An Accidental Recipe

This is an accidental recipe full of familiar flavors: too much salt, too much grease, un-soft rice, brinjal/eggplant, lime juice.

Funnily enough, some discussion on BT brinjal had me buying two packets of the vegetable, the brinjal part of it, that is, not the BT. They didn’t look oversized or particularly beautiful, which meant that they probably weren’t extra-chemically treated than the other vegetables around them, so I brought them home. I made a simple stir-fry with one packet, but it was so salty that even the juice of one big lime couldn’t redeem it. I refrigerated it in despair, trying to put my fears in cold storage along with it, but come dinner tonight, I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

There was also some plain rice that went wrong very badly - I cannot cook rice to expert softness but I’m not this bad either - and by the time I scraped it out of the pressure cooker and into a container for the fridge and then brought it out again today, it was hard and dry.

At dinner a couple of hours ago, the rice was brought out and microwaved with some water, upon which it achieved its my-usual level of softness. It was then mixed with the eggplant curry in traditional style - full hand on, palm pressed, literally, into action - to ensure that the spices were well distributed and blended. Then it was tasted.

Voila! You know what it turned into? It turned into pulihora (lime rice) with the brinjals providing a - ahem - a wonderful accent. In one shot, I had it all - instant lime rice and a magically redeemed brinjal curry. The microwaving had turned the old, odd rice into rice of the perfect consistency for pulihora.

So here’s the method for the stir-fry, which is all that you need to know:

Depending on the size of the brinjal/eggplant, halve or cube 250 gm of the vegetable into salted water.

In a pan, heat 4 tsp of sesame/gingelly oil. Temper it with ½ a tsp of mustard seed, ¼ tsp of cumin, 1 tsp of urad dal (split, hulled black gram), a few curry leaves, 2 tsp of red chilli flakes (or 1-3 split, dry red chilli). The urad should turn pleasantly brown.

Add the brinjal and saute for about half a minute.

Add salt and turmeric.

Mix well and saute some more.

Turn the heat down to simmer and cook till the brinjals are at the almost-beginning-to-turn into-mush stage.

Douse liberally with lime juice.

Of course, if you want it exactly the way I came about the instant rice, you should oversalt it deliberately - that involves much overconfidence in one’s abilities to shake out the exact amount of salt that one deems right (or exactly too much) directly from the salt box into the pan. Then you can experiment with the amount of cooked rice that you need to add for the perfect mix I chanced upon.

If that sounds incoherent, you've got it - no, you've got ME - right. That's how I cook(ed).

Psst: Turns out I’m not the only bold one to put brinjal and lime/lemon rice together. Check out this and this.

Rice Brinjal/Eggplant Lime Humour

Heritage Comes Cheap?

Whenever there’s a reference to Andhra food, mentions of ‘gongura’ or ‘vankai’ are inevitable. Gongura is a sour, leafy green vegetable and vankai (or vankaya) is eggplant/brinjal/aubergine. Gongura is considered typically Andhra, and many people from Andhra Pradesh consider the eggplant the State’s very own special vegetable and believe they can use it in a variety of ways that others cannot. A friend’s father says tongue-in-cheek that many people in Andhra were named Venkayya (no longer fashionable) after the eggplant! Both gongura and eggplant can be curried, added to dal, ground into chutneys, pickled and what have you, each mode in a variety of ways. I’ve even heard of an eggplant halwa, but let’s get on with what I have to say.

Very often, and more so in a generation which has now reached a certain age, if something had to be dismissed voice and expression dripping with ample scorn, “Aa, gongura! D’you really believe her?” or “Vankai! As if …!” would be the choice of words for many!

I don’t know which came first, the expression or the film song, but if you want to taunt someone saying “What do you know anyway? Squat!” ‘squat’ would translate into “nimmakaya pulusu*” or “vankai pulusu”.

Are there any such expressions in your language? What are they?

It just struck me that something we exalt and proclaim as our own, peculiar to our roots and our State is also the metaphor for something we choose to dismiss. Is it because vegetables like gongura, eggplant and even lime were kitchen garden staples, there for the asking? We didn’t have to shell out anything, or much, for them; we could get some from the neighbour and maybe not have to even give something in return; if we had to buy them, we probably had to spend only a few paise for a bunch as big as a bush. Or is it that they are exalted only now as we leave home and scatter far and wide, routine, everyday, garden-variety vegetables receding into the realms of the rare, prompting us to grow all mushy and patriotic and discuss them in our blogs using terms such as “rediscovery of my culinary heritage/roots/humble Andhra food/quintessentially Andhra” or … well, you get the drift.

I’m quite one of those who has been rediscovering the food I’ve grown up with so here’s a dish with the not-so-dismissable gongura – it’s a favourite accompaniment to mutton and chicken but I decided to try it with eggs. My new early morning gym routine promises to give me the opportunity to take a detour to the market and buy fresh greens regularly and I’m quite thrilled about it.

Here’s what you need for the gongura-egg curry:

Gongura – 1 bunch weighing ½ a kilo (500 gm)
Onion – 1, chopped
Ginger-garlic paste – 1 tsp
Turmeric – ½ tsp
Green chillies – 2, slit
Red chilli powder – ½ tsp
Boiled, shelled and scored eggs – 4
Salt, to taste
Oil – 1-2 tsp
Garam masala/curry powder – 1 tsp

Pick the leaves off the bunch of gongura. Wash the leaves in several changes of water.

Put the gongura in a pan with the chillies, salt, turmeric and red chilli powder.

Boil with a little water till it wilts and becomes a rather unified mess – what I mean is that the leaves sort of meld with each other and it’s just a little short of a paste.

Mash it with the back of the ladle.

In a pan, heat the oil, fry the onion and then the ginger-garlic paste well.

Saute the eggs lightly.

Now add the cooked gongura and mix it well with the onion and ginger-garlic paste.

Let the whole thing cook together for a while.

Sprinkle garam masala on top.

Enjoy!

I have to acknowledge three more awards. One is from Lakshmi of Yum Blog, who's given me the Witty Blogger Award and another is from Pratibha and Jigyasa of Pedatha.com who passed on the You Make My Day Award. Siri of Siri's Corner also gave me the Good Chat Blog award. Thank you!

*(The film song I refer to is “Neekemi telusu, nimmakaya pulusu …” – incidentally, 'nimmakaya' is Telugu for lime, and 'pulusu' can refer to the juice extracted or any gravy using lime).

Gongura Eggs Eggplant Humour Telugu Musings