King Kabab

I’m a guest writer on Rasa Malaysia! It’s one of the most comprehensive and wonderful food sites on East Asian food there is. Needless to say, I’m beyond thrilled!

There I was dreading the inevitable demise of yet another weekend when I received an unexpected message. It was Bee of the amazing Rasa Malaysia asking if I’d like to write a guest post for her wonderful blog. Oh my! Are potatoes my favourite vegetable? (Or something else to which the answer is a more obvious YES!) What an honour! After a quick discussion, we decided my post would be on kababs.

Kababs were the way I first ate any meat as a child. Not because that’s how my mom wanted it, but because up to that point I had steadfastly refused to eat meat. The smoky flavours and spicy one-bite poppers were what convinced me to try my first chicken tikka. (This was tikka as a kabab, simply unadorned & roasted meat, without any of the gravy that makes it chicken tikka masala), I was hooked from the first bite and have never looked back. I grew from strength to strength with lamb botis and mutton seekh. A smorgasbord of kababs that then taught me to enjoy meat in other forms.

Read the rest of the post at Rasa Malaysia!

Carroty sunshine

Summer is full of countless treasures; so many vegetables in the market, so much fruit readily available. It’s very easy to get carried away in the excesses as you scramble to sample all that is available before it’s gone for the year. And sometimes, while you hop through the tomatoes nd the sugar peas, you chance upon an old friend from a colder time, the bright orange root with cool green plume. What you’ve just rediscovered is the lovely, saffronesque carrot.

Growing up, the carrot was a vegetable often consumed raw or in sweets. My mom included it in several salads. There were also some decadent sweets made from carrots that were a pleasure to eat. Sometimes, it would be used as a filler vegetable in curries and dals, or in sambar. Carrots have a way of soaking up flavour while passing some of their own on into the dish. There are few things as delicious as a curry-soaked piece of carrot. It is, at once, understandably soft yet with a bit of surprising bite, sopped up in spicy goodness. It is incredible.

Carrots were generally a welcome vegetable among my generation in India; partly because of the popular detective Karamchand in the 80s, but mostly because with their slight sweetness which makes them an easy vegetable for kids to love. My liking of the vegetable only increased as I grew older. One of my favourite snacks still is a bit of raw shredded carrot tossed with some lemon juice and salt. But it wasn’t until I came to live here in San Francisco that I truly came to appreciate the nuanced flavour of a roasted carrot.

Indian kitchens aren’t very big on ovens. It was a rare kitchen that actually had one until very late in the last century. Some time in the 90s, my mom acquired for herself a small, counter-top version of an oven, a toaster oven if you will, which allowed us to experiment to some extent with kababs and cakes. But most of my baking and roasting began after graduate school, here in this city. Once I tasted the warm, caramelized flavour that most veggies develop after the long, hot sauna of the oven, I was hooked. It was only a matter of time before I tried it with carrots. What gave me the necessary impetus were these gorgeous, golden sunset roots that I found in the market. That, along with the inspiration that dawned upon me while thumbing through my surprisingly still-pristine copy of Cook with Jamie. (My secret? Leave the cookbook outside the kitchen and walk out to read the recipe…. I know, I need help.)

Roasted Carrots with orange and coriander
with combinations suggested in Jamie Oliver’s Cook with Jamie
Serves 2 as a side (or one for lunch if I’m one of the two)

Carrots – 4, cut into 1/2” slices
Orange – 1, zested, then juiced
Garlic – 4 cloves, smashed
Thyme – 8-10 sprigs
Ginger – 1/2 teaspoon, grated
Coriander seeds – 1 tablespoon
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil – a couple of tablespoons

- Pre-heat the oven to 350°F.
- In a bowl, toss the carrots with the orange zest, juice and olive oil. Spread in a small roasting or sheet pan.
- Bash the coriander seeds up in a mortar and pestle until it becomes a coarse powder. (You can use a spice grinder if you’re in a hurry but it’s more fun the first way!)
- Sprinkle the coriander powder on to the carrots and toss on the smashed garlic cloves.
-  Add a couple of grinds of black pepper and season with salt. Add the sprigs of thyme.
- Give the carrots a bit of a mix up, spread evenly on the pan and roast for about 45 minutes or until the carrots caramelize.

Cook’s notes:
The carrots smell heavenly as they slowly roast. They come out of the oven deliciously and deeply browned, even blackened. I like them that way. It was hard to wait until they had cooled down so I could pop one in my mouth. It may seem incongruous with the vegetable, but somehow their light, citrus flavour conveyed the promise of summer. The coriander seeds add a wonderful grassy, smoky flavour to the party, melding with the juices of the orange and carrot to form a lovely glazed coating on the carrot.  Amey popped one into his mouth and I had a hard time keeping him away from it until lunch.

A later batch of this recipe was great when eaten with some pasta. The carrots added a sweet, warm depth to the mushroom sauce and penne, creating an entirely new flavour profile. The roasting really concentrates all that is good in this vegetable. I think they would be great sprinkled on some pizza as well.

It is summer and there is some truly great produce out there. But culinary nirvana can be achieved with the easily accessible carrot even when the summer veggies are gone. One bite will transport you right back to brilliant sunshine. Plus it’s hard not feel happy when you are looking at something so remarkably sunny in appearance.

Adventures in jam-making (Part 2) – The Jam

Having acquired the berries, there were still lingering questions in my mind. How does the complete novice start with making jam? It is a bit scary to think that tasks that women of the past easily performed now have to be assiduously read about on the Internet by the 21st century person. Accompanying all instructions to jam-making are dire warnings about canning and storage, hot water and cold plates. It is enough to scare off the most easy-going person. Well, I’m here to tell you that the whole process is absolutely as easy as reaching out and picking the berry off the tree. Put all those people screaming about contamination on mute. Also ignore anyone who tells you that you need tons of specialised equipment. All that you really need is a large stockpot, some very clean Bell jars, a pair of very clean and hefty tongs and a clean ladle. Make sure your hands are clean and that you don’t touch the clean stuff with messy hands, and you’re in business.

Since ollalies are not the most well-known of berries, it is hard to find a recipe with them. I read in several places that they can be used wherever blackberries are specified. However, it is even harder when you are looking for something coupling strawberries with them. So I decided to loosely follow this recipe for easy jam off the Food Network, from Ina Garten. This would be a bit of a trial and error since there is some science to the proportions of fruit, sugar and acid used to make jam. At worst I figured I’d end up with lots of fruit syrup. Not what I was looking for but given how good the berries tasted it would still taste good. When life gives you fruit, messing with its natural perfect state without knowing exactly what you’re doing must come with some punishment. So I steeled myself to possible failure and decided to forge ahead.

Amey found me some wide mouth Bell jars at the local Safeway. It really is a pity how in the city of San Francisco, they do not sell these individually. The size of the apartments here is hardly going to encourage bulk canning and storage. Yet the smallest amount of jars available are fifteen. But I had committed to serious jam making and if my math and understanding of the process was correct, at least three to four jars were required. Having gotten the jars home without mishap, we proceeded to wash them clean in soapy water. Then I boiled some water in my largest pot and placed the jars, lids and all in the boiling water for ten minutes. Taking them out, careful not to touch the mouth or inside of the jar, I placed them on a tray and put them in the oven to dry out.

That truly is the only possible aggravating portion of jam making. From there on, it’s all downhill. You cut wash the fruit and clean it. Hull the strawberries and clean out any leftover stems from the ollalieberries. Mix them altogether and then measure them out to see exactly how much fruit you have. Ina’s recipe had about 3 1/4 pints of fruit to 3 cups of sugar. I had about that much fruit, plus a few more cups. But three cups of sugar had already made me nervous. Chalk it up to the ingrained mass of worries we all become around sugar. So I didn’t increase the quantity of sugar. I put ollalieberries in whole, halved the strawberries, tossed in a cup of sugar and set the bowl aside so that all three could get to know each other a bit better.

This recipe instructs you to use half a green apple. This provides the pectin for the party, the natural sugar found in apples that allows for the jammifying of things. It’s one of the reasons I like the recipe. No futzing around with pectin powders in sachets allowing it to stay as basic as possible. So half an apple, duly peeled and sliced, joined the rest of the fruit. I squashed the fruit a bit with my hands (let me tell you it is strangely therapeutic squishing berries under your fingers, an instant calmer), but not too thoroughly, then poured the entire thing into a deep pan to boil away and become this magic deep red nectar of the gods.

Strawberry-Ollalieberry Jam
Adapted from an Ina Garten recipe off Food Network

Strawberries – 2 pints
Ollalieberries – 2 pints
Apple – 3/4, peeled and sliced (I used a Granny Smith)
Sugar – 3 cups
Orange Liqueur – 3 tsp
Lemon juice – 1/2 lemon

- Wash the fruit. Hull and cut the strawberries in half. Toss the ollalies in whole.
- Add one cups of sugar to the mixed berries in a large bowl. Set aside for ten minutes.
- Peel and finely slice the apple.
- Gently squeeze the berries to release the juices then place into a deep bottom pan at medium high. Add the rest of the sugar and orange liqueur
- When the mixture comes to a boil, add the apple and lemon juice. Stir the mixture often and keep it at a rolling boil.
- Skim and remove the foam that forms on the top as much as you can. Keep boiling the mixture until it thickens. This can take anywhere from 25 to 40 minutes.
- Once the mixture has thickened considerably, give it the frozen plate test. Place a few drops on a plate and place in the freezer for a minute. If the syrup on the frozen plate doesn’t run when you tilt the plate, you have the desired consistency.
- Move off the heat and allow to cool to room temperature before storing. This jam can then be canned per your jar manufacturers’ instructions or, it can be stored in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

Cook’s notes:
My first jam-making experiment was a resounding success according to my very happy husband, who was thrilled to eat several crackers with the freshly made jam, making a crumby mess. It is almost as if the essential fruitiness of the berries multiplies exponentially as it conentrates and you reap this glorious nectar. The jam hits you with a sweetness immediately followed by tartness that lingers in your mouth and you immediately reach for another bite. There is a goodness in it that cannot be denied.

This quantity of fruit yielded two and half jars of jam. I proceeded with canning the almost full jars. You leave some room on top to allow for the expansion and cooling of air. Using a very clean ladle to dollop out quantities of jam into the prepped jars, I was careful to clean the few spill ups with fresh paper towels, never using the same one twice. Then placing the lids and tightly screwing on the rings, I used the tongs to place the full jars for a bath in a pot of boiling water for a scant five minutes. Fishing them out of the water (narrowly avoiding an accident that might have turned my kitchen into ending scenes from The Amityville Horror), I placed them on clean paper towels to cool. Everything was as sterilised as is possible in a kitchen environment.  As the jars cooled there were two faint pops. I have to say there is nothing as satisfying hearing that lid pop. It means all your mucking about with the jars was accurately done. I’m reasonably sure that these jars would have lasted to winter but had no opportunity of testing it with this batch. Between my co-workers and Amey, we have gone through two jars of jam. I wish I’d made more. I love to cook for people but there is nothing as gratifying as watching someone whose eyes light up when they taste jam that you made. That childhood bliss is written all over their face. I was struck by how many people told me only their grandparents actually made jam. Not only is it unbelievably easy to make, it is extremely economical when made in large quantities. Also, no store bought jam in the world tastes like the one you make at home. The aromatherapy of cooking jam is an unbeatable added benefit. At least two neighbours stopped by to ask what was cooking and I didn’t even know them (city dweller, so that’s no surprise), but I do now. I wish I’d made more to share but that is a mistake that can easily be remedied. I will certainly make more jam before the summer fruit season is over. If you are wondering about jam, I encourage you to try it. This is so easy that the idiom ‘easy as pie’ should really read ‘ easy as jam’.

Freedom bread

4th of July. Independence day here in the United States, day of siege for those of us who happen to live anywhere within a few blocks radius of the Bay. For it is the day hordes of people descend upon the city. Some are tourists involved in long weekend travelling, others just live around the city and decide that is the day they want to visit. It’s the day when city inhabitants head out while the ones from without try to get in.

Amey and I learnt our lesson about this day the year we first moved to our apartment. We had flown out of the country and hit upon the brilliant plan of arriving back on 4th of July. The airport was like a circus with none of the fun and excitement. Getting a cab was next to impossible; the moment they heard our address, cab drivers suddenly dug their tires into the tarmac and refused to budge. As we threatened to melt into sad little puddles in the July heat, a tough old lady with green hair and a moustache took pity on our wilting forms with matching duct taped luggage and decided to drive us home, with dire warnings about how much this was going to cost us with the traffic. We could see the fog slowly inching into the city over the western hills as the cab slowly headed north at about the same pace.

An hour later we were still five blocks away. As the fireworks lit up the twilit sky, jet lag was starting to hit us both badly. But every car in front of us, behind us, next to us, was frozen in place while idiots scrambled with their cameras trying to photograph flashes of light created by distant firecrackers. As the driver’s yelled profanities reached levels that were starting to shock even my well-seasoned husband, we decided the best course of action was to get out and start to walk before some of surrounded ‘happy’ people started to hurl beer bottles at us. Just as the last firecracker lit the sky, we grabbed our luggage out of the trunk, took a deep breath and headed homeward, only to find ourselves thoroughly thwarted. From the swells that flooded towards us, it seemed like all of humanity was in San Francisco watching the fireworks. I was walked into, trod upon, and thoroughly bruised. A guy in green shorts and very questionable breath nearly shattered my eardrum with a ‘Merry Cracker day’. Amey was nearly strangled when he was given a bear hug by some girl wearing star spangled tights and a neon green tank top. We nearly lost an arm several times when out-of-breath and judgment impaired morons kept mistaking our bags for ’something to sit on’. Bruised, bloody and heartily sorry to be alive, we finally made it to our building thirty minutes later. Amey was missing a contact lens, I was missing a slipper and my mind, at least two-and-a-half handles were broken. But-we-made-it-home, ostensibly all together. As we fell asleep on the carpet, we could hear the people and traffic outside and swore we’d never be out on July 4 as long as we lived in this apartment.

A few years later and July 4th comes around last weekend. The traffic started building up with bumper-to-bumper vehicles by 3 pm. Mothers yelled. Kids cried. Cars blared Michael Jackson through the stereo, loud enough to make the glass in my windows look like jelly. I looked out (at a safe distance from the glass of course) at the sea of people and was fervently grateful for not having left home. The fog meant it was a cool day so Amey and I celebrated in the warm embrace of an enchanting banana bread.

This is the kind of bread that is so comforting, it is magic. It can make all your woes disappear. First there is the fact that it smells like heaven when it is baking in the oven. Seriously, if Napolean or Hitler had a whiff of this bread in their day, they may have given up all ideas of world domination. This bread could bring about world peace. In the very least it brought our neighbours who we barely know knocking on our door. It smells like your favourite childhood bed is ready and waiting. It smells of misty dreams. And then, there is the way it tastes. Of bananas and fresh cinnamon, of cheery comfort. I’m sure it would bring searing warmth to cold days. It bought us an hour and a half of reigning peace, divorced from blaring car horns and yelling tourists. It brought us freedom from care.

Cinnamon-Banana bread with walnuts, raisins & butterscotch chips
adapted from a recipe via Everybody likes Sandwiches

Makes one medium loaf

Bananas – 3, very ripe.
Eggs – 2
Unbleached all-purpose flour – 1 ½ cups
Agave Nectar – 3/4 cup
Baking Soda – 1 tsp
Cinnamon – 2 tsp, ground
Vanilla extract – 1 tsp
Butterscotch chips – 1/2 cup
Walnuts – 1/2 cup, broken into pieces
Raisins – 1/2 cup
About a 1/4 tsp of sugar mixed with 1/4 tsp of ground cinnamon for sprinkling over

- Preheat your oven to 375°F and lightly butter a loaf pan.
- Mash the bananas well. Add eggs and stir in briskly to combine with the mashed banana.
- Add flour, agave nectar, baking soda, vanilla and cinnamon. Stir well to combine.
- Fold in the butterscotch chips, walnut pieces and most of the raisins, reserving a few
- Pour the mixture into the prepped loaf pan.
- Top with an even sprinkling of the cinnamon-sugar mixture and the saved raisins.
- Place in the oven and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until a knife or toothpick inserted into the bread comes out clean.

Cook’s notes:
I love nuts in sweets, and bananas and walnuts are a match made in my dream paradise. In fact, this is what they would serve there on demand all day. I was curious about the recipe having no fat of any kind whatsoever but there was no cause for concern. The bread turned out rich and delicious. It has a dense, soft crumb that breaks apart with the slightest pressure and fills you with a warm and fuzzy feeling all over. The warming tones of the cinnamon weave themselves through the other ingredients to create a richly spiced, out-of-this-world bread. I replaced the sugar with agave nectar and butterscotch chips for the chocolate the original recipe calls for. I didn’t miss the sugar at all and the butterscotch chips simply disappeared into the cake, leaving behind their caramelly hints. The whole thing comes together in ten or fifteen minutes and after that the oven does the work. Bake this on a weary day and you will feel your spirits rise with the bread. It gave us our Independence Day.

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.

Snack attack

I woke up with a start today, completely disoriented, something that hasn’t happened in a long time. Today was like coming out of a mental fog. There was no clarity of day or time. Was I late for work? Had I missed a test? (Yes, it must be only me who deliberately picks eight o’clock for all her exams when she could pick absolutely any time. This way it gets over and done with faster, you see.) But then, just as suddenly, the eerie-ness of it all faded. It was my Friday off. My next test is at the end of a month. There was a moment of quiet calm. And then it was effectively shattered by a sharp and precise thwack-thwack-thwack of a hammer. Construction workers don’t have Fridays off.

The renovation of my apartment building continues merrily on. It inevitably figures in my conversation because these days it is over on my side of the building. And at times, it is cacophonic. There is a strange desperation that claims your life when your home is no longer your refuge, when the simple act of reading a book or listening to music could be summarily interrupted at any time by loud noises and vibrations that has utensils bouncing off the dish rack. The situation also has the odd air about it of bringing my work home with me. The noise doesn’t consciously bother me unless it’s very close, but every time there is a new, different noise, part of my brain automatically engages in trying to figure out what machine it is, what phase of work is going on. Probably normal given my profession, but certainly not something I want to do on an off-day. Fortunately this is San Francisco. There is no dearth of places to be. So we packed some snacks and decided we’d be somewhere else.

There is an amazing array of food that could pass as snacks in Indian cuisine. Some of them just as easily become a side dish in a meal. Bhajjis (or bhajiyas or pakoras) are one such snack. They are the Indian version of fritters. They just use a different flour for batter and are principally made of vegetables. The flour here is chickpea flour, way tastier than most flours are. There is a basic and very simple ‘no yoghurt or buttermilk’ batter with a one time dipping given to the veggies. The veggies can be practically anything large enough to hold, dip and fry.

Potato & Onion Bhajjis

Yellow or red potatoes – 2, medium, sliced into 1/4 inch discs
Onions – 2, sliced and slivered
Chickpea flour – 2 cups
Red chilli powder – 1 heaped tsp
Asafoetida – 1/4 tsp
Salt – 1 tsp
Turmeric powder – a pinch
Water – to make the batter
Canola oil – for frying

- Heat about an inch of oil in a deep vessel or fryer.
- In another vessel, mix the chickpea flour, chilli powder, asafoetida, turmeric and salt
- To this dry mix, add water little by little until it forms a very thick batter, almost a paste or add more water to make a thinner batter depending on veggies used. (See Cook’s notes)
- To gauge the temperature of the oil, drop a tiny bit of the batter in. If it sizzles and rises to the surface immediately, the oil is at the right frying temperature.
- Spoon a few drops of the hot oil into the batter and quickly stir into it.
- Toss the veggies in batches to coat completely in the batter and drop gently into the oil.
- Fry until they turn a deep golden brown (about 7-10 minutes).

Serve with chutney or ketchup if serving as a snack or as a side dish if serving with a regular meal.

Cook’s notes:
There is a slight difference in the quantity of water involved for a relatively smooth-textured veggie like the onion and the rougher-textured potato. That’s why when you are using a mixture of vegetables, separate them by texture. The smoother ones will need to be cooked first. This is because they need a very stiff paste-like batter. For the onions here, several long slivers were bunched and tossed together into the batter. They are the more gnarly looking ones in the photos. Once they were cooked, the batter was thinned out a bit for the potatoes. The onions being smooth grab on to just enough thick batter. If the potatoes were tossed into the same thick one, they’d grab on to too much. And there is such a thing as too much chickpea batter. Less is definitely more here.

This is probably one of the rare times I’m specifying an amount of salt. That’s because this is the absolute minimum this batter will need. The batter should taste slightly extra salty than you would like your fritters to taste. The vegetables and the frying process will even out the salty taste. Practically any veggies can be used. Smoother textures like pepper and eggplant work with the thicker batter. Rougher ones like cauliflower used the thinner batter. Even leaves like spinach be individually fried. Of course, the fry time is much quicker. Isn’t it amazing how food around the world has counterparts? Change the flour & batter and this would be tempura in Japan and fritters in the West.

We had a lovely day at the beach with our fritters. And a wonderful, peaceful evening at home. Here’s to a weekend where I can sleep in and wake up to dulcet tones of tow trucks and fire engines instead of jarring hammers!

Yellow and green

The need to be different and unique; I went through it too. That was before the time I realised I am different and unique, as are we all. No wait, come back…I wasn’t beginning to preach. This point will become a character sketch, you’ll see.

Anyway getting back to the need to be different; I believe it first truly struck me when I was five and in first grade. The teacher called upon us to each name our favourite fruit, as a prelude to the five sentences we would write about it. Right away, the aspiring teachers’ pet (moi) decided she was going to dazzle the class and the teacher with my sensational choice. As I listened to the litany of ‘mango (the easy highest favourite) apple, orange, banana, grapes……’ , I mentally whizzed through the fruits I liked and decided to go with watermelon which no one had mentioned. (Not very surprising; in India we are spoiled by an abundance of fruit, kids would largely think of melons last.) I had already started composing the write-up in my head, probably along the lines of ‘Watermelon is red. Watermelon is sweet. Watermelon is juicy’ (hey I said I was 5!) when the unthinkable happened. A friend stood up and said ‘Watermelon’. Black thoughts, probably along the lines of what Caesar must have thought of Brutus, passed through my head. But reeling from this unexpected blow, I rallied and thought of another fruit; the pineapple. That would show ‘em you can’t keep me down. At this point I’d probably eaten the thing once (who knows? I don’t have perfect recall), knew it was pretty good. Yup by the time the teacher got to the S’s, no one mentioned pineapple and I had my very own, only vote, favourite fruit. Was I cool or what? (*choke* sorry I can’t believe what a chump I was once.)

Life is not without its little ironies. While I didn’t know it then, pineapple is one of the very few things I grew up to be quite allergic to. Pineapple in its raw form can give me a sore throat a hypochondriac would be proud to acquire. Sad really, I do love the fruit, but I can’t eat it. Stuff like that cured me of any claims on being unique pretty soon.

One of my favourite culinary ingredient discoveries in United States was another fruit, the avocado. This fruit is nothing short of spectacular, lending itself easily to sweet and savoury preparations. I love it especially because it reminds me of coconuts, something that was abundant in Bombay but not so much here. There are similarities in that they both have fat content, though I believe avocado oil is good for you while coconut in large amounts, not so much. But one bite of the guacamole, what avocados are commonly used for had me ecstatically thinking of coconut chutney. So here is a good recipe for guacamole. Not a unique use of the versatile fruit, but I’ve learned that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing

Guacamole
Serves 2-3

Haas Avocados – 2, cut & the green flesh scooped out
Shallots – 2, finely chopped
Green Chillies – 2 to 3, finely chopped
Garlic – 4 cloves, minced
Lime juice – 1/2 of fruit
Cumin powder – 1 tsp
Cilantro – a good handful, chopped
Salt to taste

- Mash the avocados with onions and mix in the garlic.
- Add the lime juice and salt. Then add in cilantro, reserving it for the garnish, and mix in thoroughly.
- Add chillies & cumin powder and mix to incorporate. Top with the cilantro garnish.

Serve with your favourite tortilla chips. (though I’ll happily smear this on the first available cracker, piece of toast, anything to eat it).

Mmmm……summer is just around the corner!

Coffee and oranges

It would be rare to see coffee in my hand. I reach for it only when I absolutely need a boost for an early morning or from a long and tiring day. It wasn’t always like this. While I never drank copious amounts, it used to be what I asked for often instead of tea. But either the beans or the processing here is different from India. And whatever the change is, it leaves me with a bitter taste, both literally and figuratively. The smell of some coffee beans brewing early in the morning can make me nauseous. I’m sorely disappointed that I can’t enjoy any and all varieties. I read somewhere that the palette changes every seven years. I do hope mine learns to like all coffee. Meanwhile I’ll stick to the tried and tested. I get my coffee from a jar bought in the Indian store.

Working where I do brings with it, among other good things, every other Friday off. Though most of my weekends these past months have involved wrestling with books filled with cost estimation, grades of soil, Modernism and the like, I’m nevertheless still thankful for these alternating long weekends. I wake up early in the morning, grab the requisite cup of coffee to help keep my eyes open and jog my brain, and hit the books with the fervent hope that they won’t hit back too hard. It’s difficult to put up much of a fight when I’m just about barely awake.

Today, the caffeine carried me through some part of the morning.Then I realized methods of project delivery were starting to leak out of my head. My early morning meant that I was hungry earlier than usual as well. Luckily, there was still some orange bread left over. While I would normally never advocate this for a meal; indeed, it’s original intention had been for an afternoon snack, I was glad to have it at hand. It meant I didn’t have to get up and futz around the stove, racking my already hurting brain about what to cook.

This bread is strangely refreshing, something I’d never thought I’d say in connection with bread. Bread would be satisfying or comforting one would think, but refreshing sounds like a stretch. In this case though, it is actually true. The recipe utilizes the fresh juice and zest of an orange which I believe is responsible. The bread though sweet and having the consistency of a coffee cake, can be toasted and eaten like regular bread. Makes a superb snack.

Cherry-Orange Bread
Adapted from Everyday Greens. Makes 8-10 slices

All-Purpose Flour – 1 1/2 cups
Baking powder- 1 tsp
Salt – 1/2 tsp
Unsalted butter -  1 stick, softened
Sugar  3/4 cup
Eggs – 2 large
Orange Zest – 1 tbsp, minced
Fresh Orange Juice – 1/4 cup
Sour Cream – 1/2 cup
Dried Cherries – 1 good handful, pre-soaked in warm water
Walnuts – 1/2 cup, toasted and chopped

- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Whip the butter and sugar together using a hand or stand mixer, until the mixture is fluffy. To this, add the eggs, one by one, taking care to mix the first in before the other is added.
- In another bowl, sift the dry ingredients together and separately, combine the juice, zest and sour cream.
- Add the dry ingredients and the cream mixture bit by bit to the butter and egg mixture, alternately folding until everything is incorporated.
- Lastly, fold in the cherries (removed out of the water) and walnuts.
- Pour the batter into a 9”X5” loaf pan, buttered or lined with parchment paper. Bake until an inserted skewer or toothpick comes out clean, about an hour to an hour and half.

Cook’s notes.
The original recipe was made with blueberries and listed the cherries as an alternative. I would like to try the recipe again with the berries as I’m sure they will taste great. This bread was delicious and it made the apartment smell better than any candle could. The alternative of slivered almonds listed here would also work excellently here, though I’m sure about the pecans. On my study day, I did toast a slice and it took to the toasting nicely. I didn’t take the recipe up on it’s suggestion of buttering the slice though, I thought it might be overkill. An excellent, if not entirely appropriate, lunch substitute for a hungry and tired mind.