Getting high on tea

Generally we ask friends over for lunch or dinner. Sometimes due to busy diaries we have done a tea. What started off being just a few things with tea went on to become something on the lines of the british high tea tradition. 

I find it a good way of trying out new recipes which won't get any attention in a normal indian menu. It does a great job of breaking the monotony of the same old dal sabzi roti routine. 

Also it allowed me to show off my tableware. I love collecting weird and wonderful serving ware. Walking into a shop and trying to keep myself to buying a new platter or a new bowl is a constant struggle. I also need to say this is where pinterest comes into its own. Just do a search on canapes and the pictues that come back are so stunning that there is nothing you can do but try to make them. 

These pictures are my two successfull trials. Both were vegetarian selection of canape. 

It does take some time to get all the ingredients. There is a fair bit of preparation you can do beforehand. The good thing about this is you can make it as elaborate or simple as you want. 

I will be sharing some of the recipes done for this over time. 

Bass Do Minute - Meri Maggi Story

Smart devices are everywhere. On my train journey people (including me) have earphone stuck in their head and are swiping and tapping (no longer typing) on their devices. From Iphones, Ipads to Galaxy tabs and Kindles.They are more omnipresent than (dare I say) God!. While it seems we must be smart to have created these things and using them day in and day out, it does make me wonder if we are getting dumb through their use.

We do not remember phone numbers, email addresses, birthdays. Everything is customised and pre-filled as much as possible. 

While life is very much easier and intuitive, it does beg thinking whether it is enriched enough. 

I am probably what in market analysis would be called a Late Majority. AS and me as a couple probably own the least number of smart devices among all our friends.In fact there was just one since last two years and only now we have increased the number to 2.

The best things though about all this technology is you can connect to those you are closest to. Easily and quickly. 

Whatsapp messenger is a case in point. I have a group with two of my college friends on it. We share different lives and timezones. But for the past month or so we have been really connected. When you are swapping texts many times a day there is suddenly so much more to talk about. The tantrum of a child, the irritation of boss, the vagaries of weather. Instead of hearing about something when it is a memory, you suddenly are part of it.

While one such mundane but very relaxing discussion we happened to remember a thing we used to eat. Maggi sandwich. If I could I would probably send this to 'meri Maggi' contest. Apart from the usual canteen, there was a nescafe kiosk within the campus of our college. The best thing served there was maggi sandwich. It sounds yucky but it was good. Piping hot and the quantity always seemed less.

Maggi in India is a not just a brand. It is a way of life. You have maggi when you are a student. You got maggi at home when you wanted to have junk food (McD, KFC were not around every corner). You also got maggi when mum was just fed up of pandering to your taste whimps. In my house maggi was cooked with peas and as many vegetables as it could accommodate. The idea being that if I get one strand of maggi I should be forced to consume at least 1 tablespoon of veggies. That certainly did not endear it to me.

I was reintroduced when I joined college. The dreary stuff of canteen could be bypassed by an order of maggi. We have even tried making it unsuccessfully with a water heater. Maggi is something you have when you are short of time, culinary skills or just motivation of cooking.

We even had a case study on how the maggi brand established itself in India over a long period of time.

I tried recreating the it from what I could recollect. 

It is essentially very simple. 
Ingredients: 

One pack of maggi 

Bread of your choice 

Tomato sauce

The recipe could be just a single line. Make maggi, put between two slices of bread and toast.

But I am not known for my brevity. So here we go

There is some TLC involved in making the maggi. Because otherwise it would soak the bread.

For 1 packet of maggi, I use just 1 and 1/4 cup of water. Add to it more than half of the maggi masala.

Let the water come to a boil with the masala.

Now add the maggi and break it up. Add little bit of the remaining masala over the top and mix.

It should just take a minute or two at high flame for the liquid to be absorbed and maggi to be cooked.

Ensure that there is no liquid remaining. I prefer to make the sandwich immediately because I hate cold maggi.

Take a slice of bread. Spread two tablespoonful of maggi. Sprinkle the left over masala on it. Put another slice and toast it. I prefer to use a sandwich toaster. But you can use the frying pan, griddle!, or the toaster bags.

Once done, slice them open. They are best accompanied with Maggi Hot and chilli sauce.

I must warn that without memories associated with this sort of a thing, you will probably say goodbye after the first bite.

When puffiness is good - veg puffs

It is really intriguing how a situation endears certain things to you. Puffs veg or otherwise was no big deal to me. But when I spent 45 days in Trivandrum learning the difference between a sada dosa and ghee roast, upma and appam, a sole egg puff was my highlight of the day. The opportunity presented itself only once a day during the snack hour in canteen of the training centre. A delay of 5-10 minutes would mean a wait of another day. A golden half of a boiled egg ensconced in the crumbly puff pasty with spices was something to savour. I am not sure it was the best I have ever had, in fact I have never had an egg puff since.

Recently I came across frozen puff pasty sheets in the supermarket. I know these sort of things are easily available in the market. But frozen section gets a boycott from both AS and me, other than peas and kulfi. I tried out a simple veg puff. Actually its just a potato puff, as an experiment. They turned out well and tasted yummy. I still need to work out the best way of storing them as they lose the crunch if whatever way I try to store them. They are very easy to make and set a real good impression.

I managed to get a light puff pastry roll. Disaster struck next time though, because I bought short crust pastry. So look closely before you buy. But then I am assuming that you rush through the frozen section as I do. In that section I always feel like the dementors from Harry potter are following me. All exuberance of a supermarket experience drains away and I am left with a overbearing preoccupation with the chill. Thankfully I can shop online without these diversions.

The filling for this pastry can be anything savoury. You can try mixed veg, paneer. This is just a template for anything you want to adapt it for. I tried with a really spicy potato mixture because it seemed to go well with the intended blandness of the puff. Also you need to resist the urge to overfill the parcels. Because you need to account for the fact that the puff will expand. I made morsel sized parcels. You can try bigger sizes , but then they would take longer to cook so adjust the timing accordingly.

Ingredients

2 big potatoes boiled and mashed

1 sheet of rolled puff pastry

1 onion sliced 

garam masala 1 table spoon

coriander powder 1 tbsp

red chilli powder 1 tsp

chat masala - according to taste

Cinnamon- 1 pinch(option)

Defrost the puff pastry.

Boil potatoes. Peel and mash them up. To hot oil in a pan add sliced onions. Cook them till they turn transparent. To this add coriander powder, garam masala, red chilli powder, amchur or chat masala. The pinch of cinnamon is optional. Add the mashed potato and mix well. Add salt to taste and let it cook for 10 mins.

I spread the mixture on a plate to let it cool quickly. While it is cooling, you can prepare the pastry. Roll out the sheet and cut vertical strips of about 4cm in width. Slice the vertical strips into squares. Spoon in about 1 teaspoon is the mixture in the middle. Bring the two diagonal ends of the pastry piece together. Have a little bit of water handy in a bowl. Slightly touch the two end with water and bring them together. This should seal the two ends together. If this feels difficult work, you can simply fold it lengthwise, or even bring the four ends together to make a parcel.

Preheat the oven to 180 deg C. on a baking tray put foil paper and put the pastry parcels keep space between then because they are going to grow in size. For the size I have got here, it took 15mins. I knew the filling was cooked so all I looked out for was the layers of the puff rising up. When the top layer is turned a slightly darker shade than golden, it is time to take it out.

Spread them out on a cooling rack. I did not have one so I just put them on the place settings we use for crockery. The steel ones with slots. It is best to put it on something which allows the base to cool. Otherwise it gets soggy.

Since I have not yet worked out the best way to store them, I must ask you to savour some of them as soon as they cool.

I want to make the egg puff one of these days when intent and stamina are both in tandem. It was after an egg puff which started it all.

Kalatop ,maggi and movies

Watching movie in a theater is a big occasion for us. There are only few movies which inspire us both, and even fewer which justify an evening spend at a movie hall. Especially with a new arrival on way we tend to stay away from noisy places and a movie hall counts as one.

Recently though there has been a spurt in the number of movies which meet our stringent criterion. So finally last week we decided to take advantage of a midweek 2 for 1 ticket offer and went for a night show of Lootera. The songs and the trailers promised a good movie (in our case good does not always equate to happy!). Do not worry, I am not going to give a movie review. All in all we managed to sit through three hours in spite of the hero's insipid acting. The sets, costumes and songs were binding enough. But the best bit was the second half, which was shot at a place we had been three years ago.

The house which represented the Dalhousie home, is actually a forest guest house in a place called Kalatop, some hundred feet above Dalhousie. In December 2010, we had been on a forest tour with my papa in Himachal & Punjab covering Dalhousie, Kalatop, Kajjiar, , Gurudaspur and Amritsar. We did not know it at the time , but that was to be our last trip with papa. Seven months later he left us all. But left us with so many rich memories to treasure for a lifetime.

Kalatop guesthouse has thus got a special place in my thoughts.

Kalatop gets its name from the dense forest around it. The foliage is so dense and dark green that it gives a sheen of black when viewed from the panoramic clearing of the guest house. Hence the name Kalatop (Kala- Black, top - cover)

We only stayed there for a night. It was -2 degree C outside and we sat ensconced in the heat from the crackling wood burning fireplace, electricity being a premium commodity. It was a very clear night and there was a veritable traffic jam of stars in the sky!

Looking through the photographs of the trip I came across some great photos of the Dalhousie market.

Among the usual hill station street food staples of boiled eggs, tangy pickled fruits and warm crunchy peanut, interestingly enough there were vendors selling maggi. I tried one of them and this post is about it was made the himachali way. I have called the Dalhousie Maggi Masala.

Ingredients

1 packet Maggi

1/4 Onion chopped

1 green chilly finely chopped

1/4 capsicum chopped

1/2 tomato  chopped

The process starts with adding 1 tbsp of oil to a hot pan. To this green chillies and onions are added and sautéed. After 2-3 mins the onions should turn transparent, then the tomatoes are added. While the tomatoes are being cooked add the contents of the maggi masala (leave a bit to be used for garnish) to it along with the chopped capsicum. Capsicum is optional but I have found it does lend a nice edge to it. A couple of minutes of mixing everything together till the tomatoes disintegrate. Now add the required water ( iw would add 1-1/4 cup of water for 1 packet maggi). Everybody has their own preferred consistency of their maggi. Let the water come to a boil so that all the taste is absorbed into the water. Then add maggi to it and cook to your level of consistency.

Garnish with coriander leaves and the leftover masala.

It might not be the epitome of culinary delight, but in the December chill of Dalhousie the heat and spice from the maggi was really great.

I dedicate this post to the location manager of Lootera who short listed the kalatop guesthouse. If not for you, it might have stayed in my memories and might not have been recorded on a post.

PS : I recently came across a kiosk in the 'famed' DB mall in Bhopal which sells food items made exclusively of maggi. I have tried the spring rolls which were different (another way to say it did not endear itself to me).

Soya Chilli for Auld Lang Syne

"Purano shei diner kotha" is a song written by gurudev RabindraNath which is known by even the most distant of bengalis. It is sung almost like an anthem at farewells and reunions. It is evocative and you cannot but let yourself go down the memory lane as you listen to it. Imagine my surprise when during the my first new year celebration in london, I heard people singing what suspiciously sounded like this song. It turns out that Robert Burns wrote the poem Auld Lang Syne (losely translated as 'for old times sake') and Gurudev was inspired by it to create purano sher diner kotha. It always takes be back to the college and hostel times.

Apart from friends; food figures a lot in my memories of college and hostels. Panipuri from naka (junction), egg roll from sector six, chuski (crushed ice served with coloured sugar syrup) from benarasi thela , chowmein & pav bhaji from civic centre, dosa from Indian coffee house....the list is broodingly long.And this is just the first four years. Recently I remembered one such addition to the list.

There were two canteens in our engineering college. One for students and other called 'Chachaji's canteen' for teachers.The latter was out of bounds and by virture of this was the preferred one, especially for the samosas and kachoris. But there was one item for which the student's canteen was favoured. Soya chilli. It was a dark drab looking preparation. And it cost 12Rs a plate. Any spend in double figures were written with red ink in my monthly ledger.A few rash double digit spends could blow off the monthly budget of 500Rs. But soya chilli had to be had. At the cost of walking from college to hostel instead of tempo, or forgoing the other extras. If lucky, one could find someone ready to share the plate and more importantly the cost. If you could do with only half a plate of it, that is. Time and travel had faded out the memory of the precious plateful of tangy, fiery nuggets of nostalgia.

A recent dinner brought me together with some friends from those times. A last minute addition as remembrance of those days was soya chilli.

I did not have any recipe to refer to, so i made it mostly by instinct, trying to recreate the taste.

Ingredients

2 cups of Soya Nuggets 

1 medium onion sliced in rings

2 cloves of garlic finely chopped

2 green chillies sliced lengthwise

1/2 inch ginger sliched into thin lengthwise

3 tbsp tomato ketchup

1 tbsp light soya sauce

1/2 tbsp dark soya sauce 

1tsp lime juice

Like with everything else the story here starts with onion and garlic. In 4 tbsp of hot oil add the garlic and follow with the onion almost immediately. If you prefer the fried falvour of garlic more than the pungency than let the garlic cook for 10-15 secs before adding the onion. Save some onions rings for garnishing, if you want.

While that is cooking, soak the soya nuggets in hot water. I put them in the microwave for about 2 mins. I also add some salt to the water so that the soya granules get some of the salt deep inside as they soak up. you can either slice them up and i did or blitz them in a food processor to get smaller granules. The latter is good when you are pressed for time.

Add the chillies, part of the ginger and the soya chunks into the oil. after a minute of mixing them around, add the tomato ketchup and dark soya sauce and the lime juice. Mix well and let it cook covered for 4-5 minutes. Taste and add the light soya sauce. Let it be absorbed for the next 3-4 minutes. Check the salt and add more if required. 

The nuggets would already have got the salt from when they were soaked and the light soya sauce would have added to it, so it is best to check if you need any salt at all.

If you prefer you can change the proportions of the sauces to match your taste.

The ginger is an optional. It just adds a bit of zing and bite to the whole dish....and the canteen always had ginger in it.

Making it Simples....Poha (fluffed rice snack)

Sometime back we were given the name of Sinha Tours and Travels by our long suffering friends. Mainly because of our inclination to plan a trip to death not just for ourself but for those unfortunate enough to trust us with their trip details. We have improved over the years..in the sense that we do not bore others anymore with our planning. But like all good tour advising companies, we do not mind a bit of PR. With that in mind we have been sharing our travel experiences with friends in form of calendar. It combines two of our three loves..travel and photography (in case you are wondering, third is food). The latter is still a work in progress. This year I added some quotes to it, all related to passage of time. The most insightful one was

Not enjoyment and not sorrow, is our destined end or way; but to act, that each tomorrow, finds us further than today.

It is a simple concept. All it asks for is to make sure that what we do today has a positive impact on tomorrow. And if all our tomorrows turn out better than yesterdays would we not have achieved ultimate happiness? But simple in concept it is really difficult in practice! But does it mean that we should always exist in a state of strife and unrest? I do not think so. One set of people are always on the quest for more without really appreciating what they have at hand. There is another set of people who are so complacent with what they have that they do not strive for better. The path to steadfast sense of well being is actually a very tightrope walk. The straddling of past, present and future is probably why the religions came into existence to resolve.

One thing that strikes me as a shortcoming of our society is that perusal of scriptures is relegated to the sunset of life. Our vedas and upanishads transcend geography and religion in their wisdom. It is a distillation of the experiences of people who worked to make sense of our existence. They should be read and applied as we go through the daily churn of life rather than realize too late what we did wrong. 

On this eve of another year, let me set this as my goal. Hopefully a simple resolution to last a year. It feels good to set a goal for that elusive happiness within for the coming year.

New year's eve and a party due in the evening calls for some big recipes. But I just wrote couple of paragraphs about simple concepts so I will try to keep this simple.Or as Aleksandr Orlov calls it Simples.

Poha is a simple and healthy snack. Anyone brought up in central or western india could not have gorwn up without being familiar with it. In bengal it is called chirer pulao. In bhopal you can find cartful of golden fluffy poha with amber succelent jalebis to start the day with. In mumbai kanda poha, batata poha, masala poha are almost synonyms with the snacks routine.

It was never on top of to eat list of things. When AS and I, we were pursuing the usual correspondence that accompanies an 'arranged marriage',  I was in the process of disillusioning him about my non existent cooking skills. In our six months of courtship he put up a brave face and had probably reconciled himself to a lifetime of drudgery in the kitchen. He mentioned poha as his favourite thing to eat. It was also our first joint venture in the kitchen, with me in the role of something even below Souz chef. My first couple of trials met with exemplary failures. I learnt a few tricks from my mother-in-law on my next visit. Simple things which make a vast difference to the outcome.

Ingredients

4 cups medium flaked poha

1 medium onion chopped

1/2 cup peas

1 tbsp Mustard seeds

1 tsp turmeric

5-6 curry leaves

1/2 cup chopped coriander

1 tbsp sugar

juice of 1 lime

3 tbsp oil

salt to taste

 The first step is wash the poha in water. Twice. Drain the water immediately before the flakes start absorbing it. The sprinkle 5 tbsp of water on it. Add salt, just a little bit less than what you would eventually want in our poha. Add half the lemon juice and sugar to this. Mix with your hands and let it soak it all up.

Heat the oil for 2mins. Add the mustard seeds. After they splutter add the curry leaves. 10 secs later add the onions. Cook them till softened but not as much as you would for a gravy. they should hold their shape. Now add the turmeric and the peas. After the peas get some colour from the turmeric (which would be 30 secs to 1min), add the poha. Mix quickly so that it absorbs the colour of turmeric. The first 5-6 secs it might seem that you do not have enough of the turmeric. But keep faith and keep mixing and you will be rewarded.

Add the remaining lime juice and sugar. Check the salt. the reason for adding half of the sugar and lime juice later is that the taste remains fresh. You can adjust the lime juice, sugar and salt as per your taste.

At this point if I find the poha flakes are dry-ish, I sprinkle some water, cover the utensil and let it be for 5 mins at low flame.

Garnish with fresh coriander, pomegranate and freshly grated coconut.

Simples....

Kiwi Pana

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.

Koraishutir Kochuri (Puris stuffed with peas)

Always a bride never the bridesmaid

Recently, I was watching the movie 27 dresses. I know it is an old movie. I am way behind on the hollywood and bollywood listings. The only time there is a massive update to the list is on my trips to india. In the age of 50inch tvs and multiplexes, majority of my movie watching experience is a 10inch screen in a pressurised cabin 30000 feet in air. I end up watching about 3 sometimes 4 time,technology and eyesight permitting. I decided make my veiwing experience better and enrolled in an online streaming website. Even with my faltering Virgin active (that was one failed branding exercise!!) braodband..the website worked! I had to watch some five hours worth of content to allow me a month’s free trial.So I diligently set about doing just that. Selected romance and more so chick flicks (did you know this is a bonafied category of its own) and set about watching one every day. What I came to realise was, I may have gained years, muffin waist and a few grey hairs, but I had certainly not lost the heart of a 16 year old. I can still get misty eyed at a common girl being courted by a prince, swoon over Mr Darcy and Mr Rochester and sigh over the ball gowns and dresses. The 27 dresses in the movie were hedious..a sort of allegory to the unplesant aspect of being

a bridesmaid one time too often. It must so tiresome. Times of India called Rahul Dravid ‘always a bridesmaid ..never the bride’. It was on some tour probably australian, where his test hundreds where trumphed by Sachin’s or ganguly’s. I am pitiful at cricket stats.

But I digress..i actually started with a digression (is there such a word??).

I was actually eating matar paneer while watching this, and I thought..have I ever eaten any item where matar (peas) was the bride not the bridesmaid. What I mean is where it is not aloo matar, matar paneer, methi matar malai...anything where the peas held their own and did not play second fiddle to the aloos, paneers and other veggies.

Try this for yourself. I could come up with two things only. Koraishutir kochuri and nimona. Nimona is a sort of curry made from fresh peas. I had a few times during my hostel days and I could not recall how it tasted. But koraishutir Kochuri...now there was something which got the tastebuds tingling. Koraishuti is essentially what bengalis call peas. Google failed me, when I tried to find out why such a big name for a small item?

Kochuri is any fluffed stuffed fried bread. So we are talking about a fulffed, stuffed fried bread filled with peas. Sounds like a rattle :-) ..yet is is awesum. One of the things you should have if you feel like indulging. On my bi-annual home visits during graduation this was an item which topped the to-eat list. Ma made it at least twice if not more. I loved it best with very (and I mean very) garlicky coriander chutney. Just coriander/garlic/ green chillies and lime juice with salt. Yummmm. It saved ma time to cook an accompanying veggie so I would get dollops of this chutney. The kochuris are not big ones. Broken in half they can consumed in two mouthfuls each. I would use it to enclose a big portion of Chatni and savour the taste. I am very good at chewing my morsels and I think I do it because of this fascination for food. I probably want to taste and savour the components before it goes down the pit of my stomach.

But those were the days when one did not think about the cosnequences of refined flour, deep frying or binge eating. I had not forgotten this kochuri and did try to make it on my own a couple of times. But the result was a FLAT bread with stuffing dislodged and leaking oil. I lost patience on my third attempt and ended up eating the stuffing as side dish and using the dough for making nimkis(which did not turn out well because of the wrong amount of moyan-crispiness)

So when ma was visting this time, I put this high on her to-cook list with an additional note that it should be cooked on a weekend to allow proper knowledge transfer.

She had a trick up her sleeve, the way that all mothers do. It was sprinkling of roasted and then grounded fennel,pepper and ajwain. It changed the equations of the taste from linear to quadratic.

 Another trick that I learnt was not to be greedy and stuff a lot of peas mixture, It has to be just the a  teaspoonful at a time. Also when rolling out the kochuri use a little bit of oil to avoid them sticking on the rolling pin.

All in all it turned out quiet a feast. With the pungency of garlic in the chutney vying for attention against the strong flavour of hing, it is a dance drama in every muthful.

One very good thing is that you can do the preparation on large scale and then store away the mixture and the dough in fridge. It can cherished over 2-3 days.

Here goes the recipe then.

Ingredients

For the Peas Mix

2 cups of peas (I blitz the frozen ones with some water in the microwave)

½ tsp asoeftida (hing)

3 green chillies

For Roasted powder

½ tsp cumin seeds

½ tsp fennel seeds (saunf)

½ tsp ajwain

2-3 pods of whole black pepper

salt to taste (for the filling)

For dough

3 cups of white flour (Maida)

3 tbsp of any oil

¼  tsp of salt

Oil for frying

Add the salt and oil to the flour and crunch it in hour hands to ensure the oil is spread throughout the flour. Add enough (a whole thesis can be written on the amount of water required for dough!!) luke warm water and make this into a dough. Cover with a damp cloth and let it rest while you get on with the preparation for the mix.

Add the defrosted peas with the green chillies into a food processor. If you do not have a food processor...you are joking right? Who does not have one in these days?..well I did not...till a year ago. The workaround is to crush the peas with something, a small bowl, the pestel mortar...although you will not get the smooth blend we are looking for. Whatever you use, do not add any water. The only water should come from the peas. Mix the peas with green chillies.

In a broad utensil add the oil and when it is warm add the asafoetida. Quickly spoon the mix into this. Now comes the patience part. You have to stir the mixture every now and then, depending on how good is the pan( which calims to be non-stick is). Slowly the moisture in the mix will vapourise and the mix will turn from a fresh green colour to a darker shade. On a medium flame it took me 15 minutes for this quantity of paste. If you are making more, then it would proportionally increase.

Once the mositure is all gone, you can add the salt and grounded powder (metioned in the ingredients- they should be lightly roasted and then ground to a fine powder.

If you need to adjust the hot quotient, add chilli powder at this stage.

Let the mixture cool.

Add enough oil in a deep frying vessel to at least cover one kochuri at a time. Let it heat up before you start rolling out the kochuris.

Divide the dough into calls the size of rasogulla, or lemons (the size we get in india). Slightly roll them out to flatten them and make into disks the size of 3cm dia. Spoon in little of the mixture, about ½  teaspoon into the middle and close the edges. Make sure nothing is coming out of the joint. Slightly massage it in your hands to spread the mix. Start rolling it out now, with a very light hand so the misture is not pushed out with vengence. Add a touch of oil if the dough starts sticking to the rolling pin. The 3cm dia should at least go upto 6cm. You know it is not rolled out properly if you can feel the dough thick at places.  And you know you should leave it alone, if you start seeing the greenish tinge appearing below the dough layer...because that means the mix might come out. The first one will never puff up. Call it what you will, but it is similar to my ‘Laws of Dosa’ (another day about this- but in nutshell the first dosa will always stick to the tava). But preserve and learn and you will be rewarded

Do not overcook it, take the kochuris out of the oil as soon as you see bubbles on the surface of the it.

Well that is all there is to it, as Forrest Gump said. Easy said than done!

Kabuliwala & Aalo Kabli (Potato Chaat)

“Kabuliwala, O kabuliwala, tomar jholae ki ache? (what is in your bag)”, asked Mini

“ ete to ekta hathi ache (there is an elephant in here)”, replied the kabuliwala with a smile.

Kabuliwala, is a short story by Rabindranth Thakur. Written in a simple language it was my introudction to the vast world of Rabindranath Thakur’s literature.  Aptly it was narrated by my father, because it is the story of a father more than a little girl. Mini is the small girl who befriends a kabuliwala (Rehmat) selling his dry fuits in the lanes of Calcutta. Sometime later Rehmat is arrested on charge of attacking a debtor and is sent to jail. The day he is released,  Mini is getting married. I would not be a spoil sport by revealing all of it. Although it is not a particularly sad story, it felt sad to me. There are not many kids of my generation who can claim to have bedtime stories from their father.But I have had the pleasure.

Used to the five day week syndrome of the 21^st century, after a six day week, I would not have the energy to even stammer. My father used the Sunday afternoons to read to us from nonte phonte, batul de great, abol tabol, stories from sukhtara and sometimes from his memories. He would doze off in between and start talking something about work. I thought it really funny and would relate that everyone in house who would listen how Baba started talking about a big tree girth and bessel area in midst of a ghost story.

Kabuliwala was shared on one such afternoon. While he dozed off I stayed awake thinking not about the girl but kabuliwala. How lonely he must be in a different country away from all whom he loved, learning new language, learning new practices, all because he had to earn money to support his family. It is not fair to compare him and me. I am comfortably off with a much loving husband(inspite of my efforts to test his patience) living a good life in a foreign land,  but in the heart of the matter lies distances. When life trudges along in its routine, there is nothing much, but on odd occasions one feels a sudden yearning to be back and within easy reach of what has been home for 25 years of existence. It is also an yearning for the quiet afternoons spent listening to stories with Baba’s arm for a pillow. And also for the innocence which allowed feelings of tenderness. In my bid to be strong there seems to be a loss of the appreciation of  feelings.

Much much later I saw the movie made in hindi by Bimal roy and bengali by Tapan Sinha. Balraj Sahni’s potrayal was heart wrenching, so was the song ‘ae mere pyare watan’ by manna dey.

I always thought of this story kabuliwala when I heard the word kabuli channa. Don’t ask why. In the weird way that mind works, I seem to have a look-up created against these two words in my database. This post was written in two parts, one was my diary entry and the other I was writing up for the blog. It does seem all right to combine them together, because in my mind they are connected together

Snacks are a headache. I cannot afford at best of times putting in an hour’s effort for  something which is a filler item. Also when you feel like eating snacks you want it with immediate effect.  How to conjure up something in 10-15 min? I feel the need of a wand, accompanied by a spell, similar to those from Harry Potter.  Point at the stove and mutter abracadabra and voila! There is lovely snack sitting on the stove. But however much I search for Diagon alley and platform 9^3/4 in London, they have not condescended to reveal themselves to a muggle.

So till the time I get a wand of my own I make do with small tricks. One cardinal rule I have 

decided to follow for snacks is, try not to use the gas/stove. Microwave and grillers are exempted from this. Once I put a pan on the gas, I end up spending at least 20-30 mins on it. Not worth it as I already mentioned. If we have muri (puffed rice) then there is nothing better than a jhalmuri. Then yesterday I recalled Aloo Kabli. This was not a frequent snack item in my childhood but its teasing taste had placed itself in a corner of my mind. A couple of years back when I went to a restaurant called Oh Calcutta! in Bombay they served this as a nibbler while we were waiting for the sumptuous bangali feast. A sudden hunger pang at 4pm Sunday evening triggered my forefathers instinct and I started foraging in my cupboards and fridge. I was rewarded with a tin of chick peas (yes it is not kabuli channa..you cannot be so fastidious) hiding behind the neglected food supplements bottles. I dragged it out and started thinking. That is when the memory of aloo kabli shone out in bright neon lights.

It is a medley of salty and citrus flavours. Things that make it different is the crunchiness of the onion, flakiness of the boiled potato and fragrance of the coriander expertly held together by the juices of the tomatoes. Here goes the recipe...

Ingredients

3 medium bolied potato

1 large or 2 small tomatoes

1 medium onion

1 cup kabuli channa , boiled  (or use tinned chick peas)

Coriander – 2 tbsp

Chaat Masala – ½ tbsp

Lemon juice

Red chilli Powder

Salt

Quickest way to boil the potato is to put them a refrigerator bag and microwave for 5-6 mins. Let it stay for a couple of mins and then take out and remove the skins. The baking variety of the potato works best. But any will do.

Dice the boiled potato, tomato and onion into square sizes. We don’t want the potato to lose its identity and that is the reason to keep it big enough. Add the boiled kabuli channa to this. I have to confess here that when the fancy strikes to have aaloo kabli, I more than often resort to the tinned variety. I know it is not good for digestion, but try telling that after you have the first spoonful.Last time we had it, we added another word to our limited medical vocabulary..epigastric region pains. To be fair the blame should be shared by haldiram samosa, cheesy garlic bread, skipped lunch. So if you want to play safe and still want the fun...be patient, soak a cup of channa overnight and then boil them. You might even be like me on those odd weeks when healthy eating takes my fancy and the fridge is filled up with all sorts of sprouts. Mine rot away after the first couple days of zeal. On an extreme you can skip the kabuli channa altogether. Potato/tomato and onion is a star combination anyways.

So then, after this discourse on channa, mix all the items together in a bowl. Add the coriander leaves, chaat masala, salt, lemon juice and red chilli powder as per you taste. Give it a good toss. If you allow it to stay for about 10 mins the juices really become great and you can lick your bowl clean.