These are a few of my new favourite things….

Most of us get addicted to reading blogs before we get one of our own. I wandered into the food blog world one fine day looking for some variety in my daily cooking. Nothing fancy, just everyday cooking that would show new ways with the same old ingredients.

Here are a few that have been added to our list of family favourites, and have been cooked more than once in my kitchen. Tried and tested…

1. Get your morning off to a good start with these scrumptious Pumpkin Cheddar Muffins from Manisha - (Indian Food Rocks)
2. Pel’s (Elaichi et Cetera) scintillating Thai soup Kaeng Thom Yam, and Nam Prik Pao, the secret paste behind it.
3. Bee and Jai’s (Jugalbandi) Kootu podi (spice mix for vegetables cooked with dal) from Southern India.
4. Bhinda ni Kadhi - Gujarati okra kadhi (Spice Cafe).
5. Bisi bele hulianna, a rice dish that was the essence of Karnataka cuisine to me (still is!) from Saakshi (Healthy Home Cooking), a serving of which can give you upwards of 20 varieties of food in one dish (including spices, of course)!

Check them out, if you haven’t already! Happy eating, and repeating!

The Old Faithful: Aloo Parantha

Usually, I love my time in the kitchen. More often than not, TH stays out, and is very appreciative of the food I put on the table (even when it is store-bought bread on days such as today when I am too rushed for even a 30-minute meal). But there are (many) days when I am not inclined to step into the kitchen at all.

One such day last year was my birthday. It is rather pathetic to have to cook yourself a special meal when it’s the perfect opportunity for others to show their love for a change. Yet, neither my son nor TH can be expected to bake a cake (not everyone is like Jai!). Every time I am not inclined to cook, the son is willing to order pizza and TH is only too happy to step out to get a fresh loaf of bread. But that day I insisted on a home cooked meal, and varan-bhaat was not going to cut it.

As it crawled towards dinner time and I showed no signs of getting off the couch, TH finally got the message and decided to grab the bull by the horns . Off he went into the kitchen and busied himself to prepare paranthas stuffed with my favourite vegetable - no prizes for guessing this time - potatoes. To bide my time till the paranthas were ready was a seasonal twist on my favourite drink - mango margaritas! Yes, he excelled himself.

Buried under…

This month I have been mostly…

…buried deep in work. I want so much to surface, get a breath of fresh air, and share my notes with you. But work takes priority; it does, after all, help pay the bills.

I have been eating healthy…mostly. Fresh cooked breakfasts had been sacrificed for the convenience of industrial bread…till the guilt caught up with me, and I decided yesterday that enough (of white bread) was enough. And how much work is idli, right?! Wrong. If you want sambar and chutney with it. Still, in about an hour this morning, much of which overlapped with my morning tea-and-newspaper-time, I had fluffy healthful ragi idlies! And there are leftovers for breakfast tomorrow as well!

What a Party!

Out they poured…tiny ones, giant ones, white ones, brown ones, thin ones, thick ones, flat ones, puffed ones, plain ones, flamboyant ones, stuffed ones, speckled ones, “…they ran all over …in and out of kitchens, squeaking in their hundreds so that people could not hear themselves speak. They killed all the cats and fought the dogs quite boldly. They were too cunning to be caught in traps. What could be done?” (from The Pied Piper, an old Tale).

Not quite the belan-wielding avtar that was giving Bee and Jai nightmares, but I sure felt a little like the Pied Piper! It is hard to believe this post led to this party!

The sweet music from my magic pipe led us all to this Party table, which is now groaning under the weight of poories. And what a party it is - there are friends and family, neighbours and roomies, little ones and older ones, guys and gals, singles and couples, married-with-children, extended families, those with blogs, and those without, old faithfuls, and new faces too.

To celebrate 60 years of Indian Independence we covered quite some ground. The South was fully represented by Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh; Maharashtra held up the west; from the east we had Orissa and West Bengal; and North was represented by Delhi, and Punjab. And we also had participation from the Western World - USA! And everyone dressed up too! Yay!

It’s Party Time!

The Party is not over yet! The previous two posts and the comments there have piqued my curiosity. And it’s getting the better of me.

While admitting that poori-bhaji is a national (if not yet international) favourite, I cook it infrequently in this seemingly health-conscious age. I am always reminded of it on the day of Ramnavmi, when I see neighbourhood kids (mainly girls - they are revered on this day only ) flitting from one house to the next and their growing piles of poori-halwa and chana.

I am getting the feeling that some of us may have deprived ourselves too long! So, I implore all of you to join in the party and make some poori-bhaji for a change. You could start with a longer walk in the morning or burn it off later in the evening as you go shopping this weekend or the next.

The rules are simple:

• Cook poori-bhaji this week (Aug 12-Aug 19), write a post about it (with or without a recipe ), how you enjoyed it, maybe a picture of the meal and/or the family enjoying the meal.
• Too hot to fry? Go out and get some! The portion will be right, and you don’t have to fry ‘nothing’! Write a post about it, and how you really enjoyed it!
• Link to this post (which will be updated next week to include my poori-bhaji. Of course, I have to make it again; these pics are from months ago!) You may, if you like, use a Pingback and it will automatically show up in the comments here. Or leave a comment here which will lead us to your post!
• Don’t have a blog? You can still join the party; just leave a comment here about how you enjoyed your poori-bhaji! Feel free to provide links to any pictures you may have posted on a photo-sharing site such as Flickr or Photobucket.

Never made poori-bhaji before but would like to join in the party? Here’s the simplest of recipes to get you started! There are suggestions for variations too.

If a health condition prevents you from enjoying these foods, we understand. Responsible cooking and eating comes first. Always.

It is also India’s Independence Day this week, on August 15. Another reason to celebrate! I hope all of you (Indians as well as those of other nationalities) will join in!

Update: Aug 15

Poori Bhaji

The celebration was quite incomplete yesterday. A party without food?!

Today I share with you my recipe for poori-bhaji. I am going to go ahead and declare this a national favourite, with every family having their own take on the batata bhaji that must accompany crispy pooris. In Uttar Pradesh though, poories are sometimes served with pumpkin bhaji that is redolent with ginger; and a fantastic combination that is too.

TH’s family version combined poories with a dry potato subzi. But that was before he got married!

I had worked on my aloo ki subzi for a while by then, and I and my sisters agreed that we had hit the jackpot. It is mightily inspired by the subzi served with poories at all railway stations in India. Affectionately, we also refer to it as station-bhaji. The poori-stall chap keeps a ready stack of boiled potatoes that are transformed quickly into fresh bhaji as sales start to peak around lunch and dinner times.

Whole Wheat Potato Bread

There are few smells that can rival that of fresh bread baking in the oven. I tried my first bread with trepidation many years ago. I was afraid not because I thought it to be a daunting task, but because I had no special ingredients – just regular maida (all purpose flour) and atta, Indian whole wheat flour. All those years ago it was difficult to find even reliable yeast granules. But bread baking has been easy and frequent since my sister became the yeast supplier. Thank you, Minnie.

But, potential bakers of the land, don’t despair. That problem is history too. I recently bought an industrial size half-kilo pack of yeast manufactured and packed right here in Delhi. So, you are all set. Don’t have fancy bread flour, gluten, or KitchenAid-type equipment – neither did the people who discovered bread making. Indeed, the French are trying to move back to pre-modern ways of bread making to recapture the taste of real bread. You will need a good oven though.

Whole Wheat Pita and some Labneh

The Arab-middle east-North Africa region, even the Mediterranean, have much that can be thought of as a common food heritage with the Indian subcontinent. The use of spices such as cumin, peppercorns, nutmeg, and bayleaf provide for the linking aromas, and the prominence of lentils and beans as a major ingredient in everyday food also speaks of a shared history. I find the similarities even more striking with North Indian food.

It is a cuisine for which the Indian palate needs no gradual tuning. We can embrace it in a bear hug the very first time we meet.

Besides the similarity in the use of spices, lentils and beans, as also vegetables, I find the plentiful use of yoghurt and the variety in flatbreads another reason for its easy adaptability to the Indian meal time. Even when meat is part of the meal, it is never the meal itself, and will always be served with some bread akin to out roti/parantha, and maybe a small bowl of dahi, the kind that has become better known as Greek-style yoghurt.

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.

Giving Thanks with Corn, Potatoes and Carrots

cornbread

Divali starts the festive season. Actually, Dussehra does. And now it is Thanksgiving, and all the blogs are reflecting this. Since most of the Indian food-bloggers are US based, it is all over the Indi-blogs as well, and we can safely assume, it is now another Holiday we can lay claim to. And Indians never shy away from embracing a Holiday - another day to goof off from work, another day to partay!

Holi, Divali, Eid, Ramzan, Gupurab, Christmas, and New Year - they are all as Indian as chai. And we are beginning to get attached to Valentine’s Day as well! The Government of India presently has seventeen (!) official Holidays in a year!

The first time I found out about this very American holiday, I was intrigued that it did not involve religion! It does involve ‘the Pilgrims’ though - but that is just another word for colonisers, no? Most of us associate this holiday with ‘giving thanks’, but the truth may have become ‘coloured’ over time. For some perspective you can look up No Thanks to Thanksgiving, and if it is too ‘coloured’ for you, this article in the Seattle Times tells us a bit about the real Thanksgiving menu!

Kamla got me thinking about what Thanksgiving means to me (and you can listen to the podcast interview!); I can tell you that it is about sharing what you have and also about accepting what is different in others. That is something I personally experienced in all the Thanksgivings I spent in the US. My friends shared their tradition, their home, and food with me. In fact, on my first Thanksgiving, I was a total stranger to the host family. And yet there I was, with my kheer*, featured on their hand-made menu cards, which we all signed at the end of the long laid-back lunch. I still have mine!

The menu today, authentic or not, featured potatoes (mashed potatoes), corn (cornbread with cumin and coriander), carrots (baked carrot fries), stir-fried vegetables, and mango relish. The turkey was missing, and I would have loved to use the drippings to make the gravy for the mashed potatoes. Since last year, turkeys have become available at the INA Market in Delhi. And one small turkey is my entire year’s chicken, mutton, and fish budget, combined! Thanks but no, thanks.

Bring on the food - it’s Thanksgiving! And thank you, America, for sharing your tradition with me.