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Vegetable cutlets: Of squeaky voices and ‘grown up’ sisters

 
“Excuse me, Sir, but could i talk to my sister?” one absolutely cherubic 4-year old’s countenance presents itself at her 8 year old sister’s classroom door. The face belies an iron will not to be done out of her share of goodies which her mother has inadvertently mis-packed.
 
A very embarrassed older sister comes to the door of the classroom. Loud hiss: “What do you want? Can’t you see I’m in the middle of a maths class?”
                                      
“But, Akka, I think you got my cutlets and i got your salad!” Imagine this in a 4 year old voice which is way off the pitch scale, earning consequently for its owner the nickname of “Squeaky”, audible to the whole class and you have  a classfull of 8 year olds rolling about in laughter – very happy for the comic relief in the midst of algebra! As also an “Akka” who by now looks as though she would cheerfully murder the 4 year old sibling.
 
The younger one has her lunch hour at noon; the older one half an hour later and the mom in question (me) having packed tomato rice and cutlets and a salad has – in the morning rush – packed two dabbas of salad in one’s lunch and two dabbas of cutlets in the other’s, to the younger one’s intense disappointment but like i said earlier, she wouldn’t be diddled out her favourite cutlets!
 
End result – one very upset 8 year old stalks home in the evening: “Amma, you have to teach Kanchana to behave – tell her she can’t come to my class”! No harm was done, however, and the story passed into the school’s folklore!
 
So here’s the dish that Kanch couldn’t do without!
 
Veg cutlet
 
Potatoes – 1/2 kg – the floury variety – boiled and peeled
Carrots – 2 – peeled and boiled
Peas – 1 cup – boiled
Coriander (dhania) powder – 2 tsp
Cumin (jeera) powder – 1 tsp
Himalayan pink salt (kala namak) – 1/4 tsp
Asafoetida – 1 large pinch
Chili powder – 1/2 tsp
Finely chopped green chilies – 1 large
Chopped mint and coriander – 1 tbsp each
Juice of 1/2 lemon or raw mango powder (amchoor) 1/2 tsp
Salt
Cornflour – 1 tbsp
 
Mash the potatoes and carrots together along with all the spices and salt. Mix in the peas. Fold in the cornflour without overworking it. Shape into flat discs about a cm thick and fry on a flat tawa (pan) with a few drops of oil on each. Serve with ketchup, of course!!! And watch your pitch rise from alto to soprano!
 
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Varuthakozhambu: Vat-ral-koz-ham-bu and other tongue twisters south of Nellore

 
“Anu atha, what is Vat-ral-koz-ham-bu?” asks my nephew Shriram who’s just landed in Madras and been taken to visit the sights – one of which is a famous local sweets and savouries shop. Puzzled, i walk over to the shelf that he was staring at in fascination.
 
Omg, you’s better start learning a bit of Tamil, or rather, Tamizh, now that you’re going to be here for five years! You’d better learn to pronounce Vatra kozhambu properly or else you’ll get beaten up sometime in the years you’re going to be here!” And he proceeded to receive his first of many lessons in pronouncing the Tamil “zha” – the lessons continued for five years till he left Madras but he never got beyond a “C” in pronunciation!
 
Can’t blame him though, i married a Tamilian and it took me 6 months of hardcore Tamil immersion before i got it right! Not to mention having an uncle whose Ph.D thesis in phonetics (honest-to-god, I’m NOT making this up!) was based on this one sound – unique to the Tamizh language! For those of you still struggling with it,, try curling your tongue upwards into a “U” and saying “llll” through the curve – enjoy!
 
My own first encounter with this dish was a disaster – it looked like a browner version of the familiar sambar and so i piled it on – four large ladlefuls – on to my rice – only to have my tongue curl up backwards and upwards in the sheer shock of the sour taste and i went “llllll” in disgust! Am pretty sure now that’s how the Tamilians got to invent the sound “zha” – the shock of vatral kozhambu (or vatha kozhambu – easier to say!) – the first guy must have gone “llll… ” and his “paattu master” (the ubiquitous music teacher in every good Tamilian household!) must have decided he had a prodigy on his hands!!! ZH-UH!!!
 
Here goes the dish dear to the hearts of everyone south of Nellore!
 
Vatra kozhambu
 
Drumsticks (not chicken, i’ve told you this earlier but the hard, 2-foot long bean called “murunga” in Tamil and “moringa moringa” to give it it’s botanical due) – 2 cut into 2 cm long pieces. Or spring onions – 1 handful. Or dried “vatral 2 tbsp – salted and sun-dried variety of seeds
Sambar powder – 3 tbsp
Tamarind paste – 2 tsp 
Jaggery – 1 to 1.5 tbsp
Rice flour for thickening – 1 tsp)
Sesame oil – 2 tbsp
Fenugreek seeds – roasted and powdered – 1 tsp
Turmeric – 1/4 tsp
Asafoetida – 1 generous pinch
Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
Salt
Garlic pods- optional) – 10
 
To temper:
 
Mustard seeds – 1/2 tsp
Chana dal (bengal gram dal) – 1 tsp
Urad dal – 1/2 tsp
 
Heat the oil in a pan, add the mustard. Let it splutter and add the chana dal and the urad dal. Let them turn golden brown and add the curry leaves and asafoetida. Add the sambar powder and turmeric and turn over for about 30 seconds. Add the vegetables and mix well. If using shallots, fry for a little longer. If using garlic, add at this stage and fry for a couple of minutes.. Add two cups of water, cover and cook for 5 minutes. Add the tamarind paste, jaggery, salt, fenugreek seed powder and a slurry of rice flour. Cook for a further 10-15 minutes till the vegetables are tender and the fragrance is so overpowering that you begin to lick the ladle ;). 
 
Switch off, serve with hot rice and appadams.  
 
Vathaaks (our nickname for this) tastes even better the next day. Keeps for a week – I challenge you to! 
 
Oh, an btw, roll your tongue over and say “lllll…..”!!
btw, working with only one eye open – having a small polyp removal today -so there may be some spell errors – please to forgive!!!!
 
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Dibba rotte: Ooby doobies, Grammy awards and Palghats

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“Dibba rotte. Say it”.
“Oobie doobie”
“Dibba rotte – see how easy it is.”
“Oobie dooby.”
 
I give up in disgust. I’ve been trying to teach husband the name of this unusual Telugu dish he’s fallen in love with and the recalcitrant Palghati refuses to learn… thereby following the Tamil convention of renaming everything particularly road names – that can be renamed and to a composition in praise of the said dish.
 
“Oobie dooby doo,
Where are you?
I want to be eating you
Right noooooowww…”
(sung to the tune of Scooby Dooby Doo)
 
May never win a Grammy but perfectly representative of hubby’s (and rest of the family’s) feelings towards this crisp and golden brown on the outside, light and fluffy as ‘mallepoo’ (jasmine flower) inside – breakfast dish served with ginger pickle (allam pachadi).
 
Husband being from Palghat and me a mixture of Andhra and Maharashtra settled in Hyderabad via Bangalore made for an interesting set of new foods we learnt from each other, or in this case, from mother-in-law as husband’s ability to cook in the early days extended to making a mean cup of tea!
        
I learnt this dish from my mother who learnt it from her mother. Dibba rotte is a traditional Andhra recipe and is usually cooked in a heavy kadai set on dying embers after the morning’s main meal has been cooked. Usually eaten in the evening it however makes for a great breakfast dish.
 
Dibbe rotte
 
Urad Dal – 1 cup
Raw rice, soaked for about 4 – 6 hours – 2 1/2 cups (or raw rice rava – semolina – available in some supermarkets)
Cumin seeds – 1/2 tsp
Pepper – 1/4 tsp
Asafoetida – 1/4 tsp
Red chilli – 1
Salt – 1 tsp
Gingelly oil – 1/2 cup
 
Grind the soaked urad dal and the soaked raw rice separately. Grind separately to idli batter consistency in a blender along with cumin seeds, pepper, asafoetida, red chilli and salt. Mix batters together. If using the raw rice rava, just add it to the ground urad batter.
 
Whip the batter and let it rest, covered, for about an hour. This batter makes about four medium-sized dibba rottes. The batter should not ferment.
 
Heat a thick bottomed kadai, add 3 tbsp of oil and pour about a quarter of the batter into it. Cover and cook on a very low flame (about 15-20 min) till the bottom develops a thick golden crust. 
 
Turn over using a large spatula. Cook the other side, uncovered, this should take about seven-10 minutes. Slide carefully on to a plate, cut into wedges and serve hot with ginger pickle or avakkai. Enjoy – and battle the re-naming brigade!
 

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Green chilli pickle: Of chillies and bookworms, lessons in humility

“Are you sure, paapa, that your mother asked you to get this?” the vegetable woman at the corner store asks me. I draw myself up to my full height of 4 feet nothing – as  haughtily as an eight-year old can manage: “Of course. You think I don’t know what my mom asked for?!”
I pack the stuff and stalk off home only to return some twenty minutes later with my tail tucked securely between my legs and asking in a barely audible voice: ” My mother said she didn’t want one kilo of  green chillies. She actually wanted a kilo of onions – so please can I exchange this?”
Having had my head in some Enid Blyton cloud, I hadn’t quite heard what my mother wanted and… bought the wrong stuff. Now if only I’d had the sense to mistake it for a kilo tomatoes or potatoes – of which we got through prodigious quantities, i could have wriggled out of a most embarrassing situation, but I HAD to choose green chilies instead! Considering how much I hated “khaaram” or spicy food when i was a kid, you’d have thought I’d know that it had to be something else but you’d have underestimated the cloudiness of a bookworm’s fuzzy brain!
End result: Gales of laughter from the other customers in the shop – thankfully no one from my school was around! The vegetable vendor, happily for me, happened to be mom’s patient and a very kindhearted soul in the bargain, so she hid her amusement till i left the shop – salvaging the dignity of an 8-year old is VERY important! I had  tried to wriggle out of the exchange scheme: “Please, mom, can’t Lakshmamma (our faithful old retainer who’s saved me from many a contretemps!) go instead of me?” But no, my mother was a firm believer in clearing up after one’s own messes so off I went!
I still can’t handle the spiciness that any Telugu is supposed to be able to handle but yes, i do make green chilli pickles!
Green chilli pickle
(and don’t feed it to an eight-year old bookworm!)
Green chillies – 20- 25 – cut into 1″ long pieces
Lemons – 2 large – cut into eight pieces each (alternately the juice of 2 large lemons will also do)
Coriander seeds (dhania) – 2.5 tbsp
Aniseed (Saunf) – 1.5 tbsp
Mustard seeds – 1 tbsp
Fenugreek seeds (methi) – 1 tsp
Dried mango powder  (amchoor) – 1 tsp
Turmeric – 1 tsp
Mustard oil (preferably) – 4 tbsp
Salt – about 1.5 tsp
Powder the spices together – not too smooth. Heat the oil in a pan and switch off. Let it cool for a minute and add the ground spices and mix well. Add the chillies and the lemons or the lemon juice and mix again. Bottle and store in the frig for a couple of days before use. This lasts for at least 2 weeks in the frig if you eat it sparingly. If you don’t go buy a kilo of green chillies for your mother!
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Anything goes salad: Chinese checkers and mongrel pets, salads and superstars

Salads, when we were growing up, were, at best, a distraction to the serious business of doing justice to a biryani or a bisibele… at worst, they were just clammy cucumber slices that had to be gotten through or to be quietly disposed off while mom’s eye was distracted by someone else not taking a third helping (almost indicative of criminal interest in her view)!
Unfortunately, the disposing off could not be done under the table to the ever-faithful mongrel Tommy as even he would turn up his nose at it! Considering what all Tommy did eat – he once swallowed a blue Chinese checkers ball from a set I’d just gotten for a birthday and I had to run behind him for a whole day poking at droppings with a stick till he eventually passed it! – useful to have a doctor mom – poured large quantities of various antiseptics over it until we could use it again – hey – NOT GROSS – remember these were the days of few – very few toys and almost no board games – so each was precious, though, now i come to think of it, wonder whether that tiny ball was worth THAT much!! So, if even Tommy wouldn’t eat them…
The kind of salads we did like were the koshumbris – the Marathi/ Kannada heritage of grated and seasoned combinations of carrots, cucumber and mango which elevated salads to something else. Realisation suddenly dawned in the third decade of life (don’t laugh, I’m a bit slow on the uptake!) one day that actually there’s almost nothing that you can’t put into a salad and then on, salads became superstars!
Here’s one that always a favourite at home and with guests and can be stretched to accommodate almost anything you have in the frig. Two “musts” though – apple and boiled chana (chickpeas). The rest you make up as you go along and it’s a meal in itself with a fresh-baked loaf and golden butter…
‘Anything-goes’ salad
Boiled chana – 2 cups (if you’re an Indian student in America use 1 can chickpeas)
Any crunchy apple – cubed – 1 cup (avoid the woolly ones – they taste yuck!)
Capsicum – any and all colours – cubed
Raw mango – if available – chopped – 2-3 tbsp
Radish – one – peeled and cubed
Cucumber – 1 – peeled and cubed
Tomato – 1 – chopped
Purple cabbage – 1/2 cup – shredded
Pomegranate seeds – 1/2 cup – optional
Juice of one lemon
Mint and coriander – 2 tbsp each
Chaat masala or Himalayan pink salt – optional – 1/4 tsp
1 green chili – very finely chopped
Salt
Mix everything together and chill before serving.