Non Pestering Pesto

Someone said, “When things mean a great deal to you, exciting anticipation just isn’t safe”. I have had multiple doses of this anticipation in the past couple of months and am now mentally exhausted. I have made so many lists and crossed them out so many times that now when things seem to be falling into place, I just do not have the energy to be jubilant. We had planned for my parents and parents-in-law to visit UK. It was envisaged as a wonderful get together. A summit in the line of the G-8 or G-20s!!. The preparations were on similar scale. Countless conference calls, strategy discussions and research went into it. We pored over various visa forms and worked at deciphering what an innocent question like ‘who would pay for your food and accommodation’ in visa form might imply. I day dreamed about all the days out, restaurant visits and shopping trips. After the initial impediments of documents, visas and tickets everything was set. Then things started changing. Programs and schedules changed with the speed of light. Everyday there was breaking news similar to the umpteen news channels on air. I felt like a yo-yo..this anticipation was not safe at all for my mental sanity. In this state I managed to achieve what I have tried a lot of times earlier and failed. I managed to ‘let go’. I actually asked God to decide what was best and not give him a multiple choice option. And believe it or not, it worked. Things fell into place in their own time. He does know best. It is beautifully illustrated by a story from the book Vedanta Philosophy by A Parathasarthy.
Once upon a time two friends while walking came across seeds of a fruit. Each took a few and planted it at home. One of them, prayed to God for rain. Colossus clouds benevolently spilled over the land. He then prayed for sunshine. The sun shone in all its brilliance. A few months later, his tree looked limp and only had few fruits. He went to visit his friend to find out how his tree was. He was astonished to find it laden with fruits swaying in the breeze. Curiously he asked, “What did you ask God for, that you tree has borne such good fruits”. His friend replied, “Nothing, I just prayed, do what is best for this tree. After all God created the seed, he should know what is best for it”. This is such a simple yet important thing to realize.

It is not an easy thing to practice. Especially when from childhood itself, we are shoved in front of various God and Goddesses and prompted to ASK, please let me clear this exam, please let me come 1st in class, please let me get good placement, please give me a good husband. While it is important to assimilate the lesson of managing your expectation, it is equally important to work towards a goal.
Like all such things, religious teachings can be misunderstood. There is no scarcity of people who are so lazy, they would rather blame everything on fate than put in an honest effort first.

Here again I remember my thammi (Paternal grandma). I would ask her to request God to grant me good marks in exams. She would say, “Yes, I can pray for that, but then you have study every evening in my room. Only when I see how you study would I forward your request to God”. So I would gather my books every evening in the preparation leave and sit on her bed and study. I however could not resist a few sly glances at the small pedestal in the room for all residing deities to check if it was making any difference to them.

Anyways, things are better now and I am looking forward to welcoming my parents tomorrow. With so many things to do at the last moment I went for the quick fix today. Pesto pasta. Both AS and me we love pesto sauce. It is unlike anything we have ever had. So fresh and tingly, yet so few ingredients. I will admit I make pesto sauce at home very rarely. There are so many varieties available in stores. You could pick every day for a month and not tire of them. The type of pasta is also based of our taste rather than prescribed for pesto. We generally like the linguine. Mostly we have garlic bread with pasta, but today I added some roasted vegetables to this.

1 packet readymade pasta (either linguine or fusilie)
7-8 tbsp of pesto sauce
Olive oil to drizzle
Garlic (2 cloves)
Peppercorn (7-8)

Vegetables for roasting
Baby carrots (5-6)
Baby corn (3-4)
Tomatoes (small 2, sliced in half)
Onions (2 sliced in half)
Peppercorn (10-12)
Olive oil for drizzling

Boil about 6 cups of water. Put the pasta in the boiling water for 6-8 mins. Meanwhile take the readymade pasta sauce in a mortal and pester and add the garlic and peppercorn. Grind it. You can totally give this step a skip if you are happy with the taste of your pesto sauce.
Pour the boiled pasta in a colander and drizzle a few drops of olive oil and mix well. This will keep the pasta from sticking to one another. Now serve the pasta in a bowl and add the pesto sauce. This should be done when the pasta is hot. Because the idea is that the cheese in the pesto sauce melts with the heat of the pasta.

If you have time stem the vegetables. Else you can directly spread them out on a baking tray drizzle some olive oil, sprinkle a bit of salt and peppercorn and bake it for about 15 mins. I have a gas oven and I put it on gas mark 5. After 15 mins turn the sides and bake another 10.
Serve on top of the pasta. And that is it!!

The Tomato Dilema

A small incident from my childhood got me thinking. Flashback to the late eighties. For a few months there was an hour’s afternoon slot on doordarshan. Each quarter of the hour was dedicated to a specific audience. I remember the first 15 mins, which was the children’s slot. Because I ate very slowly, I was time boxed to finish my lunch in the time of this program. Once there was a play about fruits and vegetables. Actors dressed up as potato/okhra/aubergine/carrot. Aubergine was the king of vegetables (don’t ask me why..beats me!!!). One particular episode I can still recall. It was the trail of tomato. It went something like this...

In the docks – Tomato
Prosecuting attorney –The versatile vegetable potato

Potato- “Tomato, you are hereby charged for blasphemy in the supreme court of vegetables for claiming to be a fruit. What do you have to say in your defence?”
Tomato – “I AM a fruit. I am called ‘love apple’ in many parts of the world. I carry the seeds of my own flowering plant like fruits. I do not need to be boiled in pressure cooker like other vegetables. I do not think I am a vegetable.”
Potato: “You forget that you are not eaten as a fruit, you are not sweet enough. You are used in cooking with vegetables.”
Tomato: “Yes I am not sweet enough, but that is why I am so popular in jams and preserve because I can save the fruits by my acidic content. I lose my identity when added along with vegetables; with fruits I can hold my own.”

Well, I am pretty sure the discussion was not this technical. But I do think it could have gone this way. Sadly I cannot recall what the verdict was.

Bengalis have understood the quandary of tomato and given it its due in some ways. The best example is the Tomato-r Chatni which comes during the Chatni course in Bengali cuisine. Not as an accompaniment like dhaniya ki chutney or imli chutney. It is a standalone component of the food hierarchy and comes between the mains and the sweets.
For a non-bengali this misplaced serving of Chatni can seem weird. But the idea is to balance out the palate, cleanse it of the spices from the mains and prepare it for the sweetness to come (which comes in plenty). Well that is my theory at least. I think it does make sense...doesn’t it? The preparation of Chatni collaborates this. It has spices like Mustard seeds/ methi sometimes tejpatta (Bay leave), but also has sugar/jiggery.
Chatni is a deliberate spelling mistake. This is how Bengalis pronounce it. Maybe because you end up licking your plates to eat this..so ‘CHAT’ni. Probably a distortion of the phrase ‘chaete ne’ (as in lick it up).

When we got married, AS who claims he is a pretender not actually a bangali, was perplexed with this. He loves the tomato Chatni. But as it was always served after the mains, he could never do justice to it with his filled stomach. Finally he requested that it should be declared at the beginning of the serving that there was tomato chutney coming down the line.

I have forgotten the number of times I have made this Chatni now. That is a bit weird considering that I don’t like it much. I only have a spoonful at most. It is not anathema. It is more like apathy to something you have seen in plenty. Having said that..it is an easy to make and adds a course to any lunch /dinner party.

My mom is makes the loveliest tomato-r Chatni. Whenever there was a pot lunch this was a standard fixture. I have yet to meet someone who did not like her tomato chatni. Outside home, durga pujo bhog is incomplete without chatni and mostly it is the tomato one. She uses a pressure cooker to for cooking it. I prefer to use pans with lid. Pressure cooker makes me uncomfortable. It is like a magician’s trick box, you can’t really see what is going on. In my case the trick mostly goes wrong. So I stick to my pots and pans.

So here is the simple and quick recipe to bangali tomato-r chatni.

Tomator Chatni
6-7 medium sized tomatoes sliced in big quarters
A few strands of sliced ginger
½ tsp mustard seeds
2 tbsp oil
1 cup sugar or 1 cup jaggery ( jaggery gives a better colour to the chutney)

Optional
Some dates sliced
Few pieces of dried mango pulp (called aamshokto –hard aam, or aampapad)
Aalobukhara (Plum)

Heat oil in a pan (or pressure cooker) and add the mustard seeds. Let them sputter. Add the sliced ginger(optional) and immediately add the tomatoes. Cover with lid and let it cook on low heat for next 10 mins. Depending on the variety of tomato it may take a few minutes more or less.
When the tomatoes get mushy and lose their structure, it is time to add the dates/aloobukhara or dried mango pulp if you are using them. Cover and cook for another 10 mins.
If you are happy with the texture, add sugar or jiggery and cover and cook and further 5 mins. I prefer to use jaggery because it gives a good dark colour ..and takes the slight red tomatoes into the category of maroon.
The best thing about making this is it does not take any time. You don’t need to skin the tomatoes, or keep stirring the mixture. You can even prepare this a day or two in advance of a party. It goes wonderfully with kichuri.

P.S – In 1887 US Supreme Court declared tomato as a vegetable, because otherwise it was being imported as a fruit (which was exempt from certain tariffs).
In 2009 Ohio State made tomato its state fruit.

Bash Baganer Ranna

In Matrix we are told the world we live in is not real. Well that was not such news to me. Don’t we all spend a good part of our childhood in the world of make believe? Whether a child is a boy or a girl, they are either soldiers or princess respectively.
In absence of video games or Barbie dolls and cartoon network, Pogo and Nickleodeon and sometimes playmates, I improvised. I favoured myself in the role playing more than any conventional games. I have been a strict teacher writing long questions for tests on the back of doors with chalk and beating the life out of the pillows at times. I have been a farmer planting seeds left over from my breakfast and expecting it to sprout into a glorious apple, lychee or Jamun tree the next month (it was realistic according to me). I have also tried my hand at being a bank clerk. Old passbooks (they are an extinct entity now) and counterfoil of used up chequebooks along with a red, a green and a blue pen formed the essentials of my desk. Add to it some discarded files and I became a knowledgeable number crunching clerk!!To be a street vendor selling pakodas...I used a tasla for the frying pan, an old badminton racket as the ladle, stones as my pakoras, clay to make aloo tikkis. The most innovative (if I may say so) was when I dressed myself as meerabai. It may be because the only saree my mom could spare at that time was dirty orange- close to saffron, the colour of hindu sanyasis and worldly renunciations (probably that is why she didn’t wear it) and I had to memorize some couplets written by Meerabai for school work anyways. So I spent a quite a few hours in a supposed trance, trying to chant back the memorized poems with the end of the saree demurely draped over my head. I would have scored well in my Hindi oral exams that term for sure. I didn’t realize how wonderful the words were, and how troubled her life would have been in renouncing the human marriage bond and claiming a celestial union. All this involved some level of imagination and high degree of conversation which was supplied by me for all the possible characters involved. In my defence against the obvious allegation of ‘this was too much’ all I can say is I did not have a sibling till I was in grade II and that I did have fun!!

I was mostly a harmless kid tucked away in some corner without making my mother’s or grandma’s life any harder. It was my Mom who got me small sarees from Calcutta (I had 2 cotton ones in wonderful colours..though I had a taste for the silks and the chiffons which continue to this day) to play around in when I started demanding more variety in my wardrobe. My granny suggested and organized a cooking picnic more than once for me and my friends. Some of my friends (the precious ones) were invited in the morning and a part of the open courtyard was covered with a bedsheet to create a small alcove for us to light a fire and cook. We were supervised, of course. Heavily. In fact it was just our believe that we cooked the food and not my mom or granny who kept dropping in at just the right time a spice was supposed to be added or the hot vessels needed any tending. The recipe did not vary. Kichuri (a mixture of rice, lentils and select vegetables cooked with barest of spices), tomato-r-chutney and a bhaja. Bhaja means fried in Bengali. Fried vegetables add an oomph to kichuri and make it the star of the show. Anything could be fried. I have heard that you should have five different ones. Big coin shaped potatos, diced okhras, round shaped aubergines, blossoming florets of cauliflower or long curled potol. There can be many more..but these are my favourites. We didn’t fry so many. We just fried one. My Granny gave it a name, bash baganer rannaghor. In her childhood in the village they were would spend an afternoon in the bash bagan (a bamboo thicket interspersed with other wild growths) cooking kichuri in earthen pots set over three big stones, a fire created with dry twigs and leaves coughing up some flames. She had a choda associated with it as well. A choda is a rhyming poem of about 4-6 lines generally sung to kids. I tried ‘googling’ it without any success. I guess it is lost with so many other things of her I would have liked to preserve.
To help you visualize, there is a scene from Satyajit Ray’s Apu’s triology Pather Pachali (song of the road), a recommended viewing even for non Bengalis. In the second or third minute there is a snippet of Durga (one of the protagonist) cooking a picnic with her mates.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F9wDupzeDc&feature=related
It does look very close to what picture I had in my mind.
To me my Grandma’s variation of cooking under the shadows of the bamboo with the birds chirping felt more adventurous than a corner of a courtyard and adults fussing about. It was difficult even for me to imagine bamboo clumps and conjure up the fragrances of that kichuri. But I have forever wanted to have another picnic of this style.

The recipe is to honour my grandma a wonderful lady who has vision and courage in measures beyond usual in her times. This simple recipe of kichuri tomato chutney and bhaja is me trying to keep the essence of the Bash Banager Rannaghor alive.

Kichuri Recipe

1 cup rice
1 cup moong daal (proportion of the rice and daal vary. but I have found that equal proportion makes for a good mixed effect ..for me..you could start with 1:2 and then work out which suits you best
1 carrot Diced lengthwise and then breadth wise...as batons
5-6 medium sized florets of cauliflower, I leave them big as I do not like them but A does and keeping them medium sized stops them from dissolving into the kichuri
½ cup peas
2 small-medium potato sliced in quarters ( i like them with skin on)

Spices
2-3 tej patta (bay leaves)
2-3 cloves
1 brown cardamom( badi elaichi)
2 green cardamom
1-2 ½ inch cinnamon sticks
A pinch of turmeric
Salt to taste

Optional
1 tsp Coriander powder
½ tsp jeera powder
1 tsp garam masala
A pinch of sugar

2 tbsp Ghee (I have managed to get the gawa ghee- ghee made from cow’s milk in London.Yes!! it adds the wonderful fragrance with nothing else can. But any other ghee or even oil would also do the work)

Heat 1 Tbsp of the oil/ghee in a pressure cooker. Add the spices to the ghee and fry lightly to release the their flavour into oil. Add the moong daal and fry lightly. When you start getting a slight fragrance from the daal its time to take it out and out aside in a bowl. A healthy alternative is heating the daal in a any other vessel without ghee. Make sure that the daal is not browned, it should turn just a shade or two darker than what it is initially. There is a wonderful variety of moong daal available in Calcutta, it is called shona moong. It looks like tiny gold seedlings. It melts much swiftly. I hoard it and only take it out when I want that special kichuri taste (which is almost always).

After taking the daal out, add the remaining tbsp of ghee.oil to the same pressure cooker. If you want to add the coriander, cumin power and the garam masala now is the good time. Then first add carrot batons. Saute for couple of minutes before you add the cauliflower florets. Another couple of minutes later add the potato and in the end the peas. You do not need to fry the peas for long. That is why we are adding it in the end. In the end add a bit of turmeric. Salt. Add the rice and mix well so that it gets coated with the colours and spices. Add the fried daal and water to this. I am not very good at understanding the water requirements in a pressure cooker. I generally make my rice in microwave, that way I have more control. Fortunately in kichuri a little extra waters would not do any harm. I generally add so much water that the water covers the vegetables etc and is about 2 cm above the rice line.
With about 4 whistles the aroma of kichuri starts filling the house and it is time to add the bhaja and stir the tomato chutney (recipes would be shared shortly).
If you feel the kichuri is runny, then let it simmer for a bit to reduce the water. Remember that kichuri does soak in some of the water if allowed to cool down. So if you are hoping to make it work for your lunch as well as dinner (which I invariably do) then keep it a bit runny than what you would have.
Ladle it into a plate and add any accompaniments that you want, bhaja, chutney, achar, papad.
I sometimes like mine with more spice. For that I add a twist I learned from a maharashtrian friend of mine. In about 2 tbsp of warm (not hot) vegetable oil (any oil other than mustard would do ), add a pinch of cumin seeds, finely chopped garlic (I add lotssss)and sliced green chillis. Just keep it on heat for 10 secs or so and then take off the gas. Add salt, red chilli powder and chopped coriander. Add this over the kichuri to get the added zing, not that it needs ones.
The bengali kichuri is different from that made in other parts mainly because it is richer in spices and heavier in content. It is something to have and then do nothing for rest of the day.
Happy eating!