Anu Chenji

 The year was 1969, I think. There was a huge political agitation going on, the Army had been called out to maintain law and order and there was a curfew and if I remember right (well, I was only six years old!) a shoot-at-sight order. As I grew up and learnt about the Mulki movement and various other protests that shook the generally peaceful state of Andhra Pradesh, as it was then, these events  took on a different colour.

But… to a six-year old happy kid, curfew only meant NO SCHOOL, holidays when we supposed to be having exams, unsupervised time at home since both parents were working in what were deemed essential services. Mom and Dad used to leave home early in the morning before the curfew started and come back only at sunset when it was lifted. Our cousins, Rami and Ashi, being “older” and supposedly more responsible, arrived home every morning to “look after” us smaller fry.

They also introduced us to the joys of making prank telephone calls, pillow fighting, ‘disguises’ – which consisted of smearing our faces liberally with kohl from my mom’s kohl box and pretending to be dangerous pirates who fought fierce battles with cutlasses (pillows!). Since we generally tried to hide the evidence of much of the day’s perfidy before the parents came home by scrubbing our faces and much of our skin away- with soap and oil, we sort of squeaked by.  But were not so successful with blackened pillowcases – none of us knew how to wash clothes (!), I wonder what my mother made of these when she came back home!

Today, from a grown-up perspective (never half as exciting as a child’s!), I guess she was too relieved to find us in one piece to make too much of a fuss!

The presence of the men in uniforms with rifles in the maidan outside our house was a source of much excitement. We had been warned to stay indoors and not show our heads outside otherwise they’d get shot off – a completely unimaginable occurrence! And so, we took to soldier-baiting as one more fun activity – poking our heads just above the compound wall and hooting at the soldiers and as they turned around, ducking down again!

Since mom used to make lunch and leave it for us, we were supposed to eat and then clear up. With five highly imaginative children at home with no adult to tell you to “mingu” (swallow!), lunch used to sometimes take from noon till five o’clock as we sat around exchanging tales of adventures and pirates and robbers and thieves, at which point we would realize that parents were due to descend soon and some superfast clearing up used to happen!

Today, everyone bemoans the fate of latchkey kids but we were all of us latchkey kids who revelled in solitude and in the company of other kids only without supervision! Maybe that explains why I chose to go into business on my own rather than have a boss later in my life!!

Much the same way we learnt cooking – with little supervision and much freedom to figure what cooking terms in recipes meant. Figuring out that a ‘fried egg’ did NOT mean a ‘deep-fried egg’ was an important lesson!

This story is about the Telangana movement and so, it is only fitting that my dish too should be from here… presenting the yummy…

SARVA PINDI ALSO KNOWN AS THE GINNAPPA (father of a dish – ginna’s appa?)

• Raw rice flour – 1 cup
• Onion – medium – grated – 1
• Curry leaves – 1 sprig – chopped
• Coriander leaves – 1 tsp – chopped
• Green chili – 1 minced (the traditional recipe does not include this but I like the tang)
• Red chili powder – ¼ tsp
• Sesame seeds/til/nuvvulu – 2 tsp
• Roasted peanuts – crushed slightly – 1 tbsp OR 2 tbsp chana dal soaked for half an hour.
• Spinach/palak/palakoora – 3 or 4 leaves – sliced thin
• Salt
• Oil to shallow-fry

Mix all the ingredients except the oil together into a soft dough without using too much water. Cover  and set aside for ten minutes. Oil your palms, shape into balls (makes about 4-5) and flatten the balls.

Heat a tava and spread a little oil on it. Sprinkle a few drops of water to get the oil to get it to sizzle and spread evenly and then place a flattened ball on it. Wetting your hands, continue to spread the dough to the thickness of a roti. Sprinkle a few drops of oil on top. Cover and cook till it turns golden brown and crisp. Flip over and cook for another five minutes without a lid.

This dish does not need any accompaniment.

And parents, leave your kids alone!

(Pic courtesy: Internet)

Kids, in their innocence, assume the darned-est things. Stories like “Where does milk come from?” being answered by, “Plastic packets”. Or my brother Anand who, when he was small, always wanted to go “for a walk” in a cycle rickshaw! My nephew Adarsh, brought up outside India and here only for the holidays, exclaims one day, “What a small horse!”  on sighting a goat!

My daughter’s best friend, Vinaya, at the age of four, completely enamoured by my younger daughter, still a baby, keeps begging her mother to have a baby. Finding it a no-starter, she modifies her plea, “At least can you have a monkey?!”

Another day, I heard my four-year old use a cuss word that was strictly forbidden and asked her, “Where on earth did you learn that?” Pat comes the reply: “From you, Amma, when you’re driving!” (Teach me to express frustrations on Indian roads!!)

On another occasion, when I was trying to teach my 6-year old daughter Math – and her eyes kept wandering off in the direction of her dolls (obviously more interesting!), I gave her a test with made up sums. One of the sums went like this: “If Amma gives you 4 adis (slaps) in the morning and 6 in the evening, how many would you have got altogether?” She reads through my paper and prints painstakingly and clearly “AMMA, YOU ARE SO SIK (SICK) I FOGGOT TO WOMMIT!”

Another friend’s five year-old son, finding the dad snoozing, carefully pries open his eyelids, peers in and asks solemnly, “Are you in there?!!”

How about the kid who, on hearing the Nativity story one Christmas, pays close attention to the gifts the three wise men brought and says sagely, “Amma, if it had been three wise women, they’d have brought nappies and baby powder and bottles, no?” YES, indeed they would have!

For the longest time, I thought pepper came out of packets and was quite shocked to find that it actually grew on vines and was GREEN! The first time I saw these was after I was married and was completely fascinated by what seemed like nodular caterpillars growing on vines… then I bit into one, rather reluctantly (caterpillar, right?) and was hooked for life!

Today, no matter how much of it I have, I still can’t resist buying the jewel-green shiny little globules of… pepperiness!

Here are TWO recipes to be made out of it… one is the

GREEN PEPPERCORN PICKLE

• Green peppers on stalks – 150 gm – washed and wiped dry carefully without breaking
• Crystal salt – 3 tbsp
• Turmeric – ½ tsp
• Lemon juice – 5 tbsp
• Water – 2.5 cups.

Boil the water and salt together. Add turmeric.  Switch off. Cool completely. Add the peppers and bottle. Shake every day a couple of times for 4-5 days. The pickle is ready to eat. Brilliant with curd rice.

Another unusual recipe is the…

GREEN PEPPERCORN RASAM

Recipe for rasam as given in the blog entry for Tamil Rasam – click here.

Omit the toor dal. Crush two “caterpillars” of peppercorns lightly and 5-6 flakes of garlic (optional) and add to the rasam before boiling.  Proceed with the rasam as usual.

And forget the caterpillars! They’re actually furry things and I’m sure not half as tasty as peppercorns!

(Pics courtesy: Internet)

For the longest time, my younger daughter K had “eyes bigger than her stomach” as the old Telugu saying goes – meaning that she always served herself more than she could manage to eat. Since, I, in the interests of not putting on any more pounds, had resolved not to eat any lefotvers from my children’s plates (believe me, you’ll end up eating two or more meals at one mealtime, depending on the number of kids you have!), these would be disposed of in the dustbin with stern lectures on the poor starving children in Africa and elsewhere in India… to little avail..

Until finally, K’s stomach finally caught up with her eyes – both plate sized rather than saucer sized! As her athletics training grew more intense, she could out-eat almost every kid in the class – boys and girls – and in the process giving the boys a plate sized complex! Copious quantities of food were made and consumed, as she continued to remain reed-thin – no thanks to genes – going by the sizes of both parents!

Now, working with a fitness firm, K has finally met her match in appetites – everyone eats more than her! A couple of weeks ago, on her way back from work with a friend, AP – they spot a new, snazzy bakery. Yay, a NEW place to eat at! Suddenly remembering the mom who’s fed her all these years, K, feeling very virtuous, tells AP, “Let’s go in and buy something for my mom. She loves breads”. Nothing loth, the two of them park and enter the bakery full of the milk of human kindness (let’s get mom something kindness!) and money jingling in their pockets. The bakery smells heavenly – as any bakery should. And so, a few minutes later, our pals roll out of there, with hands full of baguettes, croissants and what-have- you, hearts feeling very virtuous and pockets no longer jingling with anything!

They unload the stuff and sit down in a car now smelling quite heavenly! Unfortunately, what they’ve forgotten is that companions tend to go in threes and the the third in the trio of good intentions and jingling pockets is grumbling tummies! The third now grumbles loudly – over the noise of the engine…

“Let’s just smell it,” says he.

“Let’s just break off a small bit at the end and taste it,” says she.

“A very small bit can’t hurt, right?” says he.

You see where this is heading, right? An hour later, the mom of K is presented with two buttery, jammy, satisfied but guilty faces with several empty brown paper packets. Yes, the packets did smell quite heavenly!

Yes, this mom is quite nutty about breads – to the extent of making croissants for Deepavali in preference to the usual festive fare of pulihora, payasam and vadas! But the making of croissants in weather like Madras is quite a feat so now I prefer the easier recipes – like this delightful one for… supersoft…

SCOTTISH BAPS

• Maida (plain flour) or a mixture of plain and wholewheat flour – 500 gm
• Sugar  – 1 tsp
• Butter – 60 gm
• Salt – 1 tsp
• Yeast – 2 tsp
• Warm milk – 120 ml
• Warm water – 120 ml
• Flour for dusting

Mix together the salt, flour, sugar and butter. Make a hole in the centre and add the yeast and the liquids. Mix well till you get a  very moist dough. Cover and set aside until doubled in size – about an hour.

Knock back, divide into eight balls. Press them slightly and roll out a little till the tops are flattened.

Place on a greased, floured baking tray, about 2″ apart and press on top of each with your thumb to form an indentation.

Brush over with milk and dust with flour. Set aside for twenty minutes till it doubles again in size and bake at 200C for about ten minutes till golden and feels hollow when you tap the bottom.

Serve as sandwiches with any kind of filling from anywhere in the world – Indian masala paneer to Thai salad or just plain with butter and honey!

And next time you want to buy something for your mom eat first and then buy!

“Exotic” food like pizzas came into our life quite late – sometime in my teens, if I remember right. Having eaten it once in a restaurant (no, there were no pizzerias back then in Hyderabad), I, like a million others before me, fell in love with the cheesiness, the gooeyness, the breadiness (thin-crust pizzas were aeons away!) and the general unhealthy yumminess! 

Like my mom, I too had firm faith in the tenet that what could be made ‘outside’ the home could be made at home – always better, cheaper and healthier! And so began the hunt for recipes.’ Eve’s Weeklies’ and that corniest of women’s magazines -‘ Women’s Era’ – a mag that was so anti-feminist one could only laugh at it – were scoured. No success. Old issues of ‘Good Housekeeping’ were dug up. The British didn’t seem to have heard of it either – at least going by their recipe sections – which were full of roast beef, potaotes in various forms including curries that no Indian cook would recognise and something called a “syllabub”! Sounded more like a pet name for a child than a dish, if you ask me. Loved reading them but was no nearer to solving my pizza problem.

Then I decided that I’d try to replicate it from memory – a memory that has failed me more often than not! We had  only an old-fashioned round oven (still the best for cakes, if you ask me!) at home and I needed to make many. Mulling over it, I decided that the idli stand was a perfect substitute for making many small pizzas. Flour and yeast were an obvious place to start. Now the topping involved some ketchup-y sauce and cheese – that much I was sure. But what else? And surely, it couldn’t just be ketchup and cheese, could it??

Much rumination with my Psychology textbook in front of me – free association happened – many ideas happened – until… Eureka… topping happened… scrambled eggs!

And so, dough was made, shaped into little circles, ketchup spread on it, scrambled eggs sprinkled liberally over and finally topped with grated – Amul cheese – what else? Mozzarella? What on earth was it? The idli tray (see pic in yesterday’s post on idlis) was ceremoniously lifted into the oven and baked till… well, not done but we were fed up of waiting! The “we” being my dear friend Shreesha and me! Another friend happened to drop in as we got fed up of waiting and we proudly presented the results of our “experimentation” as… voila… little pizzas aka “Pidlis”! Ignorant creatures that we were, we hadn’t even heard the word as meaning something else till much later! Our mutual friend looked shocked, looked at us quizzically as we gazed back innocently, realised that here were a couple of very green girls and proceeded bravely to try the “pidlis”! We plied him with a third and a fourth till he couldn’t eat any more and left and then sat down to eat our masterpieces – semi-raw dough with dry-as-dust scrambled eggs on top!

And so, here’s the right way to make…

MINI PIZZA

DOUGH:

• 2 cups plain flour or use a mixture of half whole wheat and half plain for a healthier version
• 1.25 cups tepid water
• Honey 1 tbsp
• Yeast – 1.5 tsp
• Salt – 1 tsp
• Olive oil – 1.5 tbsp

Prove the yeast in water. Add honey and knead dough till soft and elastic. Cover and rest to double in size – about 1 hour. Knock back and shape into little circles about 1/2 cm thick (for a thin crust) or 1 cm for a breadier crust, and the diameter of a teacup . In fact, it’s easiest to roll it out flat and use an inverted teacup to cut out the the circles. Lay out in an oven tray, leaving about 2″ between each on all sides. Cover and let prove again for 10-15 minutes. Bake in a preheated oven at 450 F for 5-6 minutes.

TOPPING (Just one of a million possible – none of which use scrambled eggs, btw!)

• Tomatoes – 1/2 kg – chunked
• Onions – 1 – sliced – optional
• Garlic – 8-9 flakes – minced – NOT optional!
• Sugar – 1/2 tsp
• Capsicum of many colours – sliced – 2 cups
• Tomato puree – 2 tbsp
• Paneer (cottage cheese)- 1 cup – chopped into small cubes
• Pineapple – 1/2 cup – cubed.
• Mozzarella (I still have a hankering for Amul’s cheddar though!) – 1 cup
• Oil – 1 tbsp
• Salt
• Pepper – 1/2 tsp
• Chili flakes – 1/2 tsp
• 1 green chili – minced
• Basil and oregano – 1 tsp each

Heat the oil and add sugar. When it caramelises, add the garlic, minced green chili and tomato. Cook till tomatoes are mushy. Add tomato puree, salt, pepper, chili flakes and herbs.

Separately stir fry the onions and capsicums on high heat for 3 minutes.

Spread the topping sauce over the pizzas. Sprinkle capsicums, pineapples, onions and paneer over the top. Grate mozarella generously and return to oven at 450 F for a further 5-6 minutes (if thin crust, more if bready) till the cheese melts and starts bubbling and forms a golden skin. Don’t let it burn.

There go your mini pidlis – oops, sorry – pizzas!

(Pic courtesy: Internet)