Of Dubai, Barberries and Vegetarian Food Without Vegetaybles

In January this year, I flew to Dubai en route to Ireland. I had half-a-day there before I caught the flight to Dublin. After a late lunch, I hired a taxi and set about exploring the place. The photo above is the Burj al Arab hotel photographed from the beach.

I loved the beach. There were hardly any people there even though it was a Sunday. It was almost deserted, except for a family, a couple and a solitary man who kept making sand tunnels and playing with them.

This is the Dubai skyline as seen from my taxi en route to the spice souk.

This was a friendly guy at the first shop I saw in the spice souk. Notice the little sheikh in the picture, behind the preserved limes?

Inside a store at the spice souk. I could identify most of the spices.

Another store at the souk.

Baby corn chips, that's what they're called.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

And a thousand more.

This was where I met the old man mentioned in the previous post. He kept extending his arms and contracting them with a smile. I couldn't understand what he was saying. And then he got off his seat and came up to me and started pointing at me and the shelf and back and forth, keeping up the chatter and the arm movement. By this time, something about his widening smile and the brightening glint in his eye had started to bother me. He must have seen several of them but he wasn't about to dismiss me as an involved tourist photographing all the strange and amusing things that caught her eye. Oh no, he wasn't about to pass up the opportunity of a sale. He thought I had potential as his customer. He was mistaken. I left.

A variety of dates, stuffed and processed in various ways.

Barberries/Zereshk (soaked, above, and below), from Iran, which I bought in the spice souk. I also bought some asafoetida and saffron, those too were claimed to be from Iran.

Dal/Lentil and barberry stew - vegetarian food without vegetaybles (vegetables, of course - just spelling it the way it's pronounced in certain parts of the country, it rhymes with vegetarian, you see).

How to make it:

In a spoon of oil,

fry two cloves and a piece of cinnamon.

Then, add a handful of onions.

Add 1 green chilli, slit

and 1 tsp of ginger-garlic paste.

Add 3/4 cup of boiled but not mushy chana dal/gram dal to the  pan

with 1/2 cup of water.

Simmer. Add some salt.

Add a fistful of soaked barberries and continue simmering for a couple more minutes - don't let the barberries turn brown though.

Remove from fire.

I found out about this stew when looking for barberry recipes on the Internet. The search threw up zereshk polow from a lot of Persian cooking blogs. The stew seemed to be the next most popular recipe, usually one with meat, lots of slivered nuts, lentils and the barberries.

The barberries are a delight - whenever I discover something new, I tend to use a lot of that in the recipe. But I am glad I didn't this time. The sour berries are quite unobtrusive once they are inside your mouth - they are small and you can't feel them unless you try hard - so when you bite into them, it's a tiny and refreshing spurt of sourness.

Notice the picture of the barberries in the sieve above - that's a tip that I picked up from the Persian cooking blogs which was really useful: The berries are very dusty, with mud and stems and such stuff. So put them in a sieve and immerse that in another vessel full of water. Pour some water into the sieve to soak the barberries. (I soaked them for an hour.) This ensures that the dirt sinks into the vessel below the sieve. It yields quite a bit of dirt, believe me. Wash the barberries a few times and use them.

Barberries/zereshk Dal/Lentils Dubai spice souk Travel Humour

Dinner At An Irish Pub

Two weeks ago, I went on a short trip to Ireland. Though the first two days were full of work, evening saw us eating out at Irish pubs. We told our hosts we didn't want to go to the Indian restaurant they planned on taking us to and they walked us to Davy Byrnes which was quite close to our hotel. The food was good, I'm sure the drink was better for those who enjoyed it, and everyone kept murmuring knowledgeably about James Joyce and Ulysses till someone said, "Alright, who has actually read Ulysses?" Laughing, he said: "I know the name." Then he continued: "It's a hard book to read, you know." Some others chimed in with similar opinions and we soon gave up claims to much knowledge of Ulysses or James Joyce and got busy ordering.

Here's the photo in original colour:

This is their menu, a tribute to the author

And here's some of the food we ate in Ireland:

Traditional Irish stew, with lamb and potatoes

Fillet of plaice, fried in beer batter

The dark brown bread on the left is Guinness bread. Pure awesomeness, with some butter.

A full Irish breakfast - sausage, poached eggs, toast, potato farl, bacon, black and white pudding (towards the back), mushrooms and tomato

One of the two times that I've liked whiskey. This is whiskey cake. The second time was that evening, when I had my first taste of Irish coffee.

Black & White Wednesday Musings Irish pub Ireland travel humour

Of Just Desserts and Going Bananas

My first memories of eating out date from the time I was seven. I was visiting my parents in the US and I know we ate out more often than we did in India, where I don’t ever remember being taken to a restaurant except when we went to Madras as it was then known to see off parents and aunts and uncles to the US and stayed in hotels. (My favourite then was a green pea soup at a hotel that is still around and popular.) In the US, some of the places we ate out at were Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s. I tried spaghetti and meatballs. I tasted pizzas, French fries and other legendary junk food I don’t remember now.

Later we went on an extended road trip of both the US and Europe. I remember being not too fond of the new food. (Could that really have been me?) I was always looking for rice and other familiar food. The one time my parents did locate some rice dish, in some place we had halted for lunch in FRG, as West Germany was known then, it was ice-cold and strange and I threw a tantrum. My father was annoyed, my mother more patient – I’m sure one of those two poor souls downed it so as not to waste resources. (I also made them buy me rolls of coloured wool in some other country though neither they nor I had the faintest idea of what I would do with it, despite my father protesting we were “on a budget” and we couldn’t afford to waste money.)

During that time, I remember, my father would always ask me, “Do you need help?” and lean over and relieve me of a bit of whatever was sitting on my plate. That joke continued throughout the trip and after. I didn’t think it was a big loss unless I liked the food.

It just struck me that the tables have now turned – whenever I visit my parents, my father opens the fridge to find that his nightly dessert of cream, curds (yoghurt) and bananas is halved or wiped out. A fortnight ago, after it happened a couple of times, he factored me into the scheme of things and started adding one more banana and some more cream and curds.

My father seems to have discovered a way to add more taste – and where taste lies, calories follow – to this nightcap. This visit, he told me that the inside of a kajjikai (karanji) crumbled over the curds-banana concoction is a great addition. It seemed interesting, but where would I find kajjikai with the same filling here? As I was mulling the possibilities, the brain in me ticked off the idiot in me (the morning diet of soaked almonds must be working) and told me I didn’t have to go searching for a kajjikai, deconstruct it, extract the filling, crush it and sprinkle it on the dessert. I could simply make the filling myself.

The pictures that you see are my father's, photographed at my request, but in the interests of his diet, I didn't ask him to add the topping, so there is no picture of that.

Banana: 2, sliced (I prefer the chakkarakeli variety, seen in picture above, the second and third from left)
Cream from the top of curds: 2-3 tbsp

Note the layer of cream on top - this is home-made curds/yoghurt.

------------
Topping
------------
Dessicated coconut: 1 tbsp
Semolina/rava/sooji: 1/8 cup
Sugar: 1/8 cup
Cardamom powder: A smidgeon
Chopped cashew: 1 tsp
Raisin: 1 tsp
Ghee: 1 tsp
In a pan, heat the ghee and toast the coconut in it on medium flame for a few minutes. Remove, keep aside.
In the same pan, add another ½ tsp ghee and roast the semolina 7-8 minutes.
Powder sugar, mix with the sooji, coconut, cashew, raisin and cardamom powder.


To assemble: Put the sliced banana in a bowl and top with the cream. Mix lightly. Sprinkle with topping.

Bananas Curds/Yoghurt Humour Nostalgia

Kadhai Rajasthani

Hah! Thought it was a Rajasthani curry, didn't you? It is a recipe, though.

Recipe for Kadhai Rajasthani: Take some time off, go to Amber Fort in Jaipur and see these huge kadhais.

How could I have forgotten to post these pictures in my previous post? Anyway, here's some trivia for you - I haven't watched Jodhaa Akbar but apparently these kadais feature in the movie. Jodhaa cooks kheer for Akbar in these kadhais. So I read on the Net.

The vast and rambling Amber Fort is also complex and maze-like. I saw these kadhais about 90 minutes from the top before I managed to get to them. I didn't figure it out - I made my way to several points in the fort through a combination of stumbling and guesswork. There are no directions anywhere, not even on the audio guide, if you're lucky enough to be able to listen to it.

There was no information about these kadhais. I shot these pictures from high above, as much as my 14X optical zoom compact camera would allow.

There are more pictures of Amber Fort here.

Swimming pool, bathtub, what other uses can they be put to? They would need a ladder, though. In various palaces and museums, we saw oversized vessels and containers like these that needed ladders to access them.

Like this. This was one of the two containers of Gangajal (water from the Ganges, considered sacred, and believed to wash away sins, including those accruing from crossing the ocean) that the then king, Sawai Madho Singh II, took to England when he went to attend the coronation ceremony of Edward VII. These are reported to be the biggest sterling silver containers in the world.

Kadhai Rajasthani

Rajasthan Amber Fort Jaipur Travel Humour

Rajasthan - Vinaigrette of Past

Vignette, vinaigrette, does it matter? But the tag line of the hotel I passed by did make for a big grin - and I knew that would be the title for my next post. Here are some delicacies we tried in Rajasthan over the past week, across Jaisalmer, Jodhpur and Jaipur.

Dinner at a canteen in the Jaipur Railway Station. The round breads in the plate in the foreground were a pleasant surprise. We got those when we ordered a 'kulcha' - it took us a few seconds to realise they were more pav (of the pav bhaji kind) and less kulcha - the South Indians in us immediately noticed their resemblance to ootappams. We liked them so much, we ordered another plate. The gravy was a thin channa/chick pea gravy, which was spicy and rather ordinary.

Behind, you can see some kachodis. They were filled with dal, spices (saunf/fennel, dhaniya/coriander) and red chillies. Very tasty, very heavy - and very, very hot! The other plate (covered by an arm) contains pooris.

How long has it been since you had a Cassata? This brand used to be famous all over India once, now I suppose it's not marketed everywhere any longer. This was dessert, and comfort, in the cold Jaipur night, in a women's waiting room where we huddled trying to forget we had only two confirmed tickets for a group of four.

Roasted papad and bandhani tablecloth - all set for our first full Rajasthani meal in our hotel!

Ker sangri - the desert vegetables Rajasthan is so famous for. I never realised it would be so oily. (Granted my picture/version in the link above is no adequate representation either, but none of the pictures on the Net seem to contain so much oil!)

Gatte ki sabzi - oily again, but quite tasty.

Samosas (right) with a dry, spicy filling and chilli/mirchi vada at a snacks/sweet shop in the market.

More savoury snacks. The one in the foreground is a maida preparation intended to resemble fried cashewnuts.

Mawa kachori, filled with milk solids and nuts and sugar, which Jodhpur is famous for. We had this in Jaisalmer, though. 

A hole is punched in at the centre of the kachodi and some sugar syrup is poured into it. The periphery also is wetted with the syrup.

Maybe we didn't eat it at the right places but we didn't like it very much as the mawa just tasted burnt and the other batch we had reeked of kerosene from the stove rather than anything else!

Yes, all these curries were very oily! This was a methi-papad curry, the methi being the fenugreek seed and not the greens.

That's a Rajasthani thali. Clockwise from the yellow dish is the kadhi, dal, churma, roti, ker sangri and the gatte ki subzi.

Breakfast at Pokaran - mirchi vada and kachodi frying. 

Another Rajasthani thali - rotis, dal, potato curry, kadhi with pakodas, cauliflower and potato curry

This churma was a delight, fragrant with ghee and cardamom

The chaas (light buttermilk spiced with roasted cumin and carom (ajwain) 

This stall serves up jaljeera, lime juice, shikanji and lemon soda. 

My friend asked for lime juice with mint - this is what she got, I guess it was shikanji!

Yet another Rajasthani thali - notice the churma, it's different in this thali.

Churma, close up - it's been processed in the mixer!

The baati of the classic dal baati churma. After we were served this, a waiter came up with more baatis and ground sugar, crushed a baati in our plates, drenched it in sugar and told us to eat it up with the dal. In a more ignorant past, my first reaction would have been to gag, but I tried it now with a more open mind. Strangely enough, it didn't make a difference or affect me much, so I was content with just a taste.

You can see more pictures from my Rajasthan trip here.

Rajasthan Rajasthani food Travel Rajasthani thali