My Continuing Discovery of Indian Cuisines

I mentioned earlier the likelihood of my having been a South Indian in previous life. I believe there are people who are offended by this title – South Indian. I know not why. I do understand though, the umbrage at everyone from Southern India being (once) called ‘Madrasi’ by self-centered North Indians. May I add that for my grandma’s generation all non-Kashmiris were Punjabi – likely the only other state they had heard of from their insular position. “So, you married a Punjabi,” she would say.

Southern India is not a homogeneous region; neither is Northern India nor, for that matter, the Eastern or the Western parts of our country. And, just as the cuisine and customs of the Northern plains have a lot in common, the people of Southern Peninsular India also share a long cultural heritage.

While I have established (some might say - followed my tummy to) the general region of my previous birth as Dravidian India, I have not yet been able to point to the exact spot. In my early teens I already knew that Andhra and Tamil food gave me as much comfort as did my mum’s cooking. I relished the everyday-kind dal-based vegetable preparations (which I may not know by their names) served with thick short grain rice; idli smeared with fiery milagai podi was as much ambrosia as was tayir saadam. I discovered Kerala cuisine a little later – in my twenties - though it was confined to the odd fish curry, thorans and pachadis, and the exotic (to me) appams with either avial or ishtu.

If you are in southern India be sure to wear some flowers in your hair…strung flowers sold by arm-lengths!

Whew! It’s Over! Time for Some Breakfast

Party fatigue took over. But since I promised a concluding post, I will tell you a little bit more about the wedding and the events after the mehndiraat.

On the morning of the wedding, preparations were on for the Devgon – a ceremonial cleansing of the self to get ready for the next phase in one’s life – entering the grihasta (family) ashram. In India, it has always been said that a marriage is a relationship not just between two individuals but between two families. The living members and those who have passed on to the other realm. On this day the groom and his family first seek the blessings of their ancestors by performing the pitr pooja.

Hindu philosophy believes agni (fire) to be the ultimate cleanser – it can never itself be sullied or polluted, and all are equal before him. Devgon is performed around this sacred fire. The groom-to-be sits by the fire after a ceremonial bath and offers prayers to Goddess Parvati and Lord Shiva. All the elders of the family participate in the ceremony and fast till the conclusion of the havan.

Daughters of the family are always a part of the ceremonies with the bua (father’s sister) enjoying an enviable position. She prepares kheer and monjjvor (flattened moong dal vadas) on this day which are offered to the Gods and then distributed to all family members to break their fast. The function is usually followed by a simple vegetarian meal of rice and vegetables. Our lunch that day comprised of a yellow subzi of pumpkin, a fiery red dish of radish and potatoes cooked with nadur (lotus roots), and served over steamed rice with yoghurt. (Read more about Devgon and Kashmiri wedding rituals here).

The Big Fat Kashmiri Wedding and Stuff

mere hathon me mehndi lagi hai!

There is a very good reason for my disappearance. My cousin is getting married - one of only two boys in our generation on my dad’s side. This is (almost) the last wedding in this generation so we are making the most of it.

Weddings are when I catch up with the extended family. I even get to meet more-than-once-removed cousins now that they are mostly settled outside Kashmir. I am almost caught up .

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

Relishing the Radish

Here is another Kashmiri vegetarian recipe. It is special because it is one of the few accompanying dishes that make up Kashmiri cuisine. The rest of India has a mind boggling variety of things to be ‘served on the left side’ of the thali. Let me explain this. There is a specific sequence to serving food in Maharashtra. You start with a bit of salt on the left side. This is the side reserved for all accompaniments: chutneys, pickles, wedges of lemon, koshimbirs (salads) or raitas. Bhajjis (pakoras), if part of the meal, will also find room here. Next will be a katori of daal, and then to the right of the thali is the main subzi. Rice and roti are towards the lower centre of the thali. The sweet, somewhere in the middle, is always served along with the meal. Even for everyday meals you will have something served on the left, even if just a pickle, though chutneys are served frequently. It would sadden my MIL to serve just a pickle ‘daavi kade‘ (on the left side!).

I have no idea why the Northern most state of our country is so lacking in this category. Maharashtra, Gujarat and all the Southern states lay as much emphasis on this ’side’ to introduce a complexity of texture and flavour into their cuisine. It might have something to do with Kashmiris being obsessed with their meat or the harsh climate making cooking harder with women concentrating on getting the meat cooked in time for the unusually early meal times. Lunch, in most houses, would be ready and served before 10:00 in the morning. Everyone ate and went to work or school. Where was the time to sit and pound different things together in a pestle and mortar? The plentiful fresh fruits and vegetables such as radishes and cucumbers are perfect for snacking and getting the crunch that might have been missed at meal time.

Though there are just a few chutneys and raitas but these are much loved and used over and over. One loved vegetable is mooli (daikon radish). It is cooked with fish or nadur (lotus stem) to lip-smacking results. It is also the vegetable of choice for making our most popular raita – mujj chatin. For some reason it is called a chutney. Grated mooli added to thick salted dahi with chopped green chillies mixed in. Red chilli powder and a pinch of shah zeera (black cumin) is totally optional. This is the only Kashmiri dish in which I will use a garnish of coriander leaves. I love coriander, but it is not traditional to Kashmiri cuisine.

The Last Word on Kheer

Well, as I was saying (paraphrasing Ammini) “Much is made of rice in Kashmir.” It is the staple at meal times, naturally. For most ‘holy’ days and special days like birthdays, as also to mark new beginnings, we make taher (soft ta – her) – rice cooked with turmeric and mixed with salt and heated mustard oil as naveed (prasad); more delicious than you may think. Any function in the family - weddings, yagnopavit (the thread ceremony) - the bua or maasi (aunts) will make ver, a risotto like preparation in which rice is spiced with caraway seeds, heeng, and vari-masala, and creamed with the gradual addition of water and mustard oil (what else!), quite the olive oil to us. There will be walnuts added, or in the non-vegetarian avtar, chichir (bits of, ahem, intestine). While modur polav is usually served at weddings, the sweet at other less-extra-ordinary occasions is the Kheer.

Now, this is again where Kashmiris are at loggerheads with Maharashtrians. Maharashtrians serve rice kheer only for shraddha! And we think the(ir) sevian (vermicelli) kheer is nothing to write home about (no relation of the muslim seviyan, mind you, which is an altogether different delicious animal). We serve rice first on our thali which then receives all the gravied dishes – katori being used only to serve yoghurt. On a Maharashtrian thali, rice is served last; except, again, when observing a shraddha. If they serve the rice to the front of the thali, we serve it on the other end away from you, and you bring forward, a little at a time, mix it how you want and eat. They serve a dainty handful, we upturn an entire bowl-full. Yet the twain has met!

Mutsch: Kashmiri Meatballs

Naani’s much talked-about mutsch!

It’s time we talked Kashmiri food. Kashmiri cuisine derives its unique flavouring from regular Indian spices used somewhat differently. Fennel and ginger powder are used in most of the preparations. The colouring is important to the presentation; turmeric for yellow curries, and red chillies for the red ones, and there are the white curries that derive their colour from the use of milk and yoghurt. The word ‘curry’, incidentally, is not a part of our vocabulary.

An interesting feature of Kashmiri Hindus is the complete lack of caste hierarchy. That’s correct – we are all Brahmins. Garlic and onions may have been taboo, but please give us our daily serving of meat.

Just like the Bengali Brahmins we salivate over our fish and goat-meat, cook everything in the wonderfully fragrant mustard oil, favour rice, and worship mother Goddesses with fervour. And like them, we also have the loochi, maida pooris fried in mustard oil. Oooh, they taste super with Kahva, and are intertwined with my memories of visits to the Kheer Bhavani shrine, many kilometers outside of Srinagar city. A tiny temple inside a water tank (a natural spring), it sits in a large paved area shaded by giant Chinar trees (Oriental Plane trees). A typical visit to the temple would involve an early morning rise, a head-bath (this is Indianese for washing hair as part of the bathing process; most of us women keep long hair, or used to, and daily shampooing is neither practical nor necessary), trekking to the bus-adda to take the bus into the countryside. The mothers, grandmothers and aunts would have gotten up even earlier to prepare a packed lunch of rajma, dum aloo, and such delicacies, to be had later under those magnificent Chinars in true picnic fashion.

The bus would wind through the most beautiful (the word - beautiful - being very inadequate here) landscape of paddy fields and rustling (Lombardy) Poplars. There is hardly a stretch on that picturesque narrow road where you are too far from a brook or a stream to not hear its gurgle. The droopy willows by the brooks add to the idyllic picture.

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.

VCC Q3 2006, Voting Has Begun!

Many of you out there already know about the Virtual Cooking Competition (VCC) that was started by VKN at My Dhaba. The third (quarter) edition entries are currently in and all of you can participate in voting for the entries of your choice. The theme for VCC Q3 2006 is Festival Foods (any cuisine).

Check out the delicious spread here and decide the wining entry. I am off to cast my vote!

Divali Treats II: Karanji and Sev

ready for the Puja with diya, haldi-kumkum, and the karanjis

It’s time to hit the gym or jogging track or whatever it is that you are able to do to reduce the guilt (amongst other stuff that might have been added) of over-indulgence. But before I do that I must put down these two recipes lest I forget how I made them this time. I never seem to follow recipes for familiar things…

At our home we make karnajis as prasad for Laxmipujan. The fresh coconut filling makes it different from the North Indian gunjiya, which is stuffed with a mix of khoya and dessicated coconut, and sometimes, a little bit of sooji (semolina) as well. The fresh coconut reduces the shelf life of the karanjis, but don’t ask how long they are good for. I wouldn’t know!

Karanji