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Mills & Boons and ‘sneaky’ readers’!

Been following the stats on this blog and consistently the readership has been gender biased. More women, you say? Sorry, way off! the viewership is 55% men and 45 % women!! For a food site – that seems a bit of an unusual statistic.

But then i think back to Mills and Boon days – the brothers of all my friends used to sneakily read the stuff that sisters left lying around and both brothers and sisters sneakily reading it against mom’s exhortations – “that stuff will rot your brain!!!” M & Bs were strictly banned at home – though i did sneak a few from my cousin Devika (responsible for much of my education back then, Devi!!) so i don’t know whether my brothers would have read them too! I do remember reading prodigious quantities of J.T.Edson and “war comics” and Biggles – thanks to my brother Anand whose friend owned a library and so we got free readership! Then we progressed to Wodehouse and THEN – all other heroes paled in comparison! Arvind used to chuckle so hard over Pelham (Plum!) Grenville (still does, as a amatter of fact!), that many times he’s fallen off the chair/bed ! If it hadn’t been for the prodigious quantities of sweets that he used to put away and consequent padding of the bones, i bet he’d have broken a few bones!

Sweets! An underlying theme/meme/fatal weakness in the family and none more themed/memed/dying for sweets as my brother Arvind and my mom! – have seen them put away a whole kilogram of sweets in the space of a couple of hours!

“I’m… on… a…diet… didn’t… you… know… that??? Why… are… you… making… burfi??? The gaps in the sentence give him the time to put away yet another piece of the beloved coconut sweet – as he works his way through a large box of them a couple of years ago!

Diet or not – here’s the irresistable.

Coconut burfi

  • Grated fresh coconut  – 2 cups
  • Sugar – 1.5 cups – powder in the mixer
  • Cardamom – 5 – powdered. The easiest way to do this is in a small stone or iron pestle and mortar with 1/2 tsp of sugar.
  • Milk – 2 tbsp
  • Ghee to grease a large thaali or plate
  • Cashewnuts – a handful – fry in a tbsp of ghee and set aside.

Put the coconut and the sugar together in a large heavy bottomed saucepan and heat, stirring constantly till the sugar melts and the “mudda” (lump) leaves the sides of the pan. Add the powdered cardamom and continue to mix. Add the milk and the cashewnuts. The lump will start getting thicker and begin to caramelise. Immediately switch off and drop onto a greased plate. In 3-4 minutes, as it cools, cut into pieces with a knife. When it cools completely, break up the pieces and store in a jar – i dare you to not eat  at least 5 pieces during the process!

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Of “outside food” and elephantine humour!

And a brilliant guest post today from the creator of this whole “new look” website – Narayan Kumar – over to you, SN.
 
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Question: Why are elephants big, grey and wrinkled?
Answer: Because if they were small, white and smooth, they would be ‘idlis’.
 
Growing up in central Chennai, I knew it in my bones that outside food was fantastic. A certain Hotel Suprabhath in the vicinity was holy proof. They served a divine ‘barota-kurma’, bisi bele bhath, Mysore masala dosa among other delicacies that are cruel-to-oneself to remember now. The only inconvenient detail was that after you ate, they wanted money.
 
Money in my pocket was a constant: zero. I envied the neighbouring boys who took a bus to school. They got bus fares. They handled real money. You could tell the bus kids from the way they ran on premises – they had a hand over their shirt pocket to prevent the change from spilling. Sometimes, the smart, good boys did the hard yards from home to school and back by foot and saved their fares for a treat to the movies or eats. The smart, bad boys “forgot” to pay the conductor. They must have had a fulfilling life too. I, on the other hand, was put in a school so close by I walked to it daily from LKG to final year.
 
It is in the nature of things that Life presents penniless boys with glorious visions of restaurant food. I learnt to live by one’s wits, to make it all happen somehow. I befriended all the charlies who boarded a bus to school and avoided the buffoons who walked to school. I was nice and helpful to random uncles and male relatives who came home. With a committed lifestyle like that, many hotels nearby sprung to life.
 
There was this one guy, much older to me, who was rich and also liked me. For the sheer pleasure he took out of talking serious philosophy, he fed me in quite a few places – including the ultimate Kutty’s Corner, known for its delish egg curry with ‘barota’. To a Brahmin boy, this was about the giddy limit there was. To have Plato, Kant and Nietzsche spouted at you while you were enjoying a meal was hardly an issue, as long as you nodded and made a stray remark now and then. It somehow led him to spread the word that I was precocious for my age.
 
And there was another boy, closer in age and richer in money, who took me to a restaurant every time I told him a joke. The schoolboy joke at the top of this piece was the kind of obliging stuff I came up with. Replacing ‘aspirin pills’ from the original joke with ‘idlis’ didn’t seem like much effort. He kept his promise each time. “Make me laugh now and I’ll get you idlis in Suprabhath”, he said. Cheapskate, of course. Of all things in the greatest hotel of my childhood, he picked idlis. Truth be told, even the idlis of Suprabhath were springy soft, jasmine-white, steaming hot, perfect… 
 
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, er, my Chennai household, things were churning. The elders had had enough of sundry family members strolling in and refusing meals with vaguely muttered, “Oh, I’m full” and “I’ve eaten already”. And the campaign against eating out began in full earnest. Outside food is bad for health. Have you seen the state of their kitchen? Doctor Kuppuswamy says main cause of illness is eating out. Dorai Uncle got malaria/dysentery/jaundice/cholera/typhoid after eating at that Suprabhath saniyan. And so on. The one that caught my attention particularly: They put baking soda in idlis! That’s why you feel hungry so soon. That’s why you burp so much. They may or may not have mentioned other sounds from other parts of the body, I do not remember.
 
There was at least one beautiful result of such campaigning. I got served something astoundingly delicious that I asked what it was. My much slighted mother rightly told me to shut up and eat it. After due cajoling and praise, she gave in and said: “Idli upma”. “Don’t be silly. Which one is it?” It turned out that the uneaten idlis of yesterday were magically transformed into the hybrid, slightly sour, souped-up idli-upma of today. Fantastic stuff. In my own home!
 
Heathens that some of my brothers were, they drowned their idli-upma in sambar, if not the god-knows-what-resides-down-there bottom portion of rasam. Royalty that I was, I graced it immaculately with curd. To this day, I can grace anything with curd.
 
No doubt, as one of today’s online deliverers of hungry souls, our venerable Anu Chenji will have her own suggestions of accompaniment. And of course the main thing itself: the humble, yet soul-satisfying Idli-Upma. A return to simplicity. A paean to yesteryear. A work of ingenuity. The revenge of slighted mothers. Ok, you get the picture. Over to Anu.
 
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And Anu agrees wholeheartedly that putting stuff on, into or along with the idli-upma is a desecration! Sambar and idli-upma – shivery horrors! Rasam dregs – straight out of Stephen King!! 
 
Jus’ eat it!
 
Idli upma
 
Left over idlis (for some reason no one ever makes this with fresh idlis! 5-6 – crumble them with your fingers. If they’re the sticky variety (meaning the earlier idlis have been a flop!), cut them into small pieces with a knife
Molaga podi – gunpowder – 2 tbsp
Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
Urad dal – 1/2 tsp
Asafoetida – a generous pinch
Sesame oil – 1 tbsp
Coriander – chopped – 1 tbsp – optional.
 
Heat the oil in a pan add the mustard. When it pops (hmmm….i think the Telugu word “popu” meaning tadka or baghar came from the popping of mustard seeds in oil?? pop-pop-pop-u??), add the urad dal and the curry leaves and the asafoetida. Then add the molaga podi and stir about. Add the crumbled/cut idli and stir till the podi coats everything. Sprinkle a few drops of water on the top, cover and cook for 3-4 minutes – this tenderises the idli again. Add some chopped coriander on top.
 
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Tales of chikki tikki tavi….

“Lakshmamma, please go to the “boodha” shop and get me some “chikki”. (The boodha or the buddha with a hard ‘d’ in the middle as we used to call him), was an old bearded gentleman who ran a small grocery store across the maidan from our house. Chikki is peanut brittle  to which i was and am – addicted!

Now the shop was barely a 3 minute walk even for short 7-year old legs but i was usually too immersed in some book to be bothered with going to the shop myself. Enter faithful old servitor – Lakshmamma – who used to go to the corner store half a dozen times a day without a grumble. The chikki would be finished in half an hour but i’d have started on another Enid Blyton by then and poor Lakshmamma would oblige yet again with her two-teeth missing grin!

That “buddha” – i swear – became a rich man on the amount of chikki i used to put away! Many years later – we had moved away from there when i was about fourteen or so – the old man and his son – the young ‘ buddha’ now – attended my wedding – my ever-inclusive mom and dad having decided that everyone who had ever known me from childhood should come and bless me – resulting in a wedding with over 3000 guests – but that’s another story! 

Around this time – the earlier time, i mean, parents decided that it was time we learnt about money and the exotic thing called “pocket money” entered our lives!  My first pocket money was 3 bucks a month, Arvind, my older brother’s was 4 and Anand, by virtue of age – 5 glorious bucks! Now, no one we knew had pocket money so the whole thing was a source of great excitement and curiosity – with as much planning going into the spending of it as deciding on India’s annual budget – come to think of it – maybe more planning!

After MUCH planning, a bunch of ten of us went off to the “buddha” shop, bought 300 (yes, three hundred at one paisa each!) of those little kidney shaped acid drops (nothing to do with drugs – these are just boiled confectionery in brilliant yellow and virulent orange and green!) – the poor old buddha had to sit and count these out for us from the big glass bottle in which they were displayed, scrupulously divided by ten and ate 30 each. We were gloriously sick the next day but felt it was completely worth it! Of course, lessons in what pocket money was meant for blah, blah followed but hey, we’d had our day in the sun!

Chikki still remains much loved – and Arch, my older daughter – is just as addicted as i am!

Chikki

  • Peanuts – 1 cup
  • Jaggery – 3/4 of a cup – grated.
  • Ghee – 1 tbsp
  • Dried ginger – 1 large pinch (optional)
  • Salt – 1 pinch (optional but i like the wee bit of contrast – like salted caramel)
  • Ghee – to grease a plate

Grease the underside of a steel plate or any large flat plate with no walls and also a rolling pin. Roast the peanuts till crunchy and let cool. Lots of people like to remove the pink skin of the peanuts but i like the taste and generally leave it in. In a large, heavy bottomed saucepan, heat the ghee and add the jaggery and a couple of tablespoons of water. Heat till jaggery melts and continue to cook till it boils and thickens till the syrup reaches a soft ball stage. Drop a few drops into a bowl of water – the syrup should form a ball between your fingers. This takes about 8-10 minutes. Add the roasted peanuts, salt and dried ginger powder. Mix  well. Continue to mix for 2-3 minutes. Drop it on to the plate and roll out with the rolling pin. Let cool for a few minutes and then draw lines to cut it into pieces. Let cool completely and store or eat! It IS Deepavali after all so you can be sick after from overeatng??!!

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Rainy days and Mondays… and paatras…

 

Rainy days and Mondays…

…always get me cookin’!!

This is both a Monday and a rainy day! So what’s cooking? Well, there’s lobia, paatra vadai with cabbage leaves, chunda (an old maid of mine visited from the village with mangoes), pulihaara mix (I don’t think anyone can make pulihaara like my mom – except maybe me, modesty certainly NOT being my middle name)! Might still bake some stuff later on…

Rainy days as a child always meant hot, roasted peanuts with lumps of jaggery to bite deliciously slowly into as you nibbled the nuts (always strictly shared out between the three of us – no Shylock could have been more watchful that the other one didn’t get more!!) If mom was home from the hospital, there were potato and onion bajjis and if there were no potatoes or onions at home, my ever inventive mother came up with the strangest things that you could batter and fry: potlakai (podalanga/snake gourd cut into rings) – super hit; baingan (eggplant) – uh-uh – middling; and even jackfruit – super flop! To my mind, however, besan (chickpea flour) was always associated with bajjis only until one day…

…the fiancée of a cousin came visiting from Rourkela (Rima, remember??!!) where she had grown up and introduced us to the joys of paatra or paatra vada – for the first time, realised that we could actually steam stuff using besan! The early ages of the twenties and the thirties (our ages, i mean, not the 1920s and 30s – we’re not that old!) when waists still stayed slim never brought this steaming stuff to mind – after all, when you can deep-fry, why steam?? So bajjis and pakodas it stayed till expanding waistlines, groaning weighing scales and shooting cholesterol levels all combined in a cacophony worthy of a Star Wars finale to finally push deep-frying out. It makes a rare appearance now and is always welcomed with the love due to a prodigal hero! Also some trepidation – what if the returning hero decides to actually move back in??? Horror!

Today the prodigal returnee is still far (may make an appearance tomorrow!) and so we shall stick to the steamy but still yummy counterpart.

Have experimented till I found the easiest way to make these – there are versions which involve many layers and rolling up and steaming and cutting and frying but this one takes barely any time, therefore is loved!

Also no arbi (colocasia/chaamagadda) leaves available in Madras so cabbage it shall be!

Paatra

  • Cabbage leaves – 12 – i used a Chinese cabbage – but you can use whatever you want. Wash and carefully separate the leaves, dunk each into boiling water for a minute and then lay them out to dry. ( i know some people i want to do this to, too!)
  • Besan – chickpea flour – 1 cup
  • Dhaniya (coriander) powder) – 1 tsp
  • Jeera (cumin) powder – 3/4 tsp
  • Chili powder – 1/2 tsp
  • Green chili – minced – 1 
  • Turmeric – 1/2 tsp
  • Asafoetida – 1 large pinch
  • Salt
  • Kasooti methi – 1 tsp
  • Oil – 2 tbsp
  • Mustard  seeds – 1/2 tsp
  • Curry leaves – 2 spriges – chopped
  • Coriander leaves – 1 tbsp – chopped

Mix everything except the cabbage leaves into a  thick batter (idli batter consistency). Spread out each leaf and smear the paste over it – can slather it on – no need to be too refined about this!  Fold the thinner sides in and then roll up the cabbage leave starting with the thick edge into a sausage. Repeat till batter is exhausted or you are!  Place a single layer of these in a steamer and steam in the cooker or a steamer – without the weight  – till done – about 7-8 minutes. Switch off and let cool. Heat a little oil in a large, flat saucepan and add mustard seeds and curry leaves. Gently place the paatras in the pan and cook, uncovered till brown on the bottom. Turn over ever so gently and repeat. Sprinkle coriander on top and serve as a side with rice or a snack by itself with tamarind chutney or – if you have Gujju genes – ketchup!! 😉

 
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Of school dabbas and tehzeeb!

 

I was the only vegetarian in my school lunch group. Some 8-9 of us used to sit together and share out “dabbas”. What i always thought was boring – my sambar rice and vegetable and curd rice used to disappear within seconds! What i, on the contrary was happy to tuck into was always the “poruginti pulla koora (pakkathu veetu pulichakeerai/the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence etc.) – the Hyderabadi khatti dals and the salans that my Muslim friends used to bring. Most of my friends used to get hot lunches sent from home about the time the bell for lunch went and the resultant aromas as the boxes were opened was enough to make Lord Ganesha himself drool! 

Being the only vegetarian, i am sure a couple of mishaps must have happened – me helping myself and digging into some non-veg salan before my friends could shout out – “don’t eat that” – which happened often enough!! But the famous Hyderabadi “tehzeeb” (the closest equivalent i can get is “sanskriti” – refinement, culture, well-mannered and so on…you get the picture) ALWAYS kicked in and i was never told that i’d eaten a meat dish – to spare my feelings! Tehzeeb incidentally is  an Arabic word literally meaning trimming or cutting out the bad, harmful, useless, obscene parts of the looks, speech, behavior etc. So it’s used to denote editing (written literature), training, promoting good manners, and discipline and so on..wow, wow and WOW!

If everyone today was so mindful of other peoples’ feelings – what a world we would create! Motorists allowing each other to pass on the road, pedestrians and motorists endlessly waving each other on – and then maybe never moving….oops – not such a great idea maybe :)!  Also what if the DMK and the ADMK (read Congress/BJP or any two parties in opposition!) constantly let the other one win? And politely waved to each other to have the pleasure of looting before us….you go first, you go first – cue evil grins! Errrr!

Dear, dear! I think i shall stop trying to solve the problems of the world and let them all kill each other off as we make:

Khatti dal

  • Masoor dal – 1 cup
  • Red chili powder – 1/2 tsp
  • Green chilies- 2 or 3 – chopped
  • Turmeric – 1/4 tsp

Cook the dal with 3 cups of water, red chili powder, green chiles and turmeric till soft. Helps to soak the dal for about half an hour pre-cooking. Mash the cooked dal well.

Add 

  •  3 tbsp tamarind paste and
  • a paste made with 4 cloves of garlic and 1/2 inch of ginger
  • Jaggery – 1 tbsp (optional) and

bring to the boil again. 

 Seasoning

  • Oil – 1 tbsp
  • Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
  • Jeera (cumin) – 1/2 tsp
  • Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
  • Garlic cloves – chopped – 4-5
  • Onions – chopped – 2 tbsp – optional

Heat oil in a small saucepan and add mustard seeds. When they splutter, add the rest of the ingredients. Stir till onions are golden brown. Pour over the cooked dal. Garnish with coriander and serve  with rice and potato fry – pehle aap!