Anu Chenji

 “Jitin, Jitin, wait, I’m coming down,” squeal three excited young voices. Jitin is our neighbour, the “Big Boy” of the neighbourhood, lording it over all the smaller kids, who were expected to do his bidding like run errands and so on… in return, nobody was allowed to bully us! Oh no, Jitin was not a bully by any chance; on the contrary he was an extraordinarily kindhearted young lad who looked after all of us and generally could be trusted by the parents to see that we were kept out of their hair!

The excitement is because we’ve heard the tring-tring of the bell on the ice-cream vendor’s cart and know that Jitin would be there. Also that if there were little kids around, he could never buy an icecream for himself alone! Poor fellow, must have spent all his pocket money on ice creams for the neighbourhood!

Jitin wasn’t above ragging us a bit though. I must have been about five and had just learnt to write – letters to my dad in France on a long study tour were what I started with. Having no clue of geography, France could have been the moon, for all i knew! And so, one day, in the kite-flying season,  Jitin, knowing my irrational fear of cockroaches (as strong as ever decades later!) tells me that if I write a letter to my dad and fix it to the tail of a kite, along with a cockroach, it will reach my dad in France! 

Fear and longing wage a battle within a five-year old heart – who says kids don’t have troubles??! I am petrified but desperately want to send the letter. And so begins the cockroach hunt. Most of them chased me away but I managed to get hold of one – a very little one but judiciously sliding a paper under it and then quickly sliding it into a matchbox. School done, I come home to check if the cockroach is safe (it is) and then run with the box to the maidan outside – cockroach container in one hand and a letter in the other. Holding his laughter, the big boy says the cockroach is too small – it can’t possibly go all the way to France. I promptly start bawling, loudly and lustily. Neighbourhood aunties all come running. Jitin is given a shelling. I am comforted with an icecream and go home, trailing my letter with me. My mother, hearing the story, takes pity on me and posts the letter – surefire but very mundane way of reaching my Dad!

Ah well, one lives and one learns – even at five! 

My dad comes back a year later and brings some strange new tastes with him. Cheese, for instance. I take one bite and gag, unlike my brothers who relish it. It takes several years for me to learn to like cheese.

 Now i can’t have too much of it!

Here’s an unusual cheese starter which involves no cooking!

ROLLED CHEESE BALLS

• Grated cheddar – 1/2 cup
• Grated paneer – 1/2 cup
• Hung curd – 1/2 cup
• Finely chopped peppers – red, green yellow – 1/2 cup – shallow fry in a pan for 3 minutes, add 2 tbsp breadcrumbs, salt and pepper and set aside
• Basil or mint – finely chopped – 2 + 2 tbsp
• Green chili – minced – 1 or 2 (well, you might like them spicy!)
• Salt
• Pepper
• Sugar -1/4 tsp
• Breadcrumbs – 1/2 cup +2 tbsp
• Walnuts – 2 tbsp
• Zest of one lemon with 1 tsp juice

Mix the grated cheeses, the hung curd, peppers,basil or mint, salt and pepper, one generous pinch of sugar with the green chili into a mixture which can hold together. 

Pulse the walnuts and breadcrumbs with the lemon zest, juice, salt, one pinch of sugar and 2 tbsp of basil or mint for a few seconds. The nuts should break up but not be powdery.

Shape the cheese mixture into balls and roll in crumb mixture. Set them in a flat dish lined with butter paper, slightly apart so they don’t touch each other and refrigerate  for at least two hours.

These are exotic enough and you don’t really need to kill yourself so just serve them with ketchup or pesto! 🙂 

Girls growing up in my generation were at a huge disadvantage in some ways – you didn’t go out alone – except to school or dance class or maybe the library. But the things that boys could do, were allowed to do, rather – like eat alone at a restaurant, stand by a gol gappa vendor and stuff your mouth with water running down your chin and tears running down your cheeks from the mirchi, go to a movie alone – were out of bounds for us.  I don’t think anyone ever specifically forbade any of this but you grew up in a culture where you knew you couldn’t do all this – from cousins, from older girls in the colony and the hush-hush of scandals which occasionally rock small towns… did we rebel? Occasionally, when it got TOO much! 

My rebellion, of course had to do with food! And at an age when I had thought about it and railed at the injustice of it all – soon after joining college. The first time was when I walked into an Irani restaurant on my own – one of the many which used to dot Hyderabad – and asked for a piece of cake (those virulently coloured trilayered ones – neon orange, parrot green and sunset yellow!) and a cup of chai. There were looks of horror from the more conservative part of the clientele and titters from the younger bunch (I should actually call them an audience because that’s what they became). After all, this was not some self-assured older woman or a firangi but a very local looking teenager who dared enter a male bastion – alone! Toba, toba! Giving back glare for every interested look i got, i managed to gulp down my tea and gobble the cake before stalking away – inwardly quaking but pleased as punch!

The next port of call was a ragda patties (or pattice as they were spelt in my corner of the world!) vendor- selling the most delicious potato patties covered with a yellow pea gravy. Mindblowingly hot and out of orbit delicious, the ragda pattice were worth every stare I got from the roadside Romeos who dotted the Hyderabad landscape like garden lizards!

There were consequences though… no, no, not of a social or admonitory kind but rather consequences to my tummy! The ragda pattice episode was followed by the most royal upset stomach I’ve ever had! Made me wonder whether it was divine retribution for challenging those bastions! Well, so be it!

Haven’t dared, out of deference to my stomach, to eat roadside ragda again but managed to, after trial and error, replicate the taste at home!

RAGDA PATTICE

 FOR RAGDA

• Dried white peas – 1 cup – soaked overnight
• Green chilis – 3 -4 minced
• Ginger – 1/2″ piece – grated
• Red chili powder – 1/2 tsp
• Turmeric – 1/4 tsp
• Pav bhaji masala or garam masala – 1/2 tsp
• Jaggery -1 tbsp
• Tamarind paste – 1 tsp
• Salt
• Oil – 1 tsp
• Asafoetida – 1 large pinch
• Curry leaves – 2 sprigs.
• Cumin powder – 1/2 tsp

Discard water in which peas were soaked, add two more cups of water, the ginger and green chili and pressure cook for 3-4 whistles and simmer for a further ten minutes. The peas should be soft but not mushed up. 

Heat the oil in a pan, add the asafoetida and curry leaves. Add the rest of the masalas and the cooked peas and salt. Simmer for 4-5 minutes till the flavours blend. The consistency should be thick – can be ladled but not run around the plate! Set aside.

FOR PATTICE

• Potatoes – 1/2 kg – boil till soft. Peel
• Cornflour – 1 tbsp
• Red chili powder – 1/2 tsp
• Salt to taste
• Oil – 2 tbsp

Mash the potatoes while still hot with the rest of the ingredients. Shape into round cutlets and shallow fry using a few drops of oil for each one (or use the paniyaaram / aebelskiver pan!) till golden brown on both sides. Set aside

In the meantime make the 

TOPPINGS

• 1/2 cup mint chutney (grind togther 2 cups mint leaves, 1 cup coriander leaves, !/2 ” piece ginger, 1 green chili, juice of half a lemon, 2 tsp of sugar, 2 flakes of garlic (optional), salt and kala namak (Himalayan pink salt) 
• 1/2 cup tamarind-date chutney (Microwave togther 1 cup dates, 1/2 cup water, 2 tbsp tamarind paste and 1/2 cup jaggery. Cool and puree. Add 1/2 tsp cumin powder, 1/2 tsp chili powder and salt and enough water to make a thick sauce.
• Onions – finely chopped – 1 cup or more
• Sev – 1 cup
• Chopped coriander leaves – 3 tbsp

TO SERVE

Place two patties in a small plate. Ladle 1/2 cup of ragda over. Add 1 tbsp each of the cutneys. Add chopped onions, coriander and a handful of sev and serve immediately.

Should send you immediately into a culinary heaven of textures and tastes!

And go bravely to that Irani restaurant and demand your cake and have it too!

 “Then Shiva caaame, looked all over for the head… “

“Where all did he look, Arch?” 

“He looked evelywhele! He looked under the bus, over the bus, inside the bus, in the lolly (lorry), on the beach, inside the house, on the terrace, in the auto… evelywhele he looked!”

“Then what happened?” 

“He diddint find it anywhele!”

“And then… ” so went the story… from the lips of my sub-two year old.

A couple of days earlier, I’d told her the story of how Lord Vinayaka had got his elephant head. How Parvati was having a bath and asked Shiva’s Nandi (the bull) to guard the door and not let anyone in. When Shiva came back, Nandi naturally had to let him in because his first allegiance was to Shiva. Parvati was furious and created her own image of a boy out of the turmeric paste with which she was bathing and breathed life into the image. The next time, she set the boy on guard when she went to bathe. The boy refused to let in Shiva and the latter, in a fit of rage, lopped off his head (the boy’s, that is!). When Parvati came out, she was so angry (i love these divine tantrums!) that she vowed to destroy all of creation unless the boy was brought back to life and worshipped before all other gods. Shiva, to appease her, sets off to look for the boy’s head…

He searches and he searches… evelywhele! My version to Arch was that he searched in the sky, on land and the sea – everywhere, in fact! She figured out that he had searched in many places and told me her version of the story a couple of days later – in the bus, on the bus… in the auto, at the beach… all over her little world, in fact!

In our own childhood, Vinayaka Chavithi (the festival to celebrate the birth of Vinayaka) always saw a flurry of activity in the days before it. We created little umbrellas for the image with cardboard, paper streamers and cooked rice paste for glue, made little decorations and waited for the sweets that the festival inevitably brought!

For some reason, this prasadam (offering) has always reminded me of this story… though it is made for a completely different festival – Varalakshmi Vratam – the paste that is cooked was irresistable to us small fry when we wanted to mould images out of it!

Also because of the myth associated with it. 

Once upon a time, there was a goldsmith who was trying to make an idol of Vinayaka. He kept failing as each time, the head came out looking more like a horse than an elephant. Fed up, he threw it away and went to bed (now do we know that feeling or what?!). That night, in a dream, Lord Vishnu appeared to him in his horse-faced incarnation – Hayagreeva and asked him to worship the image! It is made with chana dal because horses are supposed to love it. Never having come very close to a horse (except an occasional ride in a jutka (horse-drawn carriage) in small towns, I cannot verify this! I do, however, love it!

The prasadam is called Hayagreevam and is incredibly simple and delicious – and my mom makes the best version… here’s her recipe.

 HAYAGREEVAM

• Chana dal (Bengal gram dal) – 1 cup – soaked for two hours and drained.
• Jaggery – 3/4 cup
• Cashewnuts – 10-12
• Cardamoms – 3-4 powdered with a tsp of sugar
• Ghee – 3 -4 tbsp

Boil the soaked dal with a couple of tbsp of water in the pressure cooker for 4-5 whistles. Let cool and take out.

Grind the dal to a very coarse paste along with jaggery. 

Pulse the cashewnuts to a rough powder and set aside.

 Heat the ghee in a heavy bottomed vessel and add the dal paste. Cook on a low flame while stirring continuously. Add the cashewnut powder and mix in.

After a few minutes, add the ghee and continue to cook.

The mixture will form a lump around the ladle. Add the cardamom powder. Mix well and switch off. The prasadam thickens as it cools, so add 2 or 3 tbsp of water if it is too thick – while cooking. 

And oh, in case you’re wondering, what Lord Shiva finally found was a severed elephant’s head that he fixed on to the torso of the boy – and that is how Ganesha got his head and i firmly believe he found it on the beach, not in the bus!

 (Pic courtesy: Internet)

I have talked about my mom’s “projects” earlier. These were many, varied and breathtakingly exciting because of her own enthusiasm for everything she took up. So, if she’d got up one morning and said, “Hey, guess what, we’re all going to shave our heads today” or something like that, we’d have probably thought it was the most exciting thing on earth and pitied the rest of the poor sods who didn’t get to shave their heads off!

There were projects on baking, feeding the poor, writing stories, making up plays, building things (which invariably collapsed!), learning a new poem, learning to cook, even scrubbing the flagstones in the backyard  – mundane things which she imbued with a sense of excitement and high adventure…

…one of those was growing a vegetable garden. Mom, having the world’s greenest thumb, we already had, like most houses of those decades, lots of things which grew without our much noticing them – sapotas (which we loved), papayas (which we disliked cordially and when lectured on how good it was for health and how it was called the ‘poor man’s mango’, our one thought was ‘why don’t we give it to him then – the poor man?”!!), sitaphal, spinach, guavas, curry leaves, lemons, bitter lemons, tomatoes and things. But no, my mom decided that the garden could be more productive. So off she went to the horticultural gardens and came back with packets of seeds – carrots, beans, potatoes, cabbages, cauliflower and stuff – very exciting. 

Beds were dug, measured out and seeds planted at the proper intervals – each of us having a patch to take care of. Mine was the carrot patch. Two, then three days passed and there was no sign of anything green, much less anything orange (I’d thought they’d grow on top of the plant!). Consulted, mom disabused my mind of this weird notion – they grow underground. A week passed. I was convinced that carrots would have grown and would shrivel up and die of neglect if we didn’t pull them out. Not quite sure of this project meeting with parental approval, I wisely said nothing (very difficult task, i assure you!) and waited for the parents to leave for work. Armed with a trowel, i carefully dug up the patch – nothing except scattered seeds! Carefully covering them up again, i let them be but dug them up every few days to check on them – not a carrot did we get out of that patch!

Another “project” that died in infancy but left us with a great deal of curiosity about growing things!

The tomatoes thrived, however – rather difficult to kill them – even with such over-enthusiastic gardening, methinks and we got to eat plenty of them in many forms… one of those…

TOMATO THOKKU

• Tomatoes – the riper the better and the country variety is best for this – 6 – cut into chunks.
• Tamarind paste – 1/2 tsp (optional if tomatoes are not sour enough)
• Red chili powder – 1 tsp
• Turmeric – 1/4 tsp
• Jaggery – 2 tbsp or more – depending on the sourness of the tomatoes.
• Salt
• Green chili – minced – 2

TO TEMPER

• Sesame oil – 1 tsp
• Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Urad dal – 1/2 tsp
• Asafoetida – 1 large pinch
• Curry leaves – 2 sprigs

Pulse the tomatoes to a chunky puree.

Heat oil in a pan and temper with all the tempering ingredients. Add green chili, turmeric and red chili powder. Immediately add the tomato puree. Bring to a boil and add salt and jaggery. If the tomatoes are not sour enough, add half a tsp of tamarind paste. Lower the flame and cook for a few more minutes till the raw tomato smell goes.

Eaten with dosas, idlis, as a topping on bread or frankies…

And even if you’ve got a brown thumb, you can’t go wrong with growing tomatoes, i assure you… be more careful with carrots though and resist the temptation to pull them out – they take anywhere up to twenty days to produce shoots!

He picks up the rather luscious-looking, glistening with sugar syrup ball of… something… just what? With his fingers… it doesn’t give… a puzzled frown forms on his forehead… then clears… aah… maybe this is not a gulab jamun… it looks like one, it smells like one but, but… hmmm… maybe  a new sweet altogether… and carries it to his mouth… open in anticipation…

…it slips from his fingers… oops!… falls on the table… instead of a soft plop… there’s a thunk and then a clunk as it bounces… rolls off the table and lands on the floor with several pairs of horrified eyes watching… big THUNK as it lands but not a visible dent! 

“What is it?” asks a tremulous voice…

“Gulab jamun” is the answer my cousin Minnie proffers… the maker of the hmm… let’s call it a gulab jamun!

The bowl of gulab jamuns is passed around, everyone has to help themselves… under Minnie’s eagle eye… to at least two… people (cousins and friends in the neighbourhood who have been roped in to be guinea pigs) pick up their bowls and disappear one by one to the verandah, devoutly grateful that it’s nightfall… under cover of darkness, the jamuns are nibbled at and then quietly disposed of among the many bushes which surround the house. The next day, the cook is found scratching his head in puzzlement at the sudden profusion of ants which seems to have invaded the garden!

Minnie is in her early twenties and “learning” to cook… let’s say there’s a lot of learning ahead! During the learning though, we struggled through bowls of warm, pink, gooey slush (phirni??!) and worse!

Minnie today is one of the most accomplished hostesses I have ever seen – with a table loaded with super food and a house filled with welcome always…

So for all you struggling cooks out there, never say die!

Presenting one of the most beloved of Indian sweets…

GULAB JAMUN (NOT FROM THE MIX!)

• Milk powder – 1.5 cups
• Rava (semolina) – 2 tbsp
• Maida or plain flour – 3 tbsp (boiled, mashed sweet potato is an excellent substitute for this)
• 1 pinch of baking powder (too much makes the jamuns break up when they fry)
• Milk – 4 tbsp
• Vegetable oil to deep fry – i prefer sunflower oil in sweets as it is almost odourless

FOR SUGAR SYRUP

• 1.5 cups sugar
• 1.5 cups water
• Cardamoms – 4 – powdered with a tsp of sugar
• Rose water – if you like it – a a few drops.

TO SERVE:

• Grated or slivered almonds / pistachio (optional)

Sift together all the dry ingredients – milk powder, rava, baking powder and flour. If using sweet potato, wait – don’t add now!

Add the ghee to the mix a little at a time and mix till you get a breadcrumb-y consistency. Add the grated sweet potato and add the milk a little a time, kneading lightly to get  a smooth dough. Cover bowl with a cling film and refrigerate for about 30 minutes. This helps the jamuns to not break apart when frying.

Make a syrup by boiling water and sugar together. Add the cardamom and rose water and set aside but keep warm.

Heat oil to below smoking point. Make marble-sized balls of the dough using a light hand. The balls should be smooth on the surface – otherwise they’ll break apart when frying. Drop one into the oil to test. It should turn a light golden yellow and then brown – if it turns brown too fast, the oil is too hot and the balls will burn before they cook inside.  Keep moving them around constantly.

Once they are a deep golden brown, remove and drop into the syrup.

They can be refrigerated and re-warmed before serving with plain vanilla ice cream or slivered pistachios / almonds.

I promise they won’t go THUNK… or KERRUNK!

 (Image courtesy: Internet)