A Rough Guide to a Tomato Soup

We could have grown up eating/drinking something but never have had more than a vague idea, if that, about what went into its making. Despite cooking for myself ever since I set up home, there are some things that I haven't made very often with success. I usually try them, give up, don't attempt it for years, then try again, give up, don't attempt ... you see the pattern emerging. Along the way, I even forget this particular dish exists, unless I have it somewhere else, or someone asks me to make it, which is when I make another supreme effort, and end up with a decent or even winning formula. This tomato chaaru/ rasam/ soup is one such.

Earlier this year, my niece and her parents came to spend a week with me in the summer. My
sister-in-law said my niece had liked the tomato chaaru her aunt in Hyderabad had made and that she would likely relish another bout of it. How did that aunt make it? What followed was a rough guide - a little bit of this and that and that. Since the summer, I have evolved my own prescription for it and I am glad to say I have arrived at a combination of ingredients that makes a flavourful, spicy, thin soup, just the way I like it.

You will need

Tart tomatoes (I use the country/naatu varieties, you can add a few hybrid ones for their
colour)- 8-12
Shallots/onion, chopped - about 1 tbsp
Tamarind - 3-5 pieces, soaked just enough to be moistened
Green chillies - 2-3
Salt - about a teaspoon of iodised salt, to begin with
Cloves - 2-3
Garlic, smashed, without skin - 3-5
Pepper, powdered - 1/2 -1 tsp
Coriander powder - 1.5 tsp
Jeera powder - 0.75 tsp
Curry leaves
Coriander - a big handful, chopped roughly
Water

Make a plus sign in the tomatoes and boil them in water till the skins burst and you can peel
them off easily once they cool.

Puree them smoothly.

Add all the ingredients mentioned, except the coriander, as much water to thin down the puree as you like it, and boil very, very, very well.

Keep tasting it as you go along and add more salt or the other powders if it doesn't taste
quite right. If this is the first time you're making this and wonder what you should look for,
look for a slightly sour but mostly spicy taste.

Once you decide you are done with it and take it off the stove and transfer it to a serving
dish, add the chopped coriander and cover it. You can savour it in a cup, or eat it with rice
and papads, or sauteed/fried vegetables, or even kheema (minced lamb).

Eating Out Etc in San Francisco

This blog turned nine last week. I'm glad I've kept it going, even though the number of posts is vastly diminished as compared to a few years earlier. Thanks, dear readers! What better way than to celebrate with a report of something that combines travel and food! 

In July, I went to San Francisco rather unexpectedly, for just five days. This, of course, is the Golden Gate bridge but I was put up in a hotel fairly close to the piers so I managed to walk down to them everyday and take in the sights and sounds a fair bit.

This is my second trip to San Francisco. The first one was in 2003. My cousin and I spent five days there and did quite a bit - apart from visiting the city we went to Napa Valley and Yosemite too. This time, I spent three days in the city on work and spent two more days with a friend who lives outside San Francisco, just relaxing and exploring the little town of Lafayette where she works.

This shot is from a farmers' market at Ferry Plaza. Aren't they vibrant, these macaroons?

Don't you just love going to farmers' markets? I do. I even like going to grocery stores. I visited quite a few grocery stores in Lafayette and got my first pack of farro from there. 

I didn't buy any vegetables though I bought a lot of fruit at the farmers' markets and other stalls along the piers.

Tomatoes galore! I enjoyed seeing the variety.

Our hosts took us to this Italian restaurant where we ate a lot of ravioli. This ravioli in a basil tomato sauce was filled with ricotta cheese and spinach. This dish is vegetarian.

I think this was lamb or beef. Probably the latter.

This was ravioli with chestunuts in a butter and sage sauce topped with crispy pancetta.

This snaky vegetable was at one of the stalls in the farmers' market. There wasn't anyone around for me to ask what it was.

The first time I'm seeing rhubarb in the flesh. In the original form, that is. I've had a rhubarb pudding a long time ago.

I had been looking for tamales at Mexican restaurants here in India but had never found one. I was still in a tamale mood when I found a stall at the farmers' market on Ferry Plaza. It was filling but really very bland - I went on adding chillies to it from the accompaniments that were available. I may not have it again.

This is a pharmacy. It was quite a task to spot the medicines amidst all the food that swamped the pharmacies - and there were several of them around my hotel. The food wasn't restricted to fruit and breakfast - there was chocolate, there were vegetables, deli food, quite a variety.

This was a starter at a nice but crowded restaurant our hosts took us to in Sausalito. It is made up of kale, jicama and pecorino.

I've seen too many of these blistered peppers on friends' timelines and so did not pass up the opportunity to order a plate. They were very nice and mild, and occasionally a hot one would pop up. I would have eaten everything if it weren't for the fear of a runny tummy from the hot ones.

I was surprised to find out that this was what the restaurant called salt cod fritters. I've always imagine fritters to be flat, or like pakoras.

This was the wild rucula, medjool dates and gorgonzola pizza we had there.

And this, the Black Mission Fig with goat cheese and frisee. 

It's always a lot of fun to meet a blogger friend. I think of them as old friends who I'm meeting for the first time. ET, who has also been blogging for nine years, at Evolving Tastes, and I met the day I was leaving San Francisco. We met at Ferry Plaza, my luggage in tow. She treated me to lunch at the Mexican restaurant there. I had a bean taco and a shrimp taco. 

This was a pink lemonade in a shopping complex in Lafayette. I liked how the malls in California were not multi-storeyed but spread out. I rarely consume juices or drinks in India. But the ones in CA really had me thirsting for more. They were flavourful and not weighed down by sugar. I even had a couple with lavender in them. I think I would like to go back and try some more.

This was the lunch I treated myself to as I was roaming around Lafayette's main street. Tomatoes baked in feta with olives and walnut toast. Not bad at all!

And I leave you with this. No, I didn't dare.

A Plum Post

This post could have had many other headlines: I Grilled A Cake, How My California Dream Died, Holding On To A Memory - and Failing, Salvage and Redemption, etc, etc. You get the drift.

I went on a work trip to San Francisco last month and was housed in a hotel fairly close to the piers. At Ferry Plaza, I came across a farmer's market twice during my 4-day stay there. On Pier 39, there was a fruit stall that carried glorious cherries and strawberries and several other fruit.The farmer's market was full of plums and peaches and I tasted each variety and bought lots and lots of fruit. The fruit was very sweet and juicy, unlike the tart plums and peaches we get here in India.

I should have left it at that and not tried to convert a memory into a reality, however impermanent. I came back the next week and promptly bought some small plums (locally known as alubukhara, I think) and four big ones. They are sometimes called nectarines, but mostly, they go by 'plum'. What's in a name, though? They were as sour as ever. California slipped away a little more.

There was no way I was going to strip the enamel off my teeth any further. I set about looking for recipes where I could use them in a cake or a pudding and came across several. Some of them were for something called a plum buckle. Naturally, I knew that was what I would try as I had never before come across anything called a buckle. It seemed fairly easy to make too.

I combined a few recipes I found on the Internet. I marvelled at my brainwave to use Yakult as a substitute for the buttermilk the recipe demanded. I was slightly perturbed when the plum pieces sank in and didn't look like rubies studding the batter, as they did in the pictures on the Internet. They will rise when it bakes, I told myself. I was not overly worried that the sugar still helped its crystal shape. I put it in to bake.

Almost immediately I smelt it burning. I thought it might have been the sugar melting - in the pack I used, the sugar came in large crystals and I added a little extra because the plums were really, really tart. "Do not overthink everything, just do it," I told myself (channelling my friend, not Nike), and resolutely let the timer tick 25 minutes off the dial.

The burning smell did not cease to waft. I gave in at the 26th minute, switched off the oven and checked. The top was charred. I stuck a knife into the centre and it came out moist. I baked it some more and cooled it for an hour. Then I flipped it over and while it looked really pretty, like a plum upside down cake, it was all gooey and eggy as the batter had not baked all the way to the bottom or all around the cake. It was a wonder it held its shape even after being flipped.

And then I noticed that the oven was in 'Grill' mode from a previous experiment, not in 'Bake' mode. No wonder the top got charred right away! No wonder it didn't bake all the way down or around. I changed the setting on the oven and baked it for 20 minutes.

I cooled it again, cut and discarded the charred portion, scraped the rest of it into a box and took it to the Refuge of Failed Experiments (aka The Office) where my indulgent colleagues ate it, giggling, and even complimented me. Though one of them took the trouble to tell me he didn't like it, and that one had to have imagination to call it a cake. I forgave him.

After all, I had been resourceful. Earlier, such experiments would have gone straight into the dustbin. I would have been sick with guilt over the time, materials and money wasted on the effort. But now, I had made the most of a bad deal. I had managed to get it out of my house where it would serve as a reminder of my guilt and managed, instead, to create some 'colleague delight'. I had forgiven myself by doing all this. And I will not forget to check the settings on the oven in a hurry, here on. I managed to get it out of my system.

What lessons did your dessert-gone-wrong teach you?

Just Peachy, This French Toast!

Oh yikes! I can’t remember which of these pictures is the pre-baking and which the post-baking one. But I shall begin my post nevertheless.

I have mentioned my grandmother quite a few times in this blog. Her breakfasts were quite surprising, I now realize. Growing up, I thought they were normal. Crisp ootappams with tomato sauce, thick, well-browned chapattis served with a jaggery-sweet and tamarind-sour onion gravy,  and dosa with lime pickle, not chutney, and especially not coconut chutney. Toast was another regular item on the breakfast menu. By toast, I mean French Toast, but back then, we just called it toast. I am pretty sure it was called Bombay Toast in my other grandmother’s house. Only much later, I learnt it was called French Toast across the world.

Now I learn French Toast is not just French, though it got the name ‘pain perdu’ (lost bread, literally) from French bread, in whose nature it was to go stale quite quickly. Lots of nations had thought of this sweet, puddingy mixture earlier, and ‘retrieved’ or ‘recovered the loss’ by soaking this bread in a mixture of milk and eggs and then frying it.

When my grandmother made this, it was quite a treat even though it was a regular. When I was a kid, freshly baked bread wrapped in butter paper would be brought around homes from the bakery. A man called Rahman from Hanuman Bakery would come on his cycle, box attached to its rear. There would be fruit bread too, with tutti-frutti in it. And bun. If the bread hadn’t been sliced that day, we would slice it with a red-handled bread knife. Bakery or us, we would slice it pretty thick, and it wouldn’t disintegrate like today’s does on being immersed for just a few moments in the eggs and milk. It would come off the skillet moist and hot and sugary, patches of brown adorning it where it got a little too roasted, and transport me to heaven.

Neither our cook back home nor I have been able to recreate that taste, but I keep trying when the mood strikes me, and am often disappointed. It is flimsy, and no amount of sugar can make it sweet enough. I rarely eat bread, and the loaves are too big for my liking so when I am not giving away the majority of it to the person who works for me, I try to make some French Toast. Bread upma, too, but maybe I’ll have a story about it another day.

Last week, it seemed as if the stars were in alignment for me to use up some bread which had seemed ‘perdu’ the moment I opened the pack, just an hour after I had purchased it from the departmental store. It was rough and dry. I masticated my way through four slices over two days and could take it no more, when the local newspaper carried a recipe for French Toast casserole.

Of course, I did my own thing with a few substitutions. To begin with, it was a slow cooker recipe; I only had an oven. I had opened a pack of tinned peaches to make dessert for a potluck a few days earlier. I had bought the peaches (and pineapple and cherries) in May to make something for guests but never did. I used up quite a few things that were lying unused around the house. The recipe below contains my substitutions, while the rest is from the newspaper. (No credit was given, probably because it was no one person’s invention. The Internet is awash with recipes for French Toast casserole.)

Whole eggs - 2

Egg whites - 2

Milk – 1.5 cups

Honey - 2 tbsp

Cinnamon – ½ tsp

Plain white bread – 10 slices

Salt - a teensy weensy pinch

For the filling:

Tinned peaches, chopped roughly – 3 cups

Honey – 3 tbsp

Lime juice - 1 tsp

Almonds and cashews, chopped – 1/3 cup

Raisins – a handful

Cinnamon – ½ tsp

Method

Put the first six ingredients in a medium mixing bowl and whisk to combine. Lightly spray the inside of a slow cooker with non-stick cooking spray or grease lightly with oil.

Combine the ingredients for filling in a small mixing bowl and stir to coat peaches; set aside.

Cut bread slices into triangles. Layer a greased dish with some slices, add some of the filling and repeat until there are three layers of bread. End with a layer of filling.

Pour the egg mixture over bread. Bake for about 30-35 minutes at 160 C

It was nice enough and I had it for breakfast for a few days. It tasted good both cold and warm. You can have it for dessert too. Bon appétit!

Things I Am Learning, Making, Doing From the Internet - 2

So I've figured out that this is a nice way to break what seems to me like interminable silences on my blog - put out a record of stuff that you've learned from the Internet. Barbecued poha, fantastic chicken curry, a discovery of ramen, there's quite a bit on the menu.

The most recent was this poha mixture, which I thought started off well, but in reality absorbed too much of the smoke from the ingredients that I fried ahead of mixing them into the poha. It tasted downright barbecued by evening. Repairing it by adding some more plain poha helped but I had wearied of the project by then and I gave it away.

Then, very unlike myself these days, I craved some spicy chicken curry that would remind me of homely flavours. I looked for 'Andhra Chicken Curry'  and came across this recipe. At first, I thought I would use the commercial garam masala that I had stocked in the kitchen, but found a lot of comments in that post saying the masala recipe given there was just right so I went ahead and made it, with good results. This is never how chicken curry looked in my home but it always looked like this at many others'. I followed the recipe to the T, didn't even stint on the amount of oil as I usually do.

I got very fascinated by ramen noodles (instant noodles) just before the controversy about many two-minute noodle brands being contaminated in India broke out. One recipe I read suggested not using the tastemaker in the noodles, but cooking them up with vegetables et al. I had also finally bought a bottle of Sriracha after hearing so much about it on the Internet.

I was very, very disappointed that the Sriracha (I learn it's pronounced Seeracha) was quite ordinary, another version of the 'hot and sweet' sauce that most brands in India carry. I thought it would be Something Else! Now I've got a huge bottle (there weren't any small ones) and no appetite for it. Gah! And the noodles? The less said about them, the better. Suffice it to say they tasted of upma!

I attempted my hand at a microwave mug cake. As usual, I plunged in headlong, the recipe a half-baked (pun wholly unintended) affair of vague memories from the Internet and my own callousness of not checking it once more. I used two tablespoons of floor, a small pinch of baking powder and two eggs. I arranged some nuts at the base of the baking dish and poured the batter in. After it baked, I warmed some plum jam with water and poured it over the sauce. It was tough, inedible. I threw it away.

Finally: It's not often that I get to hear of dishes that have been made after reading my blog. Finla of My Kitchen Treasures saw a picture of the fried eggs my aunt had made for me in the US and replicated it with her own choice of herbs and spices.

Here is Finla's picture, which she was kindly sent me. She added chives and Turkish pepper.

And here's my aunt's version, with dill and chives

What have you been making, learning, doing?

The 200 Food Decisions We Make Every Day ...

Recently, I came across a study which referred to another study by Brian Wansink of Cornell
University. Wansink had found that we make at least 200 food-related decisions every day and ever since I read that, I wanted to explore it a bit more. When Wansink and his colleague
Jeffrey Sobal asked 139 participants how many food-related decisions they made every day, the average answer was 14. But then the respondents were asked to reconsider the various contexts and circumstances in which they made decisions for a typical meal, snack and drink - time,
company, etc and when these were added up, it showed the participants made an average of 226 food decisions a day, 59 of which related to what kind of food to eat. This lead the researchers to conclude that such gross underestimation pointed to the probability that people often engaged in mindless eating.

I thought it would be interesting to record my own food-related decisions and see if they
numbered that many. I didn't get around to maintaining a diary but I did make an attempt over the last three hours and here's what I came up with. (The figures in brackets at the end of each para are the number of decisions.)

Note: I haven't read the entire study, just gists from various sources online, but I thought it would be fun to list all that I could and see how many food decisions I can come up with.

May 23, 2015

• Decide to make pappucharu with lesser dal than usual, so that there wouldn't be too much left over. Use up the half of the bottlegourd and two of three carrots that I had bought the previous day. (2)

• Of the two-and-a-half fistfuls of toor dal that I cooked (above), I set aside some, on the spur of the moment, to mix with the new mango pickle that my mother had sent over. (1)

• I decide to add coconut to the French bean and broad bean stir-fries that I made. (1)

• I decide the small amount of oil I had used in them was enough - one spoon each in all the three items. (1)

• I feel lazy about having to peel the garlic and use it but I go ahead and do it. (1)

• I decided not to use the curry leaves in the fridge as they had all blackened. (1)

• I thought of breakfast but didn't do anything about it. I went without breakfast. (1)

• I had a couple of lychees but realised it was thirst and drank some water. (1)

• I think about adding ghee to the dal and pickle and rice combination (above) but decide it isn't worth the effort of setting my plate aside, opening the ghee jar, finding the right spoon and adding it. The kitchen is very hot and any time spent out of it, even a minute, is well worth a sacrifice. (1)

• I add some oil from the pickle to make up for the ghee.(1)

• Decide to add another bit of pickle knowing quite well that it would be too much, and that it will spoil the taste of the dal-pickle combination. It does. Serves me right. (1)

• Ate a serving of rice with the beans. (1)

• I hadn't eaten the pappucharu. I should eat some. But I miraculously decide to stop. I will cool off with some plain curds and beans instead. Shall I have another helping? Hmm? No.(3)

• I remember to put everything in smaller containers and store it in the fridge.(1)

• I should remember to take the murukkus to office. A water bottle as well. I put the murukkus in a container and put it in my bag. I decide to rely on the water cooler at work for today because I don't feel like lugging around a second bag that's heavy.(4)

• I switch on my computer at work and feel like having strawberry gateau or chocolate cake. I toy with the idea of stopping by for some on the way back home later in the day. I am hungry. Within half an hour of coming to work, which is about two hours after lunch, I dip into the murukku container and eat some. (1)

• I drink copious amounts of water to make sure it all gets flushed out properly when the time comes. (1)

• Then colleague #1 comes over and eats some of the murukku. I keep her company.(1)

• We both dip into another colleague's diet potato lacha but we don't eat much, we go off for coffee. (1)

• At the canteen, the coffee looks too strong to have it sugar-less so I have it with a bit of sugar. (1)

• I drink most of it. Usually I have only half. (1)

• I work a bit, thinking of food, recipes and blogging most of the time.

• Then I tell my colleague who sits next to me, the one with the potato lacha (potato straws), that I desperately want to eat something hot. She offers me the lacha, and I take it, telling her that my BP surprisingly was 140/80 the other day when I went to meet the doctor, and how could it be, I don't have a problem and I shouldn't be having lacha which was quite salty but of course, it was nice because there was an aftertaste of chilli powder.(2)

• I put some on a paper and snack off it. Colleague #1 comes back and helps herself to some lacha, puts a mountain of it on my paper and we both eat off it.(2)

• My murukku container has migrated to my colleague's desk in the meantime. I had put it there to offer it to her and others. I retrieve it and finish it off. I drink hot water from the cooler. Then I work steadily, cravings and hunger pangs making themselves felt. I push them away.(2)

• I leave work at about 8.15 pm, and head for the supermarket. I buy four packets of slim milk. Then two cartons of coconut milk, to replace the two we used up. This brand has a way of disappearing from the shelves for months together. A small tin of condensed milk, simply because I find it. If I don't grab it now, next time I need one I'll have to buy a regular, big one and make more dessert than I want. It can't be stored. (Well, no one needs condensed milk, do they? They only want it. And it's not even as if I make dessert regularly.) (3)

• I decide not to throw out the Black Forest cake just yet. We had bought it to delight our very young niece who loves cutting cakes, birthday or not. It's been seven days since she cut it, and she didn't show much interest in it herself after the first day. It's five days since she and her parents left to go back home and it's lying in our fridge, untouched. (1)

• For dinner, I take out the pesarattu batter I've made in the morning. I eat it with some ginger pickle, after some deliberation.  Just one, I tell myself, a large one, and then some rice with the pappucharu (in picture above). I stick to that decision. I eat some curds and broad beans too but I don't feel guilty. I think of another helping but put a lid on it, literally and figuratively.(5)

• I boil a packet of milk. I wonder whether to chop up a cabbage and store it in the fridge for tomorrow's cooking. Should I add coconut to it or not? Should I look online for a recipe? Something with wedges of cabbage rather than the usual minced? I abandon the idea.(6)

• Then a friend calls and we discuss death, disease, stones in urine and ... no, the list of unsavoury topics ends there. I stir a smidgeon of curds into the boiled milk so that it will turn into curds for the next day's meal. I feel like chocolate and have a small wedge of almond chocolate. I have a bit more, a square. I think about some more but I kill the thought. Then I polish off some lychees. I guess each fruit is to be counted as a decision. I start counting the seeds to see how many I've consumed but abandon the attempt. It's fruit only, nothing heavy. (12-20)

• I've forgotten to update my food and fitness app today. It reminded me once, I put it off. I'm going to do it now. I'm very proud to say this is one exercise I've not given up every since I started it a month ago. (1)

• It's past midnight and I'm typing out this post. Will I have the energy to cook tomorrow or should I simply order in? There's a new restaurant that promises meals of home-cooked quality just around the corner ... (2)

That's about 70 decisions in all. I wonder how much more I have forgotten or overlooked, because I kept remembering things as I was writing this post. I also sincerely believe, though, that like most respondents in that study, probably, that I've been honest about the whole thing. It's like that disclaimer we declare and sign at the end of application forms or declarations: "... these responses are true to the best of my knowledge and belief ..."

Have you ever attempted something like this? Or have you ever maintained a food diary? How did it work for you?

Salad With Some Summer In It - Bittergourd & Mango

If you know me, you wouldn't have come here for a beautiful picture of the bittergourd-mango salad that is the subject of this post. (The photo is way down, this time.) What you will get, instead, is a discussion on the methods of de-bittering the bittergourd, and some memories stoked by the taste of this salad.

What worked for the short, plump bittergourd didn't suit the long one. And what I hoped would be a Mauritian bittergourd salad turned into "let's try this Sri Lankan recipe" and then into my own.

On the de-bittering first: I stuffed the short, plump ones with 'senagakaram', what you might call a chutney powder, a mixture of chana dal powder and spices. I followed Internet instructions and steamed them for five minutes above a bowl of boiling water after scraping the skin thoroughly - I believe the bitterness is concentrated in the bumps covering the skin, and I follow it religiously, but it has also been my experience that they never ever lose the bitterness completely. With this set of gourds, though, I couldn't detect any after they had been steamed, which was truly surprising. (I didn' taste them before I steamed them.) The Spouse has a closed mind when it comes to bittergourds and I happily consumed all the 10 specimens myself over two meals.

Then, exchanging messages with a friend, I came to know about a Mauritian bittergourd salad. What attracted me was the mention of raw onions in the salad. They add such crispness to salads, don't you think? She spoke of how the recipe calls for soaking the gourds in vinegar and something something, she trailed off, she could never bring herself to eat it. So I set about looking for recipes for a Mauritian bittergourd salad but didn't find any that I wanted to make. In one picture, the bittergourd even looked bitter. (Don't ask me how I arrived at that conclusion. It's one of those I-know-it-all opinionated conclusions which are usually way off the mark.)

The next day, I saw three normal-sized bittergourds in the supermarket so I bought those. I had also seen, by this time, recipes for bittergourd or 'ampalaya' salad in blogs of Filipino heritage, and saw some preparation manual where the bittergourds were saturated with salt and soaked in water. I couldn't find the same blog post later but went ahead from memory - and was disappointed to find that they tasted bitter even after the scraping, salting, soaking and rinsing.

But I'm no wimp - in matters of bittergourd, that is - and went on to slice them. I chanced on a Sri Lankan recipe but didn't have any of the ingredients mentioned except the onion so I abandoned that too. I didn't even have limes. I applied salt, chilli powder and turmeric on the bittergourd pieces, fried them and rested them on kitchen paper, then mixed them with an onion and looked unhopefully inside the crisper of my refrigerator. Hurrah, I had a mango! I cut and peeled one side of it and mixed it with the rest of the preparation. I added a little more salt.

(That's the salad in the foreground, in the picture.)

It tasted exactly like the 'mixture' that used to be sold in 'bandis' (carts) on the roads in my town in Andhra Pradesh, when I was a child. I don't remember seeing them later. I am trying to recall what the main ingredient was - peas/ chickpeas, most likely the former - I'm not sure now, but what joy it is to discover a recipe for a long-forgotten and forbidden treat! (I don't know how I got to taste it.) Now I'm wondering if the vendor used mangoes in his mixture. It used to be heaped into a soft, starchy mountain of yellow and red in a big steel plate. Maybe they added some roughly chopped tomatoes too. It used to be decorated with tomato and onion slices, and green chillis stuck out of it. I've tried looking for pictures on the Internet but all of them seem to be modern, chaat-type versions, which this was most certainly not. There was no ' 'sev' in it, no chaat masala, just plain salt and green chillies and chilli powder. I've also seen it sold on the beach in Chennai, long ago. The funny thing is, I don't know where to find those peas! If they were yellow peas, I haven't seen them in the stores. They weren't green. If they were peas, that is.

I have asked a cousin, she does not remember either, but she will ask her mother and let me know. Meanwhile, here's the recipe.

Bittergourd, scraped and sliced: 2 cups
Turmeric: 1/2 tsp
Chilli powder: 1 tsp
Iodised salt: 3/4-1 tsp
Onion, sliced: 1/4 cup
Mango, peeled, chopped: 1/2 cup
Oil: 2 tbsp + a little more to top up

Apply the spices to the bittergourd slices and fry in the oil.

(I don't know if my theory is correct, but to save on oil and oiliness, I use a somewhat deep, curved vessel that allows these slices to get more or less immersed in just 4 tbsp of oil - I'm not sure it's deep-fried, but it's not too shallow either.)

Drain on kitchen paper towels.

Mix with the onion and mango, taste and add some more salt if you like.

Bon appetit!

Keeping It Simple - Green Mango Curry

This post has been long overdue. Not this particular post, but the next post on this blog, I mean. I had plans to reveal my grandmother's recipes, which I found in fragile aerogrammes and a tattered pocket diary on my trip to the US but I haven't had the opportunity to make any of them yet. I have also been having a bounty of fruit and green mangoes as our Uncle has been touring and passing them on to us so that they don't rot in his fridge. That would usually fall to my lot - for them to rot in mine - but I distributed most and consumed just a few.

The mangoes, though, were really hardy. As hard and as sour as ever even after a week. We made dal a couple of times and then there were three. By this time I was tired of dal, I had already made chutney and have the pickle, so I looked for some other recipes to use them up.

I saw some which called for grated coconut or coconut milk, but I didn't want a heavy affair. In one of those weary moments, I also wanted something that reflected tastes native to me, and not acquired ones. Now that was a challenge. I had never come across a mango curry back home so I decided to come up with one myself, using a recipe that I used for a pumpkin pulusu (pumpkin stewed in tamarind) a few weeks ago.

At this point, let me tell you of a conversation I had with a colleague recently. I had been telling her of a cook I had employed briefly three years ago. I had her for six months, three times a week. She would cook only with one hand. The other would be clapped to her ear, holding the mobile phone, and she would be chattering away. Well, chattering is not quite the right word. This person always was discussing something or the other busily, furiously. This happened every day that she came to cook. At this point my colleague said, "But how could she do that, Sra? It's food, and you have to treat it well." She meant we had to treat it with respect.

This stuck in my mind. Soon after, I read something somewhere that said a dish cooked peacefully, in a peaceful frame of mind, that is, would taste much better than one cooked when the cook was stressed. It sounded plausible, and reminded me of yet another discussion with yet another colleague who had said something similar: "When you are not harried when you cook, if you are relaxed about it, it will turn out well, whatever time of day."

What do you think? I have now resolved to find some peace before I cook.

My green mango curry was thus made in a moment of peace, low expectations and yes, a spirit of adventure because I was curious to see how it would turn out without being too invested in it.

Here's the recipe. I didn't use any tamarind or tomato which I would use in a pulusu because the mangoes would be sour enough. I intended to use onions and curry leaves but found out I didn't have any.

Sour green mangoes: 500 gm, washed well, cut into strips with peel on, retain the seed
Gingelly oil: 1 tbsp
Mustard seed, cumin and hulled, split urad dal: about 1 tsp each
Red chillies: 2, broken
Garlic: 5 cloves, peeled, bruised
Red chilli powder: 1 tsp
Turmeric: 1 tsp
Salt: Iodised, 1 tsp
Coriander powder: 2 heaped tsp
Cumin powder: 1 heaped tsp
Jaggery: 1 heaped tsp
Water: Enough to cover the mangoes halfway

Heat the oil and temper with the mustard, cumin, urad dal and red chillies. Add the garlic, saute till it gives off an aroma.

Add the mangoes and saute well for a couple of minutes. Season with the turmeric, chilli powder, salt, coriander and cumin powders.

Add water to cover the mangoes halfway.

Cover the pan and let it boil on a medium flame till the mangoes are soft. You can even mash the flesh of a few pieces to give the gravy some body.

***I tasted it at this stage and it was sour enough to make my mouth pucker.

Reluctantly, I added some jaggery to it. It improved a bit and I left it at that because I wanted a tangy and hot curry, not a sweet one.

It was good with rice, now I am going to try it with dosas. Now, that, of course, is an acquired taste - and more honestly, an attempt to clear the fridge. Bon appetit!

Here's the recipe for another mango curry, with fish in it! 

When I Made an Alsatian Pear-Prune Kugel

I wrote this post almost two years ago. I had wondered why I made things I wouldn't really eat when all I liked about them was the thought of 'achieving' them. I have to say this kugel fell into the same category. It's midnight as I write this and I'm not taxing my brain to check if I have made any such conquests since then and now but I sallied forth and made it anyway - a few midnights ago. Well, I would have waited for morning but my pears - purchased for a fortune less than two days earlier - had started rotting and I did not want to lose more of my money overnight.

I saw this recipe on a newspaper's Facebook page and it seemed so easy - bread is the main ingredient and there's no messing around with whisking and mixing and folding. The thought of a fruit cake/pastry made with little effort save some peeling and dicing was alluring. To add to that, there was the exotica of adding onion to the mix and still have the whole thing coming out sweet.

What was I thinking? That it would taste like the nice sweet noodle kugel I had in a Wegman's in New Jersey last year when I visited? That I would be sinking my teeth into a fruity, warm, East European dessert with so much fruit in it it would actually count for some nutrition? That I would amaze my colleagues in the Refuge of Failed Experiments with a Success? (The RFE is my workplace - most anything gets eaten there but it's nice to go bearing a legitimate success too. I didn't take it there though - most of them are vegetarians who eat eggs only as part of cakes and pastries but this is too much like an omelette - a standalone egg dish, if you get what I mean.)

I thought of many things, not the least of which was the thought of my fruit basket going from full to empty in a matter of minutes, a deal-breaker for clutter-obsessed me - the kugel used up four pears, you see - but then it is now sitting in my refrigerator, with the Spouse eating it for breakfast and as an evening snack. I have told him to give his folks some of it but he seems to have forgotten. In any case, he likes it and so I've decided it's blog-worthy.

It's sweet, of course, with all that sugar, but the onion is enough to add a strong savoury taste and I suppose I didn't expect that.

I tasted some just now, a couple of days later, and it tastes a little better cold and just out of the fridge, I have to say.

I followed this recipe with two or three changes - I added all four cups of diced pears (red ones, no idea what breed) to the mixture instead of reserving one pear for the compote. I added a grated apple to it instead. And as my springform pan has gone missing - I think it rusted and I threw it away - I used an ordinary cake tin.

And my colleagues have persuaded me to bring some anyway, so I will be taking a bit of it to the RFE tomorrow.

Have you ever made a sweet fruity omelette like this? That's what it tasted like!

Bon appetit!

Eating Out in the US - Part 2

I didn't eat all of the things in the photos - the vegetables from the store are included in this post because they are new to me or they looked pretty. I really should have done this post earlier because I've begun to forget what they were called, already.

We ate these rolls at a Thai restaurant in Bridgewater, New Jersey.

Dragon beans at a supermarket in Columbus, Ohio

White asparagus

My Mexican bowl at a fast food restaurant - I really liked it.

Vegetarian pizza at a local restaurant in Columbus, OH

Veggie burger at this restaurant

Sticky bun bread pudding

This was at a French bakery in Columbus that my cousin took me to. Before I read the label, I thought this was some variation on red velvet cake, but it was a chocolate bombe. We passed. There were more exotic treats to try.

My cousin had this pear frangipane tart.

This was a cherry tart that I had. These pastries were extremely rich and filling. They looked small but we could finish them only with some difficulty. My cousin saved a piece of her tart for later.

Don't think I'll have kale chips again, never mind what the world says about them!

This was supposed to be a low-carb dish, but it felt like I had eaten 2,000 calories! It was nice, though. Must have been all that olive oil. There was very little spaghetti but lots of zucchini noodles. 

Most of the menu at this Delaware restaurant another cousin took me to was beef. There were no chicken or vegetarian options so I tried this crisp pork belly from the 'lite fare' on the menu. It was good - and heavy. I have never had this before.

This was a roasted beets & greens  salad with red and yellow beets, arugula, honey goat cheese mousse (that was so interesting), pickled baby carrots, celeriac and pear mustard vinaigrette.

Pumpkin Pappardelle with mushroom, ricotta salata, sage brown butter and kale pesto

I think this was spare rib.

This was at a Vietnamese restaurant in Delaware - this is their yucca dessert with coconut milk.