Palak Pakoras in London

Palak Pakoras in London

Promised  Big Son that if it continues to rain the next morning as well I will make less oily pakoras for breakfast. What fun! It continued to pour and we all were hungry for the pakoras. This was made by mixing the palak puree in besan with the required ajwain, green chillies, onions, mushrooms and a bit of love.

I made it in the paniarrakal pan with drops of oil. It didn't turn out too bad except that both boys had to wait since it can be made in batches only. I always envy the cookery programmes with their neat and clean and shining new utensils. Nothing is ever spilled not even in the cookery competition shows. While my work in progress is ... well the less said about it the better.

Mangetout with aloo gobhi

         
                          Mangetout with gobhi-aloo.

Its pronounced (manjetua) a French word meaning pea shells without pea pods. I came to know that they are called snow peas a s well. They were tender and sweet. Yes even this ordinary veggie turned out just so out of the world with the usual jeera, and combination of sabzi masala readymade packet that I had taken for Divir.

My tale would not be complete without Rahman the Afgani vegetable seller who I even managed to scold for tossing his potatoes around; all in Hindi. With Divir chastising me ‘Mamma you don’t scold people in England’.

‘Don’t worry son, when we converse in Hindi, he understands the scolding as part of belonging as well.’

Omlette with macaroni

                   Macaroni Omlette Kyar Singh Style

For Breakfast our faithful Bahadur decided to experiment with the omlette. First he cooked macaroni with mushrooms and capsicum. Then with two egg whites a traditional omlette was made. The mushroom-macaroni mixture was added on and then another mix of two egg whites was added. It looked like a pie. Eaten with toasts one could only take a slice of it.

Lauki bharta and pyaz tamatar ki chutney

                         Lauki bharta and pyaz-tamatar ki chutney

Lauki ka bharta made by grating the bottle gourd and cooking it in the usual baingan ka bharta style. With tomato-onion, ginger and green chillies. It’s a delightful change from the usual fare. In fact some people even make Lauki ka kheer and there have been times I have even swallowed lauki ka halwa.

Lauki some tout is the greatest vegetable particularly the faith healers. They claim that the juice will keep the arteries unclogged and the heart pumping happily.

If only things were that simple. But at some point it had my husband drinking lauki juice first thing in the morning. But as with all fads this was forgotten after a while.

This is a tomato-chutney Kyar Singh made after I showed the recipe from a blog. It was made with lots of tomatoes, onions and a bit of sugar which was substituted with a tablet of equal. But it tasted more like gravy. Eaten with a roti stuffed with moong sprouts it was a meal by itself.

This was the other variety of star fish that I got from Cornwall. That was one of my best holidays.

I remember gorging on croissants that we specially bought from the market that led our host Mike to remark, “Have you never eaten croissants before?”

   Please note the star-fish that has come all the way from Land’s End Truro. Is it any different from the ones we find on our beaches? 

Just Aloo pyaz

                            Just Aloo-pyaz ki sabzi

But it looks so delicious. Sometimes a simple meal is much more soul satisfying than a huge gourmet spread. Tonight’s dinner was roti stuffed with moong dal and aloo-pyaz ki sabzi. Lots of onion thrown in along with boiled potatoes. As usual the tiny cups are part of a tea set which is used for anything but serving tea. The milk pot has money-plant. And the cups are so tiny that unless one wants to really be mean to one’s guests one wouldn’t serve tea in them. I wonder who does. I was told it’s used for after dinner coffee. Tiny amounts enough to keep you awake.

The achar is special one of mixed vegetables made in vinegar a gift from Sia’s Dadi. Please note that my mogras still continue to flower. Thank you Maa Durga.

Aloo Chaat

                                           

                                    Aloo Chaat

  With the excitement of buying an electric grill that promised delicious dishes without oil I experimented with my favourite Aloo. Potatoes. Wow! They were just like the chaatwallas made it in Delhi. So the next time round I added cucumber, tomatoes, anardana to make it even more healthier. It goes without saying that all the hard work was done by Guddu (the latest entrant in my kitchen). I am hunting for the large lemons that the chaat wallas use to make it that much more tangy!

Aloo Tikki

                                   Aloo Tikki

This is one of my favourite breakfasts. Aloo tikki cooked on slow fire with little oil on tawa. Served with hari-chutney and tomato ketchup and crisp toasts it’s a healthy and hopefully nutritious. As a little girl passing Punjab Sweets on my way to school and back I used to look longingly at the aloo tikkis the halwais had on their huge round tawas. They were arranged in a tempting circle at the edge of the tawa. They would heat and serve a couple of them whenever a order was passed.

As a grown up I wanted to gorge on the tikkis of Nathu’s sweets of Bengali Market. In Delhi they are served with imli chutney which is in a class of its own.

In Rajasthan I discovered aloo-tikkis stuffed with dals and kaju.

At home I do mine stuffed with matar. Peas cooked in garam masala and amchoor and mashed a little.

The guitar is a papier-mâché again picked up from Srinagar. The Sitar is a fancy silver one probably a farewell gift.

Bharwan karela

           
                                            Bharwan Karela

Bharwan karela. Stuffed bitter gourd. Ever thought it could be so tempting?

Please do not miss Kyar Singh’s decoration of the onion rings and tomato sliced like a flower. Where would I be without him? The karela is boiled and slit. The stuffing is done with a paste of onion-tomato-garlic-chillies slightly sautéed and then shallow fried on slow fire so that we got to imbibe less oil.

Beans gwar phali

                                                            Beans -Gwarfali

This is a longer variation of gwar-fali. And tastes almost similar. In Jaipur, particularly Jodhpur the gwar-gum is used as an industrial resin. The bean like vegetable of the plant has been made with the usual onion-garlic-tomato-adrak paste. Potatoes added to it make the dish a tad more interesting. Guar gum is extracted from the guar bean, where it acts as a food and water store. The guar bean is principally grown in India and Pakistan. The drought-resistant guar bean can be eaten as a green bean, fed to cattle, or used in green manure.

A special Lunch for D2

Dinaer was leaving by the five o’clock flight to Mumbai. So in a feast fit for a king Kyar Singh dished out Vegetable biryani. The recipe had just come in the Rajasthan Patrika’s ‘Parivar’ pullout. It went with aloor dum. My Bengali taste buds taking over. Arhar ki-dal and accompanied by cucumber-tomato-onion raita.

You can see my famous Jaipuri lac-bangles. Nowadays they set it with coloured Swaroski crystals. The more the rows of crystals the more expensive it is.

My dry decorations have survived nearly eight years of transfers and storms (personal and otherwise). They were made by two wonderful gardeners in my lovely paradise of Jallandhar. They were so tiny and thin that one wondered how they were recruited into BSF. Before memory fails me they went by the name Haldar and Nag. Dear husband called them my country cousins. They grew giant sized dahlias and chrysanthemums and I wish I could mummify my garden and carry it with me. So may be this was part of the dream.

I almost forgot the Bhindi one of Dinaer’s favourites was made as well.

So here goes the recipe:

You need Rice -1and a half cup, one medium sized cauliflower, onions three, oil four tablespoons. Kyar Singh added peas as well instead of potato as recommended in the recipe.

For the Masala paste

Cinnamon –one, cloves-3-4, green cardamom, dhania powder, jeera, saunf, lalmirchi and ginger 3 inch.

For the paste add water and grind it into a smooth paste.

In a nonstick pan add oil and fry the onions till they are brown then add the masala paste. Keep gas on sim for 2-3 minutes. Then add 3 cups of water, and let it cook. When it begins to boil add the washed and cleaned rice. Cook for 10-15 minutes with the lid on.

However, Bahadur cooked it in the pressure cooker and waited for 1 and half whistle?

aloo matar in London

Aloo-matar in London tasted wonderful with the Tortillas. Having no alternative but to cook without my loyal fleet of Bahadurs and BhanwarLals, I had carried mix masala packets from home. So along with chopped onions and tomato puree, I managed to make fairly palatable food. Having elder son posted there and the whole family demanding home cooked meals, I managed to even surprise myself.

What Does Cooking mean to me ?

What does cooking mean to me?

Cooking meant staring at my mother bringing forth mouth watering samosas and delicious biryanis in the kitchen from apparently inedible ingredients. I wondered if I could ever become a magician like her. Ma didn’t like having me hanging around the kitchen. She would shoo me out saying, ‘You will always have to cook all your life once you are grown up.’ Occasionally I would manage to sneak out a samosa before the whole batch was ready. Or she would let me taste a bit of the fried vegetables going into the biryani. But she was deeply offended if I swallowed her naryial laddoos meant for the puja. The offerings to gods were sacrosanct one couldn’t play around with that.

As one started living in hostel and had to face the occasional strike by the mess workers one was forced into cooking a simple meal of boiled rice with vegetables thrown in had with a dollop of butter. This proved to be quite a success amongst hungry friends and my Bengali bhaat was a staple during those days. Another easy and nutritious meal was bread and scrambled eggs with some potatoes added to make it filling.

Now that I look back I can understand my mother’s fear that all daughters have to fall in to the drudgery of cooking. She wanted me to escape such a conventional life and wished I would excel in academics, be career oriented and not tied to the kitchen.

Surprisingly, life has allowed me to look upon cooking as a pleasure since the truth must be told my husband’s job provides me the luxury of trained cooks. So I have spent a greater part of my life following recipes from different women’s magazines. I also love watching cookery programmes on TV. I am fascinated by the sparklingly clean utensils and brand new gadgets on the show. Although, the women who accompany the cooks on the show and go, ‘oooh-so-delicious’ grate my nerves.

I have turned out delicious cakes, soufflés and kulfis to the delight of my sons. They have adored my concoctions of chicken and mutton curries from various regions of India. I have diligently kept cuttings of interesting recipes published in the Hindi newspapers. Now my file is bursting in the seams with them. Some have turned yellow and smell of various curry powders over the years. In an attempt to preserve it for the future I got them scanned and downloaded into a CD.

Every season has a particular favourite fruit or vegetable. Some are not so popular and some downright rejected. I have tried to tempt them to accept or at least try them out. The favourites are easy to work on. One can have gobi-ka-parantha, aloo gobi sukhi, or in a curry form. The curry could be seasoned with achar-ka-masala or with Bengali spices.

But how does one make lauki delicious or sarson-ka-saag palatable to the young ones?

So often enough the rotis are stuffed with various vegetables; and pilaus are made with methi and palak.

I often experiment with sweets since dear husband has a weakness for it. Once while offering a traditional Bengali pathishapta, he declared it as pura of his village days only exception being that I should not stuff it with mawa. So now my cooks are ready with the pura sweetened with artificial sweeteners at the end of each meal.

As we grow older the search is on for foods that are steamed or stir-fried and eventually of course life comes a full circle as one must learn to live with as little food as possible. To realize that all this is a chimera ‘maya’ and one must control one’s senses and not indulge them; in our quest for salvation.