The giving of thanks…

I had not had a proper vacation in almost two years! Reaction to the difficult atmosphere around us has had me keeping my nose steadily to the grindstone. Slowly but surely, the strains of life had been building up and I didn’t even know it. Then there came this opportunity for a whole week of vacation in the form of an invitation from friends in Salt Lake City. It would be great to see them, it had been a long time. There was real snow to jump into that was calling my name. But before that, there was packing. I hate packing. That coupled with life in general had me in low spirits that Tuesday morning. On the plane, my fingers wouldn’t stop beating a crazy tattoo on the airline seat. I’d left the daily grind behind but the subconscious mind wouldn’t rest or relax. It is hard to turn all your thoughts off like a flip of the switch.

Then we got to Salt Lake City. It had snowed a couple of nights earlier and there it lay, a soft, white blanket covering the ground. It was a proper winter’s day; wonderfully crisp and bright, the ice crystals twinkling in the sun. There is a strange peace that reigns in the softness of it, and a hush, almost like every sound is muffled somehow.

Amey and Sanjeev have been friends even before Amey and I really knew each other. They survived college together, learned to play the guitar together, were in a band together. They have similar personalities yet each is very distinctly their own person. They argue, rib each other and criticize one another with ridiculous ease, one borne out of a long friendship that I’ll bet they never really talk about. Guys don’t do that kind of stuff. They hadn’t seen each other in almost four years. They talked, they laughed, they played guitar; two guitars in harmony, sounds I haven’t heard in a long while. They did this often at one time. But life has evolved to new adventures now. A wonder of this evolution is Sanjeev and his lovely wife Vandana’s precious little baby boy. A bundle of the most beautiful smiles you ever saw. A couple of hours spent in their beautiful home, playing with this engaging little person, and the buzzing of things in my head faded away. It was like taking a deep, deep breath and letting go. The relaxation was inevitable.

Aside from being fabulous hosts, our friends are also deeply interested in food and are great cooks. Of course, we’d started discussing a Thanksgiving dinner even before we all met up. There was some talk of turkey, but then we decided there wasn’t any need for a typical feast. In fact, the only thing typical of the Thanksgiving holiday meals was the sheer amount of good food that was cooked and consumed. We ate, and rested, then we ate some more. My only contribution to it was my poached pears. There was spaghetti that Amey made. The rest was all Sanjeev and Vandana. From the time we got there to the time we left, we were plied with delicious food. There were crisp salads, amazing bruschetta, a butternut squash and coconut milk dessert to die for (which I intend to share at some point soon), utterly delectable potatoes, and this amazing, hearty French Onion Soup.

Sanjeev collects about as many books as Amey and I do, which means he has a lot of them. Among his books is this varied and interesting collection of cookbooks. One of them is Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook, from which the recipe for this soup is derived. It is easily one of the best French Onion soups I’ve had, all about the onion, as it should rightly be. The recipe is simple, though requiring some patience, which Sanjeev had in abundance as he browned the onions on the stove top and prepped the croutons with a good amount of cheer. His energy was infectious. I rarely enjoy cooking with other people, I much prefer solitude for it. This one time was an exception. I didn’t talk too much, mostly listened as Sanjeev and Amey discussed music and the travails of high altitude cooking, intermingled with the sounds of Vandana playing with her adorable little tyke in the next room. Adding to the symphony were the rhythms of a knife on the chopping board, onions sizzling and sauce pots bubbling merrily away. There was a soothing serenity to it all. They say friends are the family you choose to let into your life. Never have truer words been spoken.

French Onion Soup
Adapted slightly from Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook
Serves 4

Sweet white onions – 4 large, sliced into thin slivers
Unsalted butter- 3 tbsp
Balsamic Vinegar – 40 oz
Pinot Noir- a couple of swigs
Chicken Stock – 1 1/2 box
Bouquet garni of dried thyme & bay leaf
Salt and pepper to taste
Baguette – sliced thick
Olive oil to brush over the croutons
Gruyère – 3 cups, shredded

- Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Sauté the onion for 20 minutes or so, until they go soft and brown evenly.
- Increase the heat, add the wine and vinegar and stir to deglaze the pan. Add the stock and the bouquet garni. Let the liquid come to a boil.
- Reduce the heat to let the soup simmer. Season with salt and pepper and cook for 45 minutes to an hour. Periodically skim any foam that rises to the top.
- Pre-heat your oven to about 400 F.

- Fish out the bouquet garni. Ladle the cooked soup into crocks.
- Brush some olive oil over both sides of the bread and place on a tray. Put the tray under in the oven (on a broiler setting if you have one) to toast the bread for about four minutes, turning over the slices about halfway through.
- Place a couple of the toasted slices of baguette on top of the soup crocks and cover with generous amounts of grated Gruyère. Place the crocks into the oven in the top shelf until the cheese bubbles and browns.

Serve right away.

Cook’s notes:
The marriage of this onion soup and the Gruyere topped croutons is a match made in heaven! You crack into the crispy crouton on top and eat spoonfuls of soup with dunked cheesy croutons, it makes for scrumptious mouthfuls. You can use your home-made chicken stock if you make it yourself. Sanjeev used boxes of stock which worked very well, so don’t be afraid to use good store bought stock. Just check for salt content and season accordingly. The onions are the heart of the dish so they need to be evenly browned and well-softened. The time for the browning in the recipe is a guideline. You might require a bit more or less depending on what you are cooking in and where. We were a few thousand feet above sea level. So my timings may or may not work for you.

Good oven-proof bowls are required for this soup. Crocks are best but deep ramekins will do too. You can find these cheap at restaurant supply stores. Try and get good Gruyère. The flavours of this soup are simple. The quality of your ingredients will really come through.

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving surrounded by friends and family. Because of our good friends, we certainly did. An amazing weekend we are very thankful for.

Growing pains

When I started this blog earlier this year, Amey took up a hobby he’s always had a latent interest in.

We’re short on the square footage so all he could have for his first foray into gardening was the little window ledge above our kitchen sink. I like to think my blog naming choice factored into what his first project was. But truth be told, that was decided by some really hot (we’re talking bright lights flashing all over the Scoville scale) chillies we happened to find at the Indian store one day. He carefully saved the seeds from capsaicin riddled beauties and tossed them into a seedling pot with a fervent prayer.

A slow two weeks went by with no results…

After a frantic consultation with the omnipresent gods of instruction on the WWW, we came to the conclusion that (thanks to some quite flawed direction from yours truly) he had put the seeds too deep into the soil. Careful digging unearthed a couple of sprouted seedlings struggling to find daylight. Words of reproach and apology were bandied at large and the seedlings were replanted just barely beneath the surface of the soil.

They responded joyfully to their lives being saved by pushing out lovely green shoots in a couple of days. Since then, the ‘Cheeky Chilli’ plants, as they came to be unescapably christened, have never looked back. They moved from strength to strength and put out two fine young plants which grew happily for a while. Despite misgivings on the part of our local gardening store assistant,  Amey moved both seedlings together to a larger pot. He was worried that their roots being completely entangled, both might die if he tried to separate them.

The plants grew quite a bit more, than stopped. No new leaves, no sign of flowers. More internet research ensued. The plants had to be separated for them to grow. Amey gave in and closely cropped the roots of one plant to make sure the other one sustained less damage. He planted the second one in another pot just in case. I’m happy to report that both patients survived the ordeal and are thriving. The larger of the two has responded to all of his TLC by producing the most perfect little flower bud you ever saw, which turned into the most marvellous little chilli. That first harvested chilli didn’t quite manage to make it to the recipe we had planned for it. But I can say that it was one of the sweetest (in a manner of speaking) chillies I’ve ever bitten into.

The fruit had strong, flavourful heat with a wonderful crunch. I managed to restrain myself with the following few and used them in a version of a potato vegetable today. The simple nature of this recipe allows the flavours of the chilli to shine. The soft and mushy potato is the perfect foil for the searing heat of the chilli, mellowing it as it mixes through.

A hearty twice-cooked potato vegetable

Potatoes – 6, medium sized, a waxy variety
Red onion – 1, medium, slivered
Tomato – 1, cut into a 1/2″ dice
Green chillies (Thai or Serrano) – 2 to 3, chopped fine (4-5 if the chillies are milder)
Curry leaves – 5 to 6
Mustard seeds – 1 tsp
Turmeric – 1/2 tsp
Asafoetida – a pinch
Fenugreek – 1/2 tsp (optional)
Coriander – small handful of leaves, chopped fine
Salt to taste

- Boil potatoes. Peel upon cooling and chop into 1/2″ to 3/4″ cubes.
- Heat oil in a non-stick pan. Temper with mustard seeds. When the seeds start to splutter, add curry leaves, asafoetida, turmeric and green chillies. Add fenugreek, if using.
- Add onions and sauté until they are golden.
- Add tomatoes and fry for a couple of minutes. Add the potato pieces. Season with salt and toss gently to mix well. Cover and let cook for five to ten minutes.
- Garnish with coriander leaves.

Serve with chapati or other similar flatbread.

Notes:
We’ve eaten this dish often, but never with an ingredient harvested moments before they went into the pan. Maybe it was the vested effort but it seemed to us that chillies had the same zing before, a certain je ne sais quoi that they delivered straight into the food. There was a vibrancy of heat that I did not believe three young chillies could deliver.The recipe is delicious and since you are more than likely to use store bought chillies for this , I venture to suggest that you use 4-5. They are the primary flavouring medium here for bland potato canvas.

Amey has since moved on to develop his little ledge garden. We now have rosemary and thyme jostling for sunlight next to the chilli plants. He also grew some basil earlier but it flowered while we were away on a short trip and the leaves went an unpalatable bitter. Sad, but basil grows like a weed so we know that it will grow easily next year. What we discovered was that with some attention and know-how, you can grow things in the smallest of places. There is amazing pleasure and satisfaction in eating something you’ve seen grow before your very eyes. The experience has also raised our respect for farmers who choose organic methods of scale farming. That must truly be a job you have to be completely involved in, with hard work involved.

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Happy Diwali!

It’s Diwali…the festival of lights! Everywhere in India, diyas and electric lights brighten homes, turning night into day. This is a time for family and friends, festivities and merriment; wonderful food eaten next to flickering lights while enjoying shimmering and stentorian firecrackers…. an annual celebration of the triumph of light over darkness.

All these years, I’ve succumbed to the time-saving promise of the microwave pedha and quick-fix barfi. Not to take anything away from these convenient modern versions, but there is something to be said for the traditional fare, the ritual of planning your time and variety in the weeks before the festival, preparing to cook various Diwali delicacies, aside from the regular cooking of lunches and dinner. I thought I’d give this route a shot this time. I’ve been cooking for a while now. How hard could all of this be, right?

*Sigghh*

A behind-the-scenes look at this setting would reveal harried women everywhere frantically juggling several balls in order to bring the idyllic celebration scene to reality. The mad dash to clean the house and work their way through the back-breaking work of doling out all kinds of festival sweets. The recipes are simple but the work tedious and involved. It is important to get mixtures, roasts and temperatures just right. These golden equations have come into existence through years of trials and evolution of modes of cooking. Messing around can at best create a variation that could work, but at worst, could result in unmitigated disaster. Patience is really not my forte and I’m not one with much upper-arm strength. This was a rigorous schooling in stretching both.

First there was the fact that I did not plan this well at all. Since the decision to make faral (traditional sweets made for festivals by the people of Maharashtra in India) was made pretty much last minute, I had to commit to doing a bunch of things rather quickly. For instance, realistically, what could be made before the holiday was through? I decided on shankarpali (a sweet made with flour, clarified butter and sugar) and also on besan (chickpea flour) and rava (semolina) laddoos. Mulling over methods and recipes, I thought these would take the least amount of time.

Then ingredients had to be sourced, and even though this was an attempt at the traditional, compromises had to be made. One involved the use of all-purpose flour. There was no such thing when I was growing up in India. There was whole-wheat flour, the one used in chapatis, the one with a high fiber content. Then there was maida, a type of flour akin to cake flour, more finely-milled with greater gluten. Most sweets made with flour ask for the latter or a mixture of both. All-purpose flour makes a remarkably decent substitute. There was a mad dash for raisins and cashews and copious amounts of sugar and whole milk, easily gotten but not something I keep around.

I found out rather early in the process that these sweets certainly require room to work on, something my tiny kitchen doesn’t have. Though I don’t do it all the time, in this case a mise en place would have been tremendously useful. But when your counter-space is packed to such capacity that finding room to put down a teaspoon is problematic, you have to make do without such things to ease the process. Then there was the fact that I had chosen to work at a time at which I couldn’t pick up the phone and call my mom, so there were no trusted recipes to fall back on. There was nothing in our files on these sweets. I guess our mothers never thought we’d embark on such ambitious sideline projects that did not show up in daily eating. Or maybe they were just hinting we stay away from trying it. I can see why.

Indian sweets are rich and decadent by definition. They take copious amounts of ghee (clarified butter) and sugar. The rest of the ingredients that shuffle around probably wouldn’t make it on anyone’s healthy ingredient list. But there is a time and place for them. Amey and I agreed this was definitely it. We tackled the shankarpali first, little diamond shaped pastry bits that put up a winning fight against all attempts on my part to make them healthier. The dough itself takes a good amount of ghee, but we thought we’d try and bake them to cut out the frying oil requirement; an attempt that failed dismally. They came out done like hard candy, not something your are looking for here. What you are looking for is a shortbread type bite, one that can only be achieved by frying them in oil till they are golden. That gives you a wonderful melting piece. There is work involved in kneading of the dough and the rolling, the cutting and the frying and the standing around for all these things to happen. The recipe I worked with was good but not great which is why I decided against sharing it. (Update: I tried a second recipe, which was very good. All I adjusted was the sugar to make the recipe a bit sweeter. Thanks to Happy Burp!)

I choose not to speak about the besan laddoos. A badly written recipe and lack of thinking things through on my part resulted in besan laddoos entirely too buttery for my liking. No one who ate them complained, but they aren’t the way they taste in my memory. The star of the entire effort however, were the rava-coconut laddoos. Delicious, crumbly, with the crunch of the nuts contrasting perfectly with the bite of the coconut and tangy raisins, by some quirky twist these turned out exactly like I remember my mom’s to be. These are the things I wish I had the time and inclination to make in batches at different times of the year. Just so I would have them around to pop them in my mouth whenever the mood strikes me.

Rava-coconut laddoos
Makes 30 to 35 laddoos depending on size

Coarse semolina (sooji or rava) – 3 cups
Sugar – 2 cups
Dry coconut powder – 1 cup
Green cardamom (elaichi) powder – 2 tbsp
Clarified butter (ghee) – 4 tbsp
Water – 3/4 cup for sugar syrup
Saffron – a good pinch
Raisins – 1/4 cup
Raw pistachio bits – 1/3 cup

- Prepare a large tray or platter to lay out the laddoos.
- In a saucepan, combine the sugar and water. Dissolve and heat to make a sugar syrup. When the sugar is dissolved, add the saffron to the liquid.
- Soak the raisins in some very hot water for five minutes, then drain.
- Heat ghee gently in a non-stick pan at just under medium heat. Add the semolina and fry until it turns a pinkish brown.
- Add the coconut and cardamom powders and fry for a several more minutes.
- Mix the semolina and coconut mixture into the sugar syrup. Move this off the heat.
- Mix in the nuts and the soaked raisins and keeping stirring to bring everything together into a thick mixture.
- When it is just about cool enough to handle, but still warm, start to roll out spheres about 3/4″ to 1″ in diameter. This may require some pressure to compact it. Place the laddoos to cool and set on the platter. Continue until the entire mixture is used up.

Cook’s notes:
Be prepared to devote some time and muscle power to these sweet delights. It is not such a bad thing if you think of it as prior exercise to offset the eating of the laddoos. I had forgotten how much I love these until I took a bite. Most kinds of nuts would work here. Amey and I even discussed using pine nuts, a far from traditional choice, but one that I think would have worked quite well. Avoid walnuts though, they don’t quite work. There is a slight bitterness they have that clashes with the other flavours. You can choose to leave the raisins out if you like. I find I like the teensy burst of tangy moisture of the soaked raisins. I know some variations include a fresh coconut or a self-grated dry coconut, but the coconut powder is the perfect thing to use here. Being of the same size as the semolina grains, it integrates perfectly into the mix.

Maybe this recipe was all I should have attempted. But Amey didn’t think everything else was as unsuccessful as I thought it was. Faral is meant to be shared with friends and neighbours. So we handed out some gifts. We made these lovely little packages for our friends. Happy Diwali guys!!

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Lemoncholy

When life tosses you lemons, what do you do? If you are anything like me, I guess you do your damnedest to lob them right back. The problem is, in this little game you have going on, life is almost always the stronger player, and it is harder to play that googly you just got tossed, especially if you weren’t expecting it. You blink and you miss, the bat kisses air, or worse, you hit the ball in a completely different direction, and not a good one. This is why you learn to make lemonade. (Not blinking would also be a good skill to learn, but “Constant vigilance!” à la Mad-eye Moody would be rather tiresome after a while.) Better to hold on to that lemon for a bit while you decide what to do with it. Lumbering about blindly never did anyone any good.

In case you are wondering, this is not how cricket is played. But we’re not talking about cricket so much as we are about lemons. In our house, we could go without milk and bread but there will always be lemons in the house…lemons and limes. My husband loves them more than he loves his guitar and his camera and that is saying something. Amey’s love of all thing sour is legendary. He adores lemons, loves limes, is enthralled by vinegars. His idea of ‘improving the flavour’ of any dish involves adding one of these ingredients. He is the only person I know whose fried rice is actually vinegar rice. If we had grown up in the United States, his favourite candy would have been Sour Patch kids, hands down, no contest.

College, while offering him several freedoms, also put in his sights, front and center, the tamarind and green mango vendor’s cart. This guy showed up with his cart, rain or shine, with kayris (green mangoes) just before summer and tamarind all year round.  While other kids were busy with restaurants, Amey snacked happily on morsels of green mango dressed in salt and chilli. The vendor knew him by name and had his order ready when he saw him coming. This guy was happily immersed in salt and sourness while the rest of the kids were flirting with alcohol.

Being married to someone who likes sour food and likes to cook comes with its challenges. He used it on everything with a heavy-handed abandon reminiscent of Paula Deen and butter. It took some time for me to convince him that not everyone thinks of lime juice as a staple. Granted his culinary quirk is way healthier than butter, but let me tell you, there is such a thing as too much acidity in your food. You will not know this until you have someone squeeze a whole lime into your plate of dal and rice…or make you a hot dog that could pass the litmus test. A chilli fiend and a lime fanatic…our early days in cooking bought some sore trials to its consumption for both of us. The years have taught us well, w-ell, maybe they have taught him better. I can still be heavy handed with the chilli. Amey, however, has honed his handling of the acid and citrus to a fine slant. Granted, he still puts too much vinegar on his rice. But now, it is his own plate of rice. He has learned that there is your own palette and that of others. More importantly, he has also found that he appreciates the subtlety of citrus as much as he enjoys the more in-your-face flavours.

One of his early experimentations was a take on a lemon cream sauce. A dish he loves to eat when we are out is the Chicken Tequila Fettucine served at California Pizza Kitchen. That pasta dish made him happy enough to try a version with cream and citrus on his own. Born out of this was a lemon-cream sauce. With some serious, careful honing, something I rarely have patience with, he has perfected the sauce. It is creamy, unctuous, just tart enough to make the presence of the lemon felt strongly but not overwhelmingly. A gentle, soothing sauce with a burst of refreshing flavour to bring sunshine to the most gloomy day.

Broken Linguine with mushrooms in a lemon, cream and thyme sauce
Serves 3-4

Garlic – 6 cloves, chopped fine
Red Onion – 1/2, diced fine OR Shallot – 2, diced fine
Thyme – 1 tbsp of leaves
Lemon zest – 1 fruit
Lemon juice – 1/2 of one fruit
Dried porcini or wild mushrooms – 1/2 cup (chanterelles would be excellent here)
Cream – 1/2 cup
Sausage (optional) – 2, diced
Cayenne pepper – 1/2 tsp
Orange Flower Honey – 1/2 tsp (use regular honey if you don’t have this)
Linguine – 3/4 box
Olive oil – 2 tbsp
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan for grating over

- Reconstitute the dry mushrooms in about a cup and half of boiled hot water. Set aside for about fifteen minutes until the mushrooms go soft and the water has become a rich, brown broth.
- Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. Break the linguine into three pieces and throw into the pot. Boil pasta as per directions on box.
- Meanwhile, Heat the oil in a shallow pan on medium low. Add the garlic and fry until slightly brown.
- Add the onions and saute until translucent. Add the thyme.
- Roughly chop the reconstituted mushrooms and add to the pan, along with the broth. Mix to incorporate, then bring to a boil.
- Add the lemon juice and zest and cayenne pepper. Season with salt and pepper.
- Stir in the cream. Season with salt and pepper.
- Reduce heat and simmer the sauce for a bit and let reduce slightly. Add the honey and mix it in.
- Drain the pasta and return it to the pot. Add the sauce and toss together to coat the strands of pasta.

Serve with a fresh grating of Parmesan over each dish, along with some fresh ground pepper.

Cook’s notes:-
This sauce originated in a pure lemon and cream version, which made for some sticky pasta incidents. We tried variations with half-and-half, wine and vegetable and chicken broths. There was no definite depth of dimension until we started to use the mushroom broth (which, by the way, is now a favourite ingredient in our cooking). Amey balanced the flavours with some orange blossom honey which he’s partial to. Its citrus notes worked wonderfully in this sauce, making it one of the most delicious pasta sauces I’ve eaten. He’s also tried variations with other herbs. While they all work with varying degrees of success, we both agree that thyme works best, gently infusing and disappearing into the sauce more completely than anything else. Also it is great as an additional garnish.

What else you put into the pasta is entirely up to you. Shreds of roast chicken would be great, as would bacon. Leave the meat out completely and you have a vegetarian version. Strips of sautéed peppers, steamed asparagus or artichoke hearts would be brilliant with this sauce. I love to put sun-dried bits of tomato on mine. This is the sauce I will ask for more often than others when Amey decides to make pasta. To him, it is also an appreciation of how he and his tastebuds have evolved.

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A nourishing noodle

I was dismayed to find autumn creep up on me rather unexpectedly this year. I kept thinking it was a while, wrapped up as I was in the corn and berries and peas, a very cozy place to be. Yet before I knew it, the days began getting shorter and shadows longer. We are already in mid-September and the good strawberries are all gone. Everywhere I turn I see the pumpkins that are being shoved on to me by eager retailers. The more I want to tuck the advent of Halloween to the farthest corners of my mind, the more I see it everywhere. The slow creeping in of the Bay area Indian summer has only just begun. While I will enjoy the sunshine, I know I’ll hate the heat, thanks to the unwelcome consensus some older folk had of not adding air-conditioning to apartments in the Northwest. Bidding goodbye to favourite foods, incumbent sleepless nights in stifling heat, all these simultaneous realizations just brought me down. Marvin, he of the paranoid android fame, has nothing on me. Such depth of depression can only be fought by deep seas of comfort. The kind that only a generous helping of comforting carbs can provide. Enter the versatile noodle.

I am, and always will be, a sucker for noodles, from any and all cultures. Slurpilicious egg noodles, feathery angel hair or rice noodles, crackling vermicelli, rich ramen; they all weave a spell on me. One glimpse of a plate or bowl of their enriched goodness and I’m lost in their uniform strands. Noodles lured me into the world of Chinese cuisine and I’ve never turned back since. I moved on to happily discover that most cultures had their own brand of noodles. But be they made of flour and egg, or rice, or wheat, I unequivocally love them all. There is something soothing, calming even, about a mouthful of pasta sopped in sauce, or a satisfying ritual of slurping up a bowl of Chinese noodles or Italian spaghetti. As a child, I remember masala Maggi noodles being my answer every time mom said she wasn’t sure what to cook for dinner. I would inhale a packet as a post-school snack with equal unbridled joy. Some of my most favourite memories involve rainy days and Maggi noodles. These were days when you went to school in the pouring rain, doing your damnedest to avoid getting splashed by cars. You sat through lessons, flinching at the lightning and jumping at the inevitable crack of thunder that followed, all the while just wishing you’d never left home. (Some part of your brain also marvelled at the repeated proof that light travels faster than sound…yours didn’t? Well, just nerdy ol’ me then!) Then at four in the afternoon you trudged through the now-pool-like puddles back home, too tired to avoid getting splashed this time. But then you arrived home and were lucky to have your mum there, with dry towels and something hot to eat. But if you were luckier still, she was out running an errand. Because then you got to make your own snack.

If she was out, there was hot milk in warming mugs, a pot of water on the stove and a note saying you could make a snack for yourself, with heaping warnings to b-e-v-e-r-y-c-a-r-e-f-u-l with fire. You peeled out of wet clothes into something warm & dry, made sure the kid sister had done the same and was staying out of trouble, (a minor feat since she made up for my lack of trouble by being twice as troublesome; who says there isn’t balance in the world?) watching cartoons with her mug of Bournvita. Then, you headed to the kitchen. There, with mom not hovering over your shoulder, you could decide whether your noodles were going to have peas or tomatoes or carrots or soy, and there were no arguments over having them plain if you so wished. After (carefully) prepping the veggies, you (carefully! since you were very obedient and responsible) boiled the water, cracked the two-minute noodles and shook the tastemaker into the water, added the extras and waited the eight to ten minutes it took for all of it to actually come together. Then you carefully ladled the noodles into two plates, slathered your own with tomato-chilli sauce (because really what doesn’t taste better with it? It’s like bacon for vegetarians) and put some ketchup on your sister’s since she wasn’t addicted to chilli like weirdo you. You called her for her plate and then made your way to the other room where it was quiet, the only sound being the pitter-patter of the rain. You grabbed a favourite Enid Blyton or Nancy Drew and sat on the sofa, slurping down the barely steaming noodles, chasing around the peas with your fork absorbed in your book in this heaven of warmth and security. The rain cocooned everything and was, quite suddenly now, more friend than antagonist, at least until you had to go to school again the next day. Those days seem so far away now and though my repertoire of noodle preparation has certainly expanded, the feeling that eating it brings is almost still quite the same. The early love of ramen has also filled me with curiosity to try all kinds of noodles. To battle the fall blues, I decided to try to rekindle a good mood with soba.

I’d bought a packet of soba, wanting to try out a recipe I’d read on Orangette, the kind that you just know will be fabulous when you read about it. The fact that I’d never eaten soba didn’t faze me one bit. I’ve never met a noodle I didn’t like. Soba are Japanese style thin noodles served warm in broth or cold with some dipping sauce. They taste a bit nutty with a nice bite. I had also bought this jar of sunflower seed butter to try. This is much more fluid than peanut butter at room temperature so I thought of using it in this recipe since it seemed well on its way to make a good sauce already. It has a milder flavour in comparison to peanut butter which worked really well as a sauce base. The old habit of chucking vegetables at my noodles also kicks in automatically and before I knew it I had chopped some of what I had at home, the last of some asparagus, a celery stalk or two and some scallions. The heat of the chilli combined with the nutty sunflower butter provided the lifting of spirits that I was looking for. I now have a new recipe added to my list of comfort foods.

Soba in a Nut-Chilli sauce
Adapted from Orangette
Serves 2-3

Soba noodles – 1/2 to 3/4 pound
Sunflower seed butter – 1/2 cup
Lemon – 1, zest and juice
Indian Chilli Sauce – 2 tbsp (alternatively use Sriracha or Sambal Olek – 1 tbsp)
Mayonnaise – 3 tsp
Hoisin – 1/2 tsp (optional)
Soy sauce – 2 tsp
Garlic – 3 cloves, finely minced
Ginger – 1/2”, cut into fine matchsticks
Celery – 2 stalks, diced small
Asparagus – 3 stalks, chopped small
Scallions – 2-3, chopped small
Sesame seeds – 1-1/2 tsp
Dark Sesame oil – 1/2 to 1 tbsp
Salt, if needed
Coriander for garnish

- To a saucepan on medium heat, add the sesame oil. Toss in the ginger and garlic and saute for a minute or so.
- Add the scallions, asparagus & celery and saute (until the asparagus is cooked, about 5 to 7 minutes if the asparagus is small). Move the veggies off the heat.
- Toast the sesame seeds and place aside.
- In a large bowl, prepare the sauce by combining the sunflower seed butter, chilli sauce, soy sauce, mayonnaise, hoisin, lemon zest and lemon juice. Stir to mix.
- Bring a large pot of water to boil. Then add the soba noodle bunches and turn the heat down to a simmer. Gently boil the noodles for about three minutes. Then drain the noodles in a colander and give them a quick wash under cold running water to remove excess starch off the strands, gently separating the strands.
- Place portions of  the noodles into the large bowl containing the sauce and gently toss to coat all the noodles with the sauce, adding more and incorporating until you have the right sauce-to-noodle proportions to your liking. Sprinkle over the sesame seeds.

Heap generous amounts into bowls and garnish with coriander (cilantro) to serve.

Cook’s notes:-
The soba is delicious, a bit chewy than most noodles, similar (though bit more al dente) to whole wheat spaghetti. Giving it that quick gentle wash in cold water makes the noodles barely warm when you toss them in the sauce. The nuttiness of the sunflower seed butter gathers a little sweetness from the mayo and hoisin, tartness from the lemon juice and combines with the chilli sauce to form a luscious sweet-and-sour sauce with a passive heat that you just feel at the back of your throat. This is a truly customizable recipe so by all means, feel free to throw in your own substitutions. I think some sort of nut butter and the lemon juice is key here. The rest of the ingredients could change around in quantity and inclusion (even without the hoisin and mayo for example, this is a marvellous sauce.) Molly of Orangette worried about over dressing the noodles. Amey and I could have happily gobbled up more sauce, so I guess this point is entirely dependant on your own tastes. The crunch of sesame seed was too subtle a contrast in texture for me. The next time I intend to add crushed peanuts. Also, I’ll add some carrots, they will really go well with this sauce.

I love developing on my childhood taste of food, it changes but never quite entirely. The chilli in the sauce kept me from putting in tomato-chilli sauce this time, but only just. Reminiscing like this also sometimes makes me wish I’d had a more fun with the food making times, like setting my Mom’s kitchen calendar on fire. But then maybe she wouldn’t have let me into the kitchen after that! My reminisces also get me thinking about you, dear reader. What are some of your favourite childhood food memories?

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Fenugreek

(I’m excited to announce that aside from my own blog, I just began writing for KQED’s Bay Area Bites, a San Francisco chef and foodie blog here in the Bay area! It is a wonderful blog collective showcasing the talents of many local chefs and writers. The following is my first post there.)

The kitchen was always interesting to me as a child because it had a number of things I wasnʼt allowed to touch. My sisters didnʼt have these rules. That is because my mother didnʼt worry that they would kill themselves by trying to eat salt or spices straight out of their tins. My curiosity almost always overshadowed my caution. All that stopped the day I knocked loose a couple of my milk teeth; the day I tried to munch on methi (fenugreek) seeds.

When you look at the squat, rectangular and extremely hard seeds of fenugreek, you may wonder why anyone would take any trouble to work with it. But this unyielding spice is accompanied by a nutty, bitter and mellow flavor that could not be replicated by anything else. It loses some of its toughness when you gently fry or boil it, which also brings out its subtle flavor. The fragrance of the whole spice is a bit woody. But the wheaty, caramel colored seeds release a nutty aroma when cooked. In a spice blend, its flavors meld with the other spice to give the blend a deep bass note.

Due to the tough physical nature of the spice, it finds wide application in its ground form. But its seeds are also popular. A little goes a long way with this spice, as too much can make your meal overwhelmingly bitter. This is especially true if you are using whole seeds.

Fenugreek seeds also have medicinal qualities. As traditional remedies, concoctions of fenugreek are used as an appetite stimulator, in the curing of cough and congestion and prescribed to nursing mothers.

In India, the leaves of the fenugreek plant are used as a fragrant herb when dried and used as greens in their fresh state. The bitterness of the seed is reflected in the fresh leaves. They are very fragrant when they are dried. In the dry form, fenugreek leaves are used in curries and paired with vegetables like peas. They pair especially well with cream-based recipes. The seeds are like a more humble cousin. They too are used in different kinds of curries and in combination with various vegetables like okra and eggplant. The difference is that the seed will form the base of the recipe while the herblike leaves will be sprinkled on top of a dish towards the end of cooking.

While several dishes use fenugreek seeds, either as part of a spice mix or on its own, the seeds are the star of this recipe along with the very versatile potato. It would be hard to define the roots of this dish. It falls under some semblance of western Indian cooking, but I think the credit lies with my mother-in-law, from whom I got the recipe. Were you to try to look for a similar vegetable recipe, you would most likely end up with several using fenugreek leaves. Like most Indian dishes, this one involves a combination of a few spices but they all come together in celebration of this unassuming seed, which is often relegated to a supporting role.

Potatoes with coconut and fenugreek seeds

Click here to read the recipe

Adventures in jam-making (Part 1)- The berry story

What is it about jam that is so comforting? I guess so much of it is intertwined with childhood and a simpler life. Mention it and people get that far away, dreamy, glazed-over look in their eyes. You can almost see them dial back the years to a sweeter time, when sugar was your best bud, not your worst enemy. There were scrambled moments of toast and jam before school or the leisurely pursuit of happiness as you were whiling away your summer vacation in the company of your friends and large bowls of ice-cream with your favourite jam over it. Jam is a quintessential representative of childhood, of all that is pure and simple, before sugar crossed over to the dark side and became something you eschewed instead of embraced.

I have always wondered about jam-making, but reading all about the sterilising and washing and boiling and botulism made me very nervous about trying it. Homemade jam may be the perfect gifts but no one wants the secret ingredient of food-poisoning to be lurking beneath brassy gold lids. But it was a losing battle. I’m always curious to try new things. The jam fairy must have had enough of my sitting on the fence because last week she gave me a firm push in the direction of making jam, materialising in the form of ollalieberries. Some say these berries are a cross between the blackberry and another berry. Some say it’s a type of blackberry. Either way they are uncommon enough that even spell-check won’t refuses to believe that it’s a real word, firmly urging me to use ‘collieries’ instead. But I digress. Ollalieberries grow best in the Southwest, the article said, the author wistfully talking about picking them in his childhood, moving on to the fact that they were around for a short spell.

I am extremely fond of berries. I have a slightly softer spot for strawberries but am still on very friendly footing with all of the berry family. Here I was, having lived in California all this time…it was sacrilegious that I hadn’t even heard of the ollalieberry. As I began searching for farms that grow them, I understood quickly that their season here was very quickly drawing to a close. Time was of the essence if I was to try this hitherto unknown-from-my-universe berry this year. I called up Swanton Farms’ Coastways Ranch off Highway 1, a well-known organic berry farm here in NorCal; I was electronically informed by a courteous gentleman that this was the last weekend for ollalieberries. They did not have huge quantities left but if I wanted a few, there was still hope. Since I wasn’t planning to turn whole-seller, a few was all I was interested in. Swift plans were made to go to the farm on Saturday. I casually threw this last-minute plan out to my friends, many of whom, to my pleasant surprise, enthusiastically agreed to join Amey and I on our berry-discovery expedition.

Saturday dawned to grey and foggy skies in the Bay area, as is so often the case in summer. While Amey sounded ominous warnings of all of us shivering and catching colds by the berry runners, I refused to waiver from the expedition. The urge to make jam had come late upon me, but by golly, I would not back down this time. The fence is a very uncomfortable seat, once you’re off it, you never willingly go back to perch there, and I was off for good. Fog or no fog, I was set to discover the mysterious ollalieberry. We headed southward with fervent prayers that it would be sunnier there, but the journey along Highway 1 (a beautiful drive in any weather) didn’t seem to hold much promise. Then suddenly, as if a benignant god had decided to look out for us, the fog backed out into the ocean and the sun shone down through the trees. The farm was a wondrously bright expanse. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful clear afternoon.

There was a bit of a comedy of errors with some of my friends getting lost. Coastways Ranch is that kind of farm that doesn’t really scream out its whereabouts, and so a couple of friends ended up on a lovely little detour ending up at their farm-stand. There is no cell signal out on this farm so there was no way to get in touch with each other. Makes you wonder how people met up anywhere before cell phones. As my friend Aashima and I embarked upon grabbing up the few ollalies left, Amey and my old college buddy Kartik kept watch at the farm entrance, then drove up the coast a bit in search of the elusive cell signal to locate our elusive friends, Yash and Mayur. Aashima and I had a peaceful time hunting for the berries, popping the first couple in our mouth. The bushes were close to bare with the bulk of the crop having already been picked, but stooping down and pushing the leaves aside we found some shining garnet gems.

The berry tastes very much like a blackberry, the ones we picked were just a bit more tart than your average blackberry. It is sublime and refreshing, especially as you walk through sunny fields. We managed to pick a couple of pints between us just as Kartik and Amey got back from their fruitless search for our missing friends. They helped us pick another pint and we decided we were done with the scant ollalies and decided to venture into the neighbouring strawberry farm where we had much better luck, both in finding fruit and our missing friends, who had ended up there first. The strawberries are at the height of their season and are sweet and bursting with summer. This is the taste experience one should be able to bottle for those long, cold winter nights. I decided there and then I was definitely going to try my hand at canning, even as something told me that if I was successful with the jam, there was no way it would last that long….

Delighted with our pickings, we proceeded to head back after a good lunch. The fog that had been kept at bay (pardon the pun) had started to creep back. But we had a beautiful few hours of sun. I can’t think of a better way to spend a day. Unless it involves sitting under a shady tree, eating berries.

The orange project

Between work and exams and one of my favourite pop stars dying (RIP MJ), I’ve been reading Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia (which by the way is a pretty wicked read!). Readers of her long-completed cooking project and blog must be familiar with her engaging style, which is very much what drew me to the book. Though I discovered the blog after the project was completed, I still haven’t managed to make my way through all of the postings and it’s really hard to wrap my head around her successful endeavour, which certainly isn’t for the faint-hearted. I know being a ’sometimes meatatarian’ there is no way on earth I could have pulled that off. Plus being the aforementioned type of meat eater, just having read the passage about the bone marrow extraction made me want to sear the images my brain supplied permanently out of it. And there is no way in hell that I am plastering eggs all over my kitchen in order to learn to toss an omlette. Just the idea of an egg-plastered kitchen had me breaking out in hives.

While Ms. Powell and I certainly don’t see things the same way (I fervently hope the level of wastage she describes is artistic license and far from the truth, my mom would have various choice things to tell her about starving children) several passages of the book had me chortling in empathy. And what I am loving most about the book so far is how much a part of everything her husband is, actively or passively. That resonates so much with me because Amey is practically always part of my maddening (for him) ideas of the time, sometimes willingly, sometimes kicking and screaming. But he is always supportive of them, half-baked schemes though they may be. Like the time that I thought I could live through a no-sodium, no fat, no flavour (kill me now!) diet, telling him confidently that I could do it. In my zeal for the thing, I chose to ignore the fact that the diet included fish, something that I could never eat and no salt, something I can’t live without. After three days of scrabbling around, steaming, baking and boiling several veggies, meats and halibut (god, what was I thinking??), I enthusiastically started the diet on the fourth day. One bite of the prescribed morning breakfast of steamed, unsalted, peppered fish had me throwing up in the sink and simultaneously howling and babbling incoherently on the bathroom floor about all the fish in the fridge I was delusional enough to think I could eat. While Amey handed me a glass of orange juice to stop the gagging until I calmed down, he packed his lunch, two cautious little boiled halibut sandwiches with salt on the side. And that was his meal for two days until he gamely worked his way through the fish. I’ll bet he gagged through it, that stuff was vile! Amey isn’t even much of a fish eater. Truth be told, he must have eaten five fish dishes in his entire life. But that’s what he does when my plans get out of hand. *Sniffle* gotta love him! Julie Powell would understand exactly what I mean.

Life throws the guy many such curve balls since he has me for his wife. So he was understandably quite nervous when I eyed our gigantor pile of oranges and pronounced I was making pasta. I had wanted to bake a cake for a friend which required a couple of oranges but since a packet of six was on sale I’d happily bought the entire thing thinking I’d juice the rest or something. Well, in middle of a mercurial last two weeks, the cake didn’t get baked and there were oranges all over our tiny counter. Something had to be done and for no reason in particular I decided that I had to make a sauce out of the oranges. Not an orange sauce. But a sauce, a savoury sauce, using oranges. I’m sure it’s been done, there’s nothing new under the sun. But I’ve never done it before. All I had for instruction was something I’d read in one of the Jamie Oliver tomes about “Orange being best friends with (a couple of things).” Amey guardedly offered the wisdom that maybe this was not the best idea. Couldn’t I try a tested orange sauce recipe first? But the oranges were staring forlornly at me and had to be given a fitting send-off. They couldn’t all be juiced. So two of them met their timely end in this unctuous sauce.

Pasta and Broccoli with an Orange Cream Sauce

For the sauce:-
Red onion – 1/2 or Shallots -2, diced fine
Juice of two navel oranges
Zest of one orange
Cream or Half-and-half- 1 cup
Ancho Chilli Powder – 1.5 teaspoons
Cumin Powder – 1/2 tsp
Gruyere cheese – 1/2 cup grated
Vegetable stock – 1 cup
Ginger – 1 tsp, grated or minced
Corn Starch – 1/2 tsp
Habanero Chilli sauce – to taste (optional)
Salt & Pepper to taste
Olive Oil – 1 tbsp

Pasta – we used 1 pack of rotini
Broccoli- one crown sliced into thin florets
Garlic – 3 cloves, sliced thin
Chilli flakes – 2 tsp
Olive Oil- 2 tsp

- Boil the pasta in plenty of salted water and drain when cooked al dente.
- While the pasta is boiling, in a skillet, heat the oil and add the garlic. When the garlic is gently browned, add the broccoli florets and saute for a minute or two, then add chilli flakes. Saute until the broccoli is cooked through.
- In a saucepan, heat the sauce portion of olive oil and add the shallots. Cook until translucent.
- Then add the ginger and stir for a minute. Add the orange juice. Turn up the heat to boil.
- Turn the heat down a bit to simmer. After a few minutes, add the orange zest and cream and turn the heat back to medium.
- Add the veggie stock and Ancho Chilli and cumin powders. Stir to incorporate. Add the cheese and stir until it melts into the liquid.
- Add the cornstarch and stir to incorporate completely. Let the sauce simmer for a while until it thickens slightly. Add the habanero chilli sauce at this point if using.
- Add salt and pepper to taste. The gruyere is already salty so you may want to taste it just a bit before you add salt.

Pour the sauce over the pasta and toss along with the sauteed broccoli. Serve hot with grated or shaved parmesan.

Cook’s notes:-
Sweet oranges do make a pretty decent savoury sauce. I admit I was a little worried when I saw swirls of orange once all the liquids had been mixed. I thought I might end up with orange juice floating on a stock and cream mixture. But once the cornstarch and cheese were added, everything came together pretty well. The sauce turned into a lovely kumquaty-yellow-orange. The pasta itself smelled citrusy yet earthy at the same time and the first bite broke into spiced orange flavours in the mouth. The sauce is light and just coats the pasta with none overflowing in the pot or plate. It worked well with this shape of pasta, though I’m pretty sure it would work with penne too.

What surprised us is was how well the garlic-sauteed broccoli worked with the background hints of orange and chilli. The ancho chilli powder isn’t very spicy, just adding a gentle heat to the proceedings. That’s why the habanero is optional; to be used if the chilli flavour is to be kicked up several notches. Use paprika if you don’t have ancho chilli powder. Fortunately, this mad scheme could be categorised under fairly successful. At least it’s not messy flaked fish for Amey to have to finish off. Maybe I should have had some anchovy paste on hand, that would have been nostalgic! Come to think of it, it probably would have worked real well in the sauce.

Puri story

Crossing continents has meant adapting to new ways. And for the most part this has been fairly painless. But sometimes I do miss the most ridiculous things. Like tea-time. Not because tea-time is ridiculous, oh no, far from it. It’s ridiculous because I wasn’t much of a tea-drinker back home and yet, I feel a twinge of nostalgia thinking of it. Or maybe that’s just that horrible cup of yoghurt that I ate for lunch today. (Raspberry yoghurt can’t be blue, I tell you!)

Food-minded as I am, I liked how the day was clearly marked into meals, breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. Without tea-time there just seems to be too long a time between lunch and dinner. You see all kinds of food products and fast food vying to be your ‘in-between go-to food’. But then of course, they are promoting the wrong fourth meal. Tea-time is where it’s at. And the reason I was so fond of it was while everyone else savoured their tea, I loved the snacks that went along with it.

If you are thinking along the lines of delicate madeleines and cucumber sandwiches, let me stop you right there. That’s not what tea-time is about where I’m from. Bring out the Nan khatai (yummy shortbread)  and the khari biscuits (a rough kind of puff pastry biscuit that’s heaven dipped in a cup of tea) and Parle-G. Sometimes it was stuff you got in stores. Sometimes it was home-made, like this recipe I’ve mentioned before. But that’s the stuff you had on an ordinary day. When it was a special tea-time, (which in case you’re interested could be anytime between 3 and 5 in the afternoon), the day we had guests, especially a collection of her friends, tea was an absolutely special meal. Such times were also known as the days my mom lost her sense of humour.

Mummy and her friends all met together once in a month or so. They didn’t even consider meeting up in a restaurant, such a frivolous notion around such seasoned cooks. So they always met at the house of each one on a rotating basis and would make a day of it, lunch and tea being on the menu. Mom would start planning days in advance. Vegetables and groceries would arrive a day or two ahead. The house would be scrupulously shiny and clean, a mini spring-cleaning ritual in itself.  She tried to prep everything she could the night before. But inevitably, tons would be left for the day itself. As a result, on the big day, my mother always gave the impression of a ponderous stampede. She would rise early, wake us up early to be done with giving us breakfast and then rush around for the rest of the day; tugging a pillow upright, furiously shaking my younger sister awake, my elder sister off the phone or snatching my book out of my hands, alternating between mumbling incoherently under her breath and prodding us loudly to “Get off the sofa!” or “Don’t eat that, it’s for later!” or “Don’t try to feed your cereal to the cat!”.  Try as we might to be sanguine about what, after all, wasn’t our friends coming over, me and my sisters couldn’t help being swept up in her frenzy and as a result at the end of the day, we all felt like we’d run a marathon. This and the incessant errands made us dread these days, but only just a little. Because we’d put up with a lot for the food that came with these days.

Friends arrived for an early lunch and everyone tucked in. Then we tried our best to let mom enjoy her friends’ company as we gave our best imitation of model children and cleared the table and dishes. But she’d be up on her feet in a little bit to get tea together. For me this was the best part really. It was like the second scene of a really good play. Lunch-lite. And of the several things she made over the years, my favourite times were the ones she made sev-puri.

Sev puri is snack food heaven in my world. In the real world, it is the snack that can be seen in similar forms in several cuisines. Tacos have a lot in common with sev puri. The concept is similar, corn chip becomes a flat flour cracker-type shell called a puri. Couple of chutneys take the place of guacamole and salsa. Add onion and potato for the bulk and sev instead of cheese. Voilà!

Sev Puri

Hard Puris for the base (in a pinch you can use Kettle Chips Black Bean Tortilla chips)
Thin yellow sev
Potatoes – 3 large, boiled in salted water and mashed on cooling
Red Onion – 1 large, finely diced
Cilantro -few chopped leaves

Chutneys:
> Sweet date and tamarind red chutney
Seedless dates – 10 to 12
Tamarind paste – 2 tsps
Red chilli powder – 1 tsp
Cumin  powder -1 tsp
Coriander powder – 1 tsp
Salt – 1/2 tsp
Asafoetida – a pinch (optional)
Jaggery – a couple of 1/2″ pieces

- Boil the dates with enough water to just cover them. Then move off the heat and cool them down.
- Add the dates into a food processor or blender with the rest of the ingredients and blend into a smooth puree.

> Spicy cilantro and mint green chutney:
Cilantro – 1 bunch
Mint – 1/2 bunch, leaves picked
Green chillies – 2
Onion – 1/4
Lemon – 1/2, juiced
Butter – 1 tbsp
Salt

- Add all ingredients into a food processor and grind into a fine puree, adding water only if required.

To assemble the sev puri:
- Start with laying out the puris on a plate.
- Next add about 1/2 tsp of mashed potato on top.
- Add about 1/2 tsp each of the sweet red and spicy green chutney
- Top with a little bit of diced onion on each puri.
- Liberally pour the sev on top of this.
- Sprinkle some coriander leaves (cilantro) over the dish

Serve along with the chutneys so that people can top off with more if they like.

Cook’s notes:
Jaggery is made from sugar cane and is often used as a sweetener for many an Indian dish. If you can’t find it, I would use plain honey as a sweetner, sugar may not work here. In India, in the summer, this dish is topped off with diced raw mango which adds a wonderful layer of flavour. But it’s not crucial to the dish. The tortilla chip alternative I’ve noted here works, though the chips are quite a bit more salty than puris are, so adjust the salt accordingly. The puris used here are small and hard versus the large and soft kind that come to mind when you think of them. Sev is made from gram flour and is a key ingredient here. Both ingredients are easily available at Indian stores.
It’s hard to quantify this recipe. The quantities here should easily make 20 to 25 puris, with a little bit leftover in case you need more. The chutneys described here can also accompany other snacks. The spicy green chutney is yummy slathered on bread for  quick and easy sandwich. The sweet chutney can take the place of ketchup in many an instance. They will keep well in the fridge for a week and can be frozen almost indefinitely. Butter is added to the green chutney to slow down the oxidation process. Adding it will prevent it from going black. Sev Puri never fails to remind me of large gatherings and wonderful tea-times.

Postcard from Italy

There was a time right in the beginning when I wasn’t as enamoured of San Francisco. While you stifle shocked gasps, allow me to explain. I arrived here from the bright sunshine and scorching heat of Texas in the month of June. Right away it felt like the world as I knew it had turned topsy-turvy. It was bleak and gray and cold….brrr..warm jacket cold, in summer! My first glimpse of the city was Tenderloin, which as anyone can tell you is an acquired taste, and certainly shouldn’t be the first thing you see in San Francisco. As I shivered in a friend’s tiny studio apartment and wondered where the sun had gone, the weather seemed to mirror the greyness in the soul of my then just graduated jobless self. It was the last recession. Another friend Viral was very surprised to learn that I didn’t like San Francisco right away. Having lived here a couple of years, he already loved it. And as I found a job, stayed here and learned to love it very quickly, his quiet confidence that I’d been mistaken in my first assessment stuck with me.

Viral is at once a charming and easy person to like. He’s an architect who is a study in contrasts. While he loves to meet people, he also enjoys being on his own. While we have a lot in common, like where we grew up, our profession and college, that is one thing I have in common with him that I don’t often have with many people. He’s a good friend and a good guy, kind and helpful. And its been a long year for him too, like it has been for so many of us. So I was thrilled for him when he got a chance to take a vacation in Europe last month. It is fun living vicariously sometimes and couldn’t wait for his stories when he got back. But he did me one better by sending me this charming postcard on my birthday. With his birthday wishes was a brief glimpse at his Italian experience. Gazing at the beautiful Piazza Navone and the fascination of Rome got me thinking about the beautiful country of Italy and invariably, its food. I went through my cookbooks book-marking all kinds of Italian-base recipes. But last night Amey beat me to the punch, by very neatly adapting a risotto recipe from Jamie Oliver’s book.

I love Italian food, but I have to say risotto is not high on my list of favs. Can’t really say what it is exactly. Individually, I’d probably like all the components that make it up. But somehow together they don’t work for me. I love rice but don’t really care for what happens to it in risotto. I love vegetables but they seem to lose a little something of themselves in risotto. There is a good degree of blandness involved all around. And don’t even get me started on the texture. Even so, I can’t stop giving it yet another try, hoping all my unknown issues with it will magically disappear. It’s sort of the same reason I keep returning to the Twilight books, hoping that I will learn to ignore the author’s strange writing style that’s not to my liking, so I can completely love the otherwise enchanting tale. It hasn’t happened yet with the books, but yesterday I finally met a risotto that I can honestly say I loved.

This dish is an intense reminder of blue skies and bright sunshine. The lemon here simply sings and combined with the mint, you can undeniably taste summer.

Asparagus, Mint and Lemon risotto
Adapted from Cook with Jamie by Jamie Oliver. Serves 4.

Arborio rice – 2 cups
Lemons – 2, zest and juice
Onion – 1 medium or 1/2 large, diced
Celery – 2 stalks, diced
Garlic – 3 cloves, smashed
Mint – 2 handfuls of leaves, finely chopped
Asparagus spears – 1 bunch, cut into small pieces
Riesling wine* (or other white wine) – 2 cups (See cook’s notes)
Water (or chicken or veggie stock) – 4 cups
Olive Oil – 2 tbsp
Butter – 3 tbsp
Parmesan cheese – 1/2 cup, grated
Salt and pepper to taste

- In a pan, add half the butter. To this, add the smashed garlic and heat gently.
- Add asparagus and saute till soft. Season well with salt and pepper. Remove the garlic out of the asparagus and keep aside.
- In a large pan, add the oil and saute onion and celery till softened.
- Add the arborio rice and stir in well with the veggies until well-mixed. Fry for 3-4 minutes.
- Add the remaining half of the butter and mix until butter melts.
- Add the wine and stir until the alcohol has evaporated.
- Add the water or stock and salt and pepper. Keeping stirring uniformly until the liquid is mostly absorbed. At this point, it is about three-quarters cooked.
- Add the contents of the pan with the asparagus to the risotto and mix in. Add the zest and juice of the lemons.
- Mix in the mint leaves and half of the Parmesan. Season with more salt, if required.
- Mince the previously sauted garlic and sprinkle over the risotto.
- Cover the pan and move off the heat. Let it rest for a couple of minutes.

Serve with plenty of parmesan grated over it.

Cook’s notes:
A layer of flavour comes from the fresh ingredients, and the nuances I found lacking in risotto before fade away and make this an intensely satisfying dish. Stirring the risotto consistently once the liquid is added and not letting it rest and stick is key to making good risotto. At the three-quarter point, the arborio rice should be able to hold its shape and still be a little al dente, cooking a little bit more through the rest of the process. We used water since there was no stock in the house. Despite water bringing no additional flavour to the dish, we didn’t find it lacking. I’m sure stock of any kind would only elevate the flavours. Amey also significantly dialed down the amount of fat used here to make a leaner risotto. Still, there is no lack in its final creaminess. I guess a little more butter would have lent it a lovely voluptuous tone. I use Riesling because that is one of the very few white wines I like. Jamie Oliver suggests a very dry white wine. I thought it would be better to use what I like rather than follow his lead, and it paid off. I know this is a recipe out of a British chef’s book, but the ingredients are similar enough to believe that it is inspired from something more authentically Italian.

We’ll make this dish again to share with Viral when he returns. It seems indicated somehow. He had shared the shepherd’s pie with me and then bravely tackled a beef version of his own, which I’m sure tasted great. He’s good at stepping out and trying different things, like the more involved cooking in this case. I’d love to cook this dish for him and have him try out a variation for himself. As for now, I await the stories from Italy and the rest of his European stint and all the chocolate I made him promise to bring from Switzerland.