The Maximum Convexity of the Butt

Is this the maximum convexity of your butt?” she questioned, holding measuring tape around such named part.
“Eh?” was my response.
“Is this the maximum convexity of your butt?” she repeated.
I confessed I did not understand. (Physics (and Chem, and Maths) left me scarred and I gave up ‘convex’ and ‘concave’ soon as I left school, and hearing those words after all these years set off those familiar, unwelcome palpitations.)
“I mean, is this where your butt is the most … how to put it, standing out?” she said.
“Judge for yourself,” I said, turning away to give her a better view.

I didn’t make up that question – those were her exact words. I was in the gym, an agonised weightwatcher going back to those confines after a break of more than six months. Other than the fact that most of me is at its maximum convex now, what struck me was how a simple question was rendered rather baffling because it was put across so bookishly.

People seem to have forgotten simple English, methinks. The need to appear oh so smart and polished, business-like and tech-savvy, and Westernised, too, is what drives this painful turn of phrase.

The other day, I got an e-mail from someone from whom I needed information, saying, “Get in touch with so-and-so – he will give you a good download.” Really?
And then there was the person who called and asked if he could “have access” to so-and-so. As if so-and-so was a vault and you could turn a key in his back and open him up!
There are the publicists who urge you to meet so-and-so “just for a relationship meeting, Madam” – their way of saying that it’s just a preliminary meeting, and that there are no expectations lurking anywhere. And the newbie, fresh out of college, who obviously had not mastered how, when and where to say “Fair enough.” To everything I said, he kept saying “Fairly good” with a wise and understanding expression on his face and never was I more tempted to correct a total stranger!

Rant over, I now focus on a recipe that hasn’t got much to do with any maximum convexity, unless you drench it in ghee and bury it in a mound of rice to get rid of the sting.

But before that, some acknowledgements. The blog header you’re seeing is courtesy Sandeepa. Thank You, Sandeepa.

Then, Nirmala gave this blog the Yummy Blog Award and Kalai gave me the You Make My Day award. Thank you both.

Now the Yummy Blog Award mandates that I reveal the desserts I like the most. Here they are:

Angoori Rabdi (At a restaurant, as part of a Gujarati thali)

Bread pudding (my own, that’s right, no humility!)

Khubani ka Meetha with cream, in a Hyderabad restaurant

One grandma’s laddu, another’s palatalikalu

Panna cotta with vanilla bean

Then, Lavi tagged me for a meme – I told her I’d do a truncated version. Here goes:

Last movie you saw in a theatre
Taare Zameen Par

What book(s) are you reading?
A Prisoner of Birth

Favourite board game
Scrabble

Favourite smells
Lavender, vetiver, jasmine, herbal soap

Favourite sounds
Birds chirping in the morning

Worst feeling in the world
Anxiety

First thing I think of when I wake
Did I have to wake up already?

Storms – cool or scary?
A nuisance, at the very least

Favourite drink?
Lime-ginger

Finish the statement – If I had the time, I would …
Look for ways to spend it!

One nice thing about the person who sent it to you.
She has big, beautiful eyes.

Morning person or night owl?
Night owl.

Eggs over easy or sunny side up?
Over easy

Favourite pie?
Apple

Favourite ice-cream
Vanilla choco-chip

The recipe I have today is a fiery and simple one. I received a present of ripe red chillies and didn’t know what to do with them for two weeks. Finally, I used them for a chutney.

Ripe red chillies: 200-250 gm, chopped
White onions (or any colour): 3, quartered or cut into eight pieces each
Tamarind – lime-sized (Wet in a little water much ahead, no need to soak it in a lot of water)
Salt, to taste
Garlic – 5-6 cloves, skinned

Tempering
Mustard seed – 1-1/2 tsp
Cumin seed – 1 tsp
Hulled, husked and split urad/black gram dal – 2 tsp
Curry leaves – a few
Oil – 2 tsp

Heat oil, temper with the black gram. As it begins to turn brown, add the mustard, cumin and curry leaves.

When they pop and the gram turns a nutty brown, add the chillies, garlic and onion. Fry them till they become glossy and onions become translucent.

Cool, add salt, tamarind and grind in a mixer. Beware, it’s really hot.

For a variation, you can mix a bit of this well with some curds/yoghurt, temper this again and eat it with rice or use it for idlis, dosas and the like.

I have since been enlightened about how chillis and raspberries belong to the same family, so this is my submission to Dee for AFAM-Raspberry.

Red chilli/Pandumirpakaya pachadi Curds/Yoghurt Meme Onion Humour

Reliving Rajasthan

A train journey of over two days, sights to remember for a lifetime: Brown earth, bright yellow fields of mustard; a tableau of camels placidly bobbing alongside turbaned masters; peacocks, tails sweeping and brilliant; women in the brightest clothes; spicy samosas and tea in earthen cups at stops along the way; a nip in the air; and then ker sangri for dinner at aunt’s place; bales of block-printed fabric; daal-baati churma in a busy part of town; peacocks freely wandering in and out of houses, even in the midst of a bustling neighbourhood; tourists gasping with amazement and delight as a guide lights a candle in a room full of tiny mirrors; the horror and tears shed over Roop Kanwar ...

When Padmaja announced RCI-Rajasthan, it was time for me to dig out Tarla Dalal’s Rajasthani cookbook from the innards of my bookshelves and look for an unusual recipe to highlight. The gravy base is a traditional Rajasthani one of curds and chickpea flour (Bengal gram flour/besan), but what struck me was the addition of red chana, which the author describes as whole red gram.

Now I’m not sure if this is the same as kala chana or black chana, having never seen anything labeled red chana before (but red gram is Bengal gram, I know), I used the black chana, which is actually a reddish brown, for this dish.

This dish is also called Chane Jaisalmer Ke (a city I did not visit, incidentally) and traditionally served with missi roti but goes well with rice or bajra rotis, the author recommends. A cupful or two sans either rice or roti makes for a filling meal, as I discovered.

Black chana/chickpeas, soaked overnight and drained
Cumin seed – ½ tsp
Mustard seed – ¼ tsp
Bay leaves – 2
Red chillies, whole – 4
Asafoetida – 1/8 tsp
Dry ginger powder/sonth – ¾ tsp
Green chilli – 2, slit
(The author recommends 1 tsp of ginger-green chilli paste but I didn’t have fresh ginger on hand.)
Red chilli powder – 1 tsp
Turmeric – ¼ tsp
Curds/yoghurt, beaten – 1 cup
Bengal gram flour/besan – 2 tsp
Chopped coriander – 4 tbsp
Oil – 1 tbsp
Salt to taste

In a pressure cooker, heat the oil, temper with the cumin and mustard, bay leaves, red chillies and asafetida.

When the seeds pop, add the black chana, ginger powder, green chillies, red chilli powder, turmeric, salt and 2 cups of water. Pressure cook for about 2-3 whistles till the channa is cooked. Wait for the pressure to escape.

(The chana will take considerably longer if you’re not using a pressure cooker – you can follow the same sequence even with a pan or a wok.)

Whisk the curds and the flour together. Add it to the cooked chana and bring to a boil stirring continuously. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve hot, garnished with coriander.

My observation – the gravy was rather watery, despite the flour, and despite my boiling it down for a while. I’m not sure what the consistency is meant to be. Tasty, anyhow!

RCI Rajasthan Curds/Yoghurt Kala Chana Black Chana Vegetarian Gravy Memories Nostalgia

When Reality Finally Bit!!!

It was, as parties are sometimes wont to be, quite civilised. Most of us were meeting for the first time, so there was a lot of good behaviour, much warmth and fuzzy, lots of compliments, no wild games, absolutely no gossip or nasty comments about the rest of you food bloggers. Zilch. (What a disappointment!) Even if you e-mail me or accost me on chat for the inside story, I won’t have any unless I manufacture some. We were a most unhealthily self-absorbed, egoistic, narrow-focus group who only discussed our food, our figures, our families, our work, our food, our figures …

Some of us were so polite or so timid we didn’t even want to guess who the others were. A couple of us could be heard shouting “No way! Don’t give up so fast! You have to guess!” and had to beat off others saying, “Hey, hold on, don’t tell her who you are!” before they could give themselves away.

And the ones who finally guessed didn’t have it easy, either. “Now, tell me, what made you think she was Lavi and I was Renuka? C’mon, tell me!” demanded some others.

As the bloggers trickled in and started giggling (like yours truly who had no clue Who’s Who as she got in the door), the guessing games began. “But you’re not the dead giveaway you said you were!” said one to another, while another revealed her name only to be chided for talking too soon. “I can’t, I can’t, please tell me who you are, I’m here only for five more minutes,” begged Bharathy, who was on a flying visit, only to be told, “Well, take three more minutes to guess, and we’ll put you out of your misery in the next two.” Some bloggers were guessed by the food they brought.

There was a profusion of food, and Lakshmi, our gracious host, got stuck with most of it. And this ungracious guest told her she wouldn’t mind throwing her home open for the next meet, as long as the leftovers weren’t given to her. Talk about seizing the moment! Ugh!

There was ethnic (Jayashree’s chakkavaratty or Chakravarthi, as Valli blithely kept calling it), artistic (a sprig of curry leaf oh so beautifully centred in Arundathi’s dish of mango curry), exotic (a Greek bread called Ladenia made by Rachel, our Darling Baker), sinful (Nirmala’s Florentines, great big round things of chocolates and nuts), time-honoured (Kamalika’s chakkara pongal) and rapidly disappearing (Kamini’s potato tikkis) and much more for which I don’t have the adjectives right now. And of course I have to be contrary and focus on the non-food part – my illustrious friends have discussed and published all that, many thanks to them.

A couple of us even went the extra mile and brought party favours of coconut burfi and banana bread, bless their loving, giving souls! And all of us have unanimously, wholeheartedly agreed that we should meet again in another three months, every three months, in fact. And no Dad, we won't have to close down our blogs - we handled it real carefully!

In the style of the tease that I have become in the last few weeks, here are a few photos from the potluck. We had fun, didn’t we? Eat your hearts out, you others! Or have one of your own soon and tell us all about it!

Naan-sense - making the naan. No, you don't have to guess whose hands those are!

Breaking bread, the first few moves

Are you being served? Rossogulla-time!

Backsides are allowed, they said, when I asked permission!

Sweet farewell! Arundathi's banana bread was one of the party favours. Valli's coconut burfi was the other.

Food Bloggers Meet Humour Report

Rediscovering An Old Faithful

Friends who know me well will attest to my reluctance to try the same dish twice. I’m known to order the newest or most peculiar-sounding dish on the menu (often to be told it’s not available) and appreciate it heartily. It’s not unless I go home or to a relative’s house or read the blogs that I realize I only rarely make traditional favourites at home.

That’s because I’m always looking for something new to make my meals more interesting, and often, the “Oh- it’s-just-that-routine-old-thing” attitude kicks in when I spy these vegetables on the shelves. But sometimes, something propels me to make it, and going back to old faithfuls to me is as good a new venture as eating strange and fascinating stuff, as it’s been ages since I’ve eaten any of these.

Yesterday, at an aunt’s house, I had some really spicy scrambled eggs, a dinner staple when I was still living at home. That really prompted me to get on with this post – I’d made this a week ago but haven’t made the time to post it due to other new-age distractions, DVDs being one of them.

Where I live, I don’t get very good specimens of this vegetable, but I try and make do. This dish, dosakaya koora (melon cucumber curry), is light and uncomplicated; I also think it’s a perfect accompaniment to a bowl of fresh curds/yoghurt if you want a low-calorie one-pot meal.

Dosakaya/melon cucumber – 2, peeled, de-seeded, diced/cubed (taste and make sure they aren’t bitter)
Onion – 1, chopped
Green tomato/red tomato – 2, chopped
Oil – 1 tsp
Mustard seed – ½ tsp
Cumin seed – ½ tsp
Curry leaves – a few
Red chilli powder – ½ - 1 tsp
Turmeric – ½ tsp
Salt, to taste
Water

In a pan, heat the oil and temper with the mustard, cumin and curry leaves.

Add the onion, fry it till translucent.

Now add the cucumber, fry for about 30 seconds. Add the turmeric and fry some more.

Now add the salt and chilli powder, about ¼ cup of water and simmer covered.

It cooks very easily so make sure it’s not all squishy before you add the tomatoes.

Once you’ve added the tomato, cover it again and let it simmer. You can add a little more water to hasten the cooking process.

It’s generally eaten with rice but also as I described above.

Bon appetit!

Another dosakaya recipe from my blog here

This is my entry for this week's WHB started by Kalyn, and hosted by Anh.


Dosakaya Vegetarian Old Favourite Old faithful Melon cucumber

Bloggers' Meet: Reality Bites?

Bloggers' meet? Nope, just us gals relaxing with some lime juice after a day out in the sun on our recent mid-week break!

My Dad and I just had this funny conversation over the phone:

Dad: What’s up?

Me: A group of us food bloggers are meeting up soon. (Okay sports, no clues, no comments on the participants, place, or anything … indulge me, please!)

Dad: (Begins to laugh) Oh, is it just a meeting or is there going to be any cooking there?

Me: Oh, apparently we’re all supposed to make and carry some stuff there, not sure whether it’s meant to be presents for the others or to be consumed there.

Dad: (and me, now both laughing) Watch out! Blogging is fun only as long as you write about food without having to actually cook.

Me: (dissolved in helpless laughter) True. I can’t make any snacks so I’ve asked if I can buy stuff and dole it out … I also have to go for some wedding-related ceremony that morning.

Dad: So take some stuff from the meal there and distribute it among your friends. OR, take something somewhat moist or liquid, so you can pass it off as fresh, just cooked?

(More guffawing from both sides.)

Dad: Beware, you may have to close down your blogs if you actually meet and sample each others’ wares – these things have to be handled carefully!

Phone drops from my hand as I double over with laughter ...

Bloggers' meet Real life Humour Reality bites