Two Vegetables, One Way

Bittergourd curry

Pumpkin curry

Today I went to visit a friend and ended up staying for lunch.It was my kind of lunch. More accurately, it was the kind of lunch I appreciate nowadays - cooked by someone else. It was home-made, simple, and yet new and alluring because it wasn't of my own making.

There was pale green snakegourd set off with a sprinkling of grated coconut and tempered with mustard seed, a spicy cauliflower and butter bean stir-fry with garlic, tempered chickpeas garnished with coconut and sambar which reminded me of the pappucharu we make back home. My hostess pushed the ghee container towards me, I put some on the rice and though she had intended for me to eat the sambar with it, I began eating the cauliflower curry with the rice, which comes naturally to me because that is how most of us from Andhra Pradesh eat our vegetables. The vegetables are rarely a "side-dish" as they are in other parts of South India. These curries are also eaten with curds or curd rice, and usually not mixed with the sambar or pappucharu.

I try to keep the cooking simple these days but rarely succeed in feeling satisfied with the result. Definitely, I have tired of my own cooking and I have wearied of what I cook. It takes a lot for me to enjoy what I have cooked these days even though The Spouse and my friends are full of compliments for my cooking. And yes, I have made a small beginning at entertaining again - I've had two persons over for lunch already, and cooked them a traditional Andhra meal. A previous stint at entertaining a few months ago saw my pasta, bocconcini salad and other dishes being cleaned out, and earned me the title of 'best curd maker' from my friend's daughter who is a foodie and has a discerning palate. Recently, I had some guests staying with me and they approved of my cooking, but I can't get myself to like my own cooking.

What I did do differently with the entertaining was use ordinary, un-fancy vegetables that I don't see being used in many homes nowadays. At least, they are not served all that often to guests, which is probably one reason why I don't see them. I think it's a great pity. These bittergourd and pumpkin curries should not be ignored and are the exception to the tired-of-my-own-cooking syndrome that I face nowadays. I have a few theories why sometimes, some curries succeed in pleasing me.

1. They look good. (Let me be honest, their photos turn out good.)
2. I am in a good frame of mind when I cook them, which includes not feeling hurried and harried.
3. They are not something I make often - they are part of the traditional cooking that I so often defer in search of the new and unusual.
4. They taste exceptionally good.
5. I haven't spent too much time on them.

 Theories 1, 3, 4 and 5 apply to these curries.

I bought a pack of cut bittergourd on my way back home from the gym (some of the prep stress is gone this way), salted the rings and waited for half an hour while I read the day's newspapers (or I might have made myself an egg and cut up fruit for my breakfast, it was so long ago, I don't remember) and only then set to work on the recipe.

Bittergourd, deseeded, cut into rings: 2
Onion, chopped: 1/2 a cup
Red chillies: 1
Chilli powder: 3/4 tsp
Salt: 1/2 tsp + 1/2 tsp
Water: To sprinkle

Mustard seed: 1/2 tsp
Cumin: 1/4 tsp
Urad dal/black gram, skinned and hulled: 1 tsp
Oil: 2 tsp
Curry leaves: 1 sprig

Jaggery: 2 tsp

As I mentioned above, sprinkle some salt on the bittergourd slices and leave them alone for 30 minutes. Then, squeeze them in batches, thoroughly, between both your palms and set aside. Drain off any remaining salt water.

(This should not be done with the pumpkin, just wash it well, cube it with the skin on and use it directly.)

Heat the oil and pop the mustard. On a medium flame, add the cumin, urad dal, red chilli and curry leaves in that order and wait till the dal turns brown.

Now add the onion and saute till it turns pink.

Add the bittergourd (or pumpkin), saute well, on and off, for about four minutes.

Sprinkle some water on it, cover with a lid and lower the heat. Let it cook till it's green and translucent.

(The pumpkin can cook till it's just soft.)

Taste the bittergourd at this stage. If it's crunchy/ yields with just a bit of resistance, it's perfect. Check if it needs more salt - it will probably retain some from the salting during the prep. Add the chilli powder and salt, if needed. Mix well. Cook for a couple of minutes more with the lid on.

Now open the lid, add the jaggery and mix till it's all coated. Simmer. The onion and the jaggery caramelise to make it a great bittersweet curry.

You can eat this plain, with rice, plain curds or curd rice. Bon appetit!

Truly Simple Stuffed Brinjals

A couple of years ago, I went on holiday to a resort which served food based on their Ayurvedic beliefs. They did not use cucumbers, potatoes, tomatoes and brinjal/eggplant.They did not use red chilli or red chilli powder either. Since I came back, I haven't eaten too many cucumbers or tomatoes and hardly any brinjal at home. (I use the chilli, though.) However, about two weeks ago, I found some good-looking brinjals and bought them. I wanted to make stuffed brinjal, but an easy version that did not involve chopping and grinding.

I took recourse to the Net and all the easy stuffed brinjal recipes that popped up involved chopping onions, shredding coconut, frying/roasting some other ingredients and grinding them all together. I was only willing to scoop ingredients out of their jars, mix them with my hands, stuff the brinjals and shallow fry them - and I needed a recipe that was willing to confirm my vague ideas as to how to do that. I had figured out that I needed gram flour (chick pea flour/besan) to do it because many stuffings are a combination of ingredients that involve fried and ground channa dal or chutney dal. For once, I had besan at home. Then I chanced across a blog that mentioned a stuffed version with ajwain/carom, something to do with Gujarat, but it was just a fleeting glimpse.

It was probably this, but I can't be sure.

That was enough for me to work out what I could do.

What you need
Brinjals/eggplant: 250 gm
Gram flour/besan: 1/2-3/4 cup
Carom seed/ajwain: 1.5 tsp
Cumin powder: 1/2-3/4 tsp
Coriander powder: 1.5-2 tsp Red chilli powder: 1/2 tsp
Salt: 3/4 tsp of ordinary, iodized salt is how much I used
Oil: Enough to coat the surface of the pan you are going to cook the brinjals in. It could be several spoons. I used a smallish pan and my brinjals got crowded in it.

Cut brinjals into four and keep them joined at the stem end.

 Roast the flour on a low flame for a couple of minutes. Cool.

Mix the flour and the spices and stuff the brinjals with the mixture.

Heat the oil and arrange the brinjals carefully in the pan.

Cover with a lid, lower the fire and keep checking to see if they are done on one side.

Then turn them over to the other and cover again.

After 3-4 minutes, take it off the fire.

You will get soft brinjals with delicious insides. Don't expect the stuffing to show very clearly, though, it will coat the insides of the brinjal, unlike the chopped and ground version with onions and coconut which adds to the volume of the dish.

If you have any besan mixture left over, you can make a most delicious kadhi with it. Dilute some curds, mix the besan with it, temper some oil with mustard and curry leaf and add the curd-besan mixture and when it begins to boil, bring it down to a simmer for a couple of minutes and take it off the fire.


Brinjal Gram flour

Salad Days Are Here Again - Mango Caviar

The Refuge of Failed Experiments (a k a my workplace) rarely lets me down. Successes or failures or halfway houses between the two, I take them there, and they are cleaned out, with compliments to boot. So when I offer them something saying it looks terrible, but tastes okay, it's no wonder that they immediately rush to comfort me, saying 'it's not bad at all', or 'it's not as bad as you think', or 'it's interesting' and proceed to empty the dish.

This was one such concoction that I could not bear to put in its actual avatar on the blog, so I cartoonized it. If you have noticed, I have given the blog a makeover and it does not deserve an ugly photo. Style over substance, yes, but indulge me - and if you go by what my colleagues said, it was worth it.

Well, this dish up there is very simple to throw together. I first got to know of a mango-sago combination some eight years ago, when I started blogging and experimented with it a few times. This time, I wanted to make a salad of this dessert rather than a pudding so I literally threw a few things together and came up with this winner. Yes, a winner, even though it is not the prettiest thing I have made. A colleague has already declared dibs on it the next time I make it and one was rather disappointed that I did not bring it on a day that she came to work.

The dibs-declaring colleague named it mango caviar. She also told me that sabja, the black grains that you see in the picture, are very cooling in nature. Now isn't that all we need for this hot, hot summer? The sabja, or basil seeds, or falooda seeds, as they seem to be better known nowadays, were such a curious discovery when I was a kid. A friend showed me what happens when you put them on your tongue - they develop a grey jelly-like coating on coming into contact with moisture, and for a few days, all I did was go to the yard, plunder the tulsi (holy basil) plant for its seeds and put them on my tongue.

My interest in them was revived recently when I read about chia seeds for weight loss and thought these were the same, but soon found out they were not. I bought them just for the fun of it, though, and thought of using them in this salad.

What you need

Ripe, yellow mango, cubed: 1.5 cups
Sugar: 1.5 tsp
Sago: A handful, soaked in water for 30-40 minutes
Sabja/basil seeds: 1-2 tsp, soaked in a little water

Sprinkle the sugar over the mango, stir lightly so that the cubes are not squashed.

Boil the sago till it is transparent, drain and cool under running water. Drain again.

The basil seeds swell up as soon as they are put in the water so do this just as you are assembling the salad.

Toss them and the sago over the mango and stir lightly. Bon appetit! And may your summer be full of mangoes and other cooling agents! I'm sending this off to Kalyn's Weekend Herb Blogging, organised by Haalo hosted this week by Lucia of Torta di Rose

Weekend Herb Blogging Basil seeds Mango Salad

Chocolate, Dark and Drinking, Makes Flourless Brownies

In my newly-adult, newly-baking days, I had a bit of a reputation where brownies were concerned. I would make them often and their fame spread across continents. When my cousins visited from the US and the UK during that period, they would ask me to bake brownies for them and I would. My baking days now are few and far between but I've never stopped loving brownies and love the idea of dark chocolate brownies after having made them once from a box mix. When I made these a couple of days ago, I could feel it in my bones that these moist, dark chocolate-drinking chocolate brownies would be a hit, and my bones were not wrong. They were cleaned out at work, and their numbers quite diminished when I got back home and checked the container in the fridge.

These days, the motivation to experiment comes more from a restless and guilt-induced funk to exhaust the ingredients groaning under the weight of their long wait in my kitchen rather than from an appetite or curiosity about something culinary. Very slowly, I am getting better at managing waste. I am still having to buy a few things to hasten the process of using up a few other things but this time I did not mind. I bought a slab of dark chocolate to finish my drinking chocolate. I know I will be making these brownies again. Very soon.

Recently, I cleaned out my kitchen shelves for a photo op for a 52-week project I did last year. With many sighs - of guilt and relief in varying measure - I threw away a few things. Maybe I hoped the drinking chocolate would be riddled with insects. It was not. It smelled heavenly and had not turned into a lump. While I like chocolate, I'm not a fan of it in liquid form. As it happens in my case with long-unused stuff, I do not recall why I bought the drinking chocolate. Probably because it is reputed to be a soporific, and I am a raving insomniac.

I have been thinking of flourless brownies for a few months now. Every recipe I read till my patience ran out suggested almond meal. I have made flourless cakes with it earlier but some reports about enzymes in raw almonds interfering with digestion made me wary. Moreover, as I do not get almond meal but have to make it myself, and that translates into more labour, I kept looking for ways to make brownies that used drinking chocolate as a replacement for flour and almond meal. I did not find any soon enough.

So I just launched into it myself and started looking for recipes which were close. I found this. I had all the ingredients, including the coconut oil. I was not too sure about the coconut oil though I was open to using it. One resource on the Internet said the oil had to be used in solid form, but that it should not solidify by being refrigerated. The recipe, and many other coconut oil-in-brownie recipes, called for the fat to be melted along with the chocolate. So what was I to do?

I searched for butter as a replacement for coconut oil in baking. And found out that it had to be browned before it could be used because a large part of butter is water. So I browned it, strained it and set about making the brownies.

Here's how I made the brownies:

Ingredients:

Dark chocolate chunks: Just over 1 cup
Butter, browned: Over 1/2 a cup, less than 3/4th cup
Eggs: 5 (The ones I used were small)
Sugar: A little under 1 cup
Drinking chocolate: 1 cup
Salt: 1/2 tsp
Irish Cream: 2 or 2.5 tsp

Method:

Brown the butter and set aside.

Melt the chocolate in the microwave on high for 3 minutes.

Add the butter to the chocolate and mix it lightly, it will continue to melt.

Whisk the eggs and the sugar.

Gradually, add the chocolate-browned butter mix.

Now add the drinking chocolate in ladlefuls, folding it into the mixture after every addition.

Add the salt and Irish Cream, mix.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees C for 20-25 minutes until a knife/fork/toothpick/anything else inserted in the centre comes out clean.

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Brownies Flourless Drinking Chocolate Dark Chocolate

Fridge-Cleaner Gravy with Secret Ingredient, Oil-Free

The other day, my friend S came over for lunch. We had decided earlier to make it fuss-free so we decided on pasta. I cooked the pasta and she brought the sauce. Her sauce smelt good, exactly like the soup sachets from the US I used to ask my folks to bring me now and then. When I mentioned it to her, she began telling me how she made it.

 "Tomatoes, secret ingredient, vegetable stock, ..." she started. I stared at her but she looked like she did not even notice my staring at her. "What?" I said, a little taken aback. "Secret ingredient, stock, ..." she went on, but I interrupted.

 "You won't tell me what the secret ingredient is?" I said, hoping my voice was not going hoarse with incredulousness. Could she be witholding something so simple from me? I had only heard of people witholding recipe secrets, but did they really do it? Even as I was saying it, she said, "I'll tell you what it is after you eat it, I want you to guess."

I named a vegetable, because that was what I had used myself sometime the previous week to thicken a gravy.

"Nonsense," she said, waving her hand dismissively. We then took the food to the table and even after a couple of tries, I could not guess what it was. She then revealed it to me and all I will say is that it was a cousin of the vegetable I had myself used. I will leave it to her to start her own blog and reveal her secret ingredient, but mine is zucchini.

What happened was that I had very few vegetables besides potatoes and peas. I also had a stump of yellow zucchini (or was it green, but it doesn't matter). I didn't want to eat any more takeaway, or go out to eat, so I was bent on finding something to eat at home. I wanted to make it oil-free just for the challenge. I already have some oil-free recipes on my blog, this and this, but I wanted something else.

I wanted something wholesome. I was bummed that the bulk of it would have to be potatoes, as those were the vegetables I had in the largest quantity, but I was concerned about the fat aspects of them. Other than that, I had precisely one tomato, one shallot, half a zucchini, and some peas. I had no idea how to give bulk to the curry other than crush some potatoes.

But then I had a brainwave and decided to use the zucchini, grated.

Here's how to make a fulfilling oil-free gravy, then! And guess what? It's also grindless, if you use pre-ground ginger and garlic.

Potatoes, scrubbed, peeled, cut into medium-sized pieces – 3, medium size
Shelled peas – 1 cup
Zucchini, grated - 1 cup
Cumin - 1 tsp
Ginger-garlic paste - 2 tsp 
Shallot - 1-2, minced
Tomato – 1 medium, chopped 
Green chilli – 2 (I used a bit of red chilli paste since I had that)
Turmeric – a pinch
Salt – to taste
Tamarind - 3 small pieces
Water: 1/2 cup
Garam masala/Curry powder – to taste (Optional)
Coriander - to garnish

Note: I made those other oil-free curries a long time ago and they were different, so my recipe/method here is by trial, error, estimate and guess work. So it will be idiosyncratic and inexact.

Heat a pressure pan and put the cumin in. Once it begins to darken, add the shallot and the zucchini and saute.  You have to watch it as you do, because it can get burnt very easily.

Once it begins to change,  add the green chillies and ginger garlic paste. This is an advantage because finally there is some moisture in the pan. Saute this too.

Add the tomato and mix it well with the onion-zucchini and ginger garlic paste mix. Let it cook for a while till the tomatoes get mushy. Add the turmeric.

Add the potatoes and peas and mix well to coat with the gravy in the pan. Add the tamarind, salt, garam masala and pressure cook it for 5-7 minutes or for 3-4 whistles. You can even sprinkle the garam masala later, after opening the pressure cooker. Open the pressure cooker only after the pressure drops. If you're in a hurry, put it under a running tap till the pressure falls. Close the tap, check the weight to see if the pressure has all gone and then open it.

Garnish with fresh coriander.

You can make this curry in an ordinary pan too. It will take more time.

   Oil-free Curry Vegetarian Potatoes

Meandering through Monda Market, Secunderabad

I find that after having lived life to a certain length, I sometimes get confused when I see something unusual. It may well be the first time that I am coming across it but I wonder if I really have not seen it or heard of it before. Sometimes pictures and good descriptions confuse me into thinking I have actually seen it with my own eyes. A couple of weeks ago, I made a quick trip to Hyderabad to see an old friend who was visiting India after almost 10 years. She had to finish some work in Secunderabad but it was not time-bound, so we took our time wandering through the small shops and stalls in Monda Market. Soon, we came upon this

and I guessed that they were fresh chickpeas in the pod. I have only heard of them, never seen them before. (Or so I think, but no, I really have not.) My friend was amazed. She has several memories of buying them and nibbling them on the way back from school and thought they were pretty common. I did not grow up or live in any place where they are commonly available so they are a novelty to me.

So we bought some, about 250 gm, I think, and kept popping them into our mouths throughout our walk. They were not very different from the brown chickpeas soaked overnight and handed over as prasadam during the bommala koluvu held during Sankranthi or Dasara. I have been to some koluvus as a kid where the chickpeas were not processed any further, though in Tamil Nadu, the tradition is to cook and temper them (sundal) before handing them out to the guests.

See those black things on the right side of the photo? Those are water chestnuts which my friend had never seen before! I told her to try one and we shared one.

I tried getting a picture of the chickpea in its pod but this is all I could manage because by this time we were in a store and the conditions, which includes my non-mastery of my camera, did not permit anything better than this.

I hear this market is a place where you can find things that are not found easily in other places in the city, especially leaves and herbs for rituals. What you see above are coconut palm leaves woven into festoons.

I had not planned to take photos but my friend wanted them. So I got pictures of the green lotus buds, 

of this stall which sells so many things of which I can identify the betel leaves, lotuses, banana leaves and chrysanthemums.

The rhizomes behind the lotuses are probably fresh turmeric, though I only see them now, as I upload these pictures.

Don't you think this is a lovely picture with all the purples, pinks and greens?

It has been ages since I saw chrysanthemums in this colour.

And in this - I now yearn to wear some, or truth be told, just possess some.

Garlands galore!

Those are rose petals stitched into a garland.

And that's a floral plait you can use over your own.

This is one of the must-shoots in many Indian markets - kukum and turmeric. Often, one finds kumkum in various colours as well.

My friend likes papayas, and wanted a shot of these.

And these are colours for rangoli, quite in demand in the Sankranthi season.

    Travel Musings Monda Market Secunderabad

LessWord Wednesday - 2

Find of the week: Split horse gram dal. I made horse gram podi/chutney powder with it, with mint and coriander.

It looks better cartoonized.

What goes into it:

About as much coriander and mint as you can see in the photos below, washed well and fried in one spoon of oil
 A few pieces of garlic, fried in the same pan that the greens were fried in

 Roast these one by one and cool:
 9 tbsps of horse gram dal
7-8 red chillies
1.5 tbsp coriander seed
 Salt
Important: We need a lime-sized ball of tamarind, seen nowhere in these pictures.

Grind the dal, chillies, coriander seeds, tamarind and fried garlic.
Add the fried coriander and mint leaves.
Grind again.
Add salt and mix.

Goes well with rice, idli and I'm sure with a lot of other things. When I try it I'll let you know.

This post goes to Simona at Briciole who is hosting Susan's My Legume Love Affair, now managed by Lisa.

My Legume Love Affair Horse gram dal

An Update On My Life and Eight Steps to Popped Amaranth Bars

I just read an article on how to give great titles for tweets, Facebook posts and blog posts. At the risk of sounding conceited, I will say that I knew and practice most of that. Have been, really, for many, many years. I never thought that the "Caption This" Photo/cartoon contests for which we tried so hard as kids would become a daily challenge for me in adulthood but it's one that I welcome mostly.

Still, given that I blog far less frequently than earlier, I will borrow from the tips given in the article and see if I get more hits than usual. The article tells me that people want to be taught and references to oneself pique curiosity, depending on the social medium. I, of course, am combining all that and giving you both a "how to" and an update on my life. I am not linking to it, however, because the illustration for one important point on how to use photos that are direct vs those that are indirect simply did not make sense to me and I didn't waste any time after a couple of attempts.

The word update is just to test whether the reference to myself brings you all rushing here. My life has really not changed much since the last post, nor since last year, or the year before, or the years before that. I keep saying I want change but of course, I only want the nice parts of it, and of course, that's not acceptable to Change which is as stubborn as I am, so we are somewhat deadlocked. But still, I am going to put this post out as per the instructions and see whether there's any change.

Here's the update, a tame one but a pleasant one: It's a cool December night and it feels very nice and calm despite the boring cricket commentary going on in the other room. It's not even bothering me, that noise. And I am thrilled to tell you this is the first blog post I am doing from my laptop - all these years, I've used a desktop and found it very convenient but in the last week or so, sitting in front of it has been affecting my head and eyes strangely - I had not been well - so I've just placed the laptop on the dining table, on a table mat and am typing away. I guess I had not done it all these years as I was worried I wouldn't be able to do it smoothly, but it is very smooth. Of course, a laptop can never be like a desktop because I have to be conscious of the charge and run for the power cord to plug it in when the charge runs out, but other than that it's really comfortable.

I made these amaranth bars at least two months ago. As usual, I bought three packets of popped amaranth as if I had foreseen a famine of this particular commodity and tucked it away in a commodious container. (Given that this is a commodity one finds in organic stores, which in my experience do not maintain a steady supply of goods, I can be forgiven for fearing a famine.) I soon tired of the morning cereal of amaranth and curds and the amaranth was ignored for a long time. Then Guilt knocked at my door and though I did not want to make anything sweet or dessert-y, I did not find anything very different with amaranth on the Internet and made two batches of popped amaranth bars instead.
This is the recipe for the first batch. In the second batch, I used desiccated coconut and dry cranberries. Not only did those at The Refuge of Failed Experiments (the workplace, that is) like this, they all asked me for the recipe which I mailed them over the weekend. They said they wouldn't really be trying it anyway, but I mailed them anyway.

None of this activity did much to exhaust my stock of popped amaranth, though. And now I wonder if it's my imagination or it's really beginning to smell a little stale. Sigh!

Anyway, here goes the recipe:

1.5 cups popped amaranth
1 cup cashew, roughly chopped
1/2 cup choc chip
1/2 cup sunflower seed

a handful of raisins

4 tbsp butter
1/4 cup jaggery
1/4 cup honey
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla essence

Melt butter, jaggery and honey on low heat till it comes to a boil and then thickens somewhat. (Can add some cinnamon powder here if you like.)

Once it thickens, take off fire.

Add vanilla and salt and stir.

Add it to ingredients in first cluster and mix thoroughly till they are all well coated.

Place in a not-too-deep baking dish, level surface and bake/toast in a slow oven (160 degrees C) for 10 mins till top browns.

Switch it off, stir it,  and then pop it back in the oven for 5 mins.

Switch off after 5 mins, remove and add raisins and level it again.

Cool and then refrigerate. Cut into pieces after a couple of hours.

Amaranth Snack Gluten-free

Making Peace With Sambar

That's a beetroot sambar in the making

Till I went to hostel where I spent six years, my meals, made at home in Andhra Pradesh by my grandmother, had been varied: a dal everyday, sometimes a gravy, a couple of dry vegetable preparations, a chutney. There would be a fresh menu in the evenings, usually lighter, except on the days that we had meat, which was made for dinnertime because everyone in the family would be present. This meal consisted of bottlegourd or ridgegourd curried in milk, or a tomato-based curry, another dry vegetable dish or scrambled eggs and ‘charu’. This last ran the gamut from a dal-less, pepperful affair to a red tomatoey one to one that was full of vegetables and yellow with a little dal. I don’t remember where sambar figured in all this. Maybe it was made when we had idlis for breakfast and it would be served again in the evening. In any case, those were days when I did not care too much about the distinctions between charu and sambar so I may well have eaten one thinking it was the other. All I know was that it was not a daily affair.

When I went to college in Tamil Nadu and lived in the hostel, sambar made an appearance at every meal, morning and evening, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Well, yes, there was the odd day when we were given a chapatti dinner and sambar would not be available then, but I swear, one day we were given sambar and bread for breakfast! The food at the hostels I lived in had the salutary effect of making me eat whatever vegetables were served, but it also bred in me a long-lasting distaste for sambar which I have not been able to shed quickly. And in Tamil Nadu, wherever you go, hostels or hotels, it unfailingly makes an appearance. I don’t mind home sambars so much but I keep institutional sambars at an arm’s length.

It also took me a while to realize that vegetables were a sideshow to the sambar, because at home, we mix them directly with the rice and consume them, unlike in Tamil Nadu where they accompany the rice which has been mixed with sambar. I still don’t believe that sambar and coconut chutney are the best accompaniments to tiffins, and my first choice of food to eat or serve will never be sambar.

In ordinary circumstances.

About two or three months ago, I realized it can be a very convenient dish to make when you are time-, sleep- or energy-poor. Ever since I stumbled on the realization that ‘lime-sized ball of tamarind’ does not cut it and my perfect sambar needs to be made with tamarind at least the size of a small orange for a cup of toor dal, I have felt more enthusiastic about it. And The Spouse has been bred in sambar-land, and he does not really seem to need anything much else if there is a vat of it available. And I love vegetables, which, if I cannot prepare them in a style to suit my own taste because of the lack of time and energy, sambar is an opportune vehicle to carry them.

Of course, this is easier done The Spouse-style when you put everything into the pressure cooker – vegetables, tamarind, dal, spices – and finish off with it, but I like my vegetables to retain their shape so I pressure cook them separately and finish the sambar in two stages. I have even gone so far as having fun with it by using different brands of sambar powder to check which one tastes best. I seem to have overdone it, though, because I don’t remember now and I must begin the cycle all over again.

Last evening, I was telling my friend that I had the title of the next post on my blog but not the substance, really, and that must have been playing on my mind. Because I came home and extracted all the edible odds and ends from the fridge and they did not amount to much, especially considering The Spouse who was chugging back home in a journey that began seven hours ago. It was past 10 p. m. I had three carrots and two shriveling beetroots – I cut up those and set them to pressure cook with an orange-sized fistful of tamarind. Then I extracted the cooked vegetables, cooled the tamarind, gave it a good squeeze, discarded it, transferred the juice and the vegetables to a pan and added some cooked dal that I had in the fridge to it and let it boil after adding some sambar powder to it.

I have had beetroot sambar only once earlier, at an aunt’s house about 20 years ago, and meal time was dominated by laughs about how strange and funny that maroon sambar was. As I prepare to post this on the blog, the 146,000 Google results the computer returns in 0.44 seconds tells me it’s not all that unusual. Probably the reason why half of the few friends who responded to a ‘Guess what’s cooking’ photo on Facebook got it right!

 Sambar Musings

The Perfect Recipe For a Grindless Gravy

Six years ago, I came up with an event called Grindless Gravies. The main condition was that no electric appliance like a mixer-grinder or hand blender should have been used to make the gravy. (There were lots of other conditions and I kept updating them as they kept occurring, which, I'm sure, frustrated a lot of participants, you can find that in the comments.)

This recipe, though, is not bound by those rules, but does not need to circumvent them either. I discovered this formula recently. I was looking for a recipe for chicken liver curry or fry when I came across this recipe. I adapted it to a pressure cooker and it resulted in a gravy that was exactly like the one you get in non-vegetarian restaurants specialising - broadly - in South Indian cuisine. As I've said before, for something to be great, it has to taste like your grandmother made it, or like something that came out of a restaurant - and this fit the bill.

I then decided to apply it to a vegetable/vegetarian affair and see how it fared - and it was wonderful. The best part is that you don't need coconut or flour to thicken the gravy. I've tried it three times since then, with different combinations of vegetables, and it came out nice and thick every single time.

I'm sure it's not an unusual recipe but for me it's a big discovery of a convenient method. The thickness of the gravy, without it going all thin and watery, is what thrills me.

The formula - for 3 cups of vegetable/main ingredient

Fry 3/4 cup of onion, a sprig of curry leaves (optional) and 3 tsp of ginger-garlic paste in that order in 2-3 tsp of oil in a pressure pan or pressure cooker. 

Mix a pinch of turmeric, 1 tsp of chilli powder and 1/2 tsp of garam masala (curry powder) in 2-3 tsp of water. Add it to the oil and fry it till it separates. 

Add mixed vegetables (the gravy in the photo has chick peas and soya nuggets; another had beans, peas, capsicum and potato), salt, mix well, and then add 1/3 cup of water and pressure cook for three whistles. 

In both the above cases, my gravy turned out to be too salty. To the second one, I added tomatoes at the end and cooked it again - it was perfect. To this one below, after it had cooled a bit, I beat some curds and added it in spoonfuls till it absorbed the extra salt.

You can garnish it with coriander.

Grindless gravy Vegetarian

Why I Still Blog, Seven Years Later

It's my seventh blog birthday and I'm sitting rather dumbly in front of my computer wondering what I should say. It's a Saturday, a day when no one seems to notice a blog or even a Facebook status, and mine, even less.

I continue to blog - yes, I still do, even if it's a pitiful one post a month nowadays - at a time when life is getting busier and harder and there seems to be lesser time for pleasurable pursuits. I blog in an era when utterly addictive social media have crowded our lives and no one seems to have the time to read blogs. I continue to blog despite falling visitor statistics and comments. I continue to blog even as the blogs of talented fellow bloggers have fallen silent. I persist even as my friends and readers seem to have less and less to say on my blog. Sometimes they don't have much to say on their own either. I struggle to involve myself in my friends' blogs when they don't talk to me as much as they did earlier.

I continue to blog even though I do not read much more than the same blogs I used to. I blog even as my friends tell me their time is too valuable to spend on the computer, on the Internet. (But I see that they can't stay away.) I blog even as bloggers I like tell me they do not want to get involved with other Indian bloggers as they are political. I blog even though I do not/cannot/am too lazy to market my blog.

I blog even though I don't always eat exotic, seasonal, local, home-grown or organic produce, and my food does not always turn golden on cooking. I blog even though the oil never seems to separate or leaves the sides of the pans. I blog despite knowing little about my tradition. I write despite my blog's lack of clear positioning and classification.

I blog even though I feel jaded. I blog a 1,000 words stubbornly; my photos are no paragons of beauty. I blog because there is some flickering, undying hope that it will lead me to what I want it to lead me to. Above all, I blog because it's sanctuary, the one activity that occupies me completely, when the rest of my life fades out entirely. (Of course, it comes flooding back soon enough.) Blogging is one of the very few things in my current life I like doing wholeheartedly. And giving up on it out of a sense of futility real or imagined would be like giving up on life itself.

Thank you, dear readers and bloggers, for still spending time on my blog. Here's wishing you all get all the time you want to put up your feet a bit more and do the things that make you happy.

And now for some less heavy reading. Here are my previous anniversary posts:

First
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Sixth

And here are some resources on why blogging still matters

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2013/08/30/is-blogging-still-relevant-in-a-world-of-social-media-6-reasons-why-i-think-it-is/

http://1000heads.com/2013/05/why-blogs-still-matter/

http://www.becomingminimalist.com/15-reasons-i-think-you-should-blog/

And why there's a place for blogs that write rather than shoot
http://lifesafeast.blogspot.in/2013/09/lets-talk-writing.html

And a blog that I like to think I had a bit to do with, in terms of prodding the blogger to start/not delay blogging:

http://viewfromthetopofthetank.blogspot.in/

Musings Anniversary On blogging

If Grandmother Could Read My Blog ...

(Read the post to know why I used the photo.) 

 Dear Readers,

Some of you will know about The Fifty-2 Weeks of 2013 project that we are doing on Facebook. Of course, it's well over seven months old and we are no longer accepting members but I am glad to say the project is going on. Well, chugging on.

This week's theme, Aparna's idea, was this:

Write a very short story beginning with the following paragraph. Your story should begin with this paragraph and then you make it all your own.
"It was past ten at night. I had finished clearing up after dinner, and locked up for the night. The rest of the family had turned in for an early night. I was looking forward to a hot shower, and then snuggling under the covers for a quiet read before dropping off to sleep.
That's when the peal of the door bell startled me. Who could it be this late at night? ....................."

It was past ten at night. I had finished clearing up after dinner (actually we had eaten out) and locked up for the night. The rest of the family had turned in early. I was looking forward to a hot shower, and then snuggling under the covers for a quiet read before dropping off to sleep.

There’s nothing like turning on the AC and the fan and curling up under a thick, warm blanket with a book in hand. My grandmother would always, say, though, that she found it absurd – why fan, AC and then cover yourself, she would question. Dear Ammamma, who would neither cover herself nor sleep on the bed. She would sleep on the floor with her hand under her head for a pillow.

I was smiling to myself, remembering my granny, now gone for two decades. That's when the peal of the door bell startled me. Who could it be this late at night? I looked through the peephole but I could only make out a vague shape. It looked like a woman of a certain age, head bowed, waiting …

I opened the door – and froze. It was my grandmother. No, really, it was. As alive as ever. Not a day older than when she died. 72.

“Papa, give me some water. I’m thirsty,” she said, before I could scream.

No doubt, it was a dream. I was not going to be afraid, I wasn’t even going to pinch myself, I would just grab the dream and spend a few more minutes with her. I got her some water, of which she had a long drink.

“Hammayya! That’s better, I feel more alive now,” she said, settling down comfortably in a chair at the dining table. “Didn’t go to work today?”

“No, it’s my day off,” I said. “Oh, what did you do then? Cook?” she asked.

“Nothing. We ate out and I have many leftovers.”

Grandmother went over to the fridge, looked at the many containers of various sizes occupying the shelves – rice, bits of dal, bits of vegetables, chocolate – and turned back to me.

“How old is this stuff?” she asked.

She looked bemused when she saw me trying to recollect – and downright disgusted when I told her the oldest curry was five days old.

“What is happening to you, Sra?” she said. Now it was my turn to look bemused. Since when did she call me Sra?

“Sra?”

“Yes, I read your blog, I know this avatar of yours. I know what you’re cooking, who your friends are and often, I find myself mentioned – I am flattered, of course – I also know you keep saying you’re busy and lazy and are struggling with leftovers but I didn’t know you let things moulder in the fridge this long!”

“But Ammamma, things never go bad.”

“Maybe, Sra, but I know you. You never enjoyed eating the same thing more than twice, and from what I gather, you don’t enjoy it now either. But instead of cooking afresh, you’re now eating out, and letting all this stay in the fridge.”

“The others don’t mind eating it. And I feel guilty to waste food. Some of them carry it to work.”

“But five days? Five days? Aren’t all of you bored out of your minds seeing the same things day in and day out? The same old things?”

Some get eaten up more quickly than the others, I told her. And yes, after some seven days, I do throw it away, fresh or not. Every week begins with a new resolution that I should not waste food, and every week the fridge groans under the weight of the leftovers.

“But it has gotten better, Ammamma, it’s not as bad as before. I don’t waste as much raw material now, maybe now I have to learn how to cook just enough for a day.”

“Yes, if you’re making mixed vegetable curry, cook with one carrot, one potato and 1/8^th of a cauliflower instead of a quarter kilo of everything. That should work,” Ammamma said.

“And when you don’t have the time, don’t cook, just take it easy. Your family can eat at the canteen or get takeout. I don’t even understand why you’re so keen on cooking, I didn’traise you to cook and talk about cooking and go into raptures about it – I wanted you to do something in life and make something of yourself! Why don’t you write a proper book? Win the Pulitzer? What is this every week writing something in the blog about this curry, that curry – and then when I visit you, you’re not even eating well!”

“But cooking is a life skill …”

“Life skill, my foot! Looks like this kitchen and this fridge are sucking your life away!” said Ammamma, and opened the fridge again. I stood up but she pushed me back into my chair. She went into the kitchen, brought my dustbin and proceeded to throw in everything into the dustbin, steel containers et al. She threw off the bits of imported chocolate carefully preserved in bits of foil, she threw away the eggs after checking the dates printed on their smooth exteriors, she attacked my vegetable crisper, the the pantry and then the storeroom with a savage energy that could only have come from spending twenty years in the world beyond! She didn't even spare the onions, and we all know what prices they command these days!

By then I was a burning ball of shame and sadness. Shame because there was no rest for my grandmother from looking after me and my affairs even at this age. And now that Operation Fridge was over, I was sure the dream was going to end and I would lose her all over again.

Suddenly, Grandma was back, she had had a bath and I am pretty sure she had napped too, on the cold bare floor in her usual style. She looked fresh and as if a weight had been lifted from her. “I’m off now, but I’ll be reading your blog and watching over you – don’t let me see all this rubbish in your fridge again. Cook if you enjoy it, but cook just a little, eat well and be well. I’ll see you soon. And win the Pulitzer,” she said, and walked towards the door.

I woke up, hopeful, but of course, everything in the fridge was just the way it had been before I fell asleep. It was 2 a.m. All the leftovers were in recycled plastic containers I would not regret losing. I cleared out everything from the fridge, it looked like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. What a refreshing sight! I would tackle the pantry and storeroom tomorrow. The Great Purge had begun!

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There, I hope you enjoyed that! 

Have lots of leftover vegetables to clear? Follow this link, the many recipes there might help

http://whenmysoupcamealive.blogspot.in/search?q=mixed+vegetable

Fiction Humour Blogging