Meddling Mandarin (Payesh with Mandarin pieces)

Food compliments our moods. When we are happy we want to eat good things, when we are sad, it doesn’t matter what we eat. Even festivals have an unique item associated with them. Durga pujo means khichuri, Makar Sankranti means til-gud, Id means sewaiyan, holi means gujiya, ganesh chaturthi means modak. Janmashtami probably needs a whole section of a recipe book to itself. It does not stop at cooked food. As children we were not supposed to eat kool (ber) till saraswati puja. It was explained that Ma Saraswati would be happy with our sacrifice and bless us with infinite wisdom. To me, it seemed a big price to pay for few marks in exam. But with the martinet Indian educational system you can never be too sure, a few extra marks never did any harm. I however think it was just a roundabout way of keeping the children off unripe kool (ber) so that they didn’t fall sick. After saraswati puja the fruits are well ripened. My mom would make kuler achar(Berry pickle) which we could then gorge on for quite a while to come. Coming back to sweets, there is however one sweet which is universal. Payesh. It comes in different formats depending on the region or even the house it is cooked in. But the basics remain the same.

Payesh is very integral to Bengali celebrations. Whether it is a jonmodin (birthday) or ai-budo-bhaat (part of pre-marriage ceremony), or saadh (baby shower) payesh is a must. Payesh is what we call Kheer in bangla. Kheer means something different in Bangla, it is the lump left after simmering milk for hours...a type of khoya. Among the sweet courses of Bengali cuisine, payesh is considered a different type of sweet than sandesh/doi or rosher misthi(sweets with chashni, or sugar syrup). There were at least 3 different types cooked frequently in our home. Batasha diye payesh. Khejurer guder payesh. Channar payesh.

My dida makes the best payesh. Our annual visit to mama-r badi (mom’s maiden home) was considered an event important enough to warrant this payesh. In the sprawling house one big room was reserved for pujo ghor and my dida would cook a full Bengali meal everyday as part of the pujo. The general household cooking was done by the other female members of the family. I remember hovering around the door (I could not go in till I took a bath) of the pujo ghor to find out what was on menu that day. She used gobindo bhog chal in it. I came to know this only recently. The granules of this rice are very small and fragrant. It lends a whole new dimension for the taste buds to explore. She would use batasha (a type of sugar candy used for religious ceremony) for sweetening rather than sugar. The consistency of the milk was thick, the rice melted in my mouth and the whole thing left a lasting taste. There was a strange sense of well being after eating it. My payesh does not come close to it. I think she did not tell me about the dollops of tenderness and affection that she added.
Bangla is known as the sweetest language. With so many sweets consumed can it be otherwise?

This recipe is as traditional as you can go with payesh, but with a twist I learned from an aunty. We call it Mandarin Payesh and it is a favourite of AS. I can hardly manage to snatch a few spoonfuls if he gets his hands on it first :-).

Mandarin Payesh (Rice pudding with mandarin pieces)

2pints milk
½ cup rice
1 cup sugar (depending on how many sweet teeth you have)
4-5 Cardamom (powdered would be better)
1 small tin Mandarin

Optional
2 tsp chironji dana
¼ tin condensed milk

Take a heavy bottom pan and let the milk come to boil in it, then keep on medium heat and keep stirring every few minutes so that it does not stick to the bottom. I generally use the pressure cooker for this. I add the condensed milk after the first boil. It allows the milk to thicken fast. If you prefer to you full-fat milk then you would not need condensed milk. If you do not have condensed milk, you could add 2 tbsp milk powder. Be aware than the taste differs between condensed milk and milk powder.
Meanwhile, wash and soak the rice in water. This softens the rice and reduces the cooking time. I managed to heave 1 kg of gobindo bhog chaal (rice) all the way from Calcutta to London. Basmati rice does not give the same texture in payesh as this rice. But you could go for very small grained rice, if you cannot get hands on the gobindo bhog.
After simmering for 15 mins, add the rice in. If you are going to add whole cardamom, then add it now. Let it cook on low heat, till the rice is done. It generally takes me about 25-30 mins to get the rice to be soft. It should so soft, that you can easily press it between thumb and forefinger without apply much pressure. At this stage add the cardamom powder and chironji and the sugar.
Let this cool down. Meanwhile take out the mandarin pieces and add 2 tsp of sugar to it and microwave it for about a minute. Remove the pieces and keep separately. We do not want the juices going into the payesh.
When the payesh has cooled down, stir in the sweetened mandarin pieces into it.
That is it. Keep in fridge and you can easily enjoy for a few days, though I have to admit mine doesn’t last that long.
Happy eating..

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!

Barbeque - A Trial by Fire

We came back from Easter holidays (a mere 4 days) to find the season had turned a new leaf..literally. The tree visible from our living room window had sprouted pink flowers. The ones next to nearby bus stop had white ones. From a distance they look like a painter has laboured to put the dots on each branch to make them look like flowers. The day light saving in UK makes the weather changes very sudden. One evening you might be walking back home in dim sunlight and the next day you can feel the warmth of the sun when you are cooking dinner. Ok agreed I am exaggerating a bit...but you would have to agree it is only a bit :-). Our friends had come back from India and other trips and there was a serious need to meet and catch-up. The last weekend was fixed and we trooped over to the edges of Cotswold countryside to enjoy the sun. I have stayed in bungalows for the first 22 years of my life. And then Bombay happened to me. And I got used to perching on the top of high-rise buildings and sharing walls with strangers. The trend continues here as well. Much as I liked independent houses, the practicalities of keeping it clean and security makes us opt for flats. So whenever given a chance we love the country cottage feel of our friend’s dwellings.

It is officially summer, although the nip in the air sometimes doesn’t make you feel that way, so we decided have a barbeque. It meant we girls would actually not be in kitchen all the time trying to outdo each other with newest tried recipes. It was the first time we were trying the ritual of barbeque. We had heard of the basics and rest was left to google. The first attempt to fire up the coal resulted in a smoke so bad, it might have rivalled the one spurted by the unpronounceable (I am glad there are difficult things to pronounce in the world than my name) volcano in Iceland. Ok.. not that much..but certainly qualified for a complaint from the neighbour, if only they were not doing a barbeque as well.


Frantic search through google (how did we ever survive before it!!!) and few fixes later things were manageable and it looked like we were going to get lunch after all. Not just charred pieces of coal.

The veggies grill section certainly looked more colourful than the non veg. We did end up with more variety than a normal lunch.

Pineapple with cinnamon, olives, corn on the cob accompanied by at least 4 different dips, there was a lot going on. At the end of it all we had eaten so much that I could compare myself with a python and empathize with what the beast might feel after eating many times than what it can digest in one day. And my behaviour resembled one too. We all of us didn’t probably move much than the positions we took in the living room after this assault. While the stomach got to work, rest of the body just gave up. But it was a great first time barbeque and I hope will be followed up by many more.

There is no recipe this time. It is more of the experience that I wanted to share. One of the chicken was murg malai tikka which I have already shared as my post ‘Heaven on Earth’. The other chicken tikka is a shortcut. Chicken marinated with yoghurt and Everest Chicken Masala.Yes thats it. Things can be so simple. Thought I must admit I didn’t like using the ready made masala. I have come to take pride in my own preparations. But I am glad I did. Because the time saved was well enjoyed with friends. So we had two marinades a white and a red. And there were batches of paneer and chicken both marinated in them.

All then we had to do was get them skewered and grilled over the barbeque.


The barbeque allowed our better halves almost equal participation in the cooking process and I am happy to say, they did the job well. The sun shone down fiercely from above while the coal flames licked the dripping chicken and paneer pieces and turned them succulent. The grilled fare was stuff of dream. The smokey undertone to the tikkas poked our tastebuds and the subtle spices of the marinade tingled the palate. I guess this is how some food critic might have written if they would have reviewed our barbeque. For us it just tasted good enough to eat.

I would have taken a proper picture of the food if only it survived longer than 10 minutes after coming off the heat. So there are no finished products to show :-)

A small ode to barbeque.

The Barbecue

When summer evenings are nice and hot,
The thing to do is find a spot,
Where a barbecue can be set up,
So everyone can come and sup,
Relax with a bottle, and sit for a spell
Which would be really nice and would end the day well,
And enjoy the light hearted, cheerful chatter,
With friends, who to you, truly matter.
Right! The table's set, the flares are lit,
The music should be a real hit
The friends have arrived, the drink if flowing,
Laughter starts, the barbecue's glowing,
The cooking has started, the aroma's divine,
Everyone is getting along fine,

Not original but a google search. I have copied part of the poem but you could read the full version here http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-barbecue/

Heaven on Earth

I had once read a book, Five people you meet in heaven. It had one very interesting concept. It said there is no heaven beyond the clouds. Heaven is on earth. A very big statement to make. But it made sense when thought about it. Every human being has his/her own thoughts, beliefs, likes, dislikes and experiences. In experiences alone an individual becomes that, an individual rather than the mass, the crowd. That being the case, is it too difficult to assume that we each have our own concept of heaven. For me heaven might mean lying on green grass with the blue sky above me with my favourite books around me to read. Would not mind a few good savouries to nibble on while I enjoy the stories. This might be someone’s nightmare for all I know!!. For Scrat from Ice Age it may be the place with nuts.

How can God or the Supreme Being (whichever way you address the universal power of universe) construct a heaven which satisfies the fantasies of the billions inhabiting the Earth. It would be a very difficult task. After sweating over creating earth and earthlings for seven whole days, I doubt He (no offence to people who think I should write She) would like the task of replicating it for creating heaven. Nor do I think He/She would also like to share the existing heaven with us. It would have been built to his specifications anyways. So the idea would not have been far away, that why not make earth the heaven. And how to judge what should be heaven on earth? It could be the places we are happiest. Is it not this feeling of happiness that we want from heaven, increased manifold? So if there was a moment in our life when we were truly ecstatic, I would like to believe we would be coming back to that. In today’s world of customized offering, is it any wonder that God might give each one of us a Customized heaven. It is a marketing solution no one can argue against!!!

Once I had thought all this, I felt very comforted. So when I am going to heaven (it may take quite a while according to Hindu Scriptures and my current behaviour), it is going to be the best place ever. And most importantly I am sure I am going to love it, because I would have been there before. Visiting a new place anyways has a factor of unknown attached to it. What if you didn’t like heaven? Well know we can be rest assured we are going to like it. Finally one can die in peace.

So if I sit down to draw the specifications of My Heaven...I can end up either in Dehradun or Konigsee. Though Mureen and Kanassar would figure close seconds. So much for the place...food would have to form a big part of the place as well. What would I want to have in heaven? That’s a difficult choice. A very very difficult one. Phuchka (better known as goluppa or panipuri) should definitely be there. What else...I guess a chicken tikka with lots of onions (more about onions another day). There is this chicken tikka which is called Murg Malai Kebab, which would be quite perfect to have in the wonderful settings of my heaven. The first time I can recall eating it was in Ranjit ka Dhabba, a Punjabi restaurant in a small suburb of Mumbai. But the best I have eaten is in Hyderabad. In Sahib Sindh Sultan. This restaurant is a tribute to Sahib, Sindh and Sultan the three engines which pulled the first train in India. It has waiters dressed as porters and maitre-de dressed as ticket collector. There is a whole coach of train waiting on the actual rails to serve as a dining car. Very very realistically made, with a hat left in the luggage rack overhead or an odd suitcase. The menu is named creatively like laughpathgamini bhatti ka tikka and lipta mushroom masala :-). For details check out this link (don’t go weak in your stomach)
http://www.foodiebay.com/ncr/restaurants/gurgaon/ambience-mall/sahib-sindh-sultan-2428#menutop
They had this Reshmi Murg tikka, and it melted in my mouth. It was so subtle and so soft that the moment you put it in your mouth, it dissolved with a sensation of something exotic. I never thought I could recreate that at home. Until a few days ago, i felt the urge to have it again. I looked at various recipes and then finally ended up with an amalgamation of what i thought would work best. The result was awesome. It might not be exactly what I had at Sahib, sind Sultan , but it was a close second. And more importantly now I had the POWER.. to eat it whenever I wanted.
So here I share with you my taste of heaven :-)
Enjoy and let me know if it can be perfected still.

Murg Malai Kebab (Reshmi Murg Tikka)

Ingredients
1/4 kgs chicken breast
1 tsp ginger garlic paste
1 pinch pepper pdr

1 Green chilli (add more depending on how spice you like it)
1cup coriander leaves
A pinch cardamom pdr
2 tbsp cheese
1 tbsp curd thick
1 tbsp Oil(optional)
1 pinch salt


Cut chicken breast to bite size pieces and remove any water from from by patting with a paper towel.
Mix it with pepper powder, squeezed ginger garlic paste. Keep aside for about half an hour. I generally did not time it so strigently. I started making the second marinade after this and let it soak till it the next step was done.

The second marination is the key. This is what will make the murg malai kebab distinct. Start by kneading some grated cheese by hand to make a paste . I used mozzarella. You could any, though not the ones with lots of flavor.
Add curd (biopot set yougurt works very well) and double cream. Make sure you knead out all the lumps. I think it is necessary to do this by hand because in food processor it will not be so thoroughly done.
Make a paste of chilli and coriander. I used mortal and pestle as I didn’t want to use water to make the paste.
Add that to the cheese /curd paste along with salt,oil(optional),cardamom pdr and mix well .

Marinate the chicken with this marination and put in the fridge. Now is the trick. Marinate it overnight. Yes you would need to silence the insistence of the heart to taste it…and let the marinade seep in overnight.

Next day put the pieces on to a skewer and put in the grill. You could do this in oven also. I would update this if I ever try it with oven. But grill has worked for me as of now.
It would take just 20-30 mins for it to be done on both sides.

Enjoy with some green chutney and onions.
There you have my taste of heaven on earth. And would love to know what is heaven for you on earth...

A toast to friendship

There are days when you are so happy that you want to share...with everybody and anybody. Today is one such day. My best friend is expecting a. It may not be so normal to experience such huge joy for someone else addition to family. But I do ..I feel it so fervently..I wish I could whiz by the oceans and landmass separating us to just give her a hug. Fifteen years is a long time. And we are still best friends. Glancing back there are so many memories. When I sometimes acknowledge the speed with which life has changes in past few decades, it is these old school memories of mine which are a comforter.
They were the days on edge of innocence. And I am glad to say I weathered it well. Without becoming bad and cynic. Well bad is a very subjective word anyways. But at least my parents never felt I was becoming wayward. I was blessed with a good bunch of friends with share passion and interests. And that is perhaps the reason we have stayed such good friends. With them i realize that you do not need to talk everyday, share every bit to remain friends. Beyonds oceans and distances, if we school friends talk over phone or exchange one email..it is like old times.
We went our separate ways after school. But there was a reunion, 5 years later. And what a riot it was. We were 6-7 of us back for 3 days in the same surrounding we had spend four best years of our lives. Those three days are a real treasure for me now. We gossiped into the early hours of the morning, lunched at our old school canteen and drove into the mountains. In some ways the days whizzed by and in others they are so full of memories that they feel stretched out. I am just glad that it happened. And now the second one from that group is going bring another life into this world. It is incredible and yet so commonplace.

I may go on rambling in this manner without thinking that few of you might be waiting for the recipe. Well since we are talking all baout friends today, let me share one recipe from a friend of mine(from another four fun filled years of graduation), who has inspired me to start cooking cakes again.

About 7-8 years back I used to make cake. At the time i didn’t even know how to cook tea, i cooked cake. The reason being it did not involve going near the stove/gas. My father feared my I would leave the outlet open or something of the sort. But fortunately we had a solar cooker. So you see we were doing your bit for environment at a time when global warming was not a buzzword. Though I have to admit , my mother didn’t have the patience to cook a full meal in solar cooker. She wanted to get the cooking bit finished in one go. Not wait for 30 mins for the lentils to boil, another 30 for them to cook with seasoning. So it was in this neglected solar cooker that I started making cakes. I cannot remember who taught, perhaps would have been another friend :-). But I would beat the cake batter to death (there were no whisking attachments in mixers those days) and just pour and put the tin in the solar cooker. And rest all was left to nature. And what wonderful cakes they were turned into. IT was a source of pride for me..and a consolation for my mother to know all was not lost and I may cook a square meal for myself someday :-). And then I left home for further studies, the solar cooker was damaged in transfer from one city to another and hence came to end my cake baking madness.
Until this fateful new year’s eve. I had this cake and the dormant craving for cake reared its head again.

So herez to FRIENDSHIP!!!

Banana Cake

Ingredients
3 medium bananas
300 g self-raising flour
150 g soft butter
2 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
150 g soft brown sugar or can be normal castor sugar as well. Brown one gives a better look
2 medium eggs


Put all the butter and oil in a bowl and microwave it for a couple of minutes.
Peel the bananas and mash them with a fork until they are like pulp. I guess you could use the food processor as well.
Place the butter and brown sugar into a mixing bowl and blend together with a fork.
Add the Flour to it.Mix the banana pulp into it.
Line a baking tin with baking parchment or just grease it.
Pour in the mixture
The Gas should have been headed on mark 6 for 20 mins (I am not sure what temp that would be..but what works for normal cakes in your oven would work for this was well)
Put the tin in the oven.
Approx baking time is 30-40 mins.

The trick as my friend told me was to mix it all with a fork while making a figure of eight. that is the best way to incorporate air into the mixture.

So here is the toast to friendship...with a banana cake.

Should I Read Books

Should I be reading books? ..rarely does this thought come to me..Today I thought I may want to sit down and think about it.

Parents are generally worried about the extra-curricular activities of their child adversely affecting the academics. Mine worried about books overpowering books. For me, Nancy Drew came before Gulmohar English reader; Gone with the Wind challenged the basics of physics while Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy rivaled the bonding theories of Chemistry. History was understood with Freedom at Midnight and geography traversed with Jules Verne’s various adventures. The number of sleepless nights I have spent reading books legally beside a lamp and illegal under my blanket will far outstretch those spent on pretended studying. While the bulk of A Suitable Boy was unsuccessfully hidden between M.L.Khanna and ABC’s of Physics, the inevitable Mills&Boons were thin enough to be stowed away in notebooks and shared with classmates. I must thank J.K.Rowling for waiting till I was in engineering before she committed Harry Potter to print. Failing that I am not sure what vocation I might be pursuing now.

With a job came the liberty to buy books. Many afternoons were spent at the erstwhile second hand book market of Flora fountain in South Mumbai, gathering numerous treasures and layers of tan. The new life of was shared with the Agony and Ecstasy of Michelangelo’s creation long before I could admire the ceiling of Sistine Chapel with my own eyes. The days spent ‘on bench’ in an IT company were utilized wandering The Far Pavilions. Mumbai, my workplace became more than a city to me while reading Maximum City in the suburban train journeys. The city unfolded itself before me through the pages and enticed me to fall into an illicit affair with it.

Marriage was not untouched by books. Our relation was founded on an affinity for Satyajit Ray’s mysteries, nurtured on the opinions about the World Wars and blossomed with travel guides duly packed on vacations. Harry Potter and The Deadly Gallows almost cost me my marriage as it implored to be finished at one go, forsaking even my better half. Just a month back my teenage years were revived with the Twilight saga. I involuntarily kept smiling late into the night while sharing Bella and Edward’s challenges.

Changing times have changed my preferences of books. From exploring the secret passages with Enid Blyton to the tribulations of heart with Jane Austen to finally questioning the world through Non-fictions, reading may have come a full circle for me. To me books have been like a friend who when put on the shelf propelled my life even with its ‘back’ turned on me. But staring at each new foreword beckoning me to an imaginative world of letters versus the daily grind of living threatening me the question ‘Should I be Reading Books?’ becomes a redundant one.

Chicken Kebab
Ingredients
For Boiling
300 gms boneless chicken ( sliced into 2-3 inch slices)
2-3 cloves of garlic
½ inch ginger
3 big black cardamom
3-4 cloves
2-3 1 inch sticks of cinnamon
1-2 Bay leaves
1-2 leaves of javentri/mace
A few shavings of nutmeg

Green Chutney
2 cups coriander leaves
½ cup mint leaves
1-2 green chillis

Masala
2 medium sized onions sliced lengthwise
2tbsp - Garam Masala (any would do , but if you want a distinctive flavour you can dry grind the ingredients mentioned in the boiling part and use that)
½ cup chopped coriander
1 tbsp Amchur or Anardana powder
1 tsp red chilli powder
1 tbsp ground cumin powder
Salt to taste

Oil for frying

Bind all the item except the chicken given in the boiling section into a small piece of cloth. In a pressure cooked put this along with the chicken pieces and fill it with water.
Cook it for 2-3 whistles. I generally list the chicken rest in this mixture while i get all other items ready.

Grind the coriander, mint and chilli and keep aside.
In 2tbsp of oil fry the onions till they are dark pink in colour.

Take the chicken pieces out of the cooker and let then cool enough to allow you to add it to food processor. I know that actual chefs might balk at the thought of kebab out of boiled instead of minced meat. But this is the best way for me to make it at home. I do not much care for the kebabs available in UK. They are nowhere near to what I am used to. There are two kebab that I still dream about. One was Kakori Kebab I had in Sahib-Sind-Sultan in Hyderabad. It just melted in my mouth. Awesome. The second was a greenish type of kebab I had at Kareem’s in Bombay. Can’t remember its name. Anyways this will have to do for the time being :-).
Ok so process the chicken at very low speed in the food processor. If it becomes too flakes, add a little bit of stock (the boiled water we had left in the cooker) or the green chutney prepared earlier. It should be such after processing that it can bind together. I have seen my mom using channel daal (yellow split lentil) while boiling chicken to get this binding. Some also use cornflour. I have however not had any problem in getting the mixture to hold so I do not use any of this.
Now mix this processes chicken with all the items listed under masala and the fried onions. Adjust the salt. Make equal sized balls and then flatten them into tikkis .
Heat 2 tbsp of oil in a skillet/ tawa or frying pan. Add the flattened balls and cook them on medium heat for 5-7 minutes on each side.
If needed garnish with onion rings and chat masala.

Telling Tales

I have always been interested in mythology. I would not take any sides on whether ramayan or mahabharat are true. For me, some bits of it has to happen to allow someone to write about it. It is like a historical novel, where some of the things have happened for sure..but the author has taken the liberty of adding much spice to it, thus making it so wonderful that goes into the annals as mythology. I had someone gift me a book from the ‘world famous’ series for mythology. That was when I realised each civilization had its own Ramayan or Mahabharat. My grandmother was a great story teller as well. We had illustrated snapshots of both these epics bought specially for me and my brother. On summer holiday afternoon, either my grandmother or my mother will read to us (we could not read Bengali) stories from the Upendro Kishor Raychaudhary’s books (Satyajit Ray’s grandfather..creativity does run in the blood). I don't recall the names, but I think they were Mahabharter Golpo (Stories from Mahabharat). My brother and me would drift off to an afternoon nap with thoughts of Nal-Damyanti, Bakasur etc. I dare say kids nowadays would disregard this kind of pastime.

My favourite is Mahabharat(conveyed in 1.8 million words), mainly because it seems more subtle in terms of right and wrong. The characters are in shades of grey. Even today anyone can identify with Kunti, a teenage single mother, or understand the humiliation and vindictiveness of Draupadi. The thirst for power of Duryodhan or the machinations of the best spin doctor ever, Krishna. After all which political party would not like a tactician like Krishna on his side, who could always find the loophole in promises made, and work out the weakness of opposition. Although Bhagavad Gita is supposed to explain the bigger aspects of spiritualism, I think it is already imparted in bits and parts all along the storyline of Mahabharat.
During the preparations for The Battle, both Duryodhan and Arjun go to Krishna to ask for his support. Duryodhan without knowing the importance words can have only looks at tangible benefit, the Narayani Sena of Yadavs. But Arjun knows that it is not numbers which lead to a victory. It is the mindset which does. You also read about how Krishna instigates Bhim to attack Duryodhan on his thighs during their final duel, fully aware that striking below the waist was not within rules of the fight. This is wrong, we know. But the good thing is you see Krishna, an incarnation of the preserver, Narayan being punished for leading on Bhim. Gandhari, Duryodhan’s mother curses him that his dynasty will be eliminated and he himself would die an inglorious death. Even God himself is not spared for his wrongdoing.
It is small incidents like this which for me carry the real message. The message for which i think these epics were written. The need for reading between the lines is in fact apparent in the very begining of Mahabharat. Ved Vyas requests Lord Ganesh to be his scribe, while he composed the hundred thousand couplets. Lord Ganesh had a condition, that Ved Vyas would have to keep up with his writing speed. If Vyas stopped dictating, he would stop as well. Vyas agreed but then cleverly added his own condition. Ganesh would have to understand the meaning before he wrote anything down. So should we. While we 'read', we should 'understand' as well. Only then the real worth and importance of our Mythology would reveal itself.

It is probably worthwhile to mention for those who would like to read more, that there are two very good books which will give you a wonderful version of Mahabharat. One is ‘Mrityunjay’ by Shivaji Sawant (originally in marathi but hindi and english translation are available) and the other is Draupadi by Pratibha Ray. They are good books to create interest in the wonderfully complex caharcters of our epics.

As promised earlier the recipe for Rabri is shared here. I thought for a long discourse as above, it probably helps if there is a small recipe to follow :-)

Rabri
Ingredients
1 tin of Evaportaed milk
½ tsp cardamom powder
Sugar..according to taste
Nuts to garnish

Take a wide mouth utensil, I used a big frying pan. Pour the evaporated milk in it. Mix the cardamom powder or pods, whichever you have. Let it heat up and then adjust the flame such that it is always at the point of boiling but never actually boils over. In this situation a thin film will start forming the on the milk, what we call malai. Use a flat spoon and push the malai on the sides of the frying pan. At times I also just take it out and put it in a separate vessel. You have to keep doing this till a very thin layer of the milk is left. I generally check whether the liquid takes a few sec to fill back if I draw it back with the spoon....meaning that its consistency has increased and made it more viscous. At this stage you can add the malai from the sides of the frying pan or from the separate vessel into the milk and mix with a light hand. Add in sugar as per you need. I however have never had very sweet rabri, so i just add ½ tsp for 1 tin of evaporated milk. Take off the heat and preferably transfer into small bowls for serving. Cool and decorate with nuts and saffron.

This is a very simple recipe if you have evaporated milk. I really do not fancy doing this from scratch. The colour of the rabri is pinkish because of the use of evaporated milk.

Happy Holi

Happy Holi!!.

A working Monday is not the best way to spend it. I miss home very much on the festivals. Though Holi is not one of my favourites, but even I cannot resist the riot of colours. The crisp cold air warming up in the sparkling sun..heralding the onset of spring. You can see the naked branches of trees starting to sprout little buds of life. Palash trees probably steals the show. It is locally also called ‘flame of the forest’. And it actually is. I have had a couple of chances of visiting forests (courtesy my father) in March and April. You can see the orange flowers of the palash trees colouring the edges of the forest. It is pleasure for the colour deprived winter eyes.
Back when chemical colours were not popular, these flowers would actually be used for playing holi. Boiled in with water, it gives a wonderful amber coloured liquid. In fact my father had two big buckets of this done for us one season. It allowed me to play holi with water, which I didn’t do much, being prone to sudden colds).
It is also a festival of freedom. With you face smothered in rainbow colours, we all become one. For some it allows them to be someone else, for other to be more life their real self. Inhibitions are overcome and liberties taken, which add just the little bit of spice a dull life might need.
Mythologically there are quite a few stories connected to holi. The foremost one being prahlad and holika. Prahlad was the son of a demon called Hiranyakashyap. Hiranyakashyap had ordered everyone to worship him. But as destiny would have it, his son became an ardent devotee of Lord Vishnu. Try what he might Hiranyakashyad could not get Prahlad to forsake his devotion. In a last ditch attempt he asked Holika, his sister to get into a fire with prahlad. Holika was supposed to have a boon that fire could not harm her. They thought Prahlad would be scared with the prospect of burning. Well, turned out that Holika’s boon only worked if she was in the fire alone. So she was burnt while prahlad came out unscathed by chanting Lord’s name.
More on these stories along with Rabri. For now the recipe for Malpua.

Malpua
1 cup of Plain flour(Maida)
2 Tbsp rice flour(optional)
½ banana
1 tsp cardamom powder
1 tsp fennel seeds (saunf)
3-4 Tbsp condensed milk (option- you can just add more sugar)
¼ cup milk
4 Tbsp sugar
Oil/ghee for frying


Mix all the ingredients given above and get it to a thick paste consistency. For better texture, grate or mince the banana in the mixture.
Heat oil in a frying pan. The oil should form a layer of a few millimetres. When it is moderately hot, put a spoonful of mixture and spread it out into a small circle. Do not do it the dosa way. Instead try to lightly spread it by tugging at the corners
Turn to other side and keep frying on medium heat. Once it attains a light golden colour you can take it out.
At this stage many people dip this fried pancake into very thin sugar syrup (chashni). I however think that makes it very rich to eat. And also it takes more time. So I generally stop after frying it.
Do remember however that if you intend to use sugar syrup, the sugar content in the mixture should be less.

An apple a day ...

Second month of the New Year is almost gone. It is but not too late to remember the new years I had some years back.

A few quirky things signify a new year to me, foremost of them being writing a different date. It used to be really relevant during school, when we would put the date on the top left corner of the page before starting a homework. It also meant another birthday to look forward to. New year also meant new calendar. Which meant i could cut out the pictures from the old one.

In my mind a year if pictorially drawn out, with January on the top and December at the bottom. It like an excel format with all the years being different columns. May be it is not just me and everybody thinks that way..but since I never thought of asking to others how their mental view of year is..i don’t know if I am different. New Year eves were usually spent watching the ‘variety’ entertainment on Doordarshan. They were good and brought the family together. But slowly that dwindled away with the satellite channels coming in. One thing though stayed constant through all this. Food :-). When at home we always had a takeaway Butter Chicken and Gulab jamuns. Still do whenever we spend New Year at home.

Though it was not new year eve, I felt like cooking new things. The cake came out of the need to clear off the fridge off the once shiny apples.


Apple cinnamon Cake

2 medium sized apple peeled and chopped up
2 tsp of cinnamon powder
2 tbsp sugar

1 ½ cup self raising flour
1 ½ cup castor sugar( you can mix Movado sugar as well to give the dark colour)
2 eggs
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp of cinnamon powder
1 ½ tsp baking powder
A pinch of salt

Put the apple pieces with cinnamon and sugar in the microwave for 2 mins.
Sieve and mix the flour with sugar. Add the salt. After mixing this in thoroughly add the vegetable oil. Add one egg at a time. Keep folding in the mixture. No need to separate the egg whites and yolk. Add the vanilla essence and the baking powder.
In the end mix the apple pieces into it. Be sure to drain off the excess water that comes out after heating up the pieces.


Heat the oven at gas mark 6 for 15 mins (I generally start the oven when I start mixing the ingredients. But time-wise may be 15-20 mins)
Line a baking tray with grease (I prefer using a baking parchment) and pour the mixture and set it into the oven for about 30-40 mins.
It should not take more than the time indicated above to bake the cake. To be sure however Just poke in the middle with a skewer. If it comes out clean, you are a winner. If not, have some patience :-)
Once done, dust it with castor sugar to make it look inviting.


P.S- Making cake is a matter of practice. Only trick I have learnt is, you need to oven to be quite warm before you put the cake in. That is what gives it a desirable crust.

Nothing Elementary about Pithe

The new movie of Sherlock Holmes is released. Friends who know me ask at least once, whether I have seen it or not. Well I haven’t.
Neither do I think I want to. Sherlock Holmes has long been my favourite character. A while before I started blushing about Mr Darcy, or Rhett Butler. Seeing Jeremy Brett play him to such perfection was a dream come true. The present movie does not give me the certainty of the unexpected, as does the other dramatization or the books. And to think such a character was not the favourite of the creator. When I read Arthur Canon Doyle’s biography, I was surprised to find he did not want to be remembered for the Baker Street’s most famous person but rather as a historical writer. How could he be so brilliant at something he did not want to do. How could he breathe such life into Not only Sherlock Holmes or Watson but the intelligent evil Prof Moriatery? Anyways, that is my lopsided reason or not watching Robert Downing Jr in Sherlock Holmes. While on this topic I recalled a quote I read in one of the Sherlock Holmes Casebooks. There Arthur Canon Doyle voiced the opinion that mind is like an attic and we should keep it clean of information which we do not need.

I do not quite agree with him. If not for the myriad memories in my ‘attic’ I would be a lonely person indeed. And i would miss things. As I have gone ahead with life; things have changed. Trying to keep pace, I find myself forgetting about a lot of these. Few I tenaciously cling to others I just let go. Still it does feel as if an era is just missing us by. In the times of fridges and cooking conveniences I forget how difficult it must have been cooking 30 years back. I am not actually saying that we need to change back..But just remembering them are good food for thought; well at least to me.

There are so many dishes which are rarely cooked even by my mother, though at one point they were common. Pithe is one of those. It is basically something prepared with Powder rice as the main ingredient. It comes in various forms, shapes and sizes. The ones that I can remember are puli pithe, chushi pithe, patishapta pithe, chetle pithe. Puli and chushi pithe are very time consuming ones. When I granny cooked it, she didn’t look at anything else in the kitchen. It was a time consuming task. Her deft hands would mould the puli, or would whizz by over the rice dough to make chushi, very similar to the haldiram sev, just imagine them broken down into much smaller sizes. Oh! Its impossible to explain. If I manage to cook it someday I will put a picture in. Anyways when my mouth waters for this, i cannot indulge. But I do manage one shortcut one, which is patishapta pithe. This is much easier version, hurriedly made and quickly finished.

Ingredients
For the pancake
Rice flour – 1 cup
Plain Flour- ¼ cup
Semolina – 3 tbsp
Condensed milk – ½ cup
Milk – about 1 cup

For the filling
Grated coconut ( frozen can be used as well) – 2 cups
Jaggery – 1 cup
Cardamon – 6/7 cloves

Method
Put the coconut in a frying pan and when heated add the jaggery to it.
Allow it to melt , all the while stirring the mixture. It will reach a consistency where the coconut starts binding together Now add the cardamom powder and let it cool.

Mix all the ingredients for the pancake. The consistency of the mixture should be about the same as dosa batter. Should not be very runny...while should not be so thick that tilting the frying pan has not effect!!!.
Heat a skillet or frying pan, add slight oil. Pour in one ladle of the batter and let it cook on one side. My granny used to flip this to other side. I don’t. Reason being I am afraid of losing the perfect round shape and end up with remains of what could have been a good patishapta. So I let it cook that extra couple second that ensures that the side facing up is not raw.
Now spread a bit of the coconut mixture in a straight line, very similar to what is called a chord in geometry. Carefully roll over the pancake over this mixture. Sometimes adding a bit of oil (though not desirable) on the sides allows easy riddance from the frying pan.

Serve it with melted patali gur or even kheer or rabri.

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow

Its snowing!!. Or has been since last few days.Everything has turned white. It never ceases to surprise me ...this sudden transformation from green to white. We had a hard frost as well. It adds the silvery touch to the trees which the snow somehow cannot. From the train on my way to work, the countryside is magical. It looks all out of the movie set of ‘Narnia’. There is no other way to describe this.

I lived 5 years of my life in Dehradun, under the shadow of Mussoorie without ever once witnessing snow. That only added to the wonder for it. I would have never predicted myself going about my regular activities with snow around. It was always something you had in hill stations..to be experienced on a holiday.

I could really appreciate a lot of the wonder of snow because I was able to stay at home and work. Thank god for software industry. You would assume that working from home for both of us would be a relaxing experience. Well...it wasn’t. In between conference calls, answering emails and working in the system..we ended up working in different rooms.
Of course we did not risk our bones to get much grocery and there came a time when we didn’t have enough left to cook.

It was the perfect time to cook Pav bhaji. Pav bhaji has become a dish coupled with fridge cleaning. It is also one good way of throwing a lot of vegetables together without causing disharmony. It saves me a lot of time as well, because it is not process intensive.


Ingredients
For the Masala
Onions – 2 large
Tomatoes – 2 large
Corainder – 1½ Cup
Ginger – 1 inch
Green chilli – 1-2 as per the fieriness you want
Lime – ½

Pav bhaji Masala (optional)- I skip this sometimes to get the medley of taste from the vegetables
Garam Masala – 3 Tbsp
Coriander Powder – 2 Tbsp
Cumin powder – 2 Tbsp
Oil
Salt

Vegetables (diced)
Potato – 2large
Carrots – 3- medium sized
Capsicum – 1 large
Beans – about 150 gms
Broccoli – 7-8 medium florets
Cauliflower – 7-8 medium florets
Peas- 1 cup

I sometimes throw in beetroot/ cabbage..basically anything other than slimy ones like aubergine.


Boil the vegetables either in a pressure cooker or in a stock pot. Drain them in a colander. Try to preferable time it such that you have then ready when you are adding the powder spices in the tomatoes and onions.
Heat the oil and add the finely chopped onions. When they become very soft add the tomatoes. A couple of minutes later add the ginger pieces. If you do not the taste of ginger then add them with onion so that they can be fried. When the tomatoes are mushed up add the powder spices and mix well. Add 1 cup of the chopped coriander to it as well. Let is cook till it starts oozing oil. Now add the boiled vegetables and mash them up whichever way is easier for you. I use a masher because i like to get the texture of the vegetables. You can use a hand mixer as well.

I have not included any details of the Pav because it is totally up to you what you want to eat the bhaji with.Rice. chappati bread or Pav.