Paneer Makhmali

All I need to do is enjoy the rain beating an irregular tattoo on my windowsill, revel in my fever for which I took the day off from work and curl up with a mystery under a reading lamp, but here I am at my computer, under the glare of tubelights, trying to post something. It’s not even as if I badly want to post this or that I’m meeting some deadline I set for myself, but sleeplessness and a regularity with which I now gravitate towards the blogs that’s making me do this. Posting doesn’t feel like a chore, though – it’s quite a mixed-up feeling.

From the confusing to the simple: what I have for you today is a paneer/cottage cheese recipe. It’s taken from Nita Mehta’s book Still More Paneer, and the only change I made was to use mango ginger instead of the regular ginger.
That's mango ginger in the photo.

This gravy is a velvety affair (hence the name Makhmal, from the Persian), given that the ingredients are pressure cooked and ground, the base being coconut milk. It’s something of a shocker, essentially being paneer in tomato chaaru (rasam/soup South Indian style, with a dash of tempering), but it’s not as odd a match as it sounds. On to the recipe, then:

Paneer/cottage cheese – 200 gm, cubed

Pressure cook (2 whistles) with ½ a cup of water:
Tomatoes – 4, chopped roughly
Coconut milk – ½ cup
Mango ginger or ginger – 1-inch piece, chopped
Garlic – 8-10 cloves, skinned, chopped
Green chillies – 2, chopped roughly
Salt – to taste

Cool and puree in the mixer.

For the tempering:
Mustard seed – 1 tsp
Red chillies – 2, broken
Curry leaves – a sprig
Oil – 1 tsp

Transfer the puree back into the pressure cooker, bring to a boil.

Add the paneer and simmer for 4-5 minutes. Check for the consistency of your liking. Switch off the heat.

In a separate pan, heat the oil, pop the mustard, add the red chillies. Remove from fire, add the curry leaves, and add to the pressure cooker.

You can find a somewhat similar recipe here.

Paneer/Cottage Cheese Coconut milk Tomatoes Mango ginger

Cuminy Cruciferae

It’s difficult to concentrate on a post when the TV is on full blast and the viewer claims he cannot but hear it at that volume. It’s even more difficult to ignore your blog when there’s an event going on but you just can’t summon the time or energy to look for a relevant dish or devise a new one.

I’ve slipped into this uncomfortable habit of being chief cheerleader when a new blog event is announced and not entering! So me tells me: Shall I take any dish and say it contains whichever ingredient is being celebrated? Switch the proportions when you write down the recipe, who’ll know? Then me tells me: “It’s dishonest, it’s dishonest” in an inner voice that grows and throbs louder and louder. Sigh! The next best option is to cook whatever you’re cooking that day, add an extra dose of the ingredient called for, eat it, test for taste and make an entry of it! Which is what I’ve done. As you can expect, a dish that was born out of such soul-searching can only be simple and straightforward, so here it is! It’s an as you like it dish as there aren’t too many ingredients and only cumin is allowed to dominate.

One small head of cauliflower, separated into florets
One small head of broccoli, separated into florets
Tomatoes – 2, chopped
Cumin powder – 1-1/2 – 2 tsp
Oil – 2 tsp
Mustard seeds – ½ tsp
Urad dal/hulled, split black gram – ½ tsp
Turmeric: ½ -1 tsp
Salt – to taste

Heat the oil in a pan, swirl to coat base.

Pop mustard, then add the urad dal.

Once the dal browns, add the broccoli and cauliflower and sauté on high flame for a minute or two.

Lower flame, add turmeric, mix, cover and let cook till the florets are softer. You can sprinkle a little water to hasten the process.

Now add the chopped tomato, cumin powder and salt, mix. Cover and cook till the tomato is cooked/skins start separating from the pulp.

Mix, remove from fire.

This is my entry for Sunita’s Think Spice event.

Think Spice Cauliflower Broccoli Cumin

An Express Purpose

When Mallugirl thought aloud about an express cooking event, I cheered her on, and then sat pretty in contemplation (and blissful ignorance of the deadline) as it approached. Then Mallugirl extended it and I had to challenge myself to come up with a quick meal. Some of these I’ve made from scratch, some I’ve used leftovers, the meal in itself was quickly made with not too much energy spent, but if thinking about something could burn calories, this took the cake!

The first is an almost unbearably tangy Capsicum and Tomato Soup. It started life as a capsicum and tomato salad with lime and honey dressing, but sudden summons to a treat for a friend’s promotion saw me leave the house and forget about if for the next two days. This morning when I saw it stagnant in its juices, my conscience and I battled, and my conscience won.

0-5 mins

What you need:

Yellow Capsicum (Pepper), Red Capsicum, Tomato – 1 each
Lime juice – from 2 limes
Honey – 2 tsp
Pepper, cracked – 1 tsp
Salt – to taste
Water – ½ cup

1-2 mins: Chop vegetables roughly, add lime juice, honey and pepper. Add water.

Microwave veggies for three minutes.
(As they are microwaving, you can wash some rice, place it in the pressure cooker with twice the amount of water and cook it. Or, you can stack four leftover chapattis one on top of another, cut them into small pieces and keep aside.)

Add some salt to the microwaved veggies, puree in the mixer.

Garnish with coriander if you like.


5-8 minutes (next 3 minutes): Scrambled eggs

Oil – 1 tsp
Eggs – 2
Green chillies – 2, slit in half
Salt – to taste

Heat oil in a pan, swirl to let it coat the base.

Crack the eggs, let the whites set a little at the bottom. This takes upto a minute on low flame. Season with salt.

Now add the chillies, mix everything and switch off the flame.

8-20 minutes: Palak Dal and Fried Chapattis

Spinach/palak/palakoora – 1 bunch (about 200 gm)
Toor dal/Yellow lentils/Kandipappu – ¾ cup
Tomato – 1
Turmeric – ½-1 tsp
Chilli powder – ½ tsp
Mustard seeds – ½-1 tsp
Cumin seeds – ½ tsp
Dry, broken red chillies – 2
Garlic – 5 cloves, skinned, crushed
Salt – to taste
Curry leaves – 1 sprig

8-9 minutes: Wash the dal in two or three changes of water, soak (with just enough water to cover and then a little more) in the pressure cooker.

9-12 minutes: Wash the spinach in two to three changes of water, chop roughly, add to the dal.

12-12.5 minutes: Chop or squish the tomato with your hands into the pressure cooker.

12.5 – 17 minutes: Set the dal to cook on the stove. As you busy yourself with the tasks below, don't forget to switch it off when it's done.

Note: Now skin some garlic and crush it under your knife, wash the curry leaves and bring out the mustard, cumin and the red chillies.

Chop up an onion if you want to make the fried chapattis.

In a pan, heat a tsp or two of oil, pop mustard, cumin, red chillies and curry leaves. Add the garlic. Fry for a minute and add to the dal.

Fried Chapattis

This is an optional dish and may take slightly longer than the last three minutes of the 20 minutes I aimed for.

What you need:
Onion – 1, chopped
Oil – 2 tsp
Mustard seeds – ½ tsp
Turmeric – ½ tsp
Chilli powder – ½ tsp
Or
Green chillies – 2, chopped
Salt – to taste
Curry leaves – a sprig

Heat the oil in a pan, pop the mustard.

Add the onion, curry leaves and the green chillies, fry a bit.

Now add the chapatti bits, the turmeric, chillies/chilli powder and salt, and mix well.

Put them into your prettiest dishes, sweat over stray curry or soup spilling over internal or external borders, agonise over the symmetry of the arrangement, photograph it till your arms ache and your head hurts, eat up the portions that are likely to get squished by a lid, stash away in the fridge, ruminate on whether this blog addiction is getting out of hand, and then tell yourself not to think too much, it’s all good fun!

Summer Express Cooking Fried chapatti Scrambled eggs Palak/spinach/palakoora Capsicum & tomato soup

Painted Black

One of the most curious things I’ve ever eaten was a simple dessert from Myanmar (Burma) made with purple rice. My friend’s mother, one of the nicest local guardians I’ve ever had in my hostel life, was brought up in Burma. She would have a feast waiting for us as we came back from college Friday evening and for the meals the rest of the weekend. Very often, she would have at least one Burmese dish on the menu. The most frequent was san win makin, pronounced sen way mackay, a sweet made of semolina/sooji/rava, coconut milk and poppy seeds. She would also make khauk-swe, the noodle soup, and on one occasion, it was the purple rice.

It was really purple, served with sweetened coconut milk and quite an experience for someone like me who had not seen anything other than white rice and had never heard of purple rice. For me, who started out knowing nobody in that city, it was a really nice thing to have my friend invite me to her home and have her mother write to mine when I told her that my parents would have to approve of my spending the weekends with them.

A few weeks ago, I visited the Khadi Gramodyog outlet near my office for something specific. As usual, I ran my eye over the other shelves idly and when I saw this pack of ‘Original Burma Black Rice’ I had to pick it up for its exotica value, though what I’d do with it, I had no idea. I could only imagine the taste, and I didn’t dare fall back on the memory of that purple (not black) rice because it would have meant a big disappointment if mine hadn’t lived up to Aunty’s. Amidst guilty thoughts of my never-shrinking pantry, I quickly paid for it and scuttled out of there. Then Sharmi announced rice as the ingredient for Jihva, and thus began the frantic trawling of the Internet for various Burmese recipes. Putting two and two together, I later deduced that this is the Kavanarisi that one comes across in Chettinad cuisine – a legacy of the days many in the Chettiar community (among other Indians) lived in Burma for reasons of business and trade.
This rice is mostly used for sweet dishes (including one made in the same way as the purple rice dessert) but in a recipe I saw, neither salt nor sugar was mentioned, and except for rice and water, all the other ingredients were mentioned as ‘optional’! Well, this was my cue – I’d get to make the rice, it wouldn’t have any sugar in it, the coconut was optional and I had the rest of the stuff at home.
But as the night passed, I couldn’t bring myself to do without the coconut so this morning The Spouse was dispatched to fetch one, by which time I had assembled everything else.

This was the hardest dish to photograph so far – the rice didn’t fluff up (it didn’t look fluffy in others’ photos, if that’s any consolation) but I’m hoping it doesn’t look like a soggy mass either, because it wasn’t – it was chewy, sticky and grainy. If that sounds like it went wrong, it’s not meant to – that’s how it’s meant to be. But it was so bland, it had me running to the snacks box for something spicy – it takes a little getting used to. You can add some jaggery for added taste.

I'm not sure it comes from just one country in the Far East, because there are recipes that are claimed by more than one country. Here’s how you go about it:

Burma black rice: 1 cup, soaked overnight
(It will run colour)
Coconut: Shaved/shredded (I shaved off some with a peeler and put the rest in the fridge)
Sesame seeds: 1 tbsp
Peanuts, crushed: 1 tbsp
Salt: ½ tsp at least
Boiling water: Enough to just cover the rice

Drain the water from the rice, wash once.

In a pressure cooker, pour in two inches of water. Using a trivet, place the black rice in a bowl on top of the trivet.

Pour boiling water enough to just cover the rice.

Cook for 3-4 whistles.

Once the pressure drops naturally, put the rice in a bowl, add salt, the coconut, sesame seeds and peanuts and mix lightly.

Garnish with a few coconut shavings.

Here are a few other black rice recipes from the blogs:
From Sig's Live To Eat
From Mallugirl's Malabar Spice
From Freya & Paul's Writing at the Kitchen Table

And here are links to more recipes:
Xoi Nep Than
How to cook purple and black rice
Black Sticky Rice


And now, to spread the joy among everybody in the blog world and pay it forward, as Cynthia of Tastes Like Home so nicely put it, here’s whom I’m picking for the Rockin’ Girl Blogger awards (in alphabetical order)


Archana from Tried and Tested Recipes
Mallika from Quick Indian Cooking
Mallugirl from Malabar Spices
Sandeepa from Bong Mom’s Cookbook
Santhi from Writing on the Mirror
Paz from The Cooking Adventures of Chef Paz
Prema of My Cookbook

Jihva/JFI Black Rice Glutinous rice Myanmar/Burma Far East

Palette in pastels

A few years ago, I met a chef who comes from a line of chefs that goes back a few centuries. Amidst talk of how his dad had been too unworldly to patent those recipes and techniques which are now attributed to five-star hotels and their research, I do remember mentioning secret recipes - you know, we always read about how proud family cooks and chefs always hold back revealing the crucial element that gives “that special touch” – and was taken aback by the intensity of his reaction.

“Oh c’mon, there’s a lot of s**t spread about secret recipes and ingredients and stuff – I’ve read interviews with chefs who claim they’ve made a marinade with 120 herbs and spices – what flavour will come through if that’s really so? They don’t know what they are talking about, these jackasses – you really shouldn’t have more than two or three spices, only that will allow the taste to register,” he said with an expression that was a mixture of weariness and impatience. I paraphrase (though I put it in quotes for effect) but I certainly remember jackasses, marinade, 120 herbs and spices, and the profanity could have been different. It was amusing to watch a suave, until-then-cool person say something so spontaneous but it was probably something he needed to get off his chest.

Chef will probably approve of the dish I’m presenting today. It has just three spices and salt, just a teaspoon of oil and uses three rather bland vegetables that amicably cooperate to let the flavours shine through. It’s an Oriya dish called Santula, and like Dalma, there are varieties of it. I also discovered the book, Healthy Oriya Cuisine, by Bijoylaxmi Hota and Kabita Pattanaik (Rupa, 2007) soon after I mentioned in my previous post that I’ve never come across a book on Oriya cuisine in India – I usually make a beeline for the cookery section in any bookshop and regretfully moon over all those books (I have most of them and can’t buy the rest either because the ingredients are hard to find here or I already own a book on the cuisine) but this time, I struck gold – this was the last copy on the shelf and I grabbed it and hung on to it for dear life!

This recipe is also a rediscovery of the bottlegourd – occasionally, I bring it home but end up giving it away because the thought of the insipid/watery fate it meets at my hands enervates me before I even try – it really came into its own and held its own against the sturdy potato and the sweet yellow pumpkin.

This is my second submission to RCI - Orissa being hosted by Swapna of Swad.

What you need:
Potatoes – 2, peeled, diced
Bottlegourd/Lauki/Sorakaya – 4-inch piece, peeled, diced
Pumpkin: 4-inch piece, peeled, diced
Garlic – 15 cloves, skinned
Green chillies – 2
Mustard seeds – ¾ tsp
Oil (preferably mustard oil) – 1 tsp
Salt – to taste

Pound the garlic and green chillies fine. (I took the easy way out and whizzed them in the mixer.)

In a pressure cooker, place the veggies and salt. Cover and simmer till the vegetables begin oozing water.

Now pressure cook the vegetables with just a little more water – for one whistle. Let the pressure drop naturally.

In a pan, heat the oil, pop the mustard. Once it begins to crackle, add the ground paste. Fry well.

Now add the vegetables, mix carefully, cook for 3-4 minutes and take them off the fire.

Your dream in pastel is ready!

Note: There was a little bit of water in the pressure-cooked vegetables but I didn’t bother draining it – you can choose to do so.

Regional Cuisines of India Garlic Pumpkin Potaotes Oriya cuisine Bottlegourd/Lauki

Going Regional

A good friend’s wedding at Berhampur, Sambhalpuri and Pasapalli weaves, Gopalpur-on-Sea, the priests at Puri, the irritating guide who insisted on explaining only the juicy bits of the Konark sculptures, a cruise on the Chilka lake to see the flying ducks and flamingoes, traditional Oriya meals in Bhubaneswar and Puri and an Oriya colleague’s grievance that Bengal appropriated much of the credit for what was originally Oriya – when RCI-Orissa was announced, I knew I had to participate for all these memories.

It seems to be such a modest State, one that doesn’t thump its chest despite a wealth of treasures. Till I met the two people I mentioned, I didn’t know much about Orissa, except a little bit about its natural resources from Geography text books, Emperor Ashoka and his repentance on realising the gravity of what he had done by waging the Kalinga War, and my mother’s childhood memory of frightening, baton-wielding pandas at the Jagannath temple in Puri. To date, I’ve not seen a single cookbook on Orissa cuisine available in English in India, and even on the Internet, there are just those few recipes circulating in various sources.

Thankfully, though, somebody did write about a restaurant called Dalma in Bhubaneswar and that’s where we went for an Oriya thali. What did we have – we had dalma, which looked nothing like mine, a lovely mustardy fish preparation or two, a raita of fresh curds and banana stem, a santula, which is a mild, vegetable preparation. At a resort near Puri, we had, among other things, a preparation of fried vadis with spring onion and garlic, almost Indo-Chinese in taste (!) and chena poda pitha, that lovely, sweet baked paneer preparation that we saw everywhere we visited in the State!

This is the first of the dalma dishes I am posting – I gather that the vegetables and the lentils can be varied; this version uses yellow lentils, the other uses toor dal!

Here we go, it’s adapted from this http://www.indiacurrents.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=7de1730e53649217dd5e422186f7793b">source

Channa dal/chickpea lentils – 1 cup, pressure cooked till soft
Kala channa (black chickpea) – ½ cup, soaked overnight, pressure cooked for just two whistles
Potato – 1, medium, diced
Sweet potato – 3-4 pieces, each an inch long
(Yellow) Pumpkin – 10 pieces, each an inch long
Eggplant – 1-2, diced (I used the round, small, purple variety)
Turmeric – ½ tsp
Salt – to taste
Garlic – 1-2 pods
Oil – 2 tbsp

Pancha phutana – Cumin (jeera), black mustard, fennel (saunf), fenugreek (methi) and nigella (kala jeera) in the ratio of 4-4-2-2-1

Cumin powder, made from 1 tbsp of roasted cumin
Chilli powder – 1 tsp

In a pressure cooker, cook the cut vegetables, lentils and black chickpea for 5 minutes.

In a pan, heat oil, fry the garlic. Add the pancha phutana, let it pop and add to the vegetable-lentil mixture once the pressure cooker cools down.

Add the cumin and chilli powders, mix. Serve with rice.

RCI - Orissa is hosted by Swapna of Swad.

Regional Cuisines of India Dalma Orissa

Sunshine, And A Bird

I didn’t really intend to post this dish, considering it was just a variation of this, but a few stray photos made me decide otherwise. The colour was so pleasing - all orange and yellow, just like the pictures and photos we see of sunshine - I couldn’t let it go.

Here’s how you make it:

Baby potatoes, scrubbed, halved – 200 gm
Curds/Yoghurt – 1 cup (and a little more, if you want)
Carrots (tiny, scrawny) – 5, cut into eighths
Ginger – garlic paste: 1 tbsp
Onion – 1 big, chopped
Tomato – 2 medium, quartered
Red chilli powder – 1 tsp
Turmeric – ½ a tsp
Salt – to taste
Bay leaves – 2
Garam masala/Curry powder – 1 -2 tsp
Coriander/cilantro – to garnish

Beat the curds. Mix potatoes, carrots, curds, salt, ginger-garlic paste, onion, chilli and turmeric. Let it keep for an hour.

Then, heat half a cup of water in the pressure cooker/pan. Add tomatoes and bay leaves. Cook till the tomatoes are soft.

Add the potato mixture, close the pressure cooker, and once the steam emerges from the vent, put the weight on it. After it hisses once, put it on simmer and cook for about 10 minutes.

*The cooker will hiss a couple of times but don’t switch it off in a hurry. (For those using pans, I would recommend a little more water and simmering the dish with a lid on.)

Once the steam escapes on its own (without you fiddling with the weight), remove the weight, check the consistency of the gravy and cook down till it’s as thick as you like.
*You can crush a few pieces of the potato in the gravy to thicken it.

Finally, add the curry powder. Check the seasoning and adjust it to your taste.

Finish off with a garnish of coriander leaves. Goes well with rice and breads.

This dish had a mildly sweetish taste, maybe from a combination of the fresh curds, the onion and the carrot. I didn’t intend it to, but there it was! Neither The Spouse nor The Cousin found any proof in it of them being guinea pigs in an oil-free experiment but simply lapped it up!

For the non-vegetarians, there’s a bonus in today’s post. It’s Herby Fried Chicken! You can use green chillies, coriander and mint or just the two herbs or just coriander without the green chillies, or just the mint, or … well, you get the drift.

Chicken, cut into medium-sized pieces – 1 kilo
Onions – 3 big, chopped
Coriander/cilantro – chopped, 1 cup
Ginger-garlic paste – 2 tbsp
Salt, to taste
Turmeric – 1 tsp
Chilli powder – 1-1/2 tsp
Garam masala/curry powder – 2 tsp
Oil – 2 tbsp

Smear the chicken pieces with the ginger-garlic paste, salt, chilli powder and 1 tsp of curry powder.

Place the chicken in a pan and boil it – you won’t need to add any water, but if you fear it will stick to the pan, you can add some.

Halfway through the boiling, start frying the onion in another pan, on a slow fire. Let them brown.

Add the chillies and some of the herbs now, if you’re using them.

Once the chicken’s boiled (it took about 15 minutes) and there’s no water left in it, transfer it to the other pan containing the onion. (Of course, the onion have to have fried well by now, and it’s still a slow fire.)

Mix the chicken and onion well, fry for a few minutes and leave it alone, just checking now and then to see that it doesn’t burn. The chicken gets darker and crispier the longer it stays.

Finish off with a sprinkling of the rest of the herbs, the rest of the curry powder, stir once more and take it off the heat. The crisped onions and herbs make a great mix with the rice but in one of those quirky twists of taste, The Spouse likes to savour this with tomato sauce!

I’m sending these dishes off to Kalyn’s Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by Anna of Anna’s Cool Finds.

Weekend Herb Blogging Curds/Yoghurt Vegetarian Potatoes Chicken Carrot

Garlicky Spuds a la Mode

There, the escape clause is in the French. Lazy me doesn’t know the principle nor the reasons why I need to bake them this way instead of directly, so she adds a smart phrase in the title to deflect the questions. Nor does lazy me adhere to quantities, but just throws in whatever she has, into whatever she has (large pan, small pan, whatever).

All I know is that I followed a recipe and the potatoes didn’t bake a whit. So I boiled some water, let the potatoes play around for 5-7 minutes, then transferred them to a greased bowl, put in a couple of spoons of butter, a couple of spoons of olive oil, some salt and fresh cracked pepper, studded some pods and cloves of garlic into them and baked them on 180 C for 20 minutes. Then when I noticed it was time to get going, I tossed them around with a ladle, increased the heat to 200 C and let them bake away till the most pleasant aroma filled the house. I then switched it off, popped as much garlic as I could out of its skin before I could stash it away for dinner, and went on my way.

This is a simple dish to make when you have some time, say about 40 minutes. If the potatoes are dirty, you need to scrub them, of course. But I find it worth the effort. I love them all wrinkled and soft when they are ready, the salt and the pepper not quite crust but somewhat crumbly when you sort of mop the bland spud against the seasoning that’s baked in the butter-oil mixture in the pan.

So here’s the recipe:

One lazy cook
Some baby potatoes, scrubbed, not peeled
Some garlic pods/cloves or both
Salt, to taste
Pepper, cracked, to taste
Butter, to grease baking dish + some more
Olive oil, a couple of spoons

Boil lots of water in a pan that's big enough.

Boil the potatoes for five minutes. They should be firm and hard, but not totally raw.

In greased baking dish, place potatoes and garlic. Add butter, oil, seasoning, mix well.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 or 200 C, turning after 20 minutes.

Makes a nice snack. While the potatoes are quite bland, the garlic is lovely. It slides out of its skin in one fluid, clean movement, and goes down like velvet. Enjoy!

Potatoes Garlic Baked

Tomato - A Rediscovery, & Egg Drop Curry

Does it happen with you that some dishes are so common, once so much a part of your life, so taken for granted that for stretches of time, years even, you go without them, preferring to spend that time and energy in making other things to eat?

It does, with me, and the tomato curry I have here, a childhood staple, happened by chance and not by design. This week has not been one of my best, what with inspiration for the blog not striking, my sofa covers not being delivered on time (“This is the 21st century, you know, Mr Draper, women don’t sit at home waiting for curtains and sofa covers, they go to work, how would you feel if I didn’t pay your bill for the next two weeks?”), the gas cylinder not being delivered on time (“Madam, you booked it on the 10th, it still has not come?” “No, Madam, I booked it only on the 15th and this is only the second reminder, but yes, it still has not come.”), and various other irritants small and smaller. But somehow, I was feeling sunny this Sunday morning — The Spouse had brought stuff for Sunday lunch, and we had planned various things and things were going along swimmingly when we couldn’t find the curry powder and things went rapidly downhill after that.

One of the dishes I had planned was tomato egg-drop curry but after methi dal, the hunt high and low for the garam masala, and the tomato gravy, I suddenly found myself devoid of the energy to crack a few eggs into it. Well, I had to go back from the kitchen to the fridge, open the door, collect the eggs and carry them gingerly back to the kitchen and crack them one by one into the gravy, didn’t I? Nah, too much energy to expend, and I had to go out and shop a bit for the next week, go to the library to see if there were any Harry Potter copies left over (fat chance, so perish the thought) and voila, the tomato curry became a moment of rediscovery!

Not that I hadn’t tried to whip up this on occasion, but I would only be faced with tired old tomato mush, the skins curling up and coming apart, more brownish than red, but today (and this past week, actually, when I had tried the egg-drop curry), I realised the trick to this curry is to add a lot of water, finely chopped onions, and cooking for a long time! (Read about another tomato-ey rediscovery here.)

This is a curry/gravy tailor made for puris and chapattis, tastes great with rice too, and can be the base for several curries. In my home, a favourite variation was to add peeled, diced potatoes to it.

This is an as-you-like-it curry, vary the proportions as per availability and taste, experiment till you arrive at the version you like. This recipe is just a guideline:

Tomatoes: ½ a kilo/ 7 medium, chopped
Onion: 1 small, minced
Ginger-garlic paste: 1 tsp
Cumin seed: 1 tsp
Turmeric: A pinch
Red chilli powder: 1 tsp
Salt: to taste
Curry powder: 1 tsp
Oil: ½ tsp
Water: (Please see recipe)
Curds/Yoghurt: 2 tbsp, beaten

A frying pan with a lid

1. Heat oil in a pan, add cumin seeds.

2. Add onion, saute till transparent.

3. Add the ginger-garlic paste, fry for two minutes.

4. Add the turmeric, chilli powder, salt and the curry powder. Mix well.

5. Now add the tomatoes, mix well with the spices.

6. Add some water, enough to cover the tomatoes.

7. Cover the pan and let the mixture cook on medium heat for more than five minutes. (Keep checking to see that it doesn’t dry out and stick to the pan.)

8. If it’s boiling well and has a nice and healthy volume, gently mash the tomatoes with the ladle. If they mash easily, the curry’s done. If you feel the volume isn’t enough, add a little more water, and simmer. Keep checking for the consistency of your choice – I like it thick.

9. Once you take it off the fire, add the curds to the curry. Do you see the several yellow specks in the curry? That’s the curds, which makes it all tangy and nice. Now fry some hot, calorific puris, dip them into this curry and taste heaven!

I'll post a picture later of the tomato egg-drop curry I made sometime ago, but here's how you make it.




For this, at Step 8, when you have a thick gravy, turn the heat down to simmer, crack a few eggs into it (as many as you think the gravy will hold), cover it and let them set. Resist the temptation to poke the eggs or ensure that the curry covers the eggs – if you are worried that the spices may not reach the top of the egg, sprinkle a little salt on the tops. (In that case, make sure you put in less salt in the gravy earlier.) Here's another variation.

I'm sending this off to Kalyn's Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by The Chocolate Lady of In Mol Araan.

Weekend Herb Blogging Curds/Yoghurt Gluten-free Tomato Curry Rediscovering Egg drop

Me, At Random

I

That’s me.

II

It was a certain boredom that drew me into cuisine’s fold. A break of several months between an MA and an M. Phil found me discovering a few cookbooks lying around the house and trying my hand at the recipes.
Seeing my enthusiasm, my father repaired an old oven that his sister had owned. I only made ‘high-class’ foods – cakes, puddings and such. Who was interested in rice and dal? Certainly not me!
The folks at home were anything but thrilled – my grandparents thought I was wasting my time but were reluctantly indulgent and my mother always feared the mess that would confront her later in the kitchen.
There were other successes but what stood out was a savarin that rose splendidly and soaked up the syrup brilliantly.

III

A friend told me I was considered a snob, and someone who didn’t offer acquaintances more than a reserved smile. I was overjoyed! For someone who is beset with doubts about whether she’s being over-friendly and eager to please, this was reassurance.

IV

In Standard I, a classmate told my cousin and me the secret of making rubber. Here it is: Scribble something with a pencil on a piece of paper, then erase it really hard with an eraser. Gather those grey bits that come off the paper, mix them with wood shavings that come from sharpening pencils, put them into some milk and refrigerate overnight. The rubber will be ready in the morning. (No, I don’t know whether the milk was to be boiled or left raw.)
I still remember the light of the fridge underlining the disgusted look on my grandmother’s face as she opened it to put in not one but two cups of this formula!

V

Years ago, a friend insisted I taste the delicious tea at an Irani café deep in Secunderabad. Though I didn’t drink tea and wasn’t used to it, had no standards to judge it by, I acquiesced because her enthusiasm was infectious.
There we were finally, getting off my bike after a long ride through the city and going into this dingy little café with blue-green walls on a dark and cold evening, full of men staring at us as if we had come off an alien spaceship! I don’t remember the taste anymore, but my friend does. That was an adventure!

VI

I am not good at repartee. My presence of mind is absent. So it was a notable victory when someone tried to do me out of the computer I routinely used for that hour of class. She refused to yield it to me. “I’ll continue to practise on this machine, but come, use this,” she said, patting the seat next to her, “it’s very good.” “If that is so good, why don’t you use it yourself?” I asked her, riled by her manner. Scowling, she picked up her stuff and huffed out and away. Petty, maybe, but I was oh so thrilled that I could retort as I had!

VII

I had to attend a conference and report on the proceedings. At the end of it, I was depressed – I didn’t understand what the point of the meeting was. Why didn't I get it, had I chosen the right profession, should I consider doing something else, how would I handle bigger challenges?
Slowly, I picked myself out of my seat and made my way out. There were two very senior and accomplished colleagues there, one younger than the other.
The younger man asks, with a totally bewildered expression on his face, “But what was the conference about?” And the older man bursts into laughter … I’ve even forgotten his reply but gathered he didn’t think much of it either, but needless to say, that boosted my morale no end!

Thank you, Sunita and Sharmi, for tagging me. I read somewhere that one's required to say seven things about themselves and tag seven others. Most people I know have been tagged. I’m tagging Santhi of Writing on the Mirror, Pooja of My Creative Ideas, Sreelu of Sreelu's Tasty Travels, Prema of My Cookbook and Jyothi of Andhra Spicy for this meme. Only if you're interested, of course, but I'd love to know more about you.

Meme Random

Mixed Up Fare

This was a post written with a lot of reservations, hence that title! I thought the picture of the mutton curry looked too red and chunky, the picture of the vegetarian dish too undistinguishable, but put it down to addiction to blogging, and hey presto, it becomes a post, deserving or not!


The vegetarian dish further below was an attempt at cleaning out my pantry – it’s made of whole green gram/moong that is at least two years old. Miraculously, it didn’t attract any life forms so I used it to make something called ‘siriyali’ that I found in a Telugu cookbook written by Ms J. Kanthamani. More about that later, on to the curry.

Nigella is a spice I love and use mostly in Bengali dishes, but over the years, have begun using it in others too. In the mutton curry, I threw in a teaspoon of nigella on an impulse and it made all the difference to this dish which didn’t have curry powder or other whole spices beyond the basic tastemakers.

Here’s the recipe:

Mutton: 250 – 300 gm (less than 1 lb)
Potatoes, chopped: 2 big (about 1 lb)
Onion, chopped: 2
Ginger-garlic paste: 2 tsp/1 tsp of each
Chilli powder: 1 – 1-1/2 tsp / as per taste
Turmeric: 1 tsp
Salt: To taste
Nigella/kalonji: 1 tsp
Oil: 1 tbsp
Water: upto 3 cups

Coriander/cilantro: for garnish

Note: I made this in a pressure cooker, I’ve never cooked mutton/lamb otherwise because I’ve known it to take ages without one.

Heat oil, add nigella.

Now add the onions, fry till pink-brown.

Then add the ginger-garlic paste, fry well, till you notice some oil around the edges of the mixture.

Now add the meat, saute till well browned.

Add the turmeric, salt and chilli powder. Mix thoroughly.

Now add the potatoes. Saute well.

Add water to cover the contents and a little more.

Close the pressure cooker and wait for the steam to build up.

Once it comes out of the vent, close it with the weight.

Let it whistle once, turn down to simmer and cook for 15 minutes.

After the pressure drops on its own, check for doneness. If the meat isn’t soft enough, add some more water and cook for a little longer in the way described above.

Garnish with coriander.



Now on to the other dish. The original recipe called for hulled yellow moong dal so you could use that if you like, but I’ve no idea of how that would turn out.

Here’s how I adapted it:

Whole green gram/moong beans: 300 gm
Tamarind extract, watery: 4-5 tbsp
Urad dal/hulled black gram: 1 tsp
Dry red chillies: 2, broken
Curry leaf: 1 sprig
Chana dal: 1 tsp
Mustard seed: 1 tsp
Oil: 2 tsp
Turmeric: A pinch
Salt: to taste

Soak moong for 2-3 hours, wash well and grind it to a grainy mix.

Steam this in idli plates or in an ordinary vessel for 10-12 minutes. It will set, like a cake.

After it cools, cut it into small pieces, or just crumble it.

In a pan, heat oil, splutter mustard seeds, add black gram, red chillies, chana dal, curry leaf, tamarind extract, turmeric and salt.

Add the crumble/pieces and mix. If you’ve cut it into pieces, don’t mix too much as they can break up.

It’s somewhat like a coarse, green upma, not bad tasting at all! Curds/yoghurt went well with it; so did some lime pickle. Could do for breakfast!

Green gram Mutton Breakfast Siriyali

Purple Passion

Garlic Purple Pink

Value-Added Mix

I’ve mentioned Sambaar Kaaram a couple of times on the blog and also mentioned that it was different from Saambaar Podi. It’s used to flavour vegetable stir-fries and daals, sometimes I’ve used it with tamarind-based gravies and I once even used it with meat when I ran out of chilli powder.

Over the years, I’ve tried finding out why it’s called Sambaar Kaaram but nobody I know could come up with an explanation, only that it doesn’t have anything to do with Saambaar, something that I faithfully repeat every time I refer to it. I haven’t seen any reference to it on the Net either, well, beyond the first 50-60 results that Google threw up, anyway. I suspect this is what is called koora kaaram though the recipes vary in ingredients and proportions.

This kaaram featured in my previous post, where I showed off all my acquisitions from my recent trip home. It attracted the attention of Mathy, who wanted the recipe for this as well as some other kaarams mentioned there. I was able to provide a link to some of them but for this, had to ask my aunt.

It has a great aromatic smell, reminiscent of that of raw mango smeared with salt and chilli powder, which probably comes from the garlic (now figure that out if you can, that’s the irrational romantic in me speaking) but let me tell you this – its uses do not end with flavouring other dishes – it makes a great accompaniment to idlis with ghee! Let your imagination run riot!

Here’s the recipe:

Dry red chillies: 500 gm (remove the stalks)
Coriander seeds: 250 gm
Fenugreek/Methi seeds: 50 gm
Cumin/jeera seeds: 50 gm
Black gram/urad dal: A little less than 50 gm
Salt, to taste
Garlic: to taste

Dry roast the first five ingredients separately.

Let cool, whiz to a powder in the grinder.

Add salt.

Crush garlic roughly, add to the powder and whiz again. Not too much, though!

Store in an airtight container.

Sambaar Kaaram Red chillies Spice Mix

Shameless Display

Foreground, from left to right: Ginger pickle, Peanut Powder/Spice Mix, Yellow Lentil Powder, Green Chilli Powder, Sun-dried mango pickle
Centre, left to right: Sambaaru Kaaram (a red chilli powder mix for veggies and daals, not to be confused with Saambaar Podi), Fish Curry, Bittergourd Powder
Last row, left to right: Channa Daal Powder, Mango Pickle (two jars). At the back, mangoes.

A short trip home yielded this bounty – pickles, powders and mangoes – see that huge tub at the back?

But before you begin to get jealous, let me tell you that I lost about half a dozen of those beauties – I readied some newspapers on my worktable, a large bowl to slice the fruit into and catch the nectar dripping down, and began to lovingly peel a golden orb, and peel I did, till thin, wiggly white worms came rushing out like they’d been freed from moist mango misery! And another, and another, I lost count after four, but I suspect it ended at six. Three were wormless, but after the events of this morning, which ruined my appetite for lunch and tea, I checked each and every piece I ate at dinner!

Not sure when I'll have my Mother Hubbard moment at this rate (sigh!) but at least one of these powders is galloping towards the finish line.

Cook at home also made and froze a few dishes that will last us till the end of this week, and an aunt gave us that fish curry you see in the steel container in the centre. The mango and other pickles are home-made, so are some of the powders.

This is an impromptu post, otherwise I would have slaved over the containers, tablecloth, photos and what have you, but this trip did yield a planned blog thing – I bought some background. Yes, background. I went to a marble-and-granite seller, turned over several slabs and selected a few pieces, telling the polite but puzzled manager there I am a photographer by hobby and needed some props. You’ll see them by and by, I’ll know if it was a great idea or not only when I begin using them, but tell me, what unlikely things have you done for your blog?

Pickle Spice Mixes Mangoes

A Liteness of Being

When Coffee announced MBP’s theme is Going Lite, several thoughts came to my mind: At last, I can finally buy the stuff but justify the expense as going towards a good cause and make that flourless cake with an expensive pound of ground almonds and orange and pass it off as a somewhat low-carb version; I can finally make use of the nice, thick, glass cake dish I just bought at a 30 per cent off sale; I can use the slowly rotting plums in my refrigerator to make a crumble using up some more of the sturdy oats in my larder …

Then I noticed some channa/chickpeas that were somewhere in the inner recesses of the shelf and I decided to take another shot at salad – I am usually disappointed with my own attempts as the dressing never seems to come together. My friend was coming to lunch so that was motivation enough. It gave me a chance to use up some vegetables from my cornucopious fridge as well. And that was the perfect excuse to boil up some wholewheat pasta and tomato-basil sauce and bake some garlicky potatoes and have ourselves a feast. And another new acquisition from the sale, a pudding bowl, could double up as a salad bowl! I do realize the meal went way past the Going Lite theme but that was lunch, not a theme party, so I suppose we can skip the guilt this time. I’m presenting just the genuinely lite dish here. MBP, here I come!

This salad is inspired by Kalyn’s Kitchen. I didn’t have/use many of the vegetables she mentioned, nor the lime juice, nor the carrot, so I used some dill-chilli vinegar, red pepper and zucchini instead. I wasn’t able to print Kalyn’s recipe, so I just worked from memory and this is what I came up with:

Dry channa/chickpeas/garbanzo: 2 cups, soaked overnight and cooked
Zucchini – Half of a big one, diced small
Red pepper – 2, cut into small pieces

Dressing:
Vinegar – 3 tbsp
Olive oil – 3 tbsp
Garlic – 5 cloves, minced as fine as possible
Cumin/jeera powder – 1 tsp
Chilli powder – ½ tsp
Salt, to taste

Steep garlic and the other spices in a mixture of vinegar and oil for some time.

Put all the vegetables in a salad bowl, add dressing, mix, let chill in the refrigerator.

It wasn’t too bad for me, my friend loved it and praise be to God, it didn’t last beyond a day in my refrigerator because I had the brains to take it to work, where my colleagues too liked it. I’m hoping you will, too!

Monthly Blog Patrolling Channa/Chickpeas/Garbanzo Vegetarian Salad

Stalking in Cyberspace

Ok, ok, the title was just a piece of sensationalism! All I wanted to say was that the answer to the question in my previous post is 'stalks'. GD and Mamatha got it right. Congratulations! They are the stalks of Malabar Spinach .

As the post was an afterthought, I didn’t take any pictures of the leafy greens or the stalks but you can see a good, clear picture here. We usually make a stir-fry or gravy of this with amaranth stalks but this time, after I finished using the leaves in daal, the stalks looked too good and fresh to throw away, so I used them for this stir-fry with a bit of the daal I had soaked for the main dish a little earlier.

Funnily enough, the stalks reminded me a lot of ladies’ fingers/okra – they gave off a bit of slime when I tossed them in the pan but gradually the goo wore off and I was rewarded with a crunchy, bright, dry stir-fry that was great with curds/yoghurt but can also be used as an accompaniment with a sambar or chaaru/rasam. It can even be served with plain rice.

Stalks, chopped – 2 cups
Toor daal/yellow lentils – a fistful, soaked for about 30-40 minutes
Garlic – 3-4 cloves, bruised/chopped
Red chillies – 3-4, broken
Mustard seeds – ½ tsp
Split urad daal/black gram - 1 tsp
Chilli powder – 1 tsp
Salt, to taste
Oil – 1-2 tsp

***A frying pan with a lid.

Heat oil, add mustard seeds.

Once they splutter, add the black gram, brown.

Add the red chillies and garlic.

Now add the daal with just enough water – it should cover the daal, but barely. Lower the flame.

Cover, and let the daal cook till it’s soft but not mushy. (It should hold its shape.) The test – if it’s not done, it will have a spot in the centre – boil till that spot disappears and the colour is uniform.

Now add the stalks, sprinkle some water, saute. Add salt and chilli powder. Cover.

Keep checking to see that the stalks don’t stick to the pan – sprinkle some more water if they do. Cook covered.

I didn’t cook it too long so there was quite a lot of bite and crunch in them, you can go in for a softer version.

I’m sending this off to Kalyn’s Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by Rachel’s Bite. Bon appetit!

Weekend Herb Blogging Malabar Spinach/Ceylon Spinach/Bachalikoora/Green Leafy Vegetables Toor daal/Lentils

No Prizes For Guessing :(

What is the green stuff you see in the bowl? Answer/recipe on Sunday.

Flaking Out

Operation Springclean is making me eat healthy. Well, somewhat, if you ignore the peanuts I added to this dish. Those of you who read my previous post know I have a lot of healthy, organic stuff languishing in my pantry – today, I chose to deal with organic red rice flakes (poha, atukulu, aval, beaten rice).

I wanted to make a tamarind version but there was no recipe in my books, no cartridge in my printer, and no memory in my brain, so I couldn’t register when I had to add the tamarind extract to the flakes, and those recipes on the Net didn’t mention how much water I had to soak the tamarind in.

I first tasted Maharashtrian poha only last year. A couple of friends and I had gone to Matheran for a break, and before we fixed up transport to go to our resort, we had breakfast at the canteen at the local authority. It was full of monkeys, grimy and rather sparsely furnished but there was no other option and we needed breakfast after the early morning ride from Bombay. My friends, used to living in Bombay, passed up the poha and asked for toast and omelette but I opted for the poha – I’d only heard of it till then, had never had the real McCoy.

Of course, I’d had these red rice flakes even then and attempted poha from a cookbook but on both occasions it ended up tasting wrong even though I had no standard to compare it with – I just put it down to the thickness of the poha – today I realized I should have soaked it for twice as longer.

The poha at the Matheran canteen, was, of course, a revelation – it triggered off the memory of ‘atukula pulihora’ that my grandmother had rustled up for a friend and me a few years ago when we visited her but that was more like lemon rice. That was made with white flakes, as was this - with a few peanuts, a little sugar, and not much tempering. I think there was a bit of onion as well, I can’t be sure though it was only eight months ago – put it down to fatigue!

The recipe I’m posting today is a variation of that. Again, I made do with what I had at home – having a pantry bursting at the seams doesn’t necessarily mean I have everything it takes all the time, so I had to buy a few peanuts, make do with fewer limes than I wanted … you get the drift.

Here’s what you need:

Red rice flakes/poha/atukulu (the thick variety) – 125 gm/1-1/2 cups
Peanuts/groundnuts – a handful, roasted, coarsely crushed

Tempering:
Mustard seeds – ½ tsp
Split, husked urad dal/black gram – ½ tsp
Red chillies – 3-4, broken
Green chillies – 1 big or 2 small, slit
Coriander - chopped, a handful
Curry leaves – 1 sprig
Oil – 2 tsp
Salt

Wash the rice flakes well in a colander – make sure every grain is washed and wetted through – and let it be for 45 minutes. The right consistency is when the flakes should feel firm when pressed but mash easily – I know that sounds contradictory but you will understand when the flakes yield. Check after 30 minutes, if they aren’t ready, wash them once more. But soaking, or washing in hot water, is a no-no because they break or disintegrate very easily.

Heat oil, season with mustard, urad dal, red chillies and curry leaves, in that order. Let 1) the mustard pop, 2) urad dal begin to brown, 3) red chillies turn brighter and 4) curry leaves crackle.

Add the peanuts, swish around the pan just once.

Now add the green chilli(es) and the rice flakes.

Season with salt.

Mix well, but with a light hand.

Add coriander, mix.

Eat with a squirt of lime juice or plain.

Poha Peanuts/Groundnuts Vegan Red Rice Flakes

My Wild Oats

Once, just once, I want to see my pantry bare. Devoid of everything except the very basic stuff I use in normal cooking – salt, chilli powder, curry powder, some lentils, some rice. This has not happened in years, and I fear it never will, thanks to my predilection for buying all fancy and not-so-fancy stuff, under the justification of being health-conscious, gourmet, adventurous, environment-friendly, farmer-supportive, moving-towards-organic and more such labels.

I’m sure at least a few of you will identify with me and my pantry – little bundles of plastic secured with rubber bands filled with spices, bottles and jars of bran, oats, wholegrains and alternative grains such as buckwheat, bought in the hope of using that exotic cookbook which promptly goes missing, cake sprinkles and coloured sugar crystals which you hang on to despite knowing you will never ever use them, exotic spices from my Goa trip two months ago, which haven’t seen the light of day, various ready-mixes (without preservatives, of course) bought in bouts of let’s-be-prepared-for-guests (who are swiftly whisked off to restaurants as soon as it’s mealtime), brown Basmati rice fondly intended for a healthier biriyani, calming chamomile tea which only induces more stress as I discover I haven’t even opened the pack each time I see it, even an everyday pack of red chillies that refuses to get exhausted and clings on dully to the gloomy interiors of my cupboard.

Just once, I want to see all these used up – thence, there will be no well-meaning but wasteful stocking up, no unsightly reminders of my spendthrift ways, only what I need for the next few days – so here I am, with a concoction of oats which is a beginning to this noble end.

Wild oats, as the name says, because I literally threw in whatever I had in the refrigerator, soul sister of my pantry, to make this an appetizing yet healthy dish – tomatoes on the verge of rotting, a cup of capsicum chopped two days ago, shelled peas which were wrinkling because I hadn’t found a lid for the container …

I intended this to be more like a tomato bath/upma, but despite five tomatoes, it didn’t look as red as I wanted it to. But then the green in it was no mean thing – capsicum, peas, curry leaves, coriander – not to mention a pinch of turmeric.

Here’s the recipe, then:

Quick-cooking white oats – 2 cups, dry-roasted
Water – 3.5-4 cups
Tomatoes – 5, medium-sized, chopped, as fine as you can
Green capsicum/bell pepper, chopped – 1 cup
Boiled green peas – 1-1/2 cups
Green chillies – 2-3, chopped
Garlic – 3-4 cloves, bruised

Tempering:
Oil – 2-3 tsp
Mustard seed – 1 tsp
Cumin seed – 1 tsp
Curry leaves – 1 sprig

Salt, to taste
Turmeric, a pinch
Coriander/cilantro – to garnish


Heat the oil.

Put in the mustard seeds, let them pop.

Add the cumin seed and curry leaves.

Now add the tomatoes and green chillies and saute well.

Add the salt, turmeric, mix well.

Let the tomatoes get all squishy.

Then put in the capsicum and boiled peas and let it acquire a ‘curry consistency’.

Now add the roasted oats, mix well and add 3 cups of water. Check for doneness. If it’s not soft enough, add more.

It won’t be slide-down-your-throat soft, but it shouldn’t be pasty, either – you will know when you test it between your fingers/taste it.

It was a smasher, and the best part was that it didn’t even taste ‘boringly healthy’ – it almost slid down my throat, effortlessly. Now there’s just a third of the oats left in its jar – I’m tackling a jar of 3-year-old whole moong tomorrow – hopefully, by the end of the year, I’ll have an Old Mother Hubbard moment!

Oats Tomatoes

Pearls of Health?

Ever since I tasted barley pulao at a health food restaurant, I’ve eyed the barley packets in the store with some curiosity. I’ve often seen descriptions of cooked barley as a chewy affair but I prefer to think of the grain as one that offered me the opportunity to savour its taste and texture, unlike rice which is gone in a trice!

After checking images on the Internet, I’ve come to the conclusion it’s pearl barley I used, though the pack didn’t say so. Pearl barley is a processed form of the grain, with the husk and more components (and so nutrients) removed, but I get the impression it’s still a better alternative to rice and wheat. (My barley was white enough for me to believe it was processed.) There’s more information here and here.

In any case, it doesn’t go down as easily as rice or roti, so there must be some truth that it’s healthier – the path of logic proceeding from the point that whatever’s yummy is bad for you and whatever’s not so tasty is good for you!

A recent visit to the restaurant again hastened me into buying some barley and experimenting with it. I didn’t put too many elements in it as it was the first time and I wasn’t sure how long it would take to cook and how well it would absorb the flavours. The result was a tasty and mild dish that looked pretty with all the raisins and almonds that I used to give it some crunch.

Pearl barley – 1 cup
Water – 4-5 cups

Bay leaf – 1
Cinnamon – 2-inch piece
Cloves – 2
Cardamom – 1

Onion, chopped – ½
Green chillies, chopped – 2
Almonds – a fistful, chopped
Raisins – a fistful, soaked for a while in water
Olive oil – 1 tbsp
Salt – to taste

I will take you through how I cooked the barley first – as it was new to me, I first boiled three cups of water and added the barley to it. I let it absorb the water but the grain still had a hard core so I added one more cup and then another. Midway through the fifth cup, I decided the barley had cooked well enough so I drained it and added some salt to the barley.

In a pan, heat the oil, add the whole spices.

Add the onions, fry till translucent.

Add the green chillies, fry till they lighten.

Lower the heat. Now add the almonds and raisins, swish them around briefly.

Add the cooked barley, mix well.

Plain, thick curds/yoghurt makes a great accompaniment, as I was to discover last night. This could even make a filling breakfast if the idea of garam masala/curry spice in the morning doesn’t put you off.

Barley Vegan