Anu Chenji

“Can you make that baingan curry we had at the wedding reception?” asked my father-in-law very hopefully of his new daughter-in-law – aka me! I could cook but baghara baingan – the dish he was asking for – was definitely a stretch!

 

Hailing from Madras, my husband’s family was used to the typical ‘thaali’ meal served at Tamil weddings and our Hyderabadi “daaawat ka khana” which is what they got at my wedding – was a total shocker! The fact that it was a shocker to them was a shocker to me – Hyderabad-born and bred!

 

After the initial surprise, however, they fell to with gusto – greeting each bowl of mirchi ka salan, baghara baingan, biryani, poori-masala aloo, khatti dal like they’d never seen it before – which was likely. No one in their family had ever married a Hyderabadi before! My father-in-law particularly fell in love with baghara baingan and some weeks later, asked me if I could make it. Now, i could cook but festive dishes like this one were a problem.  I knew only how to eat them!

 

But could I say so??? And lay my Hyderabadi background open to ridicule?? Of course not. So I prevaricated – who knows better than the Hyderabadi how to put off till “tarsoon” (the day after day after tomorrow!) anything that begs to be done today??!!! The telephones in the colony we lived in did not work most of the time – so no quick SOS call possible to mom for recipe.

 

God had not yet taken birth in his Google avatar – in fact, most people hadn’t seen a computer! Cookbooks were few and far between. Couldn’t even find a Hyderabadi in Madras those days – phew!

 

Snail mail was the answer. Quickly posted off to my mom for recipe. Mom obliges very quickly – too quickly because the speed at which she responded added to the famous “doctor’s scrawl” meant much of it was illegible.  Never mind, I reasoned, the “Madrasis” wouldn’t know if it differed from the original and proceeded to decipher as much as I could and make up what i couldn’t!

 

Unfortunately, to cater to family’s desire for spicy – very spicy – food, I added a LOT of chilies and forgot to put in any salt! A cousin who was visiting was the first to try this exotic dish from the new bride – hmmm…. all I’ll say is the cousin never visited us again!

 

After that, of course, many baghara baingans have happened with much happier results. Try this out.

 

 

Baingan (long purple brinjals/ eggplant) – 1/2 kg

2 small tomatoes – quartered – optional

1/2 tsp red chili powder

8-10 pods of garlic – grind to a paste

Tamarind paste – 2 tsp

Mustard seeds- 1 tsp

Curry leaves – 2 sprigs

Oil – 4 tbsp

Salt

 

Make a masala by roasting separately and grinding together the following:

 

Poppy seeds (khus khus) – 2 tbsp

Dhania (coriander) – 1 tbsp

Peanuts – 2 tbsp

Jeera (Cumin) – 1 tsp

Til (Sesame seeds)  – 2 tbsp

Copra (dry coconut) – 3 tbsp

Onion paste – 2 large onions – slice, fry in a tbsp of oil till golden and grind to a paste.

 

Slit the brinjals length wise into 4 keeping the stalks intact. Fry them for 5-6 minutes till they discolour. Set aside. In the same oil, add mustard seeds and wait till they pop. Add the curry leaves, Add the onion paste and garlic paste and fry for 3-4 minutes. Add the chili powder and the masala powder and stiry for a couple of minutes more. Add the tamarind paste and 1 cup water and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the fried brinjals and the salt and cover and cook for about 7-8 minutes till brinjals are tender. Drop the quartered tomatoes on top and cover. Switch off and let the tomato pieces stew in their own juices!! 😉

 

Top with chopped coriander and serve with white pulao rice. Watch ’em drool!

 

The year is 1975. The place – Vizag. The occasion – the first birthday of the twin ‘babies’ of the family. My uncle and aunt have invited the whole colony and some 200 people are expected to turn up. The house has been busy for several days with various aunts, not to mention us small fry pitching in to “help” with making loads of goodies for the party.More about this “help” later on!

Birthday parties were not so common in Indian homes back then and catered parties were undreamt of! Soft drinks (luxuries) bottles arrived and were stored in large drums full of ice – serious depredations happened on our particular favourite – a sickly sweet mango concoction imaginatively named “Mangola”! Said depredations were quickly brought to a close by my uncle discovering some 30 empty bottles neatly hidden in the bushes!

My aunts were busy making “boondi laddoos” for a crowd of 200, not counting family – another 30 or so staying in the house. My brother Arvind was roped in to help them count the laddoos – haha! The aunts parked themselves on the floor next to the dining table and the laddoos were made and handed over to Arvind who was supposed to lay them out in neat rows on the white table cloth and count them. About an hour later, my aunt asked him to count and tell them how many were there – by her reckoning, there should have been about a 100.

Arvind counted the rows and the columns many times up and down and down and up and sideways but the number stayed firm – a grand total of THIRTEEN! Summary dismissal happened – now we KNOW how laid-off employees feel on getting the little pink slip – except that they don’t have a stomach full of laddoos to console them!

Boondi laddoos are a time consuming affair but rava laddoos can be dished up with the most basic cookery skills! And i assure you, these will disappear just as fast!

Rava laddoos

Rava(semolina) – 1.5 cups

Powdered sugar – 3/4 cup

Cardamoms- powdered – 3

Pacha karpooram (edible camphor) – 1 teensy weensy bit – about the size of a mustard seed

Saffron – few strands dissolved in 2 tbsp of warm milk

Ghee – 1/4 cup

Cashew nuts – 2 tbsp

Almonds – 2 tbsp

Raisins – 2 tbsp

Milk – 3 tbsp

Heat the ghee in a pan and add the cashews, almonds and raisins. Stir till the raisins puff up and the cashew are golden. Remove from the ghee and set aside. Add the rava and stir for 7-8 minutes till it’s golden. Add the sugar and stir for 3-4 minutes more. Add the nuts and raisins, milk and saffron milk and mix well. Switch off – it should be the consistency of a heavy sludge – easier to shape. Let cool a bit till you can handle it. Dip your palms in cold milk and shape the mxture into balls.

Set aside for about an hour to dry before storing in a tin. Do NOT eat while shaping! Count. Whaaaatt??? Only 3??? What happened to the other 15???

I don’t know what it is about starting this blog, but ever since i  began, my kitchen has seen more and more South Indian food – and my blogging has been about this – something about digging for roots?

 

Growing up in Hyderabad in the 60’s and 70’s, life was one long, happy sinecure, punctuated by the occasional painful exam period but more often than not, it was about playing in maidans till the light faded, “bhuttas”(roasted corncobs) hot off the charcoal fire, waiting for the “munjal” (nongu in Tamil, Tari in Hindi) guy to come on his rounds, stealing grapes from the gardens around my grandfather’s house, waking up to the unmatchable joy of the first winter chill and overarchingly – unending summer holidays.

 

These summer holidays were a period of great fun but somewhere, i had a hankering for the kind of holiday that all my classmates seemed to have, which was two months in their “native” villages. Now, as then, this seemed the most exotic vacation and my mom must have grown quite fed up of the endless “why don’t we have a village to go to?”!! Swimming in the village well – something that everyone seemed to do – was an unimaginable thing. After all, all the wells I’d ever seen were about 3 feet across so if you stretched out, the chances were you hung out on either side of the well!

 

Villages on both parents’ sides having been abandoned centuries ago, we considered ourselves “deprived” kids!

 

Later decades haven’t quite removed this longing for the pastoral life from my heart but I have learnt to appreciate the linguistic and culinary heritage that my multicultural, city-bred background has given me – Andhra, Kannadiga and Maharashtrian with a Tamil immersion for the last 30 years. And the last month has seen me digging more and more into my roots for old recipes. Today’s special was “undala pulusu” or “urundai kootaan” – an all time favourite.

 

 

For the “undalu” (balls)

 

3/4 cup tor dal + 1/4 cup chana dal – soak for two hours

3-4 red chilies

2 green chilies

Asafoetida – a large pinch

Rice flour – 1 tsp

Grated fresh coconut – 2 tbsp

Chopped curry leaves and coriander leaves – 1 tbsp

Salt

 

Grind everything except for the herbs to a coarse paste. Mix in the herbs.

 

 

Sesame oil – 1 tbsp

Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp

 

Heat the oil in a pan and add the mustrd seeds. When they splutter, add the ground paste and stir for 4-5 minutes. Cool and shape into balls and steam for about ten minutes. Set aside

 

 

Mustard seeds – 1/4 tsp

Urad dal – 1/2 tsp

Asafoetida – 1 large pinch

Sesame oil – 1 tbsp

Curry leaves – 2 sprigs

Tamarind paste – 2 tsp

Jaggery – 1.5 tsp

Sambar powder – 3 tsp + Peppercorns – 7-8 + Jeera (cumin seeds) – 1/2 tsp -grind together

Salt

Rice flour – 1 tsp

Turmeric – 1 large pinch

 

Heat oil in a pan. Add mustard seeds. When they splutter, add urad dal, asafoetida and curry leaves. Add the ground powder, rice flour and turmeric. Immediately add 3 cups water, tamarind paste, jaggery and salt. Bring to a boil. Simmer and add steamed balls. Cook for 3-4 minustes more and switch off. Serve with hot rice, ghee and roast potato. Bet you won’t miss the village any more!

 

“What a GEM of a person”!! Compliment, you’d think, right? Wrong! GEM is an acronym for Ginger Eating Monkey – a loose translation from the Tamil: “Inji kadicha korangu”! Colourful way to describe a sourpuss with a permanent sneer. English similes pale in comparison. I dare not take on a Wodehouse (it would be sacrilegious to even think of paraphrasing anything writtten by the God of humour) but I think Mr Wodehouse would definitely have loved to describe an Aunt Agatha thus! 

 

Aside : Imagine the first man – or woman – let’s not get gender-biased here or actually first baby or LGBT member or any other grouping or of any of the above groups (as you can see i do NOT want to step on any toes here) who saw a monkey biting a piece of ginger, then saw their Aunt Agatha and drew a comparison between the two – again with no offence to any grouping, aunts included!

 

My mom makes the best ‘upma’ in the world today but there was a time when she was so busy with her medical calling and running a home that shortcuts were the order of the day – with the result that the upma would result in a number of GEMs around the table – literally – as we bit into many lumps of ginger of all shapes and sizes!

 

Anand, my brother, went through a phase where he hated mustard in the seasoning (popu) of anything and particularly upma so you can imagine his agony and subsequent hatred of upma on which many hours had to be spent picking out not just the various sizes and shapes of ginger but also the little black mustard seeds!!

 

No wonder we grew up preferring omelettes and paranthas – after all, you couldn’t put ginger into omelettes! Or so we thought – until i actually was served an omelette with ginger and curry leaves and turmeric and… ah, well, that’s another horror story I’ll save for a scary evening!

 

Ginger/inji/allam is definitely an acquired taste and one that I acquired rather late in life. Today, though, no one could be a bigger fan of “allam pachadi” (ginger pickle) than said erstwhile GEM – self!

 

Here’s my mom’s recipe for allam pachadi.

 

 

Ginger – peeled and cut into thin slices – 2 cups

Red chilies – 1/2 cup + 3 extra

Asafoetida – a pinky nail sized (gorantha in Telugu) lump

Jeera (cumin seeds) – 1/4 cup

Methi (fenugreek seeds) – 1/2 tsp

Tamarind – 1 lime-sized lump – wash

Jaggery – 1.5 lime-sized lumps

Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp

Sesame oil – 4 tbsp

Salt – 1.5 tsp

 

Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a pan and add the asafoetida, red chilies and methi seeds. Fry for a minute – till you get an aroma and start coughing ;). Add the jeera and stir for a minute. Add the ginger and fry for about 5 minutes – stirring constantly. The ginger will change colour slightly to golden brown and turn crisp. Switch off. Cool and grind along with tamarind, and salt to a slightly rough paste.Can add a few tbsp of water at this stage. Heat the rest of the oil, add the mustard seeds. Wait till they splutter and then add the 3 red chilies. In a few seconds, add the ginger paste and the jaggery. On a medium fire, cook till the ginger stops smelling raw, stirring constantly. The consistency of the chutney should be like idli pindi/maavu – dropping. It thickens a bit when cooled.

 

Cool completely and bottle in a sterile jar. Lasts in the frig for a couple of months at least. Serve with idli or pesarattu or dibba rotte (see post dated 16/09/2014). Bet it wouldn’t make you look like a GEM even if you are an inji-neer!

 

Archana’s con mum has inspired me to put this down.  My sympathies Arch. Here’s another version of the con mom.

 

I am not a foodie. But there are things I love to eat, things I eat because I have to and things that I refuse to eat (finally, as an adult you get to do this, but when your kids are not by your side watching your every move.)

 

But at 7, I was horribly fussy and exasperating. So my poor mum spent considerable time and energy in convincing me to eat.  So, there was Kovakka which was the fast-running kai that would make me win races; there was ugh! Bhindi which was maths kai so I could master maths in the confidence that my brains had had enough bhindi to eat. And so on and so forth.

 

Years later, it was my turn to be a con mom. I was luckier because my son is a foodie – provided the food had North Indian, Italian, Chinese or Thai antecedents.

 

So, one time, I decided to make paharkai pitlai (a dish that I love). My son, about 11 at the time, walked in hungry and raring to have a go at the food. Straight-faced, I told him it was called pitlai and that it was a variation of an Ethiopian dish!! He lapped it up, loved it and wanted more. Then of course, he also wanted to know what went into it.  Bitter gourd? Dhania seeds? Tamarind? Ethiopian? Really?

 

Not really. But he loves the dish. And here’s how I make it. Tweak the proportions of chilli and salt and gur to suit your palette.

 

 

Cooked Toor dal – half a cup

Tamarind water – about 1 cup

Gur – Lemon sized

 

 

One tablespoon of chana dal

Four Red chillies (or as per taste)

Half a tablespoon of Dhania seeds

One cup of grated coconut

 

Roast the chana dal, red chillies and dhania seeds in one tablsespoon of oil. Cool and grind with the grated coconut. Keep aside.

 

Cut bitter gourd (paharkai) into rings and then quarter them. Boil them in water with salt, turmeric and a little tamarind water (quarter cup). Cool, squeeze the bitter gourd pieces to remove water and keep aside. Now add fresh water to the bitter gourd pieces, add salt and turmeric if required.

 

Add the remaining tamarind water and let the mixture cook. Add the cooked toor dal and allow it to boil some more. Add the gur. Then add the ground masala. Take the dish off the fire after about five minutes.

 

For the tadka, use mustard seeds, one or two red chillies and curry leaves. Garnish and serve.