Rounding Up The Write Taste

Finally, I’ve not been my infamously inflexible host self at all, though that was due to a mistake and not the milk of human kindness - no harm done, though; I love the entries for The Write Taste all the same, they are different, and I’m sure you will all have a wonderful time feasting your eyes on them.

The gracious host that I have evolved into, I’m not going to say a single word about how surprised I was that there weren’t more entries; that I always thought it would be easier to discuss food and cooking than actually create it; that I’m so hysterically grateful to those who participated.

Now, on with the show!

Chow! I’m pretty sure I saw this word in a comic first. Was it Dennis the Menace? Or Archie? I’m not sure. But here is a 21st century version of it, and an account and proof of why it sent her to ‘nirvana heaven’.

Then comes the next entry, which describes something like having your cake and eating it too! More than that, in fact. There is some eating, but much other activity too! Pain or pleasure, you can’t do without food, it seems.

Shake off those inhibitions, and get down and dirty! Squeeze, squish, squash, slurp, swirl! Relish it every which way you can. Or not. What am I talking about? Find out, find out more!

Here’s an entry from a blogger, though it’s not a blog post. It’s a review about a book she likes, which is "not so much about the food but the style of writing and the narration somehow leading to a recipe at the end of each chapter".

The book: Monsoon Diary (Shoba Narayan)
Reviewer: Rashmi Srinivas at Curled Up With a Good Book

“In Monsoon Diary, which can be classified as part cookbook, part travelogue and part biography, author Shoba Narayan takes readers on a journey which is as eclectic and amazing as the contents of the book itself. Food is the dominant factor in this book, and around it the author describes her own life journey. …

… Monsoon Diary is a gently edifying, delightful, utterly satisfying cultural and culinary read.” Read more here.

‘Mapped to tastes and habits’ is the pun that occurs to me naturally, all the more so after a day spent listening to such language (and a day trying hard not to let such jargon creep into my writing). Explore what I’m talking about here.

My refrigerator, it seems to me, is a bottomless pit, an ever-expanding Pushpaka Vimanam that has space for that extra packet which I’ll probably never use. It is also a record of funny life truths and good memories, as our magnet collections live there. And there’s much more to it, as she and her writer tell us.

This is one classic foodie very much in the news nowadays, and there are works of hers, about her, in various media. The post is in Italian, but use an online translation to get its essence. I, for one, have put this book on my must-read list.

I felt the same way the author of this post did after reading the excerpt - to book a flight and zoom away. I’m sure I will, I live in hope. Maybe reading this will channel positive energy our way, don’t put it off!

Boarding school = always hungry.
Typically English = cucumber sandwiches.
And more.
Here.

Ever heard of daulat ki chaat? Try it, you’d be surprised at the elements that go into it. Read about all that and more here. You will also find some insights into cookbooks and memoirs.

Nostalgia unlimited is what this book unleashed. But more importantly, it also expanded her world of books - from one that seemed to set her pulse racing to an equally enthralling but calmer one, perhaps one characterized by deeper thought and introspection? Judge for yourselves.

Here’s a peek into some food reading habits, some memories and an introduction to an author in an Indian language. There are links to some recipes he has mentioned too. Discover more.

Les Ouefs! Ils sont excellents! Pardon the French, but you’ll know why I’m speaking a different language when you read this post. A cookbook it may be, but there are life lessons as well.

The descriptions are simply beautiful. I’ve exhausted my French for now, but there’s more here. And I’m relating to the post very personally as I recently saw something as beautiful: A spring onion sliced longitudinally, thready streaks of purple running through it.

Here’s a post that all of us need to read. There is a wealth of information there that we cannot do without. Enough said.

“You know, you have these crazy people asking the waiter, insisting they know where the chicken comes from,” said someone to me years ago, about how some people in her country were hung up on eating food that was produced right, processed ethically. Not so much of a joke now. Read this, think about it, and make some better informed choices.

And my own entry: Here it is!

The Write Taste Event Round Up

A Call To Action

About a month ago, I announced The Write Taste, calling for entries that highlighted good pieces of writing. The deadline that I set, October 15, is almost upon us. However, I am extending it till the end of this week (Saturday October 17) as I get the feeling that those of you making an effort to send in an entry will appreciate some more time. I won't be able to access the Net for a couple of days myself so I will acknowledge your mails and posts after the 16th.

The details are also in the sidebar.

The Write Taste Event

A Mixture Of Memories

The Listerine was always perched on top of the mesh cupboard in the kitchen. We, my cousin and I, would return from school and head straight for the kitchen, pour some Listerine into a glass, gargle and ... I don't remember what we did next. Study? Play? Possibly. But of course! We'd have a glass of hot, boiled milk, and perhaps something to eat.

I do remember, though, that my grandmother wouldn't usually make hot evening tiffin for us. I've mentioned how unorthodox she was in some of her food choices, so this non-tiffin habit was probably a manifestation of that. (Though an aunt tells me that she did do some of the conventional things when they were younger, but that's another story.) There was fruit to eat, and various savoury snacks (chakkidalu/chakralu/karappusa) that she made herself periodically, pressing the dough out of a heavy brass cylinder in a circular motion into a deep and large cast iron kadai full of hot oil. It would be a delight to watch all those twisty, twirly, rough and smooth treats coming up all brown and gleaming, resting on the sieve-like ladles for a few seconds before being deposited into a gleaming steel can next to the stove. Perhaps there were also biscuits to eat.

But once in a while, as a treat, perhaps, she would make this tasty mixture as a special evening snack and it would be done in a jiffy. I haven't made this in years, wouldn't even have thought of it had it not been for IFR Memories and the bag of puffed rice I was given during the recent Durga Pooja celebrations. I thought of making a 'mixture' with that for this post but I couldn't honestly tell myself whether my grandmother made this or I was imagining it simply because there was an event to enter and write for, but luckily, the thought process tripped the right wires and here is that simple, but great treat my grandmother would turn out in minutes.

My grandmother didn't particularly care for the recipes published in the magazines. She thought they only pretended to be novel and excelled in exaggeration. She would be quite scornful about recipes that claimed to be new just because they had some cosmetic element to it - like a fruit salad being called a pomegranate fruit salad merely because some arils were sprinkled on it. I wonder what she would make of me blogging, all the more so as she (nor my grandfather) never liked me pottering about the kitchen.

But I digress. On and off, it hits me that here's a dish I used to have when my grandmother was around, and haven't had or enjoyed properly since she passed away - it's not always something exotic or special or unusual, just that it's unavailable to me for various reasons, one of them being a slowing memory.

There are many mixtures like this - in fact, the onion, the coriander, lime, chilli powder, green chillies are constants, the main ingredient is the variable (V). Make V peanuts, and it's an appetiser or accompaniment to drinks at the club; make it puffed rice, and it's delivered to you in a soggy cone of newspaper outside the office; use boiled peas and it comes out in little tubs or katoris out of carts or from a roadside stall. This version uses roasted chana dal/chutney dal.

Roasted chana dal/chutney dal/veyinchina senagapappu: 1 cup
Salt, red chilli powder: To taste
Green chillies: Half of one, sliced thin (optional if using red chilli powder)
Onion, chopped: A small fistful
Oil: 1-2 tsp
Lime juice: From 1 or two limes, as you wish

Mix the dal, spices, onion, oil and lime juice well.

Consume.

This post goes to Manisha's event IFR Memories.

A reminder: There's just a little over a week left for your entries for The Write Taste, on till October 15, 2009. Details in the sidebar too.

Memories Chana dal Event Mixture Musings

Attaining Geekdom Amidst Idli-Dosa

I've never been a geek, gadget freak or a nerd. In fact, I'd rather buy some clothes or something exotic to eat given the opportunity, not a mobile phone. Quite unlike The Spouse who looks to change his, and like a true doer, creates those opportunities.

Of late, though, my rather low-tech mobile developed a purple blemish that kept spreading but I hung on to it because I give more importance to character and less to good looks. But then, it gave up character and started switching itself off quite arbitrarily. Just like you'd want to forgive a dear one's bad behaviour despite having to grit your teeth and bear it, I persevered. It continued its caprices and I decided it was time I stood up for myself.

When I exchanged it for a new one, all I was particular about was the number of contacts I could accommodate in the new mobile phone. And maybe a more sophisticated camera that came with a straightforward camera-computer transfer cord rather than some infra-red gobbledygook that my previous mobile was equipped with but that my computer wasn't and I didn't know how to use. Sale concluded, I came back home with my not-so-expensive, still not-so-sophisticated gleaming black mobile phone, and sent off a text message to a friend.


Voila! The font was so nice, the text so clear, and all these were helped by the fact that the screen was bigger. It was as if I was seeing it through a pair of spectacles after being diagnosed for myopia. I toyed with the idea of sending off a few more messages but told myself not to be silly, and sent off just a couple more.

Over the next few days, I fixed the ring tone, its volume, began the task of cleaning up my contacts' list, and gazing at the smileys the phone provided. And sending more text messages. Then, on the fifth or sixth day, I undertook a 6-hour journey to my parents' home, with a big fat murder mystery for company. "Apres le petit dejeuner," I told myself, waiting for the packets of biscuits and chips that are usually sold on the chair car. They never came, and in deference to my sluggish metabolism, bought a cup of what passed for coffee. As I struggled to finish it so that I could stuff the paper cup in the magazine pouch and not have to go to the wash basin to pour it out, I began fiddling with my mobile. And discovered I could acess the Web without having to have it specially activated.

The connectivity was spotty, but I managed to access a few favourite sites, post a status update on one, and surfed some more. All around me, people were busy unpacking foil packs of idli and vada, trying carefully to not let the sambar slosh from the plastic pouches it came in. The smell is usually a big put-off but with my new toy, metabolism, breakfast and big fat mystery were forgotten, and not even the messages telling me I'd been charged a certain amount for a certain quantity of KB could deter me from experimenting with it.

While I'm off to commune with my mobile and discover more about its mult-faceted personality, don't forget to participate in The Write Taste, on till October 15, 2009. There's just two weeks left for you to participate!

Musings Travel

Prawns & Greens, Expressly

For the first time ever, I listed the ingredients before I wrote out the story. And I'm glad they made the cut. They are ten in total but salt and chillies don't count, neither does the tadka, nor the water. And it's not something that I make everyday; in fact, this is the first time I'm making it. I have the vague impression that's it's a home-style/rustic dish, actually not even sure it existed till I went through a couple of cookbooks. I am late to the party but in the virtual world, attempts at a fashionably late entrance don't work as everything is subsumed in the round-up, so have I been late at all? ;)


Chukkakoora is my favourite variety of greens but a receding one - the shops in my neighbourhood that carry it have either closed down or stopped selling it. A meeting took me a little further away this past week and I found bunches of this in a large supermarket in the vicinity. Knowing that I couldn't use all of them, I regretfully restricted myself to buying only two. One bunch was used for dal and the leaves from the other were plucked and stored in the fridge. This morning, we used it up by pairing it with some prawns. It's nice and tangy, and don't omit the curry leaves.

Prawns: 250 gm
Onion: Chopped, a fistful
Chukkakoora/Ambat chukka/Khatti palak: 2 cups, washed (Chopping - optional)

Green chillies: 2, chopped
Red chillies: 2
Curry leaves: 2 sprigs
Salt, chilli powder - to taste
Turmeric: 1/4 tsp
Fenugreek seed: 1/4 tsp
Garlic: 3-4 cloves, crushed
Oil: 1-1.5 tbsp

Wash prawns, smear with chilli powder, salt and turmeric. Place in a pan and heat till the water oozes and evaporates. This takes just 2-3 minutes. (You'll have a hard time keeping your hands off the prawns till you go on to the next step, believe me.)

Simultaneously, cook the greens in another pan with chilli powder and the green chillies. You can sprinkle a little water if you like. Let it cook till it gets mushy (2-3 minutes).

By now, the prawns too would be cooked. Put them aside but in the same pan, add the oil and fry the onions, red chillies, garlic, curry leaves and fenugreek. Put the prawns back in, and add the mushed greens. Mix. Check for seasoning and take off the heat. This can be served with rice.

Sslurp!!!

Don't forget to participate in The Write Taste, on till October 15, 2009. Details in the sidebar.

Express Indian Chukkakoora/Ambat chukka/Khatti Palak Non-vegetarian Prawns Event

A Taste Of The Write Taste

Ever since I announced The Write Taste two days ago, I've been getting the feeling that I killed you with clarity. Rather than do another post to clarify the doubts that seem to have cropped up (and haven't), I am doing one to show you what it can be like.

I want you to share a piece of good writing about food with the world. Here, then, are some of my selections.

I began to read The Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, only two or three weeks ago. I have started off with his book Other Colours - Writings on Life, Art, Books and Cities (Faber and Faber 2008). These are translations by Maureen Freely.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about Pamuk: "Pamuk's books are characterized by a confusion or loss of identity brought on in part by the conflict between Western and Eastern values. They are often disturbing or unsettling, but include complex, intriguing plots and characters of great depth. His works are also redolent with discussion of and fascination with the creative arts, such as literature and painting. Pamuk's work often touches on the deep-rooted tensions between East and West and tradition and modernism/secularism."

What I am going to quote from in this post is from a piece called Frankfurter, which first appeared in The New Yorker.

In the sixties, when the doner (now popular in Europe under this name and known in the United States by its Greek name, gyro) had yet to be invented, the frankfurter was the height of fashion and the most important food for those of us who had taken to eating in the streets. You would gaze through the glass at dark red tomato sauce that had been simmering all day and pick out one of the frankfurters that had been swimming like so many happy water buffaloes wallowing in the mud; you would point it out to the man with the tongs, and then you would wait impatiently for him to assemble the sandwich.

Hot dog stand at Times Square, New York, July 2009 (my photo)

The motivation, the pressure, to eat forbidden street food, which couldn't be eaten with "peace of mind" about its origins (in this case, whether the frankfurter came from cows or donkeys) is expressed by Pamuk thus:

In Istanbul, as elsewhere, people ate fast food on the streets not just because they were short of time, money or other opportunities but also, in my view, to escape that "peace of mind." To leave behind Islamic tradition, whose ideas about food were embedded in ideas about mothers, women and sacred privacy - to embrace modern life and become a city dweller - it was necessary to be ready and willing to eat food even if you didn't know where, how or why it was made.

And then, more insight:

The best thing about Istanbul street food is not that each vendor is different, offering specialities and chasing fashions, it is that each sells only the things he knows and loves. When I see the men who have taken a village dish - something their mother or their wife makes for them at home - out into the streets of the big city, certain that everyone else will love it too, it's not just their chickpea pilaf or grilled meatballs or fried mussels or stuffed mussels or Albanian liver that I savor but the proud beauty of their decorated stands, three-wheeled cars, and chairs.

You could even point to lighter stuff, funny and delightful, and, in this case, hardly anything else needs to be said. Ogden Nash, ever pithy and with a naughty sense of humour and rhyme all his own, is one of my favourite poets. Here's what he had to say about eels:

I don't mind eels
Except as meals.

I hope that by now you've got an eel ... er ... feel for the event. Let the entries come in, I'm sure we can make a wonderful meal of them!

Note: I have done a guest post for Aparna who blogs at My Diverse Kitchen. You can read it here.

The Write Taste Event Orhan Pamuk Ogden Nash

An Eventful Anniversary, In The Write Taste

An anniversary, like a birthday, is difficult to be impervious to. As much as age is just a number, and I didn’t even realise it when I recently crossed the 200-post mark, I’m young enough in blog years to be excited about blog birthdays.

I’m all of three today, though it does feel like I am growing up. And growing older. The first sign of the latter came with me wondering a few days ago when the anniversary was. That my first post went up on Dad’s birthday because it would be easy to remember had slipped my mind. As for growing up in the blog world - well, while my stats are static, I guess I have arrived, at least some distance, though the standard I’ve used to judge that is rather perverse - my photo made it to a national publication sans permission, and while my complaint was addressed immediately, it also earned me my first rude comment. And I even managed a repartee.

I’ve always got a kick from telling less-knowing family and friends who care about “my international readership”. Like those rare and precious things in life that can give us immense joy and thrill, are the blog and its assets, which include you, my dear readers and fellow bloggers. Thank you all for making this one lovely, exhilarating, and hopefully, never-ending, fun ride.


I mulled a commemorative event for the first anniversary two years ago but found a worthy idea only now. And yes, it’s going to be as tiresome as Grindless Gravies, with the rules being updated whenever I see a loophole cropping up, and maybe even rejecting entries if you’ve got it wrong. And I hope you’ll be gracious enough like you were the first time around and attempted to get it right the next time.

This event is not about cooking or recipes, it’s about food, and quality writing.

What I want you to do is share your favourite pieces of food writing with the rest of the world through this event. It could be prose, poetry, a scene from a play, fable, non-fiction, an article from a magazine or a newspaper, a food review, a cookbook review, a post in a blog, haiku, limerick, satire, anything; even writing that looks at food, cooking or eating in a negative light, but it has to have these as one of its main themes.

It could even be a recipe that has been written innovatively (please note: I don’t mean innovative recipe formats, like grids and such).

It doesn’t have to be all sensory and descriptive; it could be about food security, food safety, carbon footprint or other such serious topics, too. Only, if you choose something like this, try and find a not-too-technical piece as it might be more attractive to readers not familiar with those subjects.

It needn’t originally have been in English, but it needs to be a published English translation. In this case, please provide the relevant details, references and a link to the original piece of writing (or a link to information about it) so that readers who know that language can enjoy it.

Tell, in your post, why you like the work you’ve chosen, how you first came across it and what it means to you. Do make sure to link to information about it, quote a few excerpts, but please do not reproduce it in full - we don’t want to be charged with copyright violation. I encourage you to name not just the writers but the publishers, translators, edition, year of publication, all so that it can be easier to find if someone wants to get their hands on it.

This event is open to both bloggers and non-bloggers. The latter can mail me with their entries, depending on their size, I will host it on my blog and include it in the round-up.

Feel free to point to more than one piece of writing; whether in one post or multiple, I leave it to you. Do a new post for this event or re-publish an old one.

It shouldn’t, of course, be something that you yourself have written, nor should it be from this blog.

Link back to this post and mail me at srablogATgmailDOTcom. The details you have to give me include:

Your (blogger) name

Your blog name

Your location (optional)

Blog URL

Post URL

Name of author/blog/blogger and the title of the work you’re highlighting.

Please say: ‘The Write Taste’ in the e-mail’s subject field.

I’ll accept entries till October 15, and maybe even a little later, depending on how far I’ve come with the round-up.

Come, indulge me!

Event Anniversary The Write Taste

A Curry Post-O!

Why is your food often so yellow, is a question I get sometimes. I can only conclude that I have a generous hand with the turmeric but sometimes it's too much even for me. Recently, when I marinated this chicken for a curry, the recipe asked for a teaspoon but I suspect I used way more, because the chicken began to smell of turmeric. And my heart began to quake. Because as good as turmeric is, an overdose of it in anything can be very trying.

It must have been the two-hour marination, because the smell miraculously disappeared from the end-product and it was gobbled down by The Eaters, who didn't have anything more elevating to say than "It's alright" amidst all the wolfing. Only when they were asked.


I got this recipe from a book called Cooking With Chicken by Kamal Mehta. This recipe is called Peekoo Posto Chicken. I wonder if Peekoo is the person who provided the recipe! Posto is the poppy seed, which is a key ingredient in this recipe. I made only one substitution - used oil instead of ghee - and one omission - left out the sugar.

Chicken: 1 kg, lean meat
Onions: 2 large, chopped
Garlic: 6 cloves
Green chilli: 4
Ginger: 5 cm piece
Turmeric powder: 1 tsp
Curds/Yoghurt: 1.5 cups
Poppy seed: 1.5 tbsp, ground to paste/powder
Coriander powder: 1 tbsp
Oil: 2 tbsp
Cinnamon: 4 cm
Cloves: 6
Green cardamom: 10
Salt, to taste
Water: 1/2 cup

Grind the garlic, chillies and ginger to a paste. Mix it with the curds, turmeric, poppy seed and coriander powders and marinate it in this for at least two hours. (The recipe said 6 hours.)

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan, add the cinnamon, cloves and cardamom. Let them splutter, and add the onions and fry till golden brown.

Add chicken, salt and the marinade. Cover and cook on medium flame till all the juices come out.

Now increase the flame and fry till reddish in colour. (This 'reddening' didn't happen to me, so I gave up trying.)

Add half a cup of water and over a very slow fire, simmer for 10 minutes.

This entry goes to Barbara at Winos and Foodies, who's conducting the LiveSTRONG With A Taste of Yellow event, an official event of the LiveSTRONG Day, an initative of the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Live Strong With a Taste of Yellow Live Strong Non-vegetarian Chicken Poppy seed

Snap, Pop and Muse

Remember this post? Some of you couldn't believe I'd given it such a title, and even I've been wondering at my own sense of humour ever since. In the quest for attractive headlines, I seem to have attracted an entire category who, in all likelihood, had cooking and humour far from their minds.

But, again, this is literally about the same thing. To do my bit to throw such abovementioned seekers off track and get the right seekers here, I will refer to this vegetable now as okra.

Yesterday, there were two urgent (well, consecutive) calls from my friend V, so I terminated the conversation I was having and called her, wondering what was up. "I'm so irritated," she said. "Last night, I went shopping for vegetables, and all the okra were mutilated. What do these old people hope to achieve by snapping each and every one of them? All you need to do with okra is touch them, and you'll know whether they are tender or not." (At this point, I had to interrupt the conversation and hurriedly own up that I too, young as I am, am a compulsive okra snapper; and V being my friend, dismissively excused me for my behaviour and continued venting.) "And everytime I go to XYZ (a certain shop that sells vegetables), there are hordes of them, old men and women, holding bags, feeling up these vegetables, discussing them endlessly, choking up the aisles. There was one such group yesterday, discussing turnips, and they didn't even buy them ultimately! They didn't even know the vegetables they were calling turnips weren't turnips. Why do they even come there? Can't they find another place to socialise?"

Most importantly, she said, people don't want to listen to loud recipes which are supposed to be proven aphrodisiacs (V, you could be wrong there!); or how you can shame your mother-in-law into oblivion with your baingan bhartha recipe; or the boring bottlegourd for oedoematous feet. She would, however, appreciate a recipe to lower the blood pressure caused by all this banality. Bloggers and non-bloggers alike, please feel free to leave your tips here in the comments section. As these cannot be tried and tested immediately, I'm not offering any prizes for the best tip.

She'd wanted to get this off her chest since the previous night, she said, and rang off. That left me wondering - what other behaviour during vegetable shopping gets your goat? If merely touching okra can tell you whether it's worthy of you or not, I thought, I've failed miserably in the Department of Vegetable Choosing. But on prolonged reflection, I think V does have a point - even I seem to understand how I can assess the okra.

When I started everyday, well, not everyday but routine, home cooking, I found out my uncle could tell whether the food cooking on the stove was salted enough or not by the smell. Not having any previous experience, I was amazed and even wondered if Uncle was pulling a fast one on me. But believe it or not, nowadays I am able to suss it out myself occasionally! Incidentally, I've also seen a few men of the older generations, who have probably never cooked in their life, hold forth on how a particular taste can be achieved or enhanced or altered. If only they'd played their part in the kitchen!

That brings me to another subject that's often on my mind: the joy - or not - of cooking. For many women (and men) who do it regularly, as well as us bloggers not excluding me, it is often a tiresome chore. See the discussion in this post. I've always wanted to bring to your attention a wonderful poem, Vantillu (Kitchen) by a Telugu poet, Vimala, on how kitchens and cooking sap women of their personality, dreams, joys, how such tasks are chores unwept and unsung. The poem also highlights the role of the omnipresent male dominance and chauvinism that contributes to these situations. For me, the most powerful part is when the poet points out (and I'm translating and paraphrasing here) 'how even the jasmine has begun to reek of the kitchen, damn it, let's destroy these kitchens now!'

Many of us, bloggers or not, are privileged in that we are able to enjoy cooking and write about it, take pictures of it, celebrate it. For some, the kitchen could even be a refuge. But just imagine how wearying it must be to make and plan meals every few hours of the day! How could it have been enjoyable, unless you were a strong-willed woman who decided that you would have fun no matter what?

Musings Blogging Humour

Salan, All Souped Up: Two In One

Though this blog is named for soup, there aren't many soups to be found here. I blame that entirely on the weather, it's too hot for soup most of the time. But, as I read in another blog a few days ago (I forget which), we don't complain about the weather being too hot to eat piping hot food, so why crib about it being too hot to eat soup? Why indeed? Food for thought, isn't it?

Then, there's the other kind of hot, the Scoville units-kind. Sweltering heat and searing spices may not sound like a harmonious combination but we do end up eating that way, especially when we are used to it, don't we?

There might be some answers here.

The other day, I noticed a pack of the nicest banana peppers ever in the store - so smooth and blemish-free, so immaculate, they almost looked like waxworks. Now, why does something have to look fake for us to consider it the most perfect specimen? Amdist such ruminations, I then had a brainwave and decided to send a souped up version of the salan to No Croutons Required but discovered just now that I'm a week late. Oh well!


But back to the heat. The weather's hot, the soup's hotter, and I had to eat it with great gobs of curds to be able to finish it.


Note to Sra: Don't take banana peppers for granted - they are as hot as any other. So when the recipe says boil the peppers first, do it.

There's an onion in the ingredients list but it disappeared by the time the method was explained, so the book shall remain unnamed. I also made a few substitutions.

Note: Read through the entire recipe, and then prepare the vegetables, otherwise, they will stay in your fridge forever, like my onion did!

Chillies: 250 gm
Dessicated coconut: 1 tbsp
Peanuts/Groundnuts: 1 tsp
Sesame seeds: 1.5 tsp
Coriander powder: 1 tsp
Cumin: 1 tsp
Dry ginger powder: 1 tsp
Garlic: 5 cloves, skinned, mashed
Turmeric: 1/4 tsp
Chilli powder: 1/2 tsp
Tamarind: Soak a big lime sized amount in 1.5 cups of water and extract the juice
Oil: 2 tbsp
Curry leaves: A few
Salt to taste

Boil the chillies in salted water till they change colour. Drain.

Roast the sesame, peanut and dessicated coconut. Add the coriander powder, chilli powder and turmeric and grind to a paste with just a little water.

Heat the oil and pop the cumin. Add the paste, dry ginger powder and garlic and fry till the oil separates.

Now add the chillies and curry leaves. Let them fry for a while.

Pour in the tamarind extract, and add salt to taste.

Simmer till the gravy is thick and oil floats to the top.

Now the Salan is ready.

On to the soup:

Take some of the curry, chillies and all, and pulverise it in the mixer. Your salan is all souped up and ready!

Soup Green chillies Vegetarian Gravy Hyderabadi cooking

Beetermilk Soup

Put some colour into your life!

I wanted to call this post Bawdy Beets (taking off on the poetic licence I could take with the colour and call it lurid pink) but there were two problems:

As my stats are wont to reveal sooner or later, everyone and his brother looking for bawdy delights will land up in my blog and curse me for misleading overstatement;

And, where, in fact, ARE the beets?

There aren't any. Their liquid is in the soup, and this soup did come alive with its addition. It's actually quite the traditional recipe for 'majjiga charu' (buttermilk soup?) which was often made to use up souring curds - just temper the buttermilk, and lo and behold, there it was!

Here, it's been turned into a bigger production with some vegetables which were threatening to turn sour as well, and liquid from boiling beets which I was turning into a stir-fry! Ingenious, no?

What you need:

Buttermilk: 2-3 cups (not too watery, though)
(I made the buttermilk by whisking some curds/yogurt thoroughly with water)

Dry ginger powder/sonthi: 2 pinches
Salt, to taste
Dosakaya/lemon (melon?) cucumber: 2, seeded and diced into medium cubes
White pumpkin: Diced - a handful
Green chillies: 2-3, slit through the centre
Curry leaves: 2 sprigs
Coriander leaves: To garnish
Mustard seed: 1 tsp
Jeera/cumin: 1/2 tsp
Fenugreek seeds/Methi: 1/4 tsp
Asafoetida: A tiny pinch (optional)
Oil:1-2 tsp

Juice from beets that have been boiled: About a cup

Add the dry ginger powder and salt to the buttermilk and whisk till it's well mixed.

Steam/lightly cook the vegetables till just cooked, with some of the green chillies. Cool it down.

The beet juice should be at room temperature too.

Now add the vegetables and their juices and the beet juice to the buttermilk. Mix.

In a pan, heat the oil. Pop the mustard, then the jeera. Add the curry leaves and the green chillies. Then add the asafoetida and turn off the heat. Add the fenugreek seeds right away. Tip all this into the beetermilk.

Beetroot Buttermilk Dosakaya White pumpkin Soup Vegetarian Dosakaya Humour Majjiga charu

'Shrooms With A View, Sage & Rosemary Too

Once, not long ago, I ranted about dry herbs here. I'm not about to eat crow (now that's another post) or my words, or even dried herbs, but as some of you pointed out in that post, dried rosemary is an exception, as I discovered today.

My aunt in the US, with whom I stayed in July, has several herbs in her garden - sage, rosemary, French tarragon, two kinds of basil, chives, mint and a few others. I would often pick a few leaves off the plants and pop them into my mouth, enjoying the fresh and spicy feel. When I was leaving, she picked some fresh sage for me, which held up rather spotlessly till today, and gave me her stash of dried sage and rosemary. A creative cook, she uses permutations and combinations of these herbs to flavour all her cooking, even Indian food, and I decided to do the same, though I did not employ any logic except that of the palate.

After years, I bought mushrooms recently and they blackened only a little bit after two days, unlike earlier when they would do so very rapidly. I also had two slabs of paneer/cottage cheese that needed to be used up fast so I decided to throw it all into a big stir-fry and flavour it with these herbs.


Here's what you need:

Onion: 1 big, thickly sliced
Button mushrooms: 2-3 cups, halved
Paneer/cottage cheese: 2-3 cups, cubed
Red chilli flakes: 1-2 tsp
Garlic: 10 cloves
Sage: 6-7 leaves
Olive oil: 2 tbsp + 1 tsp
Salt: To taste
Rosemary: A sprig or two

Grind the garlic, red chilli and half of the sage roughly with 1 tsp of olive oil - I did this with a stone pestle and mortar.

In a large wok, heat the olive oil and add the above ground mixture. Saute for a few seconds.

Now add the onions, saute for a minute on high flame, then the mushrooms and the cottage cheese.

Saute again for a minute, and add salt.

Lower flame.

The mushrooms give out some water, let this dry up but keep turning constantly so as not to burn the dish.

You can choose to let some oily juice remain - good to mop up with bread - or dry it completely.

Now crumble some dried rosemary over the top and mix it lightly. Serve.

This goes off to Weekend Herb Blogging, Kalyn's event, managed by Haalo and hosted this week by Prof Kitty at The Cabinet of Prof. Kitty.

Weekend Herb Blogging Mushrooms Vegetarian Dried herbs Sage Rosemary Paneer/Cottage cheese

Searching For Sra? You Didn't!

Where is Sra? or at least 'Sra Break' or 'What happened to Sra?' would be the search terms that popped up, I thought, during the unannounced break I took last month. Well, naturally, I'm not too happy that most of you didn't miss me and didn't send me a flood of anxious mails or comments telling me how much you miss me, and would I please tell you I was alright and haven't stopped blogging, but as it turns out, this blogger's job is merely to alive and let laugh, even if you uncaring souls couldn't care less, so I'll just go ahead and do what I'm known for - brightening a bit of your day (now that several of you tell me I do)!

One of the funniest search terms of all time that I saw (last month) was

Caligula roasted alive

I cam (sic) alive somehow (thank God for that!)

All my wild oats (what a letdown, it's actually about oats!)

Is it correct to say I have eaten my soup Yes/No (Yes, you 'eat' your soup, you don't drink it)

Orissa modest chest thumping


Keywords Humour Blog break On Blogging

A Li'l Bit of 'merica

When it became clear a few months ago that I would be going abroad, it also became clear that I would have to tell myself sternly that I couldn't come back with stuff for the pantry that I would only throw out a while later. It's quite another matter that while I shopped very little, all my purchases were heavyweights which attracted their own set of consequences on the way back home.

One of them was a packet of split peas which I've never seen in the parts of India I live(d) in. Of course, I didn't want to make anything as ordinary as green pea soup with that - I had plans for it already, which I executed once I returned. It helped that I had had a great Bengali meal at Sandeepa's place when we met - Begun Bhaja, Dal, kaancha amer ambol/chatni Jhinge Chingri Posto, Pathar Mangsho, so I knew which book to consult for a split peas (matar dal) recipe as soon as I returned.

This is a book of Bengali cuisine called Pumpkin Flower Fritters by Renuka Devi Choudhurani and has a recipe for Split Pea Lentils With Vegetables. Since it's only been a little over a week since I've returned, I don't have too many veggies crowding the refrigerator so I made do with just one of the many listed in the recipe.


And that's the result in the photo - don't miss the jaunty chilli in that bowl - it arranged itself so, I didn't arrange it that way.








Split pea lentils/matar dal: 1 cup
Drumstick (vegetable): 1
Tomato: 1, small
Green chillies: 3-4
Salt, to taste
Oil: 1 tsp
Ghee: 1/2 tsp

Water

Tempering
Red Chillies: 2, broken into pieces
Bay leaf: 1
Panch phoron with some mustard seeds: 1 tsp
Asafoetida: A pinch

Strip some of the hard skin from the drumstick and cut it into two-inch pieces. Slice the tomato into 6 pieces and slit the green chillies.

Wash the dal in warm water and rub with salt and a little oil. Set to boil in a pan of hot water (I haven't mentioned the amount as I initially used just over one cup of water and then added as and when I needed).

When the dal is half cooked, add the salt.

After it cooks a little more, add the drumstick and a few of the green chillies. When it all cooks, remove from the fire.

Heat the oil and ghee and temper with the chilli, bay leaf and the panch phoron. Add the asafoetida and tomato. Saute for a few seconds and add the rest of the green chillies. Pour in the dal and boil for 2-3 minutes.

This entry goes to Susan's My Legume Love Affair - 14.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had a great day out with Susan, whom I met in New York City. She planned a day of walking for us and took me through Wall Street and several other areas. We walked from about 10 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. One of our stops was Madison Avenue - as soon as we saw this scene, we had to stop and shoot several pictures of it.



I'm not sure how good it is technically, but for me, it felt like the sight of the day.

MLLA Split pea lentils Mator/matar dal Drumstick Bengali cuisine Meeting bloggers Travel New York City

Where I Have Been

All of last month, I was here. I was fortunate to have got the time off and I think I made good use of it, walking around the city one area a day. The following are foodie sights and scenes from my trip to New York City.

I met a few friends from the blogging world: Susan, Rajitha, Sandeepa and Paz, and spoke to a few others: Sig, Asha and Mallugirl. My operating principle was 'No Indian food' but I relaxed it in Sandeepa's case as I haven't had authentic Bengali food except in a couple of restaurants. My camera battery was dying and I used the dregs of its energy to take a picture of her rather than of the food she made.


Rajitha made all this great food for me one fine Tuesday. She picked me up at the subway station and we stopped off at the Indian store to pick up some supplies and then went on to her cozy apartment, but not before picking up some sweets. "I can't let you go without dessert, Sra, I have to buy you dessert. What will it be?" As I didn't want Indian, we opted for a Middle Eastern bakery near her place, where we picked up two pieces of each variety, and after this huge meal, steadily proceeded to demolish all but one. She has a great collection of world vegetarian cookery books, and I'm inspired to make the avocado, tomato and feta salad that you see in the foreground. Thanks to her, I tasted quinoa for the first time.


I met Susan downtown and we had a great day of walking and photographing, not to mention lunch and dinner. The crackers and biscuit that you see here are part of the meal she treated me to in one of the restaurants at Grand Central Terminal. We had different varieties of clam chowder and oysters each. That was the first time I ate oysters. For dinner, her husband Scott joined us and we ate at a French restaurant.


Paz took me on a walking tour of Harlem, treated me to some glorious cathedrals and chapels, and showed me a side of New York City that I didn't really expect. There was a wide choice of restaurants to eat in, and I picked Cuban because I had not tried the cuisine before. I must say the Zesty Corn (seen in the second tier), was the best and the most unusual.


My family and I went out to lunch at a Greek diner in Times Square where I ordered these dolmades. Initially, I didn't like these cold treats, but began to appreciate them after I tried a second one.


This and the next few pictures are from the Monday farmer's market at Union Square. I even picked up a printed recipe for peach salsa, samples of which were set out by the market organising committee. There were several other recipes available. I tried the salsa. Nice.


These are varieties of squash. I've only seen them in pictures earlier, and the ones right in the front, never before.


Peppers galore!


I never saw purple capsicum before, either. Nor for that matter, such light green ones.


Ahh! Fressshh!


I have never come across a cookie called Chop Suey before. Interesting, isn't it?


On a Sunday in NYC, there was a street fair near the restaurant in which my family was having lunch and a very involved conversation, I slipped away to see this street fair that I noticed earlier. There were several other foodie goodies on offer - kebabs, gyros, pita pockets, Italian sausage ... This was the most colourful food stall as far as I could see.

New York City Travel New York City food Meeting bloggers

My Fame Spreads

I didn't know I had 193 recipes on my blog!!! If you want to know more such wonderful facts about me and my blog, and a recipe to boot, go here. It's one of the newest food blogs on the block and a rollicking fun read too. Thanks for the invitation, Cynic!

Guest Blogging Dessert Eggless Chocolate Condensed Milk Humour

How Dost Thou Reach Me? Let Me Count ...

After a long time, I found some new hilarious search terms again in my stats - here they are:

Moong dal ladies squats - You'd think this is an unlikely pairing. But no! Among the many combinations these search terms threw up, here's one!

Do guinea pigs eat wheat pearls? I guess the reasons they landed in my blog are here.

Drooling sentences went here.

How can I sell my soup came here.

Rayalseema biscuits company case study solution found no solution here.

Humour Keywords Search Terms

Legumes, And a Bit of Cheese

A few weeks ago, our air-conditioner went kaput and we spent as much of the day as we could outside our house. Quite a few air-conditioned stores that day saw us wandering about aimlessly, touching and feeling the goods, never buying. Our last stop before we went to dinner in another air-conditioned place, was a bookstore. Or rather, as large bookstores tend to be, a books, music and gifts store.

For a while now, my favourite bedtime reading has been cookbooks, when mysteries and chicklit are hard to come by, and though my conscience knows I don't need any more cookbooks, I succumbed when I saw this well-produced book called Pumpkin Flower Fritters on Bengali cooking. I told myself that it had recipes my other Bengali cookbooks didn't, paid for it, and walked out without daring to look at it any longer in case the guilt got compounded.

It turned out my justifications to myself were well-justified - it DID contain some recipes that my other books didn't. Here's one recipe that I tried from it - it's unusual in that paneer/cottage cheese is mixed with moong dal, delicately flavoured, very heavy, and I don't think I'll try it again.

It's not really this yellow!

Warning: The quantities here make A LOT!

Roasted split moong dal: 250 gm
Paneer: 15-16 pieces
Potatoes: 2-3, medium-sized, cubed (The book recommends 8-10 small new potatoes, halved)
Chopped ginger: 2 tsp
Green chillies: 8-10

Crush
Cardamom: 2-3
Cinnamon: 3-4 pieces

Tempering
Red chillies: 2-3, broken into pieces
Cumin seeds/jeera: 1 tsp
Fennel: 1/2 tsp
Bay leaves: 2

Sugar: 1 tsp
Salt, to taste
Oil: 2 tsp
Ghee: A little

Boil the dal in hot water. Cook till half done. Set aside.

Heat the oil in a pan, fry the paneer pieces and remove. Fry the potatoes.

Add to the dal, and boil till cooked. Add half the chopped ginger and sugar.

Heat more oil in the pan and add a little ghee.

Add the red chilli pieces, cumin seeds, fennel, and bay leaves. Now add the rest of the ginger and the crushed garam masala.

Add the dal.

Bring to a boil and add the panee pieces and green chillies.

Simmer a few minutes.

This goes off to Susan's My Legume Love Affair, hosted this month by Annarasa.

MLLA Paneer/Cottage Cheese Lentils/Moong Dal Potatoes Vegetarian Bengali Humour

A Stack of Goodies

Heaven melts in your mouth

Is it paper? It looks like it," said a Bengali colleague when I held out a box of this and asked him to try some, many years ago. I didn't know too well myself but hazarded a guess. As it turns out, my little knowledge was no dangerous thing, and I was right, though not detailed. (The details are further down.)

Last week, we went home for an important party and came back with enough stuff for a party of our own. At least, it seems that way. We brought back several of two varieties of mangoes, home-made mango pickle, sweetu, haatu (to put it in typical Indian English - that's sweets and "hot"/savouries for the uninitiated). Just before we drove out of the city, I visited the supermarket close to home and when I saw these, it struck me that I could use them for Click - Stacks.

I'd always wanted to do a post on pootarekulu but didn't know much about them beyond their taste. Then, some time ago a Telugu cookery show on TV featured the making of this very traditional, very regional and quite tough-to-make delicacy.

And delicate are they! No wonder they are called paper sweet or mica sweet outside Andhra Pradesh. Can you guess what these sweet rolls of thinner-than-tissue sheets are made from?

Starchy rice flour. According to the people featured on the TV programme, a variety of rice called 'Jaya Biyyam', which is found only in and around that village in the East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh (it could be Aatreyapuram, I'm not sure) is soaked and ground to a very watery consistency.

An inverted earthen pot is heated from inside, and a cloth dipped in the rice paste is spread on the pot and removed almost immediately. The result is a thin, gauzy sheet of starch - like the one that forms around the vent of the pressure cooker sometimes after cooking the rice. You can see it in the first one in the stack.

The sheets (rekulu) are transferred to another surface, to be given a coating (poota) of finely powdered sugar and ghee. It could contain powdered cardamom too, for extra flavour. A few such sheets are layered and folded to form one pootareku.

The miracle, I believe, is one of texture and experience. At first glance, it looks compact - more and more of the same thing folded over and over. I would judge a good pootareku by this: Just bite into it, and it should literally melt in the mouth, leaving a cool, sweet feeling. It shouldn't smell overwhelmingly of ghee, either. (Sadly, supermarket versions smell both of ghee and plastic.) It looks light. It isn't.


I knew only of the white variety of pootarekulu but the TV show also showed a jaggery version and a "modern" version, which came as rather a shocker to me. The modern version, in addition to the jaggery or the sugar, was filled with cashew nuts and raisins. The next 'value addition' could be coloured pootarekulu - if you begin seeing some after this post, you know where they flicked the idea from! Let me know, I could claim some royalty.

An Uncle tells me more about pootarekulu (also known as mallinga madupulu):
They were usually made by families from the Raju community in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.
The tougher but more traditional way of making a pootareku renders it crisp - for this, the sheets in a single unit have to be alternately coated with ghee and sugar, not coated with both as that will make it soggy. (The TV show's guests were preparing them the second way, which Uncle calls the lazy way.)
Uncle didn't know about Jaya Biyyam but said that rice harvested from a crop solely rain-fed (as opposed to one cultivated by flooding the fields) is used to make this sweet (and feed new mothers) as it contains less water.

Here's a recipe if you must absolutely try it, though I doubt the results will even approximate the original.

The first photo is off to join a stack of other treats at Click-Stacks.

Pootarekulu/Pootharekulu Dessert Traditional Sweet Click-Stacks

The Onerous Task Of Consuming My Own

This evening, when I came home at the end of the day, I found The Spouse had retired for the day early but had left the food out on the table for me, along with a samosa from somewhere. These little bits on the side are making their way to our table with alarming frequency. I ate, dipping the samosa in the mango-drumstick dal I'd made yesterday, enjoying my first experience ever of samosa soaking up thin and tangy dal. But then, not only is it disheartening to have three different kinds of home-made dishes go virtually uneaten, it's worse to have to eat it steadily every day and night till it finishes so that you can make something more interesting the next time you have to cook. Especially when your own cooking has begun to bore you with the unfailing regularity of a ... {clever comparison to be added later, whenever it occurs}

I could give it off to S, the lady who helps me at home, but she also doesn't seem very enthused by my cooking. Moreover, she laughs at my having a cookbook constantly by my side.
I could give it to an uncle but he either doesn't like "squishy vegetables" or has already got an invitation for the day.
I could employ a cook, but that's an experiment I've tried with mixed success - The Spouse enjoyed the food, I didn't really care, and we had loads and loads of leftovers. I was relieved when she quit for her own reasons.
I wouldn't cook at all but get a dabba delivered instead, which would make our meals infinitely interesting, and this blog very, very finitely appealing.

Sometimes I can't bring myself to eat the things I've made (and even put up on this blog - but that was because somebody or the other liked it). A lot of people I know would love to have someone else cook for them. "Doesn't matter if it isn't tasty, it's enough that it's not mine," is how we feel. How do all of you retain interest in your own cooking?

Musings Food Cooking - own Humour