The Art of Giving
We completed five years of marriage last month. It was marked by (as usual) lots of gifts from my side and the now standard flowers/chocolate/ card trio from AS. In the first year I would have been devastated without a personalised thought-over gift. But five years teach you that there are many different ways of expressing love than surprise gifts of spa treatments or a romantic getaway to an unknown place.
Sharing gifts is a pleasure for me. In buying them, the amount of time and thought given to any gift is directly proportional to my sentiments for the person. I am dead against cash/gift vouchers and yes, you guessed it flowers and chocolates :-). I love the planning and the hunt, culminating in a look of delight on the face of the receiver.
I love getting gifts as well. Who doesn’t?. After every birthday party during childhood, all the family would gather in the biggest room in the home and the each gift will be carefully unwrapped and passed around. We also used to fold and keep the wrapping papers for reuse , so the unwrapping was done almost with a surgical precision. Papa was a master at that, he would snip and slide the scissors and make sure the paper came out unscathed and looked as innocent as slight fold marks allow it to be. Then there was the rule about sharing, unwilling as I or my brother might be. All chocolates were coveted items and we would try to fight tooth and nail over them, but there was only so much one could fight in front of papa. One stare and the good Samaritan in us would come out and share everything in halves.
I never remember my parents giving me a big gift for birthdays. It was simply not part of the celebrations. A new dress, party and maybe a tenner or twenty rupee note from Thammi (my granny), but no specific gifts. If I needed a cycle it would be bought when needed not just because it was my birthday. One thing was allowed. A new book on every birthday. A special outing would be planned to the New Market (still called the same in bhopal) and I would be taken to the Variety Book Store and allowed to meander around the shelves. It was one of my favourite places to be. The smell of new books, staid bindings and the sheer number of volumes. Recently I went to Bahrisons bookshop in Khan Market, New Delhi and it was a wonderful experience. Books stacked wall to wall seemingly without any coherence and co-ordination. But if you asked the people working there for a particular title, they would look up with an expression similar to Mr Olivander searching for Harry’s wand, and somehow conjure the book out of the clutter. Variety book store was probably not on that scale but for a six-seven year old it was a treasure trove. I agonised over my decision to follow the famous five over smuggler’s top or be part of the Three investigators puzzle solving for screaming clock. I learned to trust my instincts after reading the blurb. In hindsight, more than dollhouses, gadgets and gizmos, my parents gave my the best gift of all. The gift of reading.
With all this tradition of communal gift opening, the same followed after my wedding.Among all the milton casseroles, silk sarees and assorted show pieces someone had the foresight to gift me a book by Sanjeev Kapoor- no oil cooking, It was my first recipe book. It was probably the only gift I picked to carry with me on the maiden voyage across the seas to the Blighty. There must have been a premonition somewhere within me that food was going to consume a big slice of my thoughts and actions. The first couple of months I tried cooking from the book. But cooking with no oil when you have not cooked at all is not the best beginning AS was so traumatised by the experience that the book went missing all of a sudden. In the house move this year, it turned up. Probably it was Ma’s diligence during packing. It was put together in the box for books and I found it sitting prettily among the now expanding section for recipe books. A thin white space between gordon ramsay’s indian adventure and the highly ambitious buy for bread making. It was only last week I took it down. I could easily see which recipes I had worked on. There were smudges of tumeric and crinkles where condensation had dropped on the pages. I now feel a renewed vigour to try these out. I might not go absolutely by the recipe and use some oil here and there. The first one I tried did not however need any oil at all.
We were having a pot lunch at home and with the easy options of noodles and palak panner completed, I felt like trying something new. I did not want to imbalance the pot lunch by making another additional item, so I opted for a drink. The very first recipe in the book was Kiwi panna. Now I love aam panna. It was a saviour during the scorching summers in madhya pradesh. But raw mango need a special trip to indian store, where it is not always available. Kiwi on the other hand is easily available and totally neglected by me till now. A quick trip to the nearby grocery store and armed with 3 kiwis I embarked on the first homemade drink experiment. It turned out very well, the texture and taste was almost same as aam panna. The back seeds gave it a nice look as well. Because it required some time in oven and some more on the mixer, it felt a low effort thing.
The recipe is more or less what was written in the book. I have mentioned where I have deviated from it.
Ingredients
- 8 Kiwis
- Fresh mint leaves a few sprigs
- Fresh coriander leaves a few sprigs (I did not use)
- Cumin seeds 1/2 teaspoon
- Ginger 1 inch piece
- 5 Black peppercorns
- Sugar and salt to taste
- Pinch of black salt
- Lemon juice 1 tablespoon
- Roast kiwis in an oven till they are soft.
- Cool, peel off skin and make a pulp by hand.
- Clean and wash mint and coriander leaves. Roast cumin seeds.Peel and wash ginger.
- Grind mint, coriander, cumin seeds, ginger and peppercorns to a smooth paste.
- Blend kiwi pulp with sugar, salt, black salt and lemon juice.Stir in mint-coriander paste and strain.Add water as required and keep in refrigerator. Serve chilled
It took my oven 15-20 mins at 180C to cook the . I left them them too long in the oven the first time and the juices caramalised. So keep checking them every 10 mins.Also I blended the spice and pulp mix together to save time.
