Anu Chenji

“Malathi pinni, why don’t you remove your hair and hang it on a nail like my mom?” asks my four-year old brother Anand of my aunt – mom’s sister.

“Because my hair is actually growing out of my head!”

“Oh,” as he digests this in silence. Just how difficult this adult world is to understand – some people can hang up their hair and some can’t!

My mother “helps” her hair along with a switch which she attaches to her ‘real’ hair every morning and coils into a large bun – the de rigeur style for lady doctors in the ’60s.

“Malathi pinni, why can’t you sing like my mother ?” asks my other brother Arvind some weeks later.

“Because no one in the world can sing like your mother!” responds frustrated aunt who actually is a pretty good singer and has just spent the evening trying to sing her two nephews and niece to sleep!

My mother, on the contrary, is probably the most tuneless soul in the world – next only to my dad! But they sing – all the time! Persistently, tunelessly and loudly from my dad and equally persistently, tunelessly and reedily from my mom! We children obviously grew up with as much idea of music as a grunting rhinoceros or rather, three grunting rhinocereses, and therefore, when Malathi pinni actually sang, the shock to our systems must have taken some weeks to recover from!

“Malathi pinni, kodi guddu!” I shout out before hiding myself from her – it’s a game and kodi guddu (a hen’s egg in Telugu) for some reason, is a really hilarious name to call her! I am about a year and a half old. Malathi pinni is the only one with patience enough to play this game infinitely with me! She leaves on a trip and my mother goes to see her off at the station. Before she goes she asks me if I have a message for my aunt. Yes, I do. “Tell her kodi guddu!”

One of our favourite aunts, then as now, Pinni as the youngest aunt, was full of pep and go and willing to run around with sundry small folk – we must have tried her patience but she was a good sport!! She could sing, she didn’t care what people thought (I loved that!), said what she pleased, did what she wanted to… and was, come to think of it, still is – incredibly impulsive!

Here’s a tribute to a good sport and all in all good egg – Malathi pinni!

PESARA PAPPU PAYASAM/GREEN GRAM KHEER

• Green gram dal (the yellow, skinless variety) – 100 gm
• Jaggery – 1.5 cup – grated
• Ghee – 1 tbs
• Coconut milk – 200 ml pack (I use Dabur or any other good brand – freshly made at home is best, of course!)
• Cashewnuts – 2 tbsp – chopped
• Raisins – 1 tbsp
• Cardamoms – 4 – peel and powder with 1/2 tsp sugar.

Fry the cashewnuts and raisins in ghee and set aside.

In the same pan, add the washed moong dal and fry for 5-6 minutes till a nice ‘nutty’ smell arises (Pinni, this ‘nutty’ smell is why I’m dedicating this post to you!! Apologies, but thanks for being a little nutty 😉

Add a little water – about  a cup and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and add the coconut milk and two more cups of water.

Let it cook on a low flame, stirring occasionally. Once the dal has cooked, add the jaggery and cook for 5-6 minutes more.

Adjust with a little more water if necessary – this is a not too thick payasam.

Add the cardamom powder, mix well and switch off. Add the fried nuts and raisins.

You can see the buildup of dishes to Ugadi, can’t you?

Kutti ponne, kutti ponne,

Kovam kollade

Appa vara neram aachi

Chande podaade

Thus went a nursery song I used to sing to my daughter when she was very little – the lyrics basically meaning: Little girl, don’t get upset. It’s time for Appa (dad) to come home.

Much later, when the kids were slightly older – nine and five years old each… my husband worked for a year and a half  in the Middle East.

“How many more days till Appa comes, Amma?” is a question I’ve answered more often than I care to remember during those years. With a short stint in the Middle East and a longer stint in the deep South, ‘Appa’ was home only occassionally and therefore it was always a treat to be looked forward to. While my husband was in Muscat, the calendar would be marked off assiduously every morning as soon as they woke up – a whole two months before he was due to come! Day after day was crossed out, excitement continued to build till they could almost not contain it in the few days before he was due to arrive.

Long letters in childish scrawls starting, in Kanchu’s case, with a sentence that would begin at the bottom left hand corner of the page and meander gently, like the Danube across most of Europe, to the top right hand side corner – where, it suddenly realised there was no more room to go and would, without missing a beat, trickle down the right and then begin the long loop back to the left! Most of Kanchana’s letters had to be transcribed by pencil by me before being posted to hubby – he’d never have made head or tail of them otherwise!

Arch, as befitted an older sister and the one who could read books, wrote very ‘propah’ letters except that the style was imitative of whoever she was reading currently – so a series of missives styled after Enid Blyton, Frank Richards, Richmal Crompton or, as she became more ambitious, P.G.Wodehouse himself – reached distant shores!

Appa’s actual arrival lived up to all their expectations – waiting at the airport jumping around on one foot (K), till he came out, both of them launching themselves on to him and clinging on for dear life… the drive back home and the very serious business of opening presents! Two large suitcases, several bags, of which about a couple of kgs was his clothes and the rest loaded with goodies for everyone. Chocolates as though we owned Willie Wonka, perfumes and enough “smell things” as Kanch called them – to make our house smell suspiciously like a boudoir and on one “height of heights” occasion, roller blades for both girls! These last transformed them into instant celebrities at school – blades hadn’t hit Indian shores yet! What astounded me was the speed with which both became accomplished bladers – and how, like a good mom ;), i quickly learnt to turn this to my advantage – “yes, you can blade every evening – provided… ” Homework, finishing tea, putting away schoolbooks – all accomplished as smoothly as a hot knife cutting through the puddle that is butter in Madras in the summer!

Ah well… though I must admit it was never difficult to get them to finish tea… a much looked forward to communal meal everyday… the excitement of retailing the day’s news in detail, who was friends with whom, who had a fight… all the really important stuff life is made up of!

And a favourite teatime snack…

PESARATTU

FOR GRINDING

• Sprouted green gram/whole moong/pesarlu/pacha payaru – 3 cups
• Raw rice – soaked for two hours – 2 tbsp
• Green chilies – 3
• Ginger – 1″ piece – chopped
• Salt
• Jeera/cumin seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Asafoetida – 1 pinch

OTHER INGREDIENTS

• Chopped onions – 1/2 cup
• Oil – a few tsp

Grind the soaked rice first till fine.

Add all the other ingredients and grind into a rough, knobbly batter, adding a little water if needed. It is important to NOT let this batter ferment.

Heat a dosa pan and smear a few drops of oil on top with a halved onion or potato.

Sprinkle a few drops of water on top. If they sizzle, the pan is hot enough.

Take a ladleful of batter and spread out on the pan into a round pancake – the pesarattu. Pour a few drops of oil all around the edge.

Sprinkle a few onions on top. Cook for a couple of minutes till the bottom is golden brown. Turn over and cook on the other side – another couple of minutes. Serve with ginger chutney or sweet and sour onion and tamarind chutney. (See links to these below).

Click for ginger chutney recipe

Click for onion and tamarind chutney recipe

And don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that coconut chutney is a fitting accompaniment – it is NOT!

Also, if you have political ambitions, you just might want to check out the MLA pesarattu – filled with upma!

Gulabi poovai navvaali vayasu…

Something something, something something tum pum pum…

…goes an old Telugu song – the Telugu version of the title song from the Hindi blockbuster Yaadon Ki Baraat… a song which for some reason I’ve always sung (if what  I do with lyrics and music can be called singing, that is!) as Ugadi poola vidagaali manasu… well, in my defence I still don’t see too much difference between singing, The heart should laugh like a rose (the original) to my version which means, The heart should blossom like a neem flower – the Ugadi flower! In fact, i think mine should become the standard version – it’s a healthier version after all with neem flowers and everything! And you know what they say about a romantic heart in a healthy body, right? Oops, was that a healthy mind in a healthy body? Never mind – everyone has a right to poetic licence – whether Juvenal or me!

So back to my healthily romantic Ugadi flower – the abundantly-produced-during-this-season flowers of the neem tree – smelling as sweet as the rest of the tree’s products – bark, twigs, leaves, evn the flowers themselves – are bitter to the taste! A bit like some people I know!

Ugadi is round the corner and memories of many earlier Ugadis come flooding back… my children were always excited about this festival because the evening before, after school and the workday were done, we used to set out to one of the temple markets close to where we live and buy exciting stuff like mangoes, mango leaves to decorate the doorway to the house and most importantly – coloured kolam (muggu/rangoli) powders. Home, tea-d, bathed, we’d get down to the serious business of decorating our threshold – each of us got one area and you could draw what you wanted in it! Mine, of course, tended to be traditional and the ‘dotted’ variety whereas the kids, who had not learnt any of the traditional stuff, decided what they wanted to draw and colour. Rules were you could help if help was asked for, admire but not criticise – anyone’s works of art! Festival, right?

And so we had pink elephants with one orange eye and one purple, finished off with a green tail – all needing to be explained because I thought it was a mouse (!), mice which looked like earthworms, trees which looked like ghosts – all frolicking across our threshold! We may never have won a prize for art but definitely for spreading joy – in the form of many half-concealed giggles from neighbours!

Kanch’s exuberance would always overflow her limited (even now!!) artistic ability but her heart would overflow with the joy of creation until she couldn’t bear it any longer… and I’d get squeezed and hugged to within an inch of my life! One memorable occasion, she hugs me and asks, “Can I become you when I grow old?!!!” Ugadi that year was THE BEST! Weel, she may not want to repeat that today, but sadly K, we do end up being more like our parents than we realise!

Then of course, festival food was always to be looked forward to… Ugadi pachadi, pulihora, roast baby potatoes, chakkara pongal and whatever else they wanted…

So here is one of our favourite foods for Ugadi… the celebration of life’s flavours – sweet, sour, salty, chili hot and astringent (iguru)…

UGADI PACHADI

• Raw mango – 1 – chopped finely
• Neem flowers – washed well – 2 – 3 tbsp
• Jaggery – 1.5 cups – grated
• Green chili – minced – 1 cm piece
• Salt – 1 pinch
• Tamarind water – from a small marble sized ball of tamarind soaked in 1 cup water.
• Water – 2 cups

Mix everything well and let the jaggery melt completely. Chill and serve.

I don’t serve this only for Ugadi but several times through the long Indian summer – it’s a fantastically ‘cooling’ drink.

And here’s the link to the song from the movie – my version is yet to be shot but this one is passable 😉

Click for song

 

Weeks of post-operative recovery and then a bad virus have left me with a distaste for most foods –  for the very first time in my life that I can remember! While I do normally have food preferences, being brought up by parents whose philosophy where food was concerned was “if it’s gone through any/some/all of the processes of washing, cutting, agni-pareeksha, then it’s good enough to grace your plate, not to mention your stomach!”. I’ve never been a fussy eater… except for now…

…when I find myself turning my nose up at “wet” foods, blanch at the sight of overcooked rice, feel sick at the very thought of Italian herbs, turn my face away at the mention of eggs (yes i know i blogged these yesterday but i couldn’t face them!) …at this last, my daughter K tells me, “Amma, you must be really ill – if you can’t stomach eggs!” True – normally one of my favourite foods – I will eat them in almost any form…

Trying to figure out what I actually can stomach and want to eat is quite a job – considering that I have to ask some one else to make it for me! Come to think of it, this is probably why I’ve always recovered so quickly from various ailments and surgeries earlier – because I want to get back to making stuff that I like to eat and feed people! Ah well, there is definitely a Buddhist lesson in what I am going through now – teach me to be so attached to the pleasures of the palate.

For the past few years, have been doing some serious amount of reading on Buddhist philosophy and finding it very consoling… then I came across this piece on life in a Buddhist monastery. The monks – both novices and senior monks – all eat in silence – in mindful contemplation of their food – that works for me! But… get this… the food is deliberately made unappetising so that the monks do not get too attached to its taste! That does not work for me at all!

At which point, I decided, like a good Oriental, to get around the problem by shelving it for the time being, moving on to other areas of the philosophy that I do understand and can accept and coming back to this conundrum later! I have a sneaking feeling though, that I will not be able to shove it aside forever – no matter how Indian my mind is! Rather like Pakistan-India relations – let’s bond over everything else – Samjhauta Express, trade links, cricket matches, Hindi films and Pakistani serials, even a Coke ad – watch this clipping… click here to watch – but let’s ignore the elephant in the room that is Kashmir! We can’t shelve it – same way like I’ll have to face up to my attachment to food sooner or later… i guess!

Right now, it’s going to be later 😉 (i’m taking a lead from our politicians here!)

And while I’m on the subject of figuring out what I’d like to eat, have a craving for one of those very basic comfort foods – a mixed rice… a very specific one, as a matter of fact!

COCONUT AND RAW MANGO RICE/THENGA-MAANGA SAADAM/KOBBARI-MAMIDIKAI ANNAM/ PULIHORA

• Raw rice – 2 cups
• Raw mango – grated – 1 cup
• 2 green chilies
• 6 red chilies
• 2-3 sprigs curry leaves
• 3-4 sprigs coriander leaves
• 5-6 tsp fresh coconut – grated
• Grated jaggery – 1 tbsp or sugar 3/4 tbsp
• 3 tsp dry coconut powder (optional)
• 2 tsp mustard seeds
• 2 tsp methi seeds
• Boiled peas to garnish – 1/2 cup (optional)

TO TEMPER:

• Sesame oil – 1 tbsp
• Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Cumin seeds /jeera 1/2 tsp
• Urad dal and chana dal – 1 tsp each
• Peanuts – 2 tbsp
• Cashew nuts (optional) – 2 tbsps – broken into halves
• Asafoetida – 1 pinch
• Turmeric – 1/4 tsp
• Salt

Method:

Cook the rice in your rice cooker  (preferable) or pressure cooker. Spread it on a flat plate and separate the grains. Let cool.

Dry roast red chillies, curry leaves, methi seeds, mustard seeds, and dry coconut.

Grind this dry masala.

Next pulse the grated mango, grated coconut, green chilies, jaggery and the dry masala above till just blended.

In a pan, heat oil. Fry cashew nuts till golden yellow, remove from the pan and set aside.

Then add peanuts and let them roast till crisp. Add mustard seeds, urad dal, chana dal, asafoetida and turmeric. Let the dals roast for a minute.

Add the coconut, green chili and mango paste.

Fry for a few more minutes.

Now add the rice, salt and cashew nuts and carefully fold together all the ingredients.

I swear this will help you ponder on existential problems like India-Pak relations and o’erweening attachments… to food or anything else!

A bemused ten-year old sits staring at cage after cage of hens ranged around a huge yard… the hens are all superbly white and the thought crosses my mind… “Aunty, who gives the hens a bath everyday? They’re so white?” I ask! Aunty, my friend Neeroo’s mother, takes a minute to react – she probably can’t believe what she’s just been asked… and then great peals of laughter ring out, startling the hens – probably affected the number of eggs they laid that day! She’s never let me forget it – even four decades later!

It was my first time on a poultry farm – my friend’s parents owned one and she’d invited us over for a birthday party. Now I knew that hens laid eggs but nothing of poultry beyond that! The entry to the poultry farm is always a bit of a shock – the smell is overpowering and rather sick-making. A few minutes into it and you don’t even notice the smell any more.

A visit to Neeroo’s poultry farm was always a treat because there was no end to the amount of eggs one could eat – omelette after omelette disappeared down our throats – a healthier birthday party option than the chips and Coke that became standard birthday party fare later on.

Being the daughter of a very nutrition conscious doc and the niece of a nutritionist, I am very conscious of what we make and eat. Birthday parties never involve Coke and Pepsi – rather, it’s always a fresh juice – watermelon or orange and aloo tikkis rather than chips. And eggs wherever I could!

And while on the subject, BBC has just broken news that 19 officials in Cuba have been accused of stealing… get this – eight million eggs! Now I know that egg lovers can be forgiven much  – after all, i am one myself 😉 – but eight million? That is 4,21,000 eggs per head! Taking an average age of these egg-loving officials to be forty and a life expectancy of thirty years more for each of them, they would have 1,40,350 eggs each to look forward to – 4,700 eggs per head per year – or thirteen eggs a day! All this assuming that the eggs will last forever! Well, loving eggs is one thing but a baker’s dozen everyday is a bit much!

And so, today we make… what else – an egg curry! But a very different one from Andhra – with milk!

PAALU GUDDU/EGGS IN MILK

• 5-6 eggs
• Onions – 3 large – very finely sliced
• Green chilies – 4-5 chopped
• Curry leaves – 2-3 sprigs
• Jeera/cumin seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Turmeric – 1/2 tsp
• Oil  2 tsp
• Milk – 4-5 cups

Heat the oil in a flat bottomed pan and add the jeera. When it splutters, add the green chilis, onions and curry leaves. Fry till golden yellow. Lower the flame and add milk. Mix well and let the mixture come to the boil. Break the eggs one by one, gently into the gravy. Cover and let cook till set 8-10 minutes.

Easy peasy and yummy – maybe this is what those Cuban officials were stealing the eggs for!

Pics for the paste few weeks courtesy internet – mostly – still not well enough to cook!