Potato chips anyone?

Winter seemed almost over.  The sun was out from behind the fog and days were back to being like they are in Delhi – bright and shiny.  There were signs of spring and I was determined to turn over a new leaf.

You have to make the most of spring in my neck of the woods; you blink and you might have missed an entire season.  Not so fast.  We are back to gloomy overcast days; with added rain, for good measure.  Which is all fine; who needs summer along before spring has had a chance.  Just that I decided to put the sunshine to good use and make a batch of home-style potato chips which are an essential ingredient in my chiwda.  Long story short – Lord Indra got a whiff, took a peek, decided to stay.  I thought I would get around him and make sure I had chips that stayed white as if they had received their two days in the bright sun.  Yup, the sun does different things for different people – some it bleaches, others it tans.  Determined to save my chips from browning I heated the oven, turned it down all the way to barely warm, set my cellphone alarm for 10 minutes, and went up to the office with my cup of tea. One hour later…
…toast!

Yes, these are from last year’s batch!

Well anyway, it was good weather for potato soup, which is what we ate for dinner last night.

Curry (leaf) Powder

We are well into winter now here in Delhi. Autumn is past; the tiny leaves of Gulmohur have finally done their main shedding. It’s not bare, it never is, but we don’t sweep up a pile of leaves by the gate anymore. This is also the time when a lot of us feel the need to prune some of the evergreens so that there may be just a little more sun on the ground. My curry leaf tree does tend to shade my lime and keeps it from bearing a winter crop. It was also growing a bit too tall with hardly any low handy branches for a quick tempering. So, I had my gardener lop off a few branches last month.

It would have been a shame to have that huge pile of curry leaves go waste. Curry leaf podi has been on my list for a long time. I gathered a bunch of fresh leaves this time, like all the times before, to make into some spicy podi.  I was finally going to have curry powder in my kitchen! Actually, that is not true. I did get myself some of that authentic curry powder on my last visit to the US. My brother-in-law was very kind to give me a big bottle of it which I have used to spice many mixed vegetable stir fries; perfect when I want that exotic twist to my everyday Indian.

Cranberry Beans

It’s nippy tonight – it has snowed in the mountains and it is raining in Delhi.  Some beans and rice is just what I would like…

I was lucky to get a little of the stash of fresh cranberry beans that a cousin brought over from a visit to the valley and shared with my mom who, indulgently, shared it further with me.  I had never seen these beans fresh before.  They are called thool razma in Kashmiri. Much rounder than the regular kidney beans, they do indeed, resemble tiny spotted eggs!  I had never cooked with them or even eaten fresh ones before so I asked my mom for some general directions.  She suggested I cook them with potatoes using the usual Kashmiri combination of fennel and dried ginger powder.