THOUGHT FOR FOOD
No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut.
Channing Pollock

Boiled Peanut Chatpata

FINALLY this morning my housemaid and right hand, Ratna, arrived after an extended Diwali break, beaming a somewhat apologetic smile. The scowl that was forming on my face had no option but to also transform itself into a smile. Moreover, she had brought me a bagful of fresh groundnuts from their fields near Tumkur, and with that all was forgiven.

These healthful groundnuts are a great time-pass snack, boiled in salted water. Pushcart vendors boil them on stoves on their carts, the steam wafting a warm earthy smell that reminds me of village kitchens, and peddle them, stuffed in slim paper cones.

But Ratna went about it her own way. She spread a sheet of newspaper on the kitchen floor, spread the groundnuts on it, covered them with another sheet of paper and then began stomping them in a manner reminiscent of, but gentler than the vigorous crushing of grapes for wine. They made such a soft, crackling sound that I had a go at it too. It felt like gentle acupressure treatment for my bare feet.

That’s how they do it in their village, she explained, after which they’re washed thoroughly and boiled in salted water. That way, the salted water gets into the slightly cracked shell and infuses the saltiness into the kernels, she said, sounding very knowledgeable. Native wisdom. Additionally, I thought it created space for the kernels to swell up while boiling and made it easier to shell them afterwards. The shells went straight into my Daily Dump composting pot, from where they will eventually return unto the dust from where they came.

Boiled and shelled, it was now my turn to give the humble peanut a makeover.

For two cups of shelled peanuts, I chopped fine:

1 medium sized onion
Half a red capsicum (bell pepper)
Half a green capsicum
1 green chilli, deseeded
2 sprigs of green coriander

Then I tossed it all together with the peanuts, squeezing the juice of half a lime, and sprinkling about 1/8 teaspoon of sugar and 1/2 a teaspoon of chaat masala. I didn't feel the need for extra salt, but that depends on individual taste.

This tasty snack goes well with a drink but is equally great as a standalone.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.
Aesop

Pistachio and Milk Chocolate Squares

HAPPY Diwali to myself! Since no festival is complete without something to sweeten the mouth, I got down to trying this interesting recipe that I stumbled upon on the BBC GoodFood website.

The link to the recipe is pasted below: www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1161643/pistachio-and-milk-chocolate-squares

Contrary to my imagination, the distinctive flavours of pistachios and chocolate made for a very happy marriage. These scrumptious squares (or diagonals and triangles as I have cut them), are indeed worth trying out.

Even if you don't have all the ingredients as specified, you can tweak the recipe a bit as I did:

For instance, if you don't have golden caster sugar, use plain white sugar, powdered. I thought of dribbling a tablespoon or two of black treacle to make up but then completely forgot about it. However, the lack of it didn't really make an appreciable difference I guess.

Next time, I must remember to first line up all the ingredients before beginning to mix.

Of the 200 gms chocolate in the recipe, 75 gms is for the cake batter, while 125 gms is for the topping. For the topping I used Amul dark chocolate, which is available in 500 gm slabs. For the cake batter, I used some chocolates that no one was eating because they didn't taste as delicious as their wrappers promised with all kinds of sweet somethings printed on them! And for good measure, they had come in a heart-shaped box. Good enough for cooking purposes though!

No self-raising flour? Just sift one teaspoon of baking powder with the plain flour. And instead of soured cream, I used plain fresh cream.

The overall result surpassed my own expectations.

Banana Cake

WHAT do you think I do when there are a couple of bananas getting overripe and no one wants to eat them? Reincarnate them into a banana cake! There are banana cake recipes galore, but over the years I’ve stuck to this one, shared by my friend Eslinda, which can be mixed in a jiffy. I’ve tried this with just-ripe bananas that are good for eating, but found that overripe ones work better because besides making the cake more flavourful, they also lend the cake a rich brown colour, which keeps people guessing whether I’d added golden syrup too.

What you need:

2 big bananas (Robusta variety)
2 eggs
200 gms granulated sugar
300 gms flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
100 ml cooking oil
A dash of vanilla essence
50 gms walnuts, lightly roasted and chopped

First preheat the oven for 15 minutes at 180 degrees C, so that it’s ready for the cake to be popped in by the time you’re done with the mixing.

In a mixing bowl, mash the bananas with a fork. Break the eggs into the same bowl and continue beating with the fork. There’s absolutely no need for the ceremony of beating them separately etc…the cake will turn out just fine in a one-bowl method. Next add the sugar, cooking oil and vanilla essence and beat some more. Once again, no worries if the sugar has not fully dissolved…by the time the cake is done, there’ll be no trace of it left, except in the sweetness.

Now stir in the walnuts, and then the flour sifted with the baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix all together until all the flour is completely moistened. The batter should be of dropping consistency. If too stiff, incorporate a tablespoon or two of milk.

Pour the mix into a greased and dusted cake tin and bake at 180 degrees C for 35 minutes or until cake tester comes clean. If using a microwave, preheat 15 minutes on convection mode at 180 degrees C and set baking time for 35 minutes.

I normally use a non-stick tube pan (ring mould) for this cake - with the heat circulating through its centre, it gets nicely browned on all sides.

PS: It’s 300 gms of sugar in the original recipe, but since overripe bananas are naturally sweeter, I’ve reduced the sugar to 200 gms. Substituting melted butter for cooking oil works wonders on the palate and what’s more, your waistline will even show that you enjoyed every bite. For a hint of spice, sift a teaspoon of cinnamon powder with the flour.

THOUGHT FOR FOOD

C is for the Calories that I exonerate
H is for the Happiness I embrace
E is for Each slice that adorns my dessert plate
E is for Every indulgence of its taste
S is for magnificent Satisfaction
E (when I don't share) is for the Envious reaction
C is for Confiscating the very last piece
A is the grade I give this Amazing feast
K is for the Kismet of this phenomenon
E is for Empty (sigh!) when my slice is gone

Put them together and it spells ‘CHEESECAKE’, it's true…
but it's the last piece! Hey! Sorry, there's none left for you.

- Sourced from The Internet

Quick Lemon Cheesecake

THIS is another one of my favourites when I’ve slaved all day in the kitchen and am loathe to slave some more in making an elaborate dessert. Trust me, it’s an instant hit with everyone and even until the dish is invariably scraped clean, no one can ever tell that it was whipped up with negligible effort. I owe this recipe to my cousin Jenny, who’s a wonderful cook and loves to innovate. Our long phone chats have dwindled to zero ever since she moved from Mangalore to distant Canada. Sniff. Sniff. Must all good things have to come to an end? This dessert will bring sunshine to anyone feeling under the weather.

What you need:

One 85 gm packet of lemon jelly mix
One 400 ml tin condensed milk
1 teaspoon Davis gelatine
200 gm paneer

Dissolve the gelatine in 4-5 tablespoons of hot water. Prepare the jelly as per instructions on the packet. Do not refrigerate yet. Add the dissolved gelatine to it. Set aside.

Break up the paneer and dump it into a blender. Empty the condensed milk too into it and run the blender for just a minute. Pour the jelly mix too into the blender and whirr for a minute. All that remains to be done now is to refrigerate it till set.

For this, you and I know that the most beautiful and correct way is to set it on a biscuit crumb base, made by mixing 180 gm of powdered Marie Gold biscuits with 75 gms of melted butter and pressing it evenly in a flan tin before chilling it to harden.

However, if like me, you sometimes don't feel up to it, have no worries. Just be happy pouring the mixture into a glass dish (as in the pic). You can also set it in individual dessert bowls - and decorate with swirls of whipped cream if you like. But my whole point is to avoid all that extra work.

Refrigerate until firm and set. For quick setting, first place in freezer for about an hour and then transfer to refrigerator shelf.

For variation, use any other flavoured jelly – strawberry, raspberry, lime, apricot, orange or whatever is at hand. But I vote for lemon.

A refreshing dessert while the crumbled paneer adds a delightfully rich and grainy texture to the cheesecake. Besides, it’s so simple to make! And don't be surprised if people pounce on you for the recipe, because they most certainly will.

PS: Now I don't mean to show off, but as a supporter of the Indian dairy co-operatives, I make a conscious decision to buy Amul products as far as is possible/practical. The condensed milk used in this recipe was Amul Mithai Mate, while the paneer was Nandini, a product of Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he needed.
Mother Teresa

Passion Fruit Plants Anyone?

I'VE got quite a few passion fruit saplings ready for distribution to people who have gardens and who are really keen to have them. With this in mind, I had emailed one of my friends, Gita, thus:
"Gita, I have some healthy saplings of the purple variety of passion fruit to give away. A friend of mine had given me some of the fruit and I had carefully dried the seeds and buried them in a pot. They sprouted and have grown into healthy little plants and I'm looking for good homes that will nurture them and see them grow and yield fruit...like sending kittens and pups to good homes who will care for them...:)

Would you like to have one or two, since you have a garden? I'd be very happy to give you if you like. See pics of the fruit. Also made a cheesecake and topped it with the pulp. It was yummmm and is on my food blog. Hope it whets your appetite!"

Gita's reply:
"Oooo it really looks yuummm...am drooling over the pics.. :) I will be most happy to take the saplings from you and nurture them along with my two cats and a dog.:)

Its so uncanny...when my Mom was here last, she asked me to plant a passion fruit creeper and was saying that she had the juice at a friend's place and loved it. My Mom will be happy too...it's as if you heard our conversation...Awesome!"

Isn't that incredible? What a coincidence! And to think that I wasn't even eavesdropping on them?! Stories like this really make my day. Meanwhile, I've been busy transplanting the plants from the pot into small plastic bags for distribution. And yes, I'm reusing plastic bags, thereby contributing my wee bit to reducing my carbon footprint!

Mangalore Buns

THIS is a tea-time treat which brings back happy childhood memories of summer holidays spent in Balkudru, a tiny little island where my grandparents spent their post-retirement days. (In the picture below taken by my cousin Joey, a Goa-based architect, the sun rises over the river Sita, Balkudru village, which is approximately 75 km north of Mangalore). Apart from my grandma's kitchen, the snack also used to feature, and probably still does, on the limited menu of the small but clean and homely wayside eateries dotting the South Kanara coast, with their long tables and benches for seating.

They’re called Mangalore Buns with good reason perhaps, although my version can more likely be termed banana puris, simply because I roll them out to the thickness of puris, not quite so thick, as the way it should be for the "buns".

What you need:

2 small ripe bananas, 250 gms flour, 2 tablepoons curd, 2 tablespoons sugar, ½ a teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon sodium bicarbonate (soda bicarb), 1 tablespoon

ghee, oil to deep fry. Although the usual recipe doesn’t call for it, I also sprinkle two or three pinches of whole jeera (cumin seed) which adds a subtle contrast to the sweetness. I have also tried using saunf (fennel seed), but prefer jeera.

In a mixing bowl, mash the bananas using a fork. Add the sugar, salt, soda bicarb, ghee and the curd. Mix well. Add sifted flour and jeera and knead well. You can add a little more flour if the dough is too soft to get a firm consistency. Alternately, if it's too dry, just sprinkle a little water and continue kneading. Cover and leave overnight or for eight hours.

Make lime-sized portions and roll thick. Slide them one at a time into hot oil, fry, flip over to fry the other side and remove when done. Drain on absorbent paper.

PS: It’s ideal to roll out perfect circles but I simply roll them out to any shape that they yield to. In the picture at the very top, don't you think the ONE staring you in the face looks like the map of Australia? Something I could never draw freehand. Often they resemble maps of as yet uncharted territories beyond the face of this earth. That doesn’t really matter. They taste good. Finally that’s what matters.

Patholeo

A SEASONAL Konkan delicacy I love to make during the monsoons is what's called patholi or patholeo (plural) in Konkani. The turmeric, with its huge healing and antiseptic properties is a rhizome that lies buried in the soil and the fresh, new leaves it sprouts during the rainy season, are used as wrappers for these rolls. A row of turmeric that I had planted in a corner of our building garden was thriving until a new gardener who was ignorant about these plants uprooted them all. Fortunately, I discovered the damage before it was too late and saved a few of them. From these I managed to harvest a few leaves for the patholeo.

My kids don’t relish this robust, rustic snack, whose main ingredients are red boiled rice, coconut and jaggery. Nevertheless I make it at least once or twice a year, if only to keep in touch with our traditional cuisine and also for distribution among a few of my friends and relatives who love to eat it, but think that making it is drudgery. I too thought it was hard work, until I actually got down to making them and realized that it wasn’t such a chore after all.

For 10 leaves I used:

2 cups of red boiled rice soaked in water overnight
Fresh gratings of half a coconut
Powdered jaggery – about 5-6 tablespoons or to taste
5 cardamoms, powdered
Salt to taste for the batter
A teeny weeny pinch of salt for the filling too.

Grind the rice to a thick, fine batter, adding salt to taste. When grinding in an electric blender, you will necessarily have to add water but keep the quantity to a bare minimum. Even so, the batter will be extra moist. To make it just dry enough to enable patting on to the leaf, just add a few tablespoons of readymade rice flour and mix it in with a spatula, or better still by hand. Grinding a few tablespoons of coconut with the rice enhances the taste, but I simply added about 3-4 tablespoons of Maggi coconut milk powder. A sucker for shortcuts, I’ve found that this works very well indeed and no one will be the wiser for it, because it tastes just as good.

For the filling, mix the coconut, jaggery and cardamom powder and a tiny pinch of salt. Set aside. Wash and wipe the leaves. Snip off the tip and base. Place the leaf on a flat surface, smooth side up. Lightly dip your fingers in a bowl of water, take a handful of the rice batter and pat it on to the leaf, spreading it evenly from top to bottom to cover the entire leaf.

There are two ways to fold the leaf. You can fold it from the base upwards to the tip (as shown above) in which case, spread the batter on to the whole leaf, but place the filling on the top half of the leaf, about half a cm away from the edges of the rice layer. Press the edges lightly to seal.

The leaf can also be folded lengthwise along its spine (as shown below). In this case, the filling needs to be spread from the tip to the base on one half of the leaf, keeping the spine as the divider. Fold lengthwise along the spine and press the edges lightly to seal.

The pictures above will give you a fair idea of how to go about it. Not complicated at all.

Fill up to half, a steaming vessel with water and when it begins to boil, place the rolls on the perforated separator in the steamer. Close and steam for 20 minutes.

Serve the rolls with the leaf on, but unwrap before eating. The turmeric leaves impart a lovely fragrance to the rolls, but be warned that this is an acquired taste. From those tasting it for the first time, it can evoke reactions as varied as “Hmmm…interesting” to “Hmmm…this is something different” which makes me wonder if they’re only being very polite!

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

"Cutting stalks at noon time,
Perspiration drips to the earth.
Know you that your bowl of rice,
Each grain from hardship comes?"

- Cheng Chan-Pao, Chinese philosopher

Basil Rice

YESTERDAY I had an old friend of mine, who was in town on work, over to lunch. “Do you eat pork/pork products?” I had asked him in a message ahead of his visit. [Since he's Zoroastrian, I wasn't too sure and didn't want to take a chance.] “I eat anything that doesn’t bite me back!” was the prompt reply. That was just perfect for me, because I don’t exactly fancy cooking anything that might bite me back either…crocodiles, snakes, tarantulas and scorpions may sound like the stuff of exotic (and bizarre) fare, but certainly not on my list of edibles. So I had made pork spareribs, digging out a recipe with which you can't go wrong. More on that later. But the flavour of the day was decidedly Thai - the main dish being red chicken curry. Making it was a breeze but the credit for its authenticity and taste should rightly go to a readymade red curry paste that I used.

A basil rice, I thought, would be the perfect, simple complement to the complex flavours of a Thai curry. I used the delicately fragrant, fine-grained jeera samba. Somehow, I’ve always preferred it to the long-grained basmati.

Wash two cups of rice and soak 15 minutes in water. Boil separately double the quantity of water as the rice, that is, four cups. Add a splash of cooking oil to it – about two tablespoons. Drain the rice and put it in the boiling water. Add salt to taste, lower the heat and cook covered. Tear up 10-12 basil leaves and add them when the water is nearly absorbed. Cook for two more minutes on very low heat till the water is fully absorbed. Garnish with cooked green peas.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The guru Neem Karoli Baba said food should be cooked with love and that people had to fill their stomachs before they could think about God. Feeding people was a big part of his teaching.


Courtesy:The Speaking Tree, The Times of India

'Fire Your Passion' Cheesecake

‘FIRE YOUR PASSION!’ screamed the labels on passion fruit juice bottles that I had picked up in a supermarket in Ooty during summer last year and from which I’ve derived the name for this cheesecake.

It was a bountiful season of passion fruit for me, thanks to a couple of friends who have the vine growing in their gardens. There was the purple as well as the yellow variety and apart from making the usual juice, which is loved by all at home, I set out to make a cheesecake as well.

For a biscuit crumb base to fit a 9” loose-bottomed flan tin, you need to crush the life out (not to worry, it isn't a criminal offence) of 180 gms of Marie Gold biscuits and mix the resultant crumbs with 75 gms of melted butter. Then pat it firmly into the base and sides of the flan tin and refrigerate till it hardens.

For the filling, whisk together till smooth 250 gms of curd cheese (obtained by draining a litre of curd of its whey) with one tetrapak of Amul fresh cream, 6 tablespoons of icing sugar, a few drops of lemon juice, a dash of vanilla essence and 1 teaspoon of gelatine dissolved in about three tablespoons of warm water. Ensure the gelatine is cooled before adding it to the mix.

Spoon the mixture evenly into the flan tin and refrigerate till firm and set. Pour the passion fruit pulp over the cheesecake just before serving. Cut in wedges and serve.

Apple Crumble

WE have had a surfeit of Apple stories in the past few days following Steve Job’s demise. As my sister had posted on Facebook, “Even God plucks the best Apples…” But that was about apples in the digital world. In parts of the world, the real world in which we all reside, it’s the apple-picking season as orchards are filled with the ripening fruit. But out here in Bangalore where apples don’t grow, I must content myself with picking apples from the fruit bowl and turning them into something delectable – this time, a pie with a crumbly top.
For a 9-inch pie dish, combine 195 gm flour, 1/8 teaspoon salt, half a cup soft, unsalted butter, 50 gm sugar and one egg lightly beaten. Mix lightly. Refrigerate the dough for about half an hour and then press into the pie dish evenly.

For the filling, peel and slice four apples. Sprinkle half a cup of sugar, a few drops of lemon juice, a teaspoon of cinnamon powder and a dash of vanilla. Toss to coat the fruit. Throw in a handful of raisins.

Make a crumble by combining a cup of flour, half a cup of brown sugar, 1/8 teaspoon salt and half a cup of soft butter. With fingers mix lightly till crumbly.
Fill the pie dish evenly with the apple mixture and top it with the crumble. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees C for about 50 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice-cream or fresh cream.

I DID IT!

FOR quite a long time I had been visualising a food blog of my own. With the vast possibilities thrown up by the Internet, it seemed quite the thing to do - to own a bit of space in cyberworld and treat it as a playground of sorts...

It was to be a diary of all my culinary adventures and misadventures in the hotspot of my home - the veritable kitchen, and other food experiences. It began in fits and starts a couple of years ago with the help of a kindly friend and was called Ice and Spice. But somewhere along the way it got stuck and like a stubborn mule refused to move ahead. But when I did try to revive it - the blog, I mean - it seemed like I'd forgotten to do a Ctrl+S with the password...no matter how hard I tried to coax and cajole my fading memory into retrieval mode, it simply would not budge. Like the stubborn mule. Sigh! Should have kept it sweet and simple. Something like Open Sesame or Khul Ja Sim Sim would have done the trick. It felt terrible, like being locked out of one's own house after losing the house key.

Then again, it was the movie Julie & Julia that rekindled my interest as also Chitti's Kitchen, the food blog of my friend, Chitra Shastry.

But it is to Sunder, another friend of mine in distant NYC, that I owe its name. At a mere mention, he pulled off an endlessly colourful list of them, like ribbons out of a magician's hat. Now I was faced with a problem of plenty. So difficult to choose. Like choosing a name for a baby, an exercise I had last indulged in nearly 16 years ago when my daughter was born. Never one to fry my brains, I almost did a tic tac toe, before zeroeing in on Mimosas & Samosas...it signifies liquid and solid to me. I think it also sounds nice, with a little bit of rhyme and rhythm to it.

I'm going to fix myself a mimosa one of these days. As for the samosas, well, laborious as the procedure may sound, I've promised myself to make them some day, but in the meanwhile, I think they're best picked up from Kanti's or KC Das. Not so much for the samosas, as for the tongue-tickling chutneys that accompany it. Such a deadly combo of spicy pudina and sour-sweet imli. Yummmm. The better half, who I now suspect spent the better part of his student days checking out all those food joints, if not the cool chicks in and around his college on Brigade Road, recently vouched that those chutneys are still tasting the same...

May they continue to do so forever and forever. Amen.