Winter Freeze

Old Man Winter is loosening his grip…soon the winter bounty will be over. Enjoy it while it lasts and if you put in some extra effort now, you could make it last longer. And I am not talking about pickle making.

Drying is one method which works on summer as well as winter vegetables, though dishes prepared with re-hydrated vegetables have a distinctly different taste. Like many people preparing for long hard winters ahead, Kashmiris too have a tradition of cooking with vegetables (and fish) dried in the sunny and warm summer months. Turnips and turnip greens, eggplant, bottle gourd, tomatoes, cauliflower, cooking apples (bum tchoonth), can all be seen threaded into garlands and hung up to dry by a sunny window all over Kashmir, and relished later in the winter. Everyone has seen pictures of Kashmiri red chillies strung similarly. And of course, you have all also heard of the prized dried morels or guchhi (kannguchh in Kashmiri).

I have experimented with sun-drying vegetable very successfully myself. I have to learn some Kashmiri preparations before I try my hand at turnips and eggplant. In addition to tomatoes, I have tried sun-drying cauliflower, and karela (bitter gourd) in the Delhi summers. Mint can be similary dried for monsoon-season and winter use when it becomes scarce. Just snip bunches of fresh mint, give it a quick rinse, shake of the excess water, and let it dry in shade. Once it is dry, crush it between your palms, throw out the stems, and store in air-tight glass jars. As the end of winter nears, I do the same to make my own kasuri methi (the more fragrant cousin of the regular methi/ fenugreek greens) for later use in stews and chicken curries.

Three Things…

First Lakshmik (Veggie Cuisine) and then Shaheen (Malabar Spices) tagged me for this meme. I always need lots of time for the ‘meme’ stuff - thankfully, unlike in real life, for a blog I can take the time to think up witty one liners what I think are witty one-liners. So here goes:

3 Things that make me laugh
Watching Friends
Watching Seinfeld
Watching Friends again… and again and again. (I know, that adds up to a lot of TV. They also say laughing is a good thing. So there.)

3 Things that make me cry
Watching our Saas-bahu serials from the K-factory (looking at those decked-up conniving women with an inch thick make-up makes you want to pull your hair out. And that is very painful. So I don’t. Watch the serials, I mean.)
Watching movies like Stepmom - a totally different kind of crying. Not painful, but feels like something’s stuck in your throat.
Chopping onions. Not very original. Or witty. But true.

3 Things that scare me
There you have me. I’m not really scared of things other than being put on the spot! In the limelight I mean. Like that will happen! So, I’ll say I don’t scare easy. I hate cockroaches but I am not scared of them - I can always stomp on them (yuk).
But I am mortally afraid of riding a bicycle, with good reason.

3 Things I love
Reading the Sunday papers (especially The Hindu)
Delhi’s Four-seasons Climate, always sunny!
A good cup of tea

3 Things I hate - too strong an emotion, let’s make that - I can’t stand
Dealing with corrupt officers (I can’t offer bribes you see. Big problem.)
muggy-cloudy weather for too long (London is not for me!)
Roaches/ Salman Khan

I is for…Innula

I… am going to be there for the Flower Fest…better late…

And I bring to you another wildflower from the Himalayas, the Innula, photographed on the much blogged trip to the Garhwal Himalayas and the Valley of Flowers.

Innulas are members of the daisy family and have both ray and disk-florets that are a beautiful bright yellow in colour. The one featured here, in all likelyhood, is the Innula grandiflora, that grows at 2000-3300m elevation. It flowers from July to September and is very common in North India, especially Kashmir. The plants are about 18-24″ tall, with terminal solitary golden-yellow flowers heads that may be up to 2 1/2″ across, borne on long leafy stems.

If you look carefully, you’ll see that butterflies find them very attractive!

Tags: Himalayan wildflowers, Innula, Flower Fest

Step into My Parlour….said the Spider

Morning cuppa..the sun’s not up

Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly,
‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I’ve a many curious things to shew when you are there.”
Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”

“I’m sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high;
Will you rest upon my little bed?” said the Spider to the Fly.
“There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin,
And if you like to rest awhile, I’ll snugly tuck you in!”
Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “for I’ve often heard it said,
They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed!”

Said the cunning Spider to the Fly, “Dear friend what can I do,
To prove the warm affection I’ve always felt for you?
I have within my pantry, good store of all that’s nice;
I’m sure you’re very welcome — will you please to take a slice?”
“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “kind Sir, that cannot be,
I’ve heard what’s in your pantry, and I do not wish to see!”

Whole Wheat Bread

We all read about the NYT no-knead bread last month. It was all over the blogs . But, I was going to have to make mine the hard way. You see, I do not possess a deep, lidded, oven-proof dish that is the prerequisite for the aforementioned bread. From all the debate I gathered that the ‘covered’ pan was the key to raise the moisture during baking, and the secret behind the dead gorgeous crust, and that throwing ice cubes into the oven floor was not going to get me the exact same result. But I liked the idea of less yeast and the longer rising time.

So I decided to work with my basic bread dough recipe and try a few changes. Less yeast, less sugar, less oil, and a much longer rise.

Thai Chicken Soup

It was going to be a very cold New Year’s Eve – and hot soup and home-made bread were going to be the perfect foil.

JFI for this month is featuring the coconut, and I did want to make something specifically for the event. Thai soup with a coconut milk base seemed like the perfect solution. Except that, as mentioned earlier, TH has no taste for fish sauce. So I was going to have to make two versions: one (the real McCoy) with and one without the fish sauce. And since it was going to be so, there was no reason why the first one should not have some chicken as well.