Just finished reading Richard Branson’s autobiography. No sleep in sight yet. Can’t believe I didn’t read this book before considering it’s been in the library for years now. It must’ve been all the comparisons between him and the local liquor baron that put me off. Totally fascinated with this guy and would love to know more from the perspective of his wife Joan and his kids and how they dealt with him being on the phone all the time etc.
The awesome vegetarian legacy that Kerala has been seriously undermined. Everyone goes nuts talking about the non-vegetarian stuff, that you would think there’s nothing much in there for a vegetarian like me. Big big mistake. I can kill for a pathiri from the local thattukada or ishtu for that matter. And from the jackpot that the Onam Sadhya is, my current favourite is Pumpkin Erisseri. Oh and I could eat an entire mountain of Kerala pappadams. They are very different from papads or appalams, in short totally divine. Maybe its the Richard Branson overdose, but seriously there is a fortune to be made here.
I never ever imagined being one of those mothers who shed a tear at the smallest excuse for a baby milestone. However, the other day while we were travelling in an overnight train, my kid who’s < 1.5 yrs technically, went up to an infant in the next compartment and started “playing” with it, as in how we adults “play” with kids. The fact that he is “old enough” to play with someone younger made my face go red in a fraction of a second and I almost burst into tears in full public view. Also when we go shopping to the kids’ store, it kills me that there are THREE sections of clothes that my kid has overgrown – I mean there are actually clothes now that are too small for him. I thought we could fit into one of the fingers of my glove. Motherhood is sloppy business.
I have baked these gorgeous cookies called Nan Khatai from Nupur’s Happy Burp many times and they have always turned out perfect! I didn’t let the dough rest for a few hours as the original recipe suggests without any problem.
To make nan khatai, you’ll need
1. 2 cups of maida
2. 3/4 to 1 cup of powdered sugar or bura sugar
3. 1 tsp of elaichi powder
4. Ghee or Plain butter
5. 1 tsp of baking soda
Sieve the maida, sugar and soda. Add elaichi powder and keep adding melted ghee till you have a pliable dough (i.e you are able to make golf sized balls that don’t fall apart).
Preheat the oven. Line the baking tray with butter paper and arrange the slightly flattened dough balls, 2 inches away from each other. Bake at 180 C till the bottom is slightly browned. Let it cool completely.
Here’s another traditional yet simple Diwali farsaan recipe.
To make cholafali you’ll need
1. Besan (Gram flour) – 3 cups
2. Urad dal flour – 1 1/3 cups
3. Oil for deep frying
4. Soda bicarbonate – a pinch or 1/2 tsp
4. Salt
5. Chilly powder
6. Rock salt
Add the soda and salt to half a cup of boiling water. Once the water is cool, mix both the besan and urad dal flours and knead it into a tight dough using the boiled and cooled water. You can add regular water as required to knead a tight dough. I used roughly a cup of water in all including the 1/2 cup of boiled and cooled water. Now punch and flatten the dough using a pestle. Knead it back into a ball. Punch the dough similarly for about 4-5 times and you’re good to go.
The punching process makes the dough nice and soft and is absolutely essential for that perfect thin, crisp and puffed up cholafalis. It also calls for some serious muscle power. So if you can make it a friends and family event, it is far easier. For large scale cholafali making at home, the dough used to be sandwiched between two large, clean and dry plastic sheets and kept on the floor. Then women actually walked on it and punched the dough with their heels!!!
Keep the dough wrapped under a clean cotton cloth. Pinch out lemon sized balls and roll them out as thin as you can (thinner than fulka rotis). While rolling it out, keep flipping it and dust it with urad flour as required to prevent it from sticking. Remember the thinner you roll them out the crunchier they’ll turn out to be. Since the dough is stiff, the rolling out too takes more power compared to the regular rotis prepared from soft dough. spread out an old bedsheet/saree/cotton dupatta in two layers. As you finish making the cholafali rotis, keep them covered inside the two folds of a bedsheet. Once all the rotis are rolled out, put one roti on an inverted thali and cut it into thin long strips using a knife or a pizza cutter. Deep fry in medium hot oil till they get a slight colour change. As you fry out one batch, sprinkle the masala (salt, chilly pdr, rock salt mixture) on that batch instantly. This way the masala sticks to it. While you fry the next batch, transfer the previous batch into a large container and so on.
Ghughra is one of the traditional mithai prepared during Diwali in Gujarat/Maharashtra. Different versions of ghughra are pretty popular with various names all over the country. Kopra and khoya are two popular stuffings. I prepared the one that is common at home – with kopra stuffing. This version stays fresh for longer and I associate Diwali with this version of Ghughra.
To make ghughra, you’ll need
For the filling
1. 3 cups of grated kopra (three kopra halves)
2. 1 cup of bura sugar or powdered sugar
3. 1 tbsp khuskhus (poppy seeds)
4. 1 1/2 tsp elaichi powder (cardamom powder)
For the crust
1. Maida
2. 1 tsp salt
Oil for deep frying
Roast the grated kopra in a thick bottomed pan for a few minutes on low to medium heat. Take it off the stove and add sugar, khus khus and elaichi powder.
Mix the maida, salt and knead it into a stiff dough. Let it rest for half an hour. Make a small puri and keep about 1 tbsp of filling on top. Fold the puri into half. Seal the semi-circular edges using a little water. Optionally, you can make a pattern on the edges as is traditional or use a fork to seal the edges.
Deep fry on low to medium heat. They stay fresh for about 10-15 days without refrigeration.
Wishing you a very happy diwali and a prosperous and fun-filled new year ahead!
PS. In case you were wondering, I went and had a wonderful time while I was away from this blog. Life has been AMAZING and the proof is that I didn’t feel the need to blog/vent!!
Cooking videos have revolutionized the way enthusiasts cook, definitely the way I cook. It has taken the mystery out of cooking. You can see the gurus cook up your favourite dish right in front of your eyes.
The three baking videos from vahchef that I use regularly are these lovely & super easy bread rolls, pizza (he even shows how to bake a thin crust base) and the banana bread. I have modified vahchef’s recipe by skipping the eggs altogether and used some malai (cream) instead to brush the dough before baking them in the oven, and got great bread rolls. Also I had a lot of fun making moulding the dough into knots, loops and buns.
For the exact recipe & directions in Chef Sanjay’s trademark style, watch this video:
Twitter’s caught my fancy these days so that’s my favourite place to kill time. Plus since last month or so I have been out socializing more than I did in my entire life. Which means I have tried out pretty much every dessert at Corner House. Weight loss can go take a flying f***. To top that, a close friend from school days has been visiting, so a great time has been had shopping together and having fun over endless cups of chai. Going with the nostalgic mood, I went and cooked Sev Usal the way it was made at home and we’ll get to that shortly.
Oh and I have also been dangerously overdosing on reruns of Project Runway Canada (anything yummier than Evan Biddell I haven’t seen), Iss jungle se mujhe bachao (need something to curse at) and Rakhi ka swayamwar (can’t decide who’s making me wanna pull my hair out – Rakhi or the dulhas) on youtube. Can anyone please tell me some good fun shows to watch on youtube?
To make Sev Usal, you’ll need
- 1.5 cups of dried green peas, soaked for 6-8 hours and pressure cooked
- 2 medium potatoes, pressure cooked, peeled and cubed
- 1 large onion, cubed
- 1 large tomato, cubed
- 1 inch piece of ginger, grated
- 5 pods of garlic, peeled and crushed
- A few sprigs of coriander leaves, finely chopped
- 1/2 tsp haldi (turmeric) powder
- 2 tsp mirchi (chilly) powder or to taste
- 2 tsp garam masala (I used MDH kitchen king) or to taste
- 5 to 6 lavang (cloves)
- 2 inch piece of dalchini (cinnamon)
- 2 pieces of tamalpatra (bay leaves)
- 2 tbsp oil
- Sev for garnishing
Method of preparation
Heat oil in a large thick bottomed pan/kadhai. Once hot add the whole garam masala (cloves, cinnamon, bay leaves), chopped onions, ginger, garlic, a pinch of salt & saute till the edges start to get some colour. Add the cooked green peas along with the liquid, chopped potatoes & tomatoes. Add the turmeric powder, chilly powder, garam masala & salt. Bring the usal to a boil & let it cook till the tomatoes become soft. The consistency should be ragda-like, so add water if required to get the desired consistency.
Serve it piping hot in a cereal bowl or a pasta dish and top it off with with lots of sev, a little bit of chopped onion(optional), chopped coriander, lemon juice, chutneys of your choice (garlic chutney, tamarind chutney, green chutney go very well)
We also sometimes eat toasted bread with sev usal and that makes it more fulfilling if you’ve been starving.
Psst.. here’s a secret. I loathe entering the kitchen sometimes on days together. In case all the food posts on ‘blink and miss’ made you think otherwise. The cooking I enjoy the most is of the fancy variety. Where the outcome is something yummy, restaurant-like and when there is no constraint of balancing out the nutrients, rotating the menu, caloric limitations and such like. I love scanning through recipes (youtube has spoilt me rotten), listing out and shopping for the new ingredients. When the dish is fancy, I bring out our one and only precious dinner set 7 fancy glasses and if I feel like it I even set the bloody table (which means I just throw the books, laptops and assorted kachara off the table). These are the meals that bring in the compliments.
Back to reality, very few of us (least of all me) can afford to eat meals with unlimited calories. Recently I started reading the nutrition information on some of the regular store bought stuff. A cream bun which costs just Rs 5 (making it seem like a light snack) contains more than 200 calories. This means that the 30 minute brisk walk that I squeeze in everyday god knows with how much difficulty is the amount of effort it takes to just undo the damage done by that pesky little cream bun. The fact as I have slowly realized is that it is the everyday routine cooking that requires some serious skills apart from patience and perseverance.
1. You need to have some kick ass inventory management skills to maintain an optimum level of stuff in your pantry. Too much rava and it’ll grow insects. No besan means can’t make those bhajias you JUST NEED TO HAVE on a rainy day. You need to replenish the stocks on time, turn your inventory into a curry before it wilts. All this on your fingertips!
2. You need serious capacity allocation skills to allot the right sized container to keep your stuff safe. You need to keep the sugar stocked in a large dubba, but a small handy one for everyday chai. Armed with dubbas in stainless steel, plastic and ceramic, you’re in for a battle. If you’re a novice you’ll need to transfer the oil to the sugar container, sugar to the dal, dal to the snacks dubba just to be able to fit in the two kilos of freshly bought rice. Do not forget that with each replenishment or transfer comes the mandatory cleaning and sunning of the said containers. Basically you have a very complex allocation problem at hand with no much computing resources, except your brain at your disposal.
3. You need to be exceptionally creative to work in an environment limited by availability of ingredients, no more than an hour at hand. You’re supposed to work your magic and turn the same old vegetables and the same old dals into something new every single day. What’s more you need to take care of the preparations being in talking terms to each other at least. Like you just can not make fried rice and kadhi like I did one day, by the simple but incorrect logic that if I want kadhi and husband wants fried rice => kadhi + fried rice will make everyone happy. We ordered in that day, by the way.
Seriously all this ranting was triggered by the trailer of the movie Food Inc.
It is information like this that really scares the crap out of me. Apparently the secret behind gorgeous red looking tomatoes that we see flooding our markets is that they are plucked when they are still green and ripened using ethylene gas. When on one hand people are lapping up microwave ovens in India, there are some serious health risks with the microwave method of cooking. Ditto about nonstick pans and artificial sweetners.This is what drives me to cook. I try to cook healthy as much as possible, but even when I don’t and indulge once in a while, I know what has gone into my food. Serious contamination has creeped into basic things like milk and vegetables too, I am aware. And ideally I would like to grow the vegetables I eat and so on. But then I would even like to be superwoman.
I now appreciate people who cook everyday, including my mother who managed to feed us freshly cooked meals at least two times a day, along with a full time job. It is probably due to the high standards set during childhood that I don’t believe in living on leftovers or freezing and reheating. I mean if you can’t afford the luxury of eating a freshly prepared meal, what is the point of working so hard for a fat pay cheque? We do order in and eat at restaurants, more so during weekends, but I hate the dependence on someone else – a cook, a restaurant to take care of my diet. One of these days I may just give in and hire a cook, but till then chew this.
Popsicle –> PepsiCola – so much cooler than popsicle no? Time please –> Thupplis (is what regular junta called it). Thames (is what the hep crowd called it). Zigzagzee –> Jeejaajee (hold your breath for the rest of the song).. kabhi upar, kabhi neeche, kabhi aage, kabhi peeche.. can’t remember the rest of the stuff. No wonder the elders shooed us every time we sang that one.
