Nature ka nasha

The honey dew melon that sat in the fridge for a few days made its presence felt by flavouring everything from the milk (vessel covered with a lid) to the butter (closed butter case)…… while K mentioned that the tea tasted different, I racked my brains about what to do with it…..we had so much fruit stocked up that cutting the melon open wasn’t such a good idea. One because we couldn’t finish it in one go, two because the  cut fruit would rapidly lose its flavour and sweetness……we couldn’t take it out of the fridge cos it would just perish….talk about being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea….only this time it was the melon and the refrigerator……then I remembered that my favourite fix while at work at the fresh juice counter used to be “kharbuza shake”, creamy, frothy and totally yummy. Between trainings, while I took my breaks this was the only thing that I used to have time for and it was filling as well as nutritious…..most things that are healthy have a reputation of being tasteless, but not my tarbuza shake…it has a fantastic blend of texture, flavour and sweetness….with no added sugar (mostly)….its great as breakfast, with breakfast, or a snack supplement….so this is how the honey dew melon found nirvana…..4 glasses of fabulous shake….between K and i…..it was nature ka nasha all the way!! Cheers!!

this also is going off to Meeta for her  Monthly Mingle…this month is Liquid dreams

Always running late……with badam kulfi, lychee shrikhand and beet n banana cutlets

The past week has been a riot….between all the things that have been going on, I haven’t indulged in my favourite pastime blog hopping….nor have I had the time to post anything…..also feel horribly lousy when I miss all the foodie event…its like preparing for a test…you know the deadline and procrastinate and by the time you get your act together yoo hoo!! Date’s over!!

I was thrilled when I saw the microwave quick cooking event hosted by Srivalli ….about 12 years ago when i was still in college, my aunt got one for my mother after her trip abroad…..i remember the customs officers in hyderabad didnt know how much to charge us because they hadn’t seen too many of them….the MW took pride of place in the kitchen…all covered up with choicest linen…. yours truly tested the waters…literally the first thing I made in it was a cup of hot water and subsequently instant coffee, served it to amma and watched her closely as she sipped it….asking “how is it?? Is it nice?? Is it different?” I was like the specialist penalty shooter after that….only I was called upon to operate her Majesty……I graduated from heating stuff to making mostly non Indian food in the MW – Mac and Cheese, Veg au gratin, pizzas etc. it has been my most beloved of all appliances and I use it extensively. Not just to boil and steam and reheat, but to cook a complete meals and even do the tadka sometimes…..especially when the cooking gas runs out and when I had a two burner stove……its such a blessing and cuts cooking time unbelievably…..the adage “slaving over the stove” has taken on a new meaning now I guess…..Inspired by Lata’s theratti paal made in the microwave and Tee’s post on malai kulfi plus not to mention the many litres of milk lying frozen in the fridge, it came as manna to me……I sort of married both of them and made some badam elaichi kulfi……..this is my entry to the Microwave Easy Cooking event, the brainchild of the creative Srivalli. I’m also sending it off to Sugar High Friday # 34, the oldest virtual food event, the brainchild of the innovative Jennifer of Domestic goddess and this month hosted by the passionate cook. The theme is local and regional specialties.

i’ve also been eyeing the AFAM events that happen….i made an unusual (for me) Shrikhand that turned out super and i’m so thrilled to be able to send it to this event hosted by Sig this month, which is the brainchild of Maheshwari

 

Suganya not only suggested I post the other cutlet recipes I mentioned in the post on hara bhara kebabs (which I finished off in the “reply to comment” itself), she graciously gave awarded me with the Thoughtful Blogger Award……thank you Suganya….here is finally the beetroot cutlet recipe ….

 

its been raining blogger awards and I shall add my own two bits…… so on goes the thoughtful blogger award to these people here…..

 

Mathy, Indira and Jenn– for making such a difference to the food blogging world with your food blog resources

To Sig, Mishmash, Kanchana, Nupur and Shammi….. ladies you rock!!

leave you now with the recipes…have a lovely weekend…..

Little heaps of dynamite…………and an ode to a friend

palli podi to the left and kobbari karam to the right

My dearest friend U is going back to Syracuse tomorrow where her husband is doing a Ph.D. she’s been in India for the last few months while he has been doing his research in Phillipines. We’ve spent some fantastic times together, talking, gossiping, watching movies, laughing, crying and sharing our dreams……..we’ve fought too like crazy over many things big and small….. she’s in many ways like me…and then nothing at all like I am……a bundle of contradictions and talent, she’s dabbled in many things…..….. a painter, she’s from a very famous artistic family in Andhra and has had an exhibition of some of her work in Hyderabad…..in the last few years she hasn’t been able to pursue anything more than a slow degree in fine arts because of the dependent status of her Visa….our friendship blossomed while we worked for a telecom major in Hyderabad, we spent hours in the photocopying room over mugs of chai and talking over the intercom since we sat on different wings of the office….infact to many we were a package deal – Siamese twins and we loved it…….I still remember how once before I got married, when she stayed over, she spent the whole night stiff and awake in bed because as usual my dog and cat had curled up between us and she was scared as hell……she didn’t wake me, didn’t shove them off the bed, just lay awake the whole night!! Then at my wedding, her whole family, both the grandmothers, mother, father and brother sat up packing and attaching the little bronze colored tulle bows to the little boxes that held the wedding favours……… I remember her wedding at Annavaram for the way I pressure cooked in my kanjeevaram saree in the humid August weather, and the most amazing pesarattu upma we had for breakfast the next morning!!

The reason I am writing this ode to U is because she liked the palli (groundnut) podi that my mother makes to be served with idlis / dosa. And since she is going back I made her a batch of it to take away with her. in many ways these spicy podis that we eat, are like U, spicy, tantalizing, unpredictable and totally mind blowing…… you’ll never know what its going to taste like till you actually put it in your mouth: spicy, nutty, aromatic….thats why i call it a little heap of dynamite….Ever since I read indira’s post on kobbari karam I have made it thrice already (it should tell you how much idly and dosa sustains us!)and it is a big hit. So I made some for U too. I will miss her dearly…………My crazy, unpredictable, moody, talented and utterly loving friend……..

Baking Escapade # 5: Chocolate Brownies

Food blogging has done many things to me, for one; the most enriching has been all this exposure to this virtual world. Where talking about food, swapping recipes and taking a peak into others plates isn’t frowned upon, it is celebrated….all these fantastic food bloggers, the people behind the pages, the lives they lead, the camaraderie, the fun and the absolute celebration of the things they love best…..it has made me take greater interest (if that was possible) in my food, I find myself spending time actually reading the labels and not just checking the prices of stuff I buy, I am reading so much more, on the internet and otherwise, and not just about food, its also made me so much more adventurous in what I do in my kitchen these days…. 

I often tell people I don’t have a sweet tooth, I have a sweet jaw!! Infact I always maintain that no matter how delectable a spread is turned out, the one who makes the dessert always gets more ‘bhav’…… Sweets and I: we go back a long time….from the time my mother told me dahi and sugar was a special treat to make me have some form of milk ( I was averse to the white liquid and all its derivatives) to tiramisu……it has also been something that I haven’t been very adventurous about, barring a few episodes of successful chakkara pongal and one semiya payasam, I haven’t made too many desserts (and no I am not counting the jelly from a packet ). Infact at my last workplace, there was a European style café in the same complex and for want of better options at the office cafeteria we’d religiously eat at this café at least three times a week. The food was definitely better than the stuff we’d get at office, but what drew us there was the dessert of these amazing chocolate brownies with ice-cream. Once my partner in crime and I had made this discovery, we’d split one lunch between us so we could split one dessert to be relatively guilt free. And trust me it was to die for……..So armed with some recipes I ventured into brownie territory this weekend and they turned out fabulous even if I say so myself and the picture I took before they got demolished just doesn’t do any justice to the way they tasted – heavenly. I followed the recipe from here to the T (something that I am learning to do, so that I don’t end up with baked bricks) and found it a tad too sweet (yeah even for me). So the next time I will cut down on the sugar. I must say that I don’t know if it was by design, but there was some granulated sugar that didn’t dissolve, and it added a crunch to the texture. I made them in a muffin pan for individual servings and this batter made for 12 brownies. They didn’t survive till be could get the ice-cream but they taste just as great without anything else.

Sneaking offenders onto the plate

To say that K is a fussy eater isn’t correct. It’s just that he gets fixated on certain things and overdose till he can’t stand it anymore. In dislikes he is very particular, I won’t go into the details but suffice to say that he thinks peas have no personality, capsicum is an obese chilly at best, green leafy vegetables are for cattle and paneer is spoilt milk in the first place, so why would anyone want to eat it….. So I have learnt to simply cook around this madness because logical arguments have failed and are a waste of time. Him being kitchen challenged helps, also the fact that he blindly trusts me!! I simply camouflage and cook on……the only thing I’ve been unsuccessful in getting him to eat is capsicum because of its strong flavor. My favourite way of getting him to eat things he doesn’t relish is to hide it in some form that he loves. Cutlets have been my ultimate escape. From trying to use up cooked leftover sabjis to dressing up a simple meal when we have unexpected guests, I have sought refuge in them and marveled at how they can be adapted to embrace whatever is in the fridge. Apart from potatoes, cutlets made from yam, raw bananas and even pink cutlets with beetroots too work well. They are flavourful, nutritious and a good way of having your daily requirement of vegetables. The mixture can be made and stored in the fridge; leftovers make for great chapatti / kathi rolls, sandwich fillers or midnight snacks. The litres of unused milk threatened to drown me, so yesterday I had to convert some into paneer, a huge bunch of spinach sat sadly in its newspaper wrap in the fridge and I knew I had to redeem it. I zeroed in on the hara bhara kabab for its simplicity and the fact that I could use two of the offending ingredients always puts a devilish smile on my face.

Airline food anyone??

On Saturday as I sat between two gentlemen enroute Bangalore aboard the jet airways flight, I wondered what was in store as the snack they’d serve……considering the stray dogs outside a few airports in india almost wag their tails when they spot me and the bouquet of airlines I travel by, I know what to expect…and I surely am not in the least bit expectant of good food on a domestic airline, I know that for the 40-80 rupees that the airline pays the five star kitchen for the meal, there is painfully little you can actually buy in the said hotel coffee shop… considering the food is cooked at least 24 hours earlier, there’s little the staff can do except reheat it to death before they smile their plastic with too much blusher induced cheekbones smile, pleasantly asking you as they roll the cart down the aisle, (they cant help it, I am not judging them….i am merely making an observation)…what can I serve you sir / ma’am, veg or non veg? here you go sir / ma’am, enjoy your meal sir / ma’am…..

I get airsick behind the wing, so the only seat as far in front as I could get on the stopover flight was the one that had me sandwiched between a man blissfully asleep, spilling out of his seat onto mine and hogging all of the armrest to my right with a man warned not to sleep during landing and take off on my left because we were in the emergency exit……and was trying his best to amuse himself with the clouds outside the window

I’d just had time to eat some breakfast and apology of a sandwich for lunch and was famished enough to look forward to the food on an airplane by the time I was seated in it at 4 pm. I’d spent the previous few hours booking the ticket, closing up the house and packing for this surprise trip. I don’t miss an opportunity to pop by to see my mother, that this flu induced trip made me pine for her some more was making the plane fly too slowly……. both the gentlemen on either side of me refused the food and I looked like the glutton who wanted to eat so as to tell the story when I reached home…every bit desperately hungry I couldn’t care about public opinion…… I asked for the veg meal and carefully untied the complicated knot on the cutlery, spread the napkin on my lap and pulled back the foil…….with as less movement as I could….didnt want to wake my right side neighbour and the leftie was finding solace in the clouds so I could have some privacy with the meal

The snack menu usually has a sandwich / idly/ vada/ cut pieces of dosa / uttapam or similar savoury snack, some fruit and a dessert of some sort….i was horrified…at first glance…..what i was staring at it looked like atleast a few days old idly, dried, revived and fried with some onions and something unfathomable in the way of a spice powder….i forked some into my mouth, scared that it would bounce off the fork and land on the laps of my co passengers….. and wasn’t disappointed….it was tasteless and so I let it be….moved onto what looked like two pieces of white tyre….it was…..flubbery paneer…half cooked and tasted like what I think rubber tastes like…I was ready to burst into tears…..the aloo bonda that sat next to these two albinos was the only thing I could swallow……before I had time to react, I told myself that this wasn’t in the least tough, was warm enough and I had to eat lest my head pounds me to death…..almost tasted gourmet after the first two encounters with the food…….i tried my best to precariously open the little dish which I thought would have the fruit….. it contained something chopped and brown with what looked like a tadka….actually it looked like pieces of wood…..it tasted pretty close to wood too…this time i was sure it would waltz off the fork and land on my neighbour….what I suspect spent its life thinking it was dhokla, turned out to be wood in disguise drenched in chutney…..i closed the coffin…oops lid and let it lie….by now the lumpy excuse for chocolate mousse tasted divine….i sipped the packaged orange juice which I thankfully saved for the last to wash everything down, folded back the offending food in the foil and sat back hoping they’d clear the tray faster than I could cry……when the lady politely remarked “you’ve hardly eaten anything” I couldn’t hold back and said in my most solemn voice “I tried my best”. It wasn’t her fault…but it wasn’t mine either….i mean I know its precariously placed to serve a decent meal when you’re bleeding revenues, but serving cut wood is hardly the option…I mean a chutney sandwich would’ve been fine in place of the dead idly…..i have rarely been so scathing of my observations…mostly I refuse food…and I realized that I was doing the right thing….but what if you are really hungry?? And hey…I was paying for this wasn’t I ?? i felt so cheated…..did they think in their bid to compete with all the low cost carriers that anything would do? that no one would notice? or worse still that the customer could be taken for granted?? I wonder if anyone reads the feedback forms that are filled and does it make any difference…..i don’t know…..what I know is I will continue to refuse food on this airline….i’d rather allow my head to pound me to death till I reach a place I know wont make me cry because of what they serve…..

 

weekend quick cooking

every once in an alarmingly often while, i find myself with a near empty veggie tray. its an ode to many things………..laziness, sheer contempt of trekking to the neighbourhood sabziwala…..and other assorted lifestyle inadequacies, but this time i was staring at the near empty vegetable tray for a different reason…………. trying desperately to finish the many kilos of vegetables K bought on his first and (hopefully only) veggie buying spree. 2 weeks ago, not realizing that we would be out of town for most part of the week, K in a bid to help and surprise me, ventured to our regular veggie guy. having never bought anything remotely for use in the kitchen, if you don’t count appliances like the refrigerator, he relied totally on what the ‘bhaiya’ told him “amma hamesha yeh sab lete” and came back home like Santa Claus. he was laden with a huge Cauliflower, two cabbages, 3 kgs of aloo, carrot, bhendi, beans and other vegetables all measured out to a kilo or more………while i was touched at the gesture, i racked my brains with what to do with all this stuff since we were going to be out of town for most part of the week. anyways, the only way out was to not buy any more stuff till all this ran dry. with the exception of some button mushrooms that i couldn’t resist, i’ve steered clear of buying vegetables since and have almost come to the end……..which brings me to another dilemma, what can i rustle up that will feed us on this lazy saturday and yet not feel like war time ration cooking……so i made our classic favourite of no fuss tomato rice with the last of the aloos and some mushrooms, served with dahi and achaar….and finally celebrated an empty vegetable tray!! hurray!! this is my entry to the Summer Express Cooking Event, innovatively thought of and hosted by Shaheen of Malabar Spices and JFI - Rice hosted by Sharmi of Naivedyam and the brainchild of Indira of Mahanandi

hand made gifts - baby bed and pillows

after reading this post in my “other blog” a friend of mine wanted me to post it here as well. this is the gift i made for my 7 month old niece. the real reason i made these is that from the longest possible time, my mother has wanted to make a patchwork quilt for her grandchildren. one that would be passed on in the family and she has been collecting swatches of cloth for many years now. unfortunately last year, she was diagnosed with a degenerative retina, this means she’s left with just 30 % vision in her ‘good’ eye. she had only one regret, that she can never make the quilt now. this is’nt quite what she had in mind, but i wanted to make something to cheer her up. to give credit to my mom, she is like Jhansi ki Rani, she’ll never give away that she cant see well, fiercely independent till date, she still runs the household and does everything herself. but all the stuff that she loved doing, like sewing (she’s an accomplished seamstress) and reading, she cant do. even her beloved television serials, she can only listen to the dialogues cos everything looks hazy to her.

the pink one was the first and i made some mistakes which i thankfully bettered with the blue one. the procrastinator in me began at the 11th hour, the power cuts were of no help, and the fact that i was leaving the next morning made me realise i had to be practical, hence the patches on the blue bed are much larger than the pink one!! they’re both filled with synthetic fill and hence washable, needed i guess if its meant for a child. my niece was delighted with the pillows cos she can stick all the lace straight into her mouth!! very convenient for her. so A, this post is for you!!

Totally most wanted breakfast…err….lunch and dinner too!!

Dosa (and idli) are staple food at our table. I suppose I began to appreciate the true value of making a batter and storing it in the fridge twice a week only as a working woman with a house to run. Infact before I got married, I hardly paid heed to how amazingly the ladies of the house would have food on the table and in the cupboard for when hunger strikes, day after day…but then that is another story altogether!!

Anyways. Despite being severely kitchen challenged, I am grateful that I can get away with feeding K idli and dosa all the days of our lives!! Seriously. There have been times when we’ve had the aforementioned food for a couple of days and for all meals, and I haven’t had a complaint!! Just do a merry dance between variations of chutneys, podis and sambhar and I’m all set!! I can get sick of it and crave something else, but not K!! We came back from Bangalore last week with a takeaway of some podi which my mother made especially for K, he loves it and has let her know it from day one. But it lasted all of 4 days. K asked me if I could replicate, I said I’d try to but I’d give no guarantees. I made some for breakfast this morning and as a backup also ground some coconut chutney!! The result?? K loved it and said it was better than amma’s (which I seriously doubt, love makes men say the strangest things!!). I tried a little variation to the dosa batter a few weeks ago and we’re quite happy with the result. Added some other dals and beans to the usual. I’m not sure if this is the formula for adai, but it does make tasty dosas. The good part it this can be soaked for a few hours, ground and used immediately. There’s no fermentation process.