Anu Chenji

“You’ve got my will safely filed away? How about the file with all the passwords in it? You know where it is, right?”

He turns to his two little daughters, “Hold my hand, baby… ” and the two little ones each promptly clutches one of the father’s hands in hers…

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and braces himself… for the ordeal to come…

A scene from a Hindi movie deathbed… you think?

Nothing so mundane! It’s just hubby getting ready for a wee blood test!

In the early days of our marriage, I used to think he was funning – when he started shivering hours before he was due to see a doctor and god forbid, if the doc prescribed any invasive tests, well, let me just say that I’d rather do an apprenticeship as a toreador than drag this very reluctant, very squeamish, very scared person to the lab! But the shivering continued… after the children were born, he was much happier – now instead of one unsympathetically giggling wife, he had two very concerned daughters to help him along!

Across the ancient city of Madras are spread many analysts in many laboratories whose lives have been brightened considerably by my husband’s antics in the lab! The visit typically goes like this:

Scene: A drab, white-tiled laboratory room with a white-coat clad analyst, looking very sleepy and bored with his job…

Enter: One middle-aged man, slinking in furtively, casting quick glances all around, in the hope that if no one notices him, he can go back and tell the doctor that the lab analyst was on leave and therefore the test could not be done! Hopefully the doc will buy the story and just give him some pills!

But, unluckily for him, most analysts have been trained for just such situations – to find patients lurking in the woodwork… and they pounce on him – politely of course, helping him off with his shirt or whatever else needs to be helped off!

The man starts shivering. Please don’t take more blood than you need to, starts the plea.

Analyst: No, sir, we are going to take just 2 ml.

Middle Aged Man  hereinafter called the MAM (in shock!): What??! How can I walk out after that? I will faint! I have a family to take care of, you know!

Analyst (giggling): No, Sir, don’t worry, we will be very careful!

MAM (looking piteously at the two little daughters… he know it is useless to appeal to giggling wife for sympathy): Please hold Appa’s hands… (makes sobbing sounds)… this uncle is going to take Appa’s blood!

Children clutch their father’s hands… in the days before they grow out of it!

The needle is now pulled out gently.

MAM (sits up straighter and changes tone – more confident): You have some kind of part time job in the police department, do you?

Analyst pauses in the middle of doing things to the test tube and answers seriously: No, Sir, why?

MAM: Because if you don’t, you should apply for one. The kind of job where they torture people to extract confessions from them?! You’d be very good at it!!

The analyst, who’s been wearing a worried frown on his brow till then, chuckles loudly and smiles to himself in anticipation – what a story he will have to tell at the lunch table today!

Exeunt MAM with two small children, trailed by unsympathetic wife, slyly winking at the analyst as she leaves!

And that is the story of why labs all over Madras love my husband!

And what else can I serve after these ordeals but comfort food? In the form of this delicious…

 

HERBY WHOLEWHEAT LOAF

 

• Wholewheat flour (atta) – 2.5 cups
• Plain flour (maida) – 1 cup
• Yeast – 1 tsp
• Milk powder – 2 tbsp
• Sugar – 2 tbsp
• Salt – 1 tsp
• Rosemary, oregano, dill, tarragon, basil – 1/2 ts each – dried herbs
• 1 egg – optional
• Butter – 2 tbsp
• Warm water – about 1.5 cups (I usually freeze the whey left over from hung curd or the water strained out of making paneer (cottage cheese) in cups. I store these lumps in a ziplock bag and warm them up and use that to knead all my doughs)

 

Prove the yeast by sprinkling over a little warm water and letting it rest for ten minutes. It should turn frothy.

Add all the other ingredients and mix. Take out of bowl and knead on a counter top, sprinkling a little flour to stop it sticking, for a good ten minutes at least. The dough should, by now, be elastic and spring back when you poke a finger in it.

Cover and rest till doubled in size – about 45 minutes.

Knock back, shape and place in a greased loaf tim or a pot if you want a pot loaf.

Bake at 180C for 25 minutes and lower the heat to 160C. Bake a further 10-15 minutes till the loaf feels hollow when you tap the bottom of the tin.

 

Cool completely before slicing. Makes an awesome sandwich bread too.

No need to join the police department to make this!

Have spent most of the morning in a hospital listening to the things you don’t want to listen to – in your fifties! Cholesterol, triglycerides, treadmills, exercise, walk, walk, walk, swim, swim, swim… all doctors go to the same limited-vocabulary language school, methinks!

I am full of good intentions – alarm for 4.45 am, new shoes, walking attire – all are the new energizing buzzwords, not to count all the excitement of making lists and shopping! Now, where else did we make lists? Faint memories of setting study schedules for exams – making lists come back… in sepia tone… 

Ah, of course – the same alarm for 4.45, coffee and stretches and then sit down to study for two hours of Maths, one hour of Chemistry and three whole hours of Physics etc. etc. lists of colour pencils for cataloguing study notes by subject, exam pads (yes, plural!) for writing on, pens (remember those toffee-brown Misak pens anyone?), extra nibs, ink bottles (Bril, Quink – I couldn’t remember brands which pre-dated Camlin but hubby, being older and blessed with a better memory, brought them out like that!) What did those plans come to and where do those lists end up, i wonder??!

Get my weight down? Errrrr, it was not so long ago that I was longing to get my weight UP to ninety pounds from the skinny eighty-odd that I used to be! Not so long ago? – oops, that’s where the thirty years went??!

Diet is also the new not-so-energizing buzzword! But we shall overcome – some day, just after that truffle cake that is positively wailing out to us from the frig is consumed!

But back to our hospital. Having grown up in and around hospitals all my life, these held no great fear for me and when I first encountered people who actually shivered at the thought of hospitals even, I tended to laugh at them – till I realised how real their fear was!

It is Deepavali eve  in my small town in India. Small towns are even more enthusiastic about these celebrations than blase big cites – as though to make enough noise to make the big cities sit up and take notice! I am cowering  (hmmmm… ever notice how similar to ‘coward’ that word sounds!) under the bed, shivering with the explosion of every “Lakshmi bomb” and almost wetting myself at the blast of every “Atom bomb”! A few streets away, braver friends of mine are vying with each other to prove themselves in the rites of passage to adulthood – the bigger, the louder the explosion, the more of a hero/heroine you are!

One of my very intrepid friends decides to prove herself by holding a bomb till the very last moment before chucking it away. It would have been all right – if the bomb had not been lighted! It was and like a myriad other things in India which do not happen at the appointed time, it decided to do that very Indian thing called “preponing“! (I really have a grouse against the OED for not including this beautiful word in the English language!).

BANG goes the bomb… in the hand…

My friend’s brother – a fierce-looking chap with the blood of his warrior ancestors coursing in his veins, brings out his faithful steed – a trusty scooter, she hops on at the back and they scramble to the emergency ward.

The doctors cluck over the hand, clean it, dress it and do other gory stuff as our hero glares on fiercely. Out comes a needle and a gentle thud is heard… half the emergency team absconds to the other side of the table where hero has fainted – at the sight of the needle!

What he really needed was foods to give him “heart” – like all the 50-somethings I know! In the olden days, they would have probably fed him lion’s heart blood or something equally gory…

Today we know better and will make him this amazing, heart-friendly…

 

HEART-HEALTHY SALAD

 

• Pomegranate seeds – 1 cup
• Shredded red cabbage  – 1 cup
• Shredded green cabbage – 1 cup
• Coloured peppers – sliced – 1/4 cup
• Green grapes – 2 tbsp
• Slivered almonds – 2 tbsp – roast slightly and cool
• Sunflower seeds – 2 tbsp
• Sliced onions  – 1/4 cup
• Julienned mango ginger or fresh ginger – 1 tbsp

 

DRESSING

 

• Juice of 1 lime
• 1/4 cup mint – crushed slightly
• Crushed peppercorns – 1/4 tsp
• Minced green chilli -1 or 2
• Olive oil – 1 tbsp
• Pomegranate juice – 3 tbsp
• Salt

Whisk all the dressing ingredients together well till frothy. Mix the vegetables together well and mix in the dressing just before serving. Toss nuts on top and serve.

 

Dil se khao!

Pic: Courtesy internet

“Why are you going out with an oily face? Go wash your face, put some powder on it and a bottu and then only go out! Thebyam mohamutho koorchokoodadu”! (Don’t sit around with an oily face – for some reason this was considered quite unpardonable!)

Almost everyone in my generation, though I have a vague suspicion this applied more to girls than boys who definitely did not have to powder their faces every evening, grew up listening to this exhortation.

Some evenings, even now, if I’ve forgotten to wash my face or ‘put powder’ or brush my hair, I still peer guiltily round corners – the god of powder-putting and bottu-applying might be watching! I also thought that it was a universal phenomenon – that little kids around the world were being told to ‘put powder’ on their faces. The idea was reinforced by reading about ‘powder rooms’ – it was only late in life that I figured out that this was a Victorian euphemism for a loo! Up until then, I was under the impression that all grand houses had a room where people went exclusively to powder their noses – wow, what specialisation!

The other idea – about kids everywhere powdering their faces before going out to play of an evening, also was doomed to meet a watery grave – I hate it when childhood misconceptions die! And this how it happened… so this summer, we are traveling all over America and having loaded our suitcases with gifts for the many people we are visiting, we decide to leave out non-essentials – like toiletries – after all, Americans are really spoilt for choice in almost every product they buy!

Hubby, being a sort of single-handed supporter (I am pretty sure at least three percent of Unilever’s talcum powder revenue is attributable solely to my husband’s purchases!) of every variety and brand of talcum powder under the sun, decides to take a trip to a pharmacy. The pharmacies are huge – Americans must be a very sickly race going by the sheer number of stores, not to mention the sizes of each! We walk around, gawking at the zillions of products. Ah, there it is – the toiletries section. We search… aisle after aisle after aisle, shelf by painstaking shelf. We walk back (it’s a long walk!) to the counter and ask for help finding what we want.

“Just look in the infant section,” we are advised. Long walk back. We find the section and a teensy-weensy infant sized tin of baby powder!

We walk back to the counter. Don’t you have talcum powder?

“Sorry, sweetie, we don’t carry that stuff – nobody uses it here!” she tells us helpfully. We buy several tins of baby powder!

No talcum powder in America??!! So they go around with oily faces in the evening? Bang, or rather phussss… goes another childhood illusion!

I am quite happy – I can step safely out of the tub in the morning without having to watch out for the talcum powder slurry on the floor that is the hallmark of hubby’s ablutions!

With his genes, it was inevitable that one of the first things that my older daughter Arch learnt to say was “pooda babba” (for powder dabba – powder tin)!! It is still called that at home!

Powder is all about fragrance, right? Like this…

 

BADAM, RICE AND COCONUT PAAYASAM/Almond, rice and coconut kheer/pudding

 

• Almonds – 1/4 cup
• Rice – 1/4 cup
• Grated fresh coconut – 1/4 cup
• Cardamoms – 2, with skin

 

Grind all these together to a grainy puree. Set aside.

 

OTHERS

 

• Milk – 2 litres
• Sugar – 1.75 cups
• Saffron – a pinch
• Edible camphor/paccha karpooram – 1 tiny sliver

 

Mix the rice and almond mixture into the milk and whisk well. Set it on the flame and bring it to the boil on medium heat, stirring constantly. Lower the heat, add the sugar, mixing continuously as you pour it in.

Cook for a further 20-25 minutes, stirring frequently. The milk will thicken and become creamy.

Add the saffron and the camphor and mix well.

 

Cool completely and refrigerate. Serve chilled. It is fragrant, sweet and altogether fit for the gods!

No powder please – milk or talcum!

“Turn your face towards me and sleep!”

“No, me! Last night she slept with her face turned to you – it’s my turn today!”

“No, it was Akka’s turn last night and yours before that so it’s mine today!”

And the argument goes on till the eldest in question – Akka – gives up in disgust and announces that she is going to sleep on a mat on the floor!

The arguers are my younger daughter Kanchana and my nephew – her cousin, Adarsh, who is spending the summer with us. Born within a year or so of each other, equally self-willed, their fights are legendary and often involve us separating the two by sheer physical strength! I have on one memorable occasion emptied a mug of water over the two!

We had only one bedroom which was air-conditioned and in the Madras summer, it was inevitable that everyone piled in there – any which way. Hubby being away much of the time, three kids and I would sleep on the extra-large bed. Bedtime was always fun because it was storytelling time.

The kids used to take turns to sleep on either side of me so they could watch me closely while I told them stories – and thus began the arguments – my turn, no, mine ad infinitum! My protests were unheard – after all, I was known to be forgetful and couldn’t be trusted to keep track of whose turn it was correctly! No Shylock could have been as jealous of guarding their privileges as these two were! Arch, my peace-loving older daughter, removed herself from the stakes very early in the game!

If we couldn’t get  the argument settled early enough, the fight would erupt on the bed and spill over on to the floor, with the two wildcat protagonists rolling over and over and trying to pull each other’s hair off!

Finally settled, I would start the stories and god forbid I change one word from the previous version! Since most of these came out of my imagination combined with a really poor memory, these kids who loved everything to be just the same, must have suffered agonies with the number of different versions they had to hear – of the same story!

Before they went to sleep though, very often I was the one who went off to the land of nod and had the extremely unpleasant experience of having two bony (both of them!) little kids, digging their elbows into my sides, gently (by their reckoning!) prising apart my eyelids to ask me, in very concerned whispers, “Are you asleep?” Duh, no, Santa just sewed my eyelids together!

Loads of food experimentation was the other thing they – and I – loved and continue to love… like this recently discovered dish from Maharashtra… the crunchily delicious…

 

BISCUIT  PURI/Masala puri recipe adapted from the original by Pratibha Rao of the Indian Food Court

FOR THE PURI COVERING

 

• Bajre ka atta – 1/2 cup
• Makki ka atta – 1/2 cup
• Kambu puttu flour – 1/2 cup
• Plain atta – whole wheat flour – 1/2 cup
• Maida / plain flour – 1/2 cup
• Buttermilk – about 1 – 1.5 cups
• Salt
• Ghee – 1 tsp
• Oil – 1 tsp

 

Knead all these into a not-too-soft dough. Cover and set aside for an hour

 

FOR STUFFING

 

• Fine semolina/rava – 1 cup – roast for 5 minutes till you get a nutty aroma. Do not let it brown.
• Sambar powder – 1 tsp
• Chili powder – 1/2 tsp
• Dhaniya/coriander pwd – 1/2 tsp
• Jeera/cumin pwd – 1/2 tsp
• Asafoetida – 1/8 tsp
• Turmeric – 1/4 tsp
• Curry leaves – 3 sprigs – microwave for 2 minutes till crisp
• Copra/dry coconut – grated – 2 tbsp
• Jaggery grated or sugar – 1 tsp
• Amchoor powder – 1/2 tsp
• Salt
• Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Ghee – 1 tsp

 

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the mustard seeds. When they splutter, add all the powders and the copra. Roast for a few minutes. Add the rava, jaggery, salt and curry leaves. Mix well with your fingers to a fine breadcrumb consistency.

 

OTHER

 

Oil to deep fry. Divide the dough into lime sized balls. Roll out into puris. Drop 1 heaped tsp of the masala powder in the centre and gather the edges to make a bundle. Flatten and roll out again to discs of about 2 mm thickness, using a little flour to dust. Roll very carefully as the dough can develop holes and the stuffing leak out.

The original recipe calls for a plain four (maida) dough but these are healthier and tastier and absorb very little oil.

Heat the oil and slip in the puris. Fry till golden brown and crisp – it will take about two minutes for each puri.

 

These puris stay crisp for several hours – ideal to make ahead and keep. Serve with mint chutney or plain – they are quite yummy with nothing at all – sort of self-saucing!

“We want… we want… we want… “

“Strike… strike… strike… “

Familiar words in modern India – particularly back in the 80’s and 90’s when we were just waking up out of the hibernation of centuries in a race to “modernise”.

The strike call is not from us students – as might have been expected – after all, it is the divine duty of students to strike! Merely asking for things definitely does not suffice – even if there is a chance of it fetching results, it is tame plus there is no guarantee of a timely disruption to the exam schedule – which finally, is what the strike is all about, right?!

The strikers are our mess staff members – the cooks, cleaners, peelers of potatoes and other important hostel activity-carriers-out. They are striking for something – not important in India – the call for a bandh or a hartal is more important than the cause thereof – always! Halfway through making dinner, the workers down arms – literally – in their case – knives, peelers, rolling pins and tongs!

There we are  – a bunch of some 200 students – stuck miles out of the city – with no recourse to any other eatery. There is a small shack on campus run by a couple – “Aunty’s” – who make omelettes and tea and an occasional dosa. There is no way on earth this couple is going to manage to feed two hundred hungry young people three meals a day. Even if we could afford their very modest rates for that many meals, that is – and we can’t! Indigent student problems are endemic!

But we are not management students for nothing – here is a live chance to demonstrate some of the (very little!) stuff that we have learnt! We organise ourselves into teams – each team taking on one meal. Teams need leaders… and in this case, leaders with specific skills – culinary skills that is! In a hostel of that many students, there are just three of us who can cook! We divide up b/f, lunch and dinner in shifts – with volunteers to do the heavy jobs like picking up enormous vats of rice, dal and vegetables and some to stir and some to serve. With the staff having abandoned the cooking halfway we are also left with an enormous mass of semi-kneaded atta – for chapathis. Can’t be thrown (this is India, we do not throw away food!) and the thought of making rotis for two hundred is daunting to say the least!

Finally, one of the enthu cutlets in my class volunteers – let’s start, am sure we can finish it! Muscular guy that he is, he soon has the many tubs of atta kneaded – with many hands to help. Then we roll them out into long snakes and these are cut into lumps for rolling out. Our man is enthu – very enthu... too enthu, in fact! He goes chop, chop, chop wielding the knife like a professional looking Malcolm MacDowell in “The Passage” chopping off the victim’s fingers and causing me to puke in the middle of the movie! Well, our pal chopping chapathi balls doesn’t go that far  but suddenly I (in charge of this particular shift), come across a QC problem (see, more management lessons!) – the dough balls have changed colour – from a neutral beige to a rather virulently streaked crimson! No, this time I don’t puke. I quietly send the guy off to get first aid, unobtrusively sweep a bunch of dough balls into a dustbin and carry on with the job! We’ve got them all (the blood- streaked balls that is!) but I still steer clear of the chapathis at dinner! Many lessons are learnt – over a period of several days that the strike lasts… and not just culinary ones!

And so, now we come to an area that I have never covered in these culinary chronicles – the roti/paratha/kulcha arena – not because I don’t love them – I do – passionately, but because I probably wouldn’t stop – eating!

Here is a slightly unusual parantha – a North-South fusion kind of thingy.

 

CHAAWAL KE PARATHE/rice – stuffed parathas

 

• Left over rice – plain or pulao or anything – 2 cups
• Kneaded chapathi dough – atta (whole wheat flour and a little salt kneaded with warm water and left to rest for an hour)
• Chopped onions – 12 cup
• Chopped mint and coriander – 1 tbsp each
• Kasuti methi – 1 tsp
• Salt
• Red chili powder- 1/4 tsp
• Minced green chilies – 1 tsp
• Dhania/coriander pwd – 1/2 tsp
• Jeera/cumin  pwd – 1/2 tsp
• Ajwain/carom seeds – crushed – 1/4 tsp  – optional

 

Mash the rice together with all the other ingredients (except the dough, of course!). Make the dough into lime-sized balls. Roll out into a disc, put a lime sized lump of rice mixture in the middle, wrap into a bundle and roll out again, using flour to help.

Roast on a heated tawa, pouring  a few drops of ghee on each side, till golden spots appear.

 

Careful, you don’t want crimson spots!

Serve with pickle, kachumber (Indian shredded salad), yogurt…