Sundals and kolus, paavadas and sea-gorillas!

                       
                 "Thengaaa..., maangaaa.....pataneee.....sundaaal......" nothing brings Madras and Marina beach to mind as this cry! I once heard an Anerican who was asked about what his experience of India was like and his response was that no matter where one went, even if it was on the most deserted stretch of road and you went behind a tree to do your business (this was in the days before the mushrooming of toll plazas and loos!), you could be sure of an urchin or two popping up with a grin as you finished - unnerving!! Sitting on the beach in Madras is rather like that - you could be a courting couple, a suicidal soul, an elderly thaatha-paati or even a stray dog - all of you are fair game for the serenade of the "Sundal" seller! With an old aluminium tin can (remember those cans in whihch oil used to be sold at the corner 'kirana' store?), much-patched shorts and a shirt hanging out at the tails, the 'sundal' guy is recognisable everywhere and welcomed sometimes - obviously not by the courting couple!

             Also, it's Navaratri time - can sundal be far behind? "Bommala koluvus", the excitement of setting up the shelves and dusting the toys, the creation of a beach or a village or a temple scene with paper and toys and sand and blue washing powder for the sea ringed with white rangoli powder for the waves - and the overarching joy of ten whole days of holidays!! The pleasure of going from household to household, being asked to sing a song (being completely tuneless, i escaped this ordeal most of the time, except when an unwary new family moved into the colony!!), passing judgment on the quality of sundal in each household - most were good, the odd one was dissed but in general, we were an accepting lot :).

               This being one of my favourite festivals, i was determined that my children should enjoy it too and had a koluvu for many years. Kanch, my younger daughter and her friend Tara were always excited about this and Kanch used to insist on placing her pet gorilla toy in the middle of the Bay of Bengal - which is where she thought he came from! The two of them also firmly believed that they were part of the exhibit and as soon as guests had seated themselves, used to get up and twirl their paavadais round and round till they got giddy and sat down and the paavadai went "busssss..."! Talk about song-and-dance sequences!

Here's today's sundal:

                                                                                    Soaked and boiled chana - 2 cups

Fresh coconut - grated - 2 tbsp
Raw mango - 2 tbsp - chopped
Green chili - 1
Red chili - 1
Curry leaves -2 sprigs
Oil - 1 tsp
Mustard seeds - 1/4 tsp
Urad dal - 1/2 tsp
Asafoetida - 1 pinch
Salt

Heat oil in a pan. Add the mustard seeds and let them crackle. Add urad dal and asafoetida. Add the curry leaves. Add chana.
Pulse together in the mixer the coconut, mango and the chilies. Add this to the pan along with the salt and mix together for a minute.Switch off.

You are now qualified to sell sundal on Marina beach - practise your sales pitch - "thengaaa...maaangaaa...pataaanee....sundaaal..."

Dolls' weddings and cashewnut bhojanams!

                           Wedding in the family home signifies great excitement. All the little girls in the neighbourhood are invited and everyone turns up in "Paavada-chokka" (the long skirt and blouse combo - one of the prettiest things ever), flowers in their hair and for those who are blessed with mothers with deft fingers and time on their hands, "poola jadalu" (flowers woven into long plaits). My mom used to try valiantly to do this for me but invariably the whole assembly would be top-heavy and fall off before i reached the end of the road! Not to mention leaving me with a splitting headache!
                  Back to our wedding - said little girls turn up with little gifts - flowers from their gardens mostly, also pretty shells or rocks or coloured paper streamers left over from birthday parties or whatever else could be used to decorate a "mandapam". "Invitations" to the 'bommala pelli' were scribbled on pieces of paper and passed around to all the little people - strictly NO boys!

                 The venue was a tiny dressing room in our old fashioned home and the mandapam was below the dressing table! Much excitement over the wedding of two of our dolls - both female but one necessarily had to become a groom - am sure child psychologists and feminists today would go ballistic over gender confusion, gender identity, gender stereotyping blah, blah stuff! We, luckily, were blissfully unaware of the word 'psychology' and feminism ran in the blood anyway!!

Mantras were chanted and the dolls were duly wed and then came the serious business of eating the wedding "meal"! My mother, ever a generous soul, would provide us liberally with cashewnuts and badam (almonds) and kishmish (raisins) which were distributed out with complete fairness so everyone got their quota of 2 cashewnuts and 4 raisins or whatever it was - no army quartermaster could be fairer than a 7-year old!

                 Formal goodbyes were said before everyone trooped off to play something more invigorating after the wedding. Come to think of it, that's why those wedding feasts never made us fat - now we just sit around and nap after wedding lunches and look where we've gotten to!

Cashews and almonds and raisins remain favourite snacks to date and are rarely cooked - mostly just popped into the mouth. But when i do cook 'em, more often than not it's to make badam kheer - cold and delicious.

Badam kheer:

• Almonds - 3/4 cup - soak for an hour and peel.
• Cashewnuts (optional) - 2 tbsp
• Chironji (charupappu, charoli) nuts (optional) - 1 tbsp
• Milk - 500 ml
• Water - 3 cups
• Sugar - 10-12 tsp (sorry, but that's how i measure sugar - not at all sure about cup measures!)
• Saffron - 1 pinch
• Pachakarpooram (edible camphor) - a very tiny pinch - be very judicious in using this - it's heavenly but a very little goes a long way!

Grind the almonds and cashew nuts to a smooth paste using about 1/4 cup of water. Mix the paste with the rest of the water in a heavy bottomed pan. Cook, stirring nonstop - this takes about 7 minutes  - till the raw almond smell goes. Add hot milk slowly into the pan. Add sugar. Bring to the boil, stirring all the while. Switch off and add saffron and pachakarpooram. Stir for a few minutes more. If using chironji, roast in a few drops of ghee, cool and add to the kheer,

Serve chilled. If you're feeling lazy, just eat the nuts!

Grandmothers and thokkus...

       
"Kobbari thokku" (coconut chutney)
"Inkoka rakam kobbari thokku (another variety of coconut chutney)
"Marinkoka rakam kobbari thokku (Yet another variety of coconut chutney!
"Maree inkorakam...." you should have got it by now. As also added two words to your Telugu vocabulary!

This is an extract from the diary that my grandmother wrote for me a couple of decades ago when she spent a few days with me and at my request, jotted down a load of hardcore Andhra recipes in her spidery crawl. Even now i only have to look at the diary to bring memories of a sweet, soft as butter outside, tough as torsteel inside lady - smelling of Chandrika soap and "punugu" (musk) of which she always had a tiny bit stashed away in a little silver thumb-box in her steel trunk. That steel trunk was a source of all sweet things in my childhood - lovely smells, soft saris and always a small surprise hidden away for grandchildren - of which she had many. Ammamma taught us many lessons about generosity and sharing - through her stories and her deeds.

Inspired by her, i went on to experiment with many unusual ingredients for chutneys until now, my family has learnt to dread the question - "Guess what thokku (hey, you learnt the word in the first paragraph, remember??!) this is?" The answers vary from vodka to old shoe leather but that's only to shut me up - i promise they're not a reflection on the thokkus!

Here goes a new one which goes with dosas and idlis and even as a sandwich spread!

Carrot- mango thokku:

• Grated carrot - 1 large
• Grated raw mango - 1 cup
• Green chilis - 2
• Red chili powder - 1/2 tsp
• Jaggery - 1 tsp (more or less depending on how sour the mango is)
• Salt - 1/2 tsp
• Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp
• Urad dal - 1 tbsp
• Asafoetida - 1 pinch
• Chopped fresh coriander - 2 tbsp
• Sesame oil - 1 tbsp

Heat oil and drop in mustard seeds. Let splutter. Add the urad dal and the asafoetida and the dal brown. Add the green chilis and fry for a few seconds. Add the mango and carrot mixture and stir for a couple of minutes. Switch off, add the coriander, salt and jaggery. Let cool. Grind to a not-too-smooth paste with a little water.

Ready to make up "inkoka rakam" carrot-mango thokku on your own?

"Things with things in them" and 2-year old gourmets!

"Aren't you hungry? Would you like some dinner?" 

"What do you have for dinner?""

"Pasta"

"What kind of pasta?"

"Shell pasta with vegetables and tomato sauce"

"Can i see it?"

Yes, of course, sweetie, here you go" and i lifted the two-year old with whom I am having this conversation on to the kitchen counter to have a look.

The gourmet brat looks at the pasta from all angles, examining it as critically as any prof would a new theory and then takes her thumb out of her mouth to pronounce judgment : "I don't like things with things in them"!

Well - you try battling over food with a two-year old! I spent the next ten minutes picking "things out of things" before she consented to put a forkful in her mouth!

This was the exchange between the two-year old daughter of some visitors and me! The parents in question must have had quite a time feeding the little tyrant every day - how many Indian dishes can rightly be described as things without things in them and could be considered an almost full meal?! Being the nutrition freak that i am, thanks to my mother and my nutritionist aunt, it is almost impossible for me to envisage making things without things in them!!!

Well, here;s the closest i can come to making things with very few things in them - spaghetti with meatless meatballs!

• Spaghetti - 1 packet - boil as per instructions and rise on cold water

For the sauce:

• Onions - 3 medium - sliced             

  

  meatless meatballs before frying
  

• Garlic - 5-6 flakes
• Tomatoes - 4 large - chopped
• 1 green chili - chopped
• Tomato puree - 1/2 cup
• Sugar - 1/2 tsp
• Salt
• Nutmeg - grated - 1/4 tsp
• Herbes de Provence - 1/2 tsp (or mixed herbs)
• Coriander - chopped - 2 tbsp
• Hot milk - 1 cup
• Oil - 2 tbsp

Heat oil in a large saucepan and add the sugar. Caramelise. Add onions and stir for a minute. Add garlic and keep stirring till onions are golden brown. Add tomatoes and cook till soft. Blitz with a bar blender for a minute in the same pan till you get  a knobbly puree. Add the tomato puree, salt, nutmeg and herbs and boil. Reserve hot milk and add just before serving.

Meatless meatballs:

• Potato flakes - 1/2 cup or boiled and grated potato - 1.2 cup.
• Gulab jamun mix powder - 1/2 cup
• Grated cheddar (or paneer) - 1/2 cup to mix + 2 tbsp to serve
• 1 green chili - chopped
• Chopped coriander - 1 tbsp
• Marjoram - 1/2 tsp. 
• Pepper - 1/4 tsp

Mix all of these together lightly - do not over-knead - shape carefully into small lemon sized balls and let them rest for 5 minutes. Heat a frying pan or a tawa and shallow fry these, turning over till golden brown. I occasionally bake mine - about 12 minutes. (makes about 16 balls)

To assemble, mix a little olive oil in the spaghetti. Serve one helping. Mix the hot milk into the sauce and spoon over. Add a little grated cheddar on top and place 4-5 "meatballs" on each plate. Sprinkle coriander leaves and serve.

Voila - things with as few things in them as my conscience will allow!

Of Life Lessons, Tea and Things Learnt at Mother-in-law’s Hearth

                           I have my second guest blogger today - my cousin Minnie - who's written a lovely story about her mom-in-law and a fantastic dish - gongura pappu - i can never get enough of this!

Over to Minnie:

"My mother-in-law was a formidable lady with her penchant for crisp Bengal cotton saris in pastel hues and perfection in all things. Her elegant and neat appearance (a string of pearls or corals at her throat when she had to step out) reflected in her gleaming kitchen – no messes on the counter, no piled-up dirty dishes in the sink, methodical and meticulous in all that she did. No room for slatterns and shirkers! Her repertoire of recipes was limited but eclectic, having lived in many parts of India with her railway man husband. Her cooking did not entertain deviations, shortcuts or substitutions. When she made tea, it was an elaborate and unhurried process, much like the Japanese tea ceremony, enough to set the modern day - languishing in the living room- guest’s teeth on edge!

Up early, there was no sitting down or resting till lunch was eaten and cleared. No morning coffee, no lounging on the couch, no breakfast till the tulsi plant was watered and no snacking between breakfast and lunch. Afternoon time was relaxing in the easy chair, with her feet up on the ancient swing occupying pride of place in the centre of the hallway and the day’s newspaper on her lap. What I took away from her and reconstruct every time, as close to the original as possible is her Gongura Pulusu. A quintessential Andhra dish liberally sprinkled with garlic pods (a normally unlikely condiment in a Brahmin kitchen), it is an interesting twist to the regular greens and dhal, the sourness of the gongura and the sweetness of the jaggery giving it a piquant taste. This dish was originally adapted from the famed Gongura Mamsam  to suit vegetarian palates. Alum pachadi (long-lasting ginger chutney) which my mother-in-law made in huge quantities and distributed generously to family and friends was a great favourite and a perfect accompaniment to a myriad things, be it rice, chappathis, idlis, dosas, sandwiches and even as a topping for chats. My sister-in-law is the holder of this recipe and I will get it from her the next time round.

Gongura Pulusu.

Ingredients:

• Gongura (Roselle) leaves : 1 medium bunch
• Bengal Gram (Channa) Dhal : 1 cup cooked, with the dhal appearing separate.
• Red Gram (Toovar) Dhal : ½ cup cooked and mashed
• Garlic  - 8 pods
• Green chillies – 3                               
  
• Turmeric – ½ tps
• Jaggery : according to taste
• Salt : according to taste
• Seasoning:
•  Gingelly oil : 3 tsps
• Mustard : 1 tsp
• Fenugreek  : 1 tsp
• Asafoetida : a pinch or more
• Red Chillies : 4

Method:

Heat oil in pan and add the seasoning and sauté. Add chopped gongura leaves and sauté lightly. Add green chillies, garlic, turmeric and salt and cook till the leaves are soft. Mash lightly and add the cooked dhals. Add jaggery and if required chilli powder, adjusting according to the sourness of the leaf. The consistency should be of that of a thick dhal. Best eaten with rice."

Gongura - to the non-Telugu - only refers to the pickle which is made out of it but this is a great alternate use of the iron-rich leaf. Come to think of it, have put in a lots of posts about dishes which make you hair go black or prevent it from greying.......by now you should have stopped reaching for that bottle of hair dye! ;)

A billion litres of beer, loofahs and chutney!

                              "Beerakai? You mean there a vegetable which gives out beer? Hahaha! ".  Which Telugu hasn't heard this hoary old one when a non-Telugu hears the word "beerakai" for the first time? But just last week there was an article in the Hindu with liquor consumption statistics across India and among the bigger states, AP (the undivided one) tops the list by far with 34.5 litres per head per year, far outstripping Kerala which was undisputed liquor king for years!! At a population of 50 million, that works out to 1.75 billion litres a year which is many time the amount of milk consumed by all of India in a year! (I tried doing the maths - so many metric tonnes of milk to litres of beer but somewhere along the way, the numbers - and the milk - got curdled! Hmmm...wondering whether there is something to the beer and beerakai naming after all???

Wow, we Telugus take our beer and our beerakais seriously!

This staple - cheap and best- vegetable - is what has helped millions of homemakers tide over the end-of-the-month-pocket-is-empty-what-to-put-on-the-table blues for generations.

Okay, to put the rest of you out of your misery, beerakai is the Telugu name for what is called a ribbed or ridged gourd - one of those you have to bribe your kids to eat. This is what it looks like:

Like the coconut in Kerala, there is no part of this super-'umble veggie that is not used. You make a tonic to darken your hair - did you know that???! Bet you're regretting saying 'yuck' to beerakai pappu for the nth time when you were a kid, right? The fibrous part that is peeled away is used to make loofahs to scrub yourself free of all the 'yucks'! The thrifty Telugu housewife uses even the peel of this vegetable to make the most delicious "thokku" or chutney.

Here goes:

• Wash and peel two large beerakais. Reserve the beerakais for use later. Jsut now, we;ll make only the chutney with the peel.
• Chana dal - (Bengal gram dal) - 2 tbsp             
  
  
• Urad dal - 1 tbsp
• Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp
  
• Asafoetida- 1 small pinkie-nail sized lump
• Red chilies - 5
• Green chilies - 3
• Tamarind - small marble -sized ball
• Jaggery - 1.5 tbsp
• Coconut - 1/2 cup
• Sesame oil - 2tbsp
• Salt - about 3/4 tsp

Heat the oil in a pan. Add mustard seeds and wait till they crackle. Add chana dal and roast till golden brown. Add urad dal and chilies and stir for a couple of minutes more. Add the peel and stir for 3-4 minutes till they shrink slightly. Add the coconut and stir again for a couple of minutes. Add the tamarind, jaggery and salt and switch off. Let cool and grind to a rough chutney adding a little water. This chutney goes with most everything - rice, rotis, idlis, dosas, plain!

Death ceremonies and superstitions, golden vadas!

                            "Why can't we have hole vadas at home? Why does someone have to die before we eat them??" It seemed very unfair - there was some weird superstition when were kids about round things with holes not being made except at death ceremonies and so we grew up essentially vada-deprived - after all, even kids can't hope that people will keep popping off just to oblige our gastronomic dreams! Come to think of it, maybe it was the other way around - nobody must have liked  death ceremonies so there had to be some inducement for people to attend...ergo, vada?

                       Now of course, all those superstitions have been given the go-by and vadas are had at every possible occasion when dietary consciences don't bite! We, in fact, have a vaadyar (a family priest) who nickname is "vada vaadyar" in honour of his capacity to put away these little savoury doughnuts of deliciousness! The "maami" who comes to cook for religious functions at home always asks ahead if the vada vaadyar is going to be there so that she's not caught unprepared!

               A few years ago, a cousin from the US - an avid reader and commentator on this blog - had come home with his family for breakfast. Hadn't seen them in some years, so I really went to town on an elaborate breakfast of vada, sambar, idli, pongal and various chutneys! Almost everything got demolished excet for the idlis. Said cousin turns around and says, "what's the point in calling any Nemali home for breakfast and giving us an option of idlis and vadas? We'll always go for the vadas, of course!

                Here it is - the vada or to give it it's Tamil name - "medu wadai" with the "dai" rhyming with "die" - there's another clue to the superstition! Vada -  the dearly beloved, almost always rationed commodity - the original food to which the song "no one can eat just one" was intended but P...i stole it along the way!

• Urad dal - 1 cup - washed and soaked for at least 4 hours
• Salt                                        
  
• Green chili- 1
• Ginger - 1/2 inch piece
• Onion - chopped - 1 (optional)
• Pepper corns - 1 tsp
• Coconut pieces -  1tbsp (optional )
• Curry leaves - 1 sprig - chopped
• Coriander leaves - 1 tbsp - chopped
• Oil to deep fry

Grind the urad dal along with the green chili and the ginger with very little water - 2-3 tbsp is ample. The consistency of the ground batter is very important because if it's too watery, the vadas absorb too much oil when frying. Drop a few drops of batter into a bowl of water - the batter should stay intact and not blend into the water. If the batter is too thin, add a couple of tbsp of semolina. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. 

Heat the oil to below smoking point. Wet you hand, take a large tbsp of batter , make a hole in the centre (you're not superstitious, are you??!) and slide it into the oil. Repeat with the rest of the batter in batches, turning over the vadas with a skewer till they are golden brown. Remove and serve hot with sambar and chutney.

oh, and do you read the obit columns?
       

"Snakes" and oil baths, Vit.D and childhood tortures!

                                               "Ooooooohh, snaaake, snaaake!" three kids, oiled from top to toe waiting for the dreaded Sunday morning mandatory "oil baths" decide to make the most of it by chasing each other round and round the garden clad in bare necessities and armed with long, green, snakelike gourds in their hands - potlakai, podalanga, parval, chichinda - the various names by which this vegetable is known in India are nowhere near as descriptive as it's English title - the snake gourd. Being the youngest at about 5 or 6 years old, i half believed it was a snake !

                    That Sunday morning ritual was dreaded for many reasons. First the process of being oiled meant you got kneaded and pummeled and squashed and your nose got pulled - to make it longer - well going by the length it reached, the rest of my face caught up with it only in my 30s!!! I had one aunt whom i shall not name here but who i think used to pummel us more than the others - maybe the frustrations of her existence got too much for her by the weekend (!) and the oil massage used to be accompanied by a rising crescendo of howls of despair and many complaints to mom later! The best part of it was when were let out - makes us sound like a pack of dogs, doesn't it? - to run about and play in the sun for a while till the water was heated in an old copper boiler. What a deadly dose of Vit D we must have absorbed in the running around - whether we played "snake" or not. Then followed the agony of having your skin almost scraped off with "nalugu pindi" ( a mixture of chickpea flour and turmeric) "GOOD FOR YOU"! Your hair and very likely much of your head - was nearly pulled out by the "sheekai" (soapnut powder) - a brown and in my opinion "kaaram"(chili-hot) substance which inevitably leaked into our eyes and made the howls even louder.And all this with boiling hot water from the "anda"!

                   It was some kind of torture system devised to take a perfectly happy, reasonably clean kid and designed to turn him/her inside out in the adult's quest for that stray particle of dirt which might cause you to..what? die? i never found out! End of process you came out smelling like a pakoda from all the flour and turmeric, eyes streaming and a feeling of deep gratitude that you did not have to face this again for another blessed 168 hours (7 * 24) and the incurable optimism of childhood that something, anything might happen to prevent the next one! Alas, that hope was very rarely realised...

                And what happened to the snake which allayed the agony of Sunday baths? Many things were made out of it - in my memory it was either overcooked into a mush or under-cooked so that it tasted like a sharp-ish cucumber. Then i grew up and learnt how to actually cook it!

Here's one which my family loves - stuffed potlakai - my way.

• 1 long, tender snake gourd -wash and cut into pieces about 2" long With your pinkie or a narrow spoon, remove the insides - seeds and tissue. These are tender so easily removed. 

Mix together:

• Roasted and powdered sesame (til) seeds - 1 tbsp
• Roasted chickpea flour(roasted besan) - 1/2 cup
• Jeera powder - 1 tsp
• Dhania powder - 1.5 tsp
• Kasooti methi (dried fenugreek leaves) - 1 tsp
• Coriander leaves - chopped - 2tbsp
• Chili powder - 1 tsp
• Turmeric - 1 large pinch.
• Salt - about 3/4 tsp
• Oil - 1 tbsp 

Stuff the pieces with this masala powder. Heat oil in a large, flat pan and add the pieces. Cover and cook, turning over occasionally for abut 12-15 minutes till the vegetable is tender. Open and cook for a few minutes more.

Serve hot with rice. Don't forget to have your oil bath before this otherwise how will you make FULL use of the potlakai - to scare the littlest kid with and to get your dose of Vit. D????

p.s. - wonder what they did with all the besan they washed us with?? recycled as....no, no perish the thought - it's too yucky!

Mallory Towers, ginger beer and seed cake

                         
                                Rarely does real life live up to the promise of what books or movies describe. Take the case of Enid Blyton's food for example. Which of us has grown up not salivating over "potted meat" sandwiches, tomatoes,scones and lettuce - even those of us who were highly vegetarian? I know a little girl who went to England when she was about ten years old, still in the throes of the Famous Five's picnics, the "steak and kidney"pies, "tinned sardines" and ginger beer, insisting that the grandparents (who lived there) get her all these amazing goodies to eat. The grandparents, poor things, having already gone through the rigors of "British cooking ;), tried their best to dissuade her - "Are you quite sure you want it, dear? It's not all that it's pumped up to be; let's have pizza instead" - or maybe - since these were the days before pizzas became as ubiquitous as they are today - let's have curry instead (whatever 'curry' is ) - remember the setting is England!

The child however, who had already sent letters off to Mallory Towers and St.Clair's believing quite firmly in the existence of these, would not be dissuaded. So off they went - to a steak shop and ordered exactly what she wanted - steak and kidney pie. I don't have to do any cutting a long story short stuff  - because the story only lasted for about ten seconds after the waiter set down the dish in front of her with a cheery, "Here you go, darling". Our young friend cuts into it, looks around to see if the restaurant has some drainage problem (the smell, you see), decides not to let a bad drain come in the way of her dream meal and puts a forkful in her mouth. She lasted for all of the ten seconds it needed for her to get to the washroom - she hadn't known that kidneys performed a certain essential but unmentionable function, you see, or that the smell of said function might continue to waft out the cooked fellas!

But that is a sad story. One where reality not only lived up to expectation  but surpassed it is the story of the seed cake!  The first time i tasted this was the home of an elderly Anglo-Indian aunt - a friend of the family whose name was Miss Mary (really!) but who was universally know as Baba aunty. The cake itself looked lovely - golden and full of tiny little seeds with more fragrance than anything so tiny has a right to possess but when you bit into it - omg - the sheer luxuriance of flavour that burst in your mouth was enough to transport you right back to Blyton's England of the 1930s!

I've experimented hugely but i think i've got it right.

Here goes- seed cake:

• Maida (plain flour) - 150 gm 
  
• Cornflour - 30 gm
• Table butter - 100 gm
• Eggs - 3
• Powdered sugar (easier to cream!) - 180 gm
• Vanilla essence - 1 tsp
• Caraway seeds (these look like tiny shahijeeera seeds but have a strong aniseed-y fragrance) - 1.5 tsp

The cake is made as usual - cream butter and sugar together till light and fluffy, add eggs and mix, fold in flour. Add caraway seeds and vanilla. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for about 30 minutes till a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

This is a fantastic teatime, coffeetime or anytime at all cake :)
And i promise it really tastes better than even Enid Blyton can make it sound!

Little girls and cacti, old friends and baby potatoes!

                          "Anu aunty, is this you??!!" - am overjoyed to see the message on Facebook - from a little girl who's been our neighbour some two decades ago and who had since emigrated to Canada - she and her little brother were two of the cutest little munchkins - therefore the joy of reconnecting! And the next sentence took me back all those years ago to when both the mothers and the doting grandmother would gather on the terrace in the evening to feed the four little kids dinner together - and this little girl - Tas - would be waiting to see if i'd bring "rasam" or anything else she loved!

Many squeals of excitement ensued over the catching up of old friends from long ago  and of course, the ubiquitous " how big you've grown and how tall Akif is and how're the grandparents and the parents" kind of talk later, there was one added little message - "Please Anu aunty- can you post the recipe for the baby potato pulao that you used to make?" Wow - for a kid who left India when she was about 4 or 5 years old, this was SOME memory!

One evening when the kids were coming downstairs, Arch slipped and fell headlong into a cactus plant that someone had left on the landing. Abortive attempt to try and remove the rugae (the fine hairlike spikes on cacti) had us running to the doc who sent us to a surgeon who told us the only way was to pull out the darn things by using tweezers. Back home to borrow tweezers from neighbours, high beam torches too and well, have you ever sat up a whole night trying to pull near invisible hairy things from a little child's legs and arms? Both parents were in no condition to go to work the next day! But we DID pull out all the hairy fellas! Might have pulled out some hair too - going by the squeals!

As a reward, the kids got baby potato pulao for dinner - am sure Tas identified with the "babiness" of the baby potatoes!

Tas, dear, this one is for you!

• Baby potatoes - 1/2 kg - boiled and peeled
• Methi (Fenugreek) leaves - 1 cup full - washed thoroughly. 
• Basmati rice - 1.5 cups
• 2 cups water 1 cup milk or coconut milk
• Salt                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        To grind together: (wet spice mixture)

• 1 green chili
• 3 -4 flakes of garlic
• 1" piece ginger
• 3 tbsp yogurt

Whole spices:

• Dalchini (cinnamon) - 2"
• Cloves - 4 or 5
• Black cardamom - 1 - crushed
• Cardamom - 1 - crushed
• Biryani ke phool (paasi poo - a lichen which grows on rock) - optional - 1/2 tsp
• Jeera (cumin) seeds- 1/2 tsp
• Shahjeera seeds - 1/4 tsp
• Nutmeg - 1 pinch
• Turmeric - 1 large pinch
• Saunf (aniseed) - 1/2 tsp
• Asafoetida - 1 large pinch
• Ghee - 1 tbsp
• Oil- 2 tbsp
• Onions - 4 sliced finely and fried separately - to garnish
• Mint leaves - washed and chopped - 1 tbsp

Cook the basmati rice with the water, milk and the ground wet spice mixture and salt.

In a separate pan, heat the oil and ghee together and drop in all the dry spices. Stir on a low flame for a minute. Add one tbsp of the fried onions, the fenugreek leaves, potatoes and salt and cook, turning over occasionally. This should take about ten minutes. Mix with the rice and cover and cook for a few minutes more. Garnish with mint and fried onions. Fried cashews too- if you're feeling festive. This pulao needs just a  plain raita to go with it!

And, oh, don't go near cacti - they don't go well with pulao!

Yummy yellow curries and Rajasthani aunties

                                                    "Bhuttaaaa.....bhuttaaa......mokkaaa jonnaaaloooo..." still echoes in my ears from childhood. The bhuttawala - the guy who sold the most amazing tender corn - the "correct" Indian variety, not the sickeningly sweet American corn which has taken over the market today -lament, lament .... it's almost impossible to get Indian corn varieties in Madras any more :(

The guy used to sell roasted and masala-ed corn with the bite of chili and the tang of lemon - for 5 paisa each!!! - That's like 20 to the rupee and at today's exchange rates, 1800 to the dollar!! Okay, okay, i know i'm not accounting for inflation and all the funda about exchange rates but we're only talking about corn, for heaven's sake - i'm NOT giving a lesson in economics! Okay, having said all that, it was 7.27 rupees to the dollar in 1973 - or 145.5 corns as close as i can make it! Whatever....but the idea was that we could gorge ourselves on a rupee's worth of corn if kind relatives who came and stayed and went tipped us generously with a buck apiece as they often did. I don't think i can afford 145.5 corns today! Gorge ourselves we often did and the resulting tummy aches were always thought well worth it!

Cut to 1992....one small child comes home from school. "Amma, can you make the yummy thing Vinaya brought in her lunch box today?" What was the yummy thing? "It was yellow and it had some watery thing around it and it had pooris to go with it"! Quite a description but it could have fit almost any curry coming out an Indian kitchen. Also needed to find out who Vinaya was and then meet her mother and get a recipe from her - all of which happened in the next few weeks and brought me one of my dearest friends in life - Vinaya's mom! Till today, the curry is called "Rajul aunty's corn curry" by my extended family!

The "yellow thing" with water around it turned out to be a Rajasthani corn curry - one of the yummiest corn curries i've ever had in my life and one of the simplest to make!

Here goes yellow thing:

• Corn cobs - Indian if you can find them but if i were to wait for this i'd end up never making corn curry! - 3 - break off one inch bits from the ends - should be able to get about one or two from each cob. Pressure cook the big and little bits altogether for one whistle.
• Onions - 3 medium
• Garlic pods - 8 to 10
  
• Dhania (coriander powder) - 1.5 tsp
• Jeera (cumin powder) - 1 tsp
• Chili powder - 1/2 tsp
• Salt
• Oil and ghee - 1 tbsp each.
• Milk - 1 cup

Remove the corn cobs from the cooker and let cool. Scrape the corn off the bigger pieces with a knife. Keep the small 1" pieces intact
Grind the onions and garlic together to a very smooth paste.
Heat the oil and ghee together in a saucepan and add the onion paste and fry well.Sprinkle a little water if it shows signs of aduganting (bottom sticking - so much better a term than plain old burning!). Add the dry powders and continue to stir. Add the corn - the scraped stuff and the pieces and a glass of water along with the salt. Cover and cook on a low flame for ten to 15 minutes. Add more water if too dry. Add hot milk and switch off. Voila - yellow, swimmy, yummy corn curry!

Ode to the best omletter in the world

Ode to the best omletter in the world

Today, the end of the month - i've treated myself to a guest blogger!!! I thought long and hard about who i should invite and then decided the mantle of that honour should fall on my oldest companion in cooking - we started cooking lessons when were 7 and 8 years old respectively. Presenting my brother in real life - Arvind Chenji!!! We have even gifted each other cookbooks for birthdays when we were about 12 or 13 years old!

Over to Arvind..

                          "Variety, they say is the spice of life. My mother believed the opposite.
Faced with the prospect of eating the same vegetable that we somehow managed with
complaints in the morning, my mother added a different spice and a dose of water to it
and dished it out in the evening. Which is how I coined’ Spice is the variety of our life’.
Not that it affected my mother. She laughed merrily at my attempt at wit and sarcasm
and continued producing a series of disasters from the kitchen.
The only good that happened was Panda. Trinath Panda, an employee at the
secretariat who moonlighted as a cook at home. He actually managed to fill the
unending pit beneath the chest and ensured that my brother and I grew up with some
flesh on our bones. He joined the house hold to cook dinners.
I was so fascinated with his cooking that I would leave my books and sneak into the
kitchen to observe the maestro as he dished out the best omelettes in the world.
Panda too put up with an inquisitive and pesky brat with immense patience and
affection. It was from him that I learnt to cut onions and all other vegetables with speed
and panache.
Listed here is the recipe for an omelette a’la Panda.

Ingredients:
2 eggs [ definitely chicken]
1 small to medium size onion finely chopped
1 small tomato also finely chopped
a small bit of fresh ginger minced
optional extra : a few sprigs of coriander leaves
salt and red chilli powder to taste.
Method:
Put the pan on the stove and of course, light the stove. one teaspoon or more of oil
which should be run all over the inside of the pan once hot.
While the pan is on the stove, either on the chopping board or a bowl, mix the
onion,tomato, ginger, salt and red chilli powder with vigour. Like you need to extract the
juice from the onion. Then put the mixture into another bowl where the two eggs have
been cracked open and pronounced fresh. Beat the whole concoction with a fork till it is
thoroughly mixed.
By now, the pan would be pretty hot and you should be able to see the heat waves
rising above it. Pour the mixture into it, cut the flame to minimum and cover with a lid.
After a minute or more, raise the lid and flip the omelette over with a flat spoon , cover
again for a little while and serve hot.
Cheers! "

Cutlets and squeaky voices, '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 math 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 it's owner the nickname of "Squeaky" audible to the whole class and you have  a classful 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 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 salad 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!

• 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!

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!

• 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 s 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!!!!

Ooby doobies, Grammy awards and Palghats!

"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 particualrly 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.

What you need

• 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

Cooking instructions

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!

Green chilies 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 chilies. 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 chili pickles!

Here goes: (and don't feed it to an eight-year old bookworm!)

• Green chilies - 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 chilies 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 chilies for your mother!

Chinese checkers and mongrel pets, salads and superstars...

                     
                  Salads, when we were growing up, were, at best, a distraction to the serious business of a 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! 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...

Here goes the 'anything -goes' salad:

• Boiled chana - 2 cups (if you're an Indian student in America - 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. 

Summers and mangoes, pickles and Telugus!

                   

                          A hardworking, run-off-her-feet doctor with an eager 6 year old daughter wanting to help her do a very grown-up thing indeed - make aavakai. The mom has time to do this only in the night, after her day's work at the hospital is done and home chores are taken care of. So - as a special 'treat', the daughter is allowed to stay up till late- very late - like past 11 o'clock.I remember finding out just how hot chili powder could be on the skin when my hands started to burn and mom gave me cashewnuts to pacify me - i thought it was worth it to get burn-y hands for the sake of a handful of cashewnuts!  As for the lateness, considering that my bedtime, even today, at 50, is 9 p.m. - for a 6-year old me - this was a stretch indeed!

Aavakai - so dear to the heart of every Andhra - the making of it, the bottling, the de-bottling are all rituals that every Telugu approaches with reverence in their hearts. You might not say your prayers or light a lamp or whatever every day but you dare not violate the sacred rituals around aavakai making and bottling! For instance, you can't make it if you or anyone in the house has an infection- what if a germ gets in THERE?;  Can't make it if you haven't washed your hair that day (what if some stray flake of dandruff falls into the mangoes? Can't make it if you, your hands, your clothes are all less than squeaky clean; and finally, the one with which I've terrorised the Tamilian family into which I've married - DON'T BREATHE when i open the 'jaadi' (jar)!

Making aavakai every summer is a ritual that i look forward to - the process of shopping for mangoes - traveling to the 'mandi' early in the morning armed with buckets, cans of water (for washing the mangoes i pick carefully after pressing them and smelling them, the pile of cloths to wipe them, overseeing the actual chopping by the vendor, lovingly dropping them - gentle - you can bruise them! - into the bucket, coming home, wiping the pieces dry, mixing the spices and finally adding the pieces a few at a time with the masala and oil and dropping them into the big jaadis, which have been readied by washing them in hot water and drying them well in the sun. It's like a spiritual awakening almost! Husband has always participated enthusiastically on these jaunts - including the injunction 'don't expect anything more than curd rice for lunch today - i have to make AAVAKAI, remember?'! The prospect of a year long supply of his favourite side is enough inducement!

Here's the ritual:

Mangoes- green, very sour and unripe, weighing about 150 -200 gms each. Feel them to make sure they're not soft or bruised and smell them for that lovely sharp raw-mango smell. - 1 kg
Cut into pieces about an inch long and with a bit of the tenka (the hard nutty covering of the soft seed inside). Remove the soft seed (jeedi) completely and wipe each piece with a soft, dry, lint-free cloth.

Let the pieces dry in the shade for about an hour.

Masala for 1 kg of mangoes:

250 gm mustard powder
200 gm chili powder (ask for pickle chili powder)
225 gm table salt
225 ml gingelly (sesame) oil - get the best quality cold pressed oil - it's worth it!
20 gm whole black chana
20 gm - methi seeds
1 tbsp turmeric powder

Variation 1 - 2 whole pods of garlic - peel, dry in the sun for about and hour and mix into the avakaya
Variation 2 - 250 gm of jaggery - powder and dry in the sun for about an hour and then mix well into the avakaya.

Bottle the avakaya - remember the bottle must be squeaky clean and sun dried. Cover the lid with a thin muslin cloth and tie it with a nada (like a pyjama!). Open the next day - after bathing - we didn't go to all that trouble with cleaning the pieces for nothing, did we?? Mix it well, check if there is oil floating on top otherwise pour a little. Cover again and repeat for two more days. Kotthaavakaaya (new avakaaya), the words guaranteed to make a slave of any Telugu for life - is now ready. And pssst..... while unnamed peoples in my Tamil family tend to desecrate it by eating it as a side with curd rice (total abhisthu!!), the only REAL way to eat it is at the start of a meal or as a whole meal - with hot rice and a dollop of ghee.....

Lemonades and imposters and a business idea!

                 

                       "Rasam, rasam, rasam..",....cries out the server at an upanayanam function for my cousin in Bangalore. The food so far had been uniformly hotter (chil hot) than our taste buds were used to at home and tongues were on fire. "rasam, rasam", we - my brother an I - call out hoping for a sweet juice - preferably lemon - of which we  were inordinately fond, being able to down a jugful in a few minutes flat. "Rasam" in Telugu meant juice and being seven and eight years old, respectively, we had no clue that it meant anything else in another language! Imagine our chagrin, when instead of something long and cool to quench the fire on the tongues, what we got was a ladleful of hot, VERY HOT - chaaru (Telugu equivalent of the Tamil rasam) poured onto our rice - neither of us was particularly fond of chaaru and to add to our woes, we had to chase this runny imposter all over a leaf. Sequel: We - and our clothes - needed a good rinse after!

My mom, being a kind-hearted sort of person, managed to keep her amusement in check but not the rest of the cousins - who had a field day hotting 'rasam' after us!

"Juice", particularly lime juice, remains a favourite to this day and there is no better way to make it than the lime-mint cooler that i learnt from the chef at the restaurant chain "Sangeetha".

Here goes: Lime mint cooler

Lemons - 2
Fresh mint - 1 tbsp
Sugar (or substitute) - 4-5 tsp
Salt - one pinch
Ginger - 1/2 cm piece
Ice - 6-8 cubes
Water - 3 cups

Chop the lemons into 8-10 pieces each - DO NOT remove seeds or skin or anything - most of the essential oils are in the skin and you get a real lemony hit.
Put all the ingredients above, reserving 2 glasses of water, into a mixer and whip on high speed - for 2-3 minutes. Strain out (don't press the residue - the juice will become too bitter) and add the rest of the water. Drink immediately. If you leave it and drink later, the juice turns bitter. Drink immediately - and you are in lemonade heaven! If you have guests coming, just get everything ready, including chopped lemons, in the mixer and leave in the frig till you are ready to whip - it, not the guests!

Oh, and btw, congratulations - you are now ready to open your first business venture - a lemonade stand!

Kootus and philistines, Madras and exam fever!

                   Growing up in a household where nutrition was god and taste was considered a poor second to " healthy food for growing bones" meant that till i was about 16, my ideas of culinary glory was 'mudda pappu' (boiled dal), ghee and whatever was the dry vegetable of the day! I still could live on these btw!

At 16, i moved to live in my aunt's house in Madras for a couple of years and was introduced to many foods i hadn't even heard of - vatha kozhambu, poritha kootu (or porcha coots as i thought of it!) and other stuff which i found initially very weird. I used to get strange looks from the cook - who was a master of his art and probably thought his skill was wasted on a such a philistine. But then again, he (Sankunni Menon) became very fond of me - okay, this kid may eat only mudda pappu but she sure studies hard ( i did!) so let me take her culinary education in hand. and so, slowly, my unsophisticated tastebuds learnt the difference between sambar and vatha kozhambu (psssst....till then i'd thought of vathaks as a yuckier form of sambar!). Sankunni was the reason i did well in the 12th standard exams too - i used to study till late in the night and again get up very early - Sankunni used to make a large flask of coffee for me last thing at night so that i'd have coffee as soon as i woke up - god bless his kindly soul!

One of the dishes i learnt to love was poritha kootu (or porcha coots as i prefer!) and when i went back to Hyderabad i pestered my mom to make it for me. She never was one to say no- even when she didn't know how - so we ended up with a very strange gritty dish which effectively put a stop to all further desire for porcha coots! It was only after i set up home of my own that i learnt just how simple this dish was.

Here goes podalangai (potlakai or snake gourd) porcha coots:

• Snake gourd - 1 tender long one (don't buy the short ones - they're only masquerading as potlakais!) - chopped into 1 cm pieces. (ashgourd, pumpkin, round yellow cucumbers - dosakais- are all accpetable as a substitute. 
  
• Cooked green gram dal - 1 cup
• Grated coconut - 3 tbsp + 1 tsp
• Red chilies - 2-3
• Pepper corns - 4 or 5
• Cumin seeds - 1 tsp
• Turmeric - 1 pinch
• Chili powder - 1 pinch
• Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp
• Asafoetida - 1 pinch
• Curry leaves - 2 sprigs
• Oil - 1 tsp (preferably coconut oil)
• Salt

Boil the snake gourd with a pinch of turmeric. Grind together the 3 tbsp of grated coconut, red chilies, pepper corns and cumin seeds adding a little water. Add this paste together with the dal to the vegetables and salt and bring to a boil. Switch off. To season, heat one tsp oil in a small pan, add mustard seeds and let splutter. Add 1 tsp grated coconut and let it roast a few seconds till reddish brown. Add chili powder, asafoetida and curry leaves and pour over the kootu.

This goes really well with either rice or phulkas.

For the Iyer in my house ;) - plate with poritha kootu, avial, appalam, vadam and majjiga mirapakayalu, taamara kazhangu - can he ask for more??

Brinjals and brats, Rajas and donkeys

                                          Gutti vankaya koora - variously known as ennai kathrikayi (Tamil), something badnekaya in Kannada - ok, I'm having a senior moment here and can't remember- is inseparable from the heart of a true blue Telugu. If you call yourself a Telugu (note how carefully i am avoiding the Andhra - Telangana question!) and do not like this curry, I suggest you get your gene pool carefully analysed!

     I hated this vegetable as a child - in common with a million other kids, most likely! Refused to eat it when my mom tried to disguise it in various ways - all right, mom was NOT a good makeup artist! As kids, we were allowed to have such privileges - as saying no to any food - only for so long. Soon enough, it dawned on my dad that right under his very nose, one of his kids was growing up to be - in very colloquial Telugu - "raanu raanu Raju gaari gurraalu gaadidelu avutunnayi" literally " as the days go by, the Raja's horses are turning out out be donkeys"!! Therefore, in the interests of only daughter not turning out to be a donkey, said daughter had to be taught a lesson. Matters were taken in hand and over dinner one day. Vankaya (eggplant - the hated vegetable) was the curry. I refuse. Dad asks why. Because i don't like it ( see how fast the transformation to donkey was happening!).
Dad : Are you hungry?
Me : Yes (duh...!)
Dad: You want food?
Me: Yes ( by now far gone in donkeyness)
Dad: This is food. Eat it!
Me: No

So who do you think won? The king in question or the donkey? Big DUH! I got sent to bed with no dinner and learnt to shut up and not just eat eggplant but to relish  it - it appears on my table at least twice a week and i can eat any which way!

So here's one of my two favourite ways:

Gutti vankaaya or noone vankaaya koora:

• 1/2 kg firm, purple brinjals (or eggplants)       

  

  stuffed and before cooking

• 1 large onion - grated (optional)
• 1 green chili - chopped
• Koora podi (curry powder - recipe below) - 4 tbsp
• Mustard seeds - 1/2 tsp
• Curry leaves - 2 sprigs
• Turmeric - 1/2 tsp
• Salt
• Oil - 1 tbsp
• Tamarind paste (1/4 tsp) mixed with a tbsp of water

Wash eggplant and remove the stalks. Slit brinjal from top and bottom - making transverse slits upto half it's length- i.e. each slit is perpendicular to the other. Mix the curry powder, turmeric, green chili and salt together and stuff this mixture into the slits. Can also mix the onion into the mixture or fry it separately.

Place these in a microwavable bowl, cover and microwave on high for 5 minutes.

In a separate pan, heat the oil and season with mustard and curry leaves. Also add onions if you

noone vankaya koora

haven't used them in the stuffing already. Drop the eggplants into the oil and sprinkle tamarind water on top. Cover and cook, turning over  (them, not self!) occasionally - about ten minutes - till tender. Serve with hot, white rice, a big dollop of ghee (yeah, yeah, okay, you're watching the calories - but the curry itself has only ONE tbsp of oil, remember?! And plain boiled tuvar dal with salt (aka mudda pappu)!

Koora podi  (curry powder) recipe:

Tuvar dal - 1 cup

Chana dal - 1 cup

Udad dal - 1 cup

Red chillis - 1 cup

Asafoetida - 2 pinkie nail size lumps

Coriander seeds - 1 tsp

Roast separately and powder together - this is a very useful powder which i use for a lot of dry vegetable curries - potato, carrot, chowchow etc.