Currying Flavour, A Month Later

I've always wondered how it would be to begin a post by saying 'I'm back'. This blog has been around for five years so I may well have done it, but I don't think so. Not in such precise terms. I mean, what if I made this announcement, and you (and millions of my other readers) said to yourselves 'But when did you ever go away?' or worse, 'So what?' or worst of all 'Okay, now who are you?'

Consequently, I won't tell you why I've been posting just once a month for the last few months, barring one early reason: Internet problems. And after that, I guess I have to say I was the problem. Let's leave it at that.

I had visualised another post about my travels to strange and foreign lands, one of which made for last month's post. I thought I would write a rib-tickling piece about how a seemingly benign but rather dirty old man tried selling me his non-spice wares in Dubai's spice souk. I visualised bringing to you a barberry-flecked pilaf (zereshk polow) at the end of a photo feature on the spice souk. I imagined you rolling on the floor laughing your butts off (ROFL LMAO) over The Adventures of Sra and The Dirty Old Shopkeeper. I imagined posting stunning pictures of the pilaf, one of them black and white with just the barberries in vibrant ruby red, thanks to the Colour Accent feature on my camera. But alas, it was not to be!

Here's one picture, for now. The barberries are the maroon ones in the front row, between the green slivers of pista and the black raisins.

This time, I'm bringing to you a rather quotidian curry that I made on Monday. Actually it isn't quotidian for me, but it's not as exotic as pilaf. It did meet one condition: It had to have some gravy, and the gravy had to be achieved without grinding. Remember Grindless Gravies?

The not-so-quotidian-for-me curry was hastened by the discovery of some nice mushrooms found on Sunday evening at the store. Evening find spells bad mushrooms, but these were good. I also bought some green and red capsicum (peppers) to add crunch and vibrance. A generous hand led to much oil splashing into the pan. It was good. Is good. I still have some left over, though I may go off it by the time I finish with this post.

Here's how you make it:

Capsicum/peppers, chopped: 4-5 cups
Mushrooms, chopped: 2 cups
Onions, chopped: 1.5 cups
Oil: Ahem! (I must have used at least 6 tsp)
Ginger-garlic paste: 1 tsp
Green chillies, halved: 3
Salt, to taste
Garam masala: 1 tsp
Cumin seed: 1 tsp
Water: A few splashes

Heat the oil in a pan, pop the cumin.

Fry the onion till pink, then add the ginger-garlic paste. Fry well for 3-4 minutes, as mushy as you can let it get. If you need to add some water to prevent burning, add a splash or two now.

Now add the capsicum, saute on medium heat but make sure they don't lose their succulence.

Add the mushrooms, mix well and saute. There will be much water as the mushrooms cook - keep an eye on that.

When you've had enough of the watching-over-the-curry experience, and too much water still, turn up the heat and let it evaporate till the gravy reaches the consistency you desire. Stirring it vigorously will speed things up a bit.

When it's looking nice and unctuous, add the salt and stir.

Now add the garam masala stir it once more. Turn off the fire.

Mushrooms Capsicum/peppers Vegetarian Humour

My Green Goddess

I hate to 'simply plop'a recipe without attempting some story or humour as I usually do, but there isn't any this time. And I don't seem to have the energy to contrive something, either. There are quite a few pictures of what I've made and cooked over the past couple of weeks but the way I feel now, they will all take a while seeing the light of day.

Various events over the past couple of weeks have kept me away from the blogs and I'm not too sure this is a definitive, regular return. However, it's been too long for me and I want to take small steps towards coming back before lethargy consumes me and a good hobby goes to pot for want of nothing. So here goes ...

As usual, this was born out of slowly wrinkling leftovers from my fridge. Someone who ate it said it was unusual, and I thought it was, too, till I ran a search, and of course, found several results for this combination.

Well, I will call it my Green Goddess and hope you enjoy it as much too!

Green Capsicum/Green bell pepper: 3, chopped small
Cabbage: 1-1/2 cups, shredded
Mustard seed: 1 tsp
Green chilli: 3, chopped
Cumin seed: 1/2 tsp
Urad dal/Black gram: 2 tsp
Salt: to taste
Oil: 1-2 tsp
Water: to sprinkle

In a frying pan, heat the oil and temper with the mustard, cumin and black gram.

Lower heat to minimum, add the capsicum, saute a minute.

Then add the cabbage, mix well, saute some more.

Add the salt, mix.

If you like, sprinkle some water and cover immediately. Simmer till it softens.

Make sure it doesn't brown or burn.

Capsicum/Bell pepper Cabbage Vegetarian Vegan

Rooted To The Spot

My personal training classes at the gym have become just that - personal. More than I like. Every detail of what I've ingested is investigated and met with raised eyebrows, sober and solemn "Hmms..." and other trying-not-to-be despairing expressions. So when my passionate, desperate, young and charming trainer pointed to the weighing machine and pleaded with me to eat just fruit for dinner till I reached a certain weight, not brooking my arguments that it wouldn't be a real reflection of what I weighed, I reluctantly agreed. Neither she nor I are happy with my more than decent loss of inches, we want to see the kilos tumble away, and I don't want to be confronted with questions of how many grammes I've lost every day.

Now, dinner's my nemesis - contrary to all diet advice which says don't eat much at dinnertime, that's exactly what I do - I can easily forgo breakfast and lunch and not miss them but at the end of the day, I look forward to an unhurried dinner, a good book, a good DVD. An unhurried dinner also means a variety of good food and watermelon and apple alone do not a good dinner make.

As a via media between my trainer's desires and mine, and also to rescue some vegetables that have been lying around for a while, I concocted this salad.


My weight is still rooted to the spot, and my trainer's still pleading with me, so I make no claims to how healthy or filling or low-calorie it is (but it can't be, it's full of roots, and yeah, yeah, I've done the obligatory Googling for nutritional info).

It's an "As You Like It" salad, just add or subtract whatever you don't like.

Beetroots: 2, boiled, peeled, sliced
Turnips: 2, boiled, peeled, sliced
Capsicum/bell peppers: 2, diced

Dressing

Limes: Juice of 3
Garlic: 2 cloves, minced
Green chilli: 1, deseeded, minced
Oil: 1 tsp
Sugar: 1/2 tsp
Salt, to taste

Garnish

Sesame seed: 1 tbsp, toasted

In a bowl, place the lime juice, garlic, green chilli, sugar and salt. Mix and let it sit for a while, about 30 minutes.

In a larger bowl, place the vegetables and add the oil and dressing. Mix well but gently.

You can choose to strain the dressing too.

Garnish with toasted sesame seed. By mistake, I used cold-pressed gingelly (sesame) oil and the flavour was rather overpowering - I decided it needed some crunch to take my mind off the flavour and added the sesame seed, it was a good idea!

Salad Beetroot Turnip Capsicum/Bell Pepper Sesame Lime + garlic dressing Weight loss Humour Gym

The Chilli of the Valley

Well, there’s no valley (or lily) – it’s more a headline that’s intended to make an impression! But in a larger sense, it IS the chilli of my valley – the seeds came from an aunt’s home, went to another’s, came back to yet another’s – which is where I got them from. And the aunt last to be mentioned, actually my great aunt, gave me this recipe.

I’d almost have missed this dish. Aunty was reluctant to serve it because it was a day old when we visited her but I shamelessly lobbied for it to be included in the meal, ended up eating everything I could and even carried the leftovers home, not to mention the rest of those same chillies in the refrigerator! Along with the recipe, of course!



My grandmother (Aunty’s sister) would slave over this dish – I haven’t eaten it often since she stopped cooking. My own efforts, a muddle of deduction, shortcuts and impatience, resulted in this taste remaining a fond memory, but thanks to these generous aunts, will no longer remain so!

My grandmom used green capsicum (bell peppers) for this dish. She would prepare the mixture patiently, decapitate the capsicum carefully, stuff them with the mixture, put the caps back on, tie them with thread, stand them in a frying pan in a puddle of oil, then lay them down and fry them on all sides till the skin was discoloured, even on the verge of turning black, softer and succulent.

The attraction is the mixture inside combining with the juicy skin, and any that escaped would make a nice, dry, fried, powdery bonus. It’s lovely eaten with rice – I’m not sure what it is about us that makes us tear apart vegetables that have been put together so carefully once they approach our plates, but that’s one of life’s quirks, I guess.

Well, my great aunt’s recipe involves the microwave, so the cooking time, vigil, oil, everything involved in that long process is shorter, but just as tasty. Forgive me if there are no exact measurements, I was just too keen to get on with it, and approached it but with two thoughts in mind: I’m going to discover the secret, it’s going into my blog!

It is a laborious process if you're using small chillies but it’s worth it, and coming from a person who prefers a simpler style, that’s saying a lot! Also, I didn’t use the capsicum that my grandmom did, these are miniature versions that grow in my aunts’ kitchen garden, like I said. And it’s a one-off dish for me, I don’t think I’ll be able to get my hands on these chillies till my aunt visits again!
So here goes:

Capsicum/Biggish round chillies
Some besan/chick pea flour/senaga pindi
A whole pod of garlic, peeled
Cumin seed/jeera – 3-4 tsp, roasted dry
Salt - to taste
Oil – 2-3 tsp + 1 tsp
Some butter, just a dab or two

For tempering:
Mustard seed, cumin seed, split urad dal/black gram, dry red chilli



Roast the flour for a minute or two in a thick-bottomed pan. (Till it changes colour slightly.) Watch it like a hawk, it gets burnt easily.
Grind/mash the cumin and peeled garlic into a rough paste. Mix this with the flour, adding butter to bind – it’s like rubbing butter into flour for cake, you get fine crumbs.

Slit the chillies/capsicum and get rid of as many seeds as you can – try to get at the hard core of seeds and tip it out with the tip of your knife. Try not to let the knife go through the other side – I’ve heard that a safety pin works well but I’ve never tried this trick! Don’t remove all the seeds unless you have zero tolerance to heat, though; keep a few – that’s what imparts taste.



Stuff the chillies with the flour mixture. It’s not impossible to keep the chilli/pepper from ‘leaking’ even if it’s punctured on the other side, but if you’re unsure, keep it together with a toothpick (as I’ve done with some in the picture; I’ve also done that to some whose caps I sliced off in an experimenting mood).

Apply oil on a microwaveable plate, arrange the chillies on it, smear them with a light coating of oil or trail a spoon of oil over them, and microwave for six minutes on High – by High, I mean the highest power, that’s what I did. I did this in three spells of two minutes each, though, because I wanted to be sure I didn’t char them black. Those who don’t use a microwave oven can follow my grandmom’s methods detailed earlier in this post.

Now, in a frying pan, heat a spoon of oil, temper with the mustard, cumin, black gram and red chilli, put in these chillies, leftover mixture, if any, and quickly saute it. You’ll know it’s done my way if the skins wrinkle just a bit more and look a little drier. With bell peppers, you’ll probably have to wait a little longer.

This turned out to be an expensive dish to make – I went to the gym late, spent good money on faster transport and on the way back home, bought a shirt I’d usually only wear on holiday for a considerable amount of money as it was calling out to me from the sales gallery next to the gym – none of which would have taken place if I hadn’t been so righteous about exercising late in the day despite all that time spent in the kitchen! Look what a bit of nostalgia does!

CHILLI FACTS & TRIVIA (FROM THE INTERNET)

Chillies are a good source of Vitamin, A, B, C and E with minerals like molybdenum, manganese, folate, potassium, thiamin and copper. They reportedly contain seven times more vitamin C than orange. Ever since the chilli came to India at the end of the 15th century, it has been included in Ayurvedic medicines. Chillies are said to be good for slimming down but stimulate the appetite as well!

Christopher Columbus discovered chillies in the Caribbean in 1492 and called them peppers, thinking they were related to black pepper.

The correct spelling in English is chilli. The plural is chillies. It is etymologically derived via Spanish from the Nahuatl word for the plant. It has no connection with Chile.

Generally, fresh red chillies are 2-3 times hotter than green, and dried pods are 2-10 times hotter than fresh pods. However, the hottest can vary from plant to plant in the same field.

The fiery sensation is caused by capsaicin, a chemical that survives both cooking and freezing, but it also triggers the brain to produce endorphins, natural painkillers that promote a sense of well-being. The antidote to the heat is milk products, bread or chocolate. Water just spreads the burning around!

Wilbur Scoville in 1902 developed a method for measuring the strength of capsaicin in a chilli pepper, which originally meant tasting a diluted version of a pepper and giving it a value. Mild bell peppers rate at zero, jalapeño is mid range 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units, cayenne, aji and pequin 30,000 to 50,00 units, the habanero between 100,00 and 500,000 units. Apparently it can be measured by computer these days. (Recently, the Assamese variety called Bhut Jholakia was named as the hottest chilli.)

For more info, visit this site.



This is my submission for Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Kalyn's Kitchen this week.

Tags: Green chillies Capsicum/bell pepper Besan/Chick pea flour Vegan Weekend Herb Blogging Gluten-free