love much of Kerala’s cuisine later, though the red rice still defeats me… but one dish which stood out in my memory is a dish from Karnataka – eaten somewhere on the Karnataka roads, obviously! Akin to the Andhra mukkala pulusu, this had a unique taste of its own.

KAIRASA

• Sweet potatoes cut into chunks/drumsticks/bhindi/okra/shallots – any or a mixture of these – 1 cup

FOR MASALA PASTE

• Urad dal – 1 tsp
• Sesame seeds – 1 generous tsp
• Fenugreek/methi seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Red chilies – 6
• Asafoetida – 1 large pinch
• Grated coconut – 2 tbsp
• Dhania powder – 1 tsp
• Tamarind paste – 1 tbsp
• Jaggery – 1.5 tbsp
• Salt
• Turmeric – 1/4 tsp

FOR TEMPERING

•  Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Urad dal – 1/2 tsp
• Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
• Sesame oil – 1 tbsp

Roast and grind the ingredients for the masala paste except for tamarind and jaggery. Grind and set aside.

In a pan, heat the oil and temper with mustard seeds, urad dal and curry leaves.

Add the vegetables and fry for a minute or two. Add a little water, cover and cook till half done. Add the tamarind, jaggery and the masala paste and a cup of water and bring to the boil. Simmer and cook till the vegetables are tender.

Sweet, sour, tangy, slightly nutty from the sesame (reminds me of the good sisters of my convent!) this is a great side dish for a dal or if you want a light meal, just by itself with rice!