FOOD FOR THOUGHT
I find that a great part of the information I have found was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.
Franklin P. Adams

Betel Leaf Parcels

WANDERING aimlessly through the wild and untended garden at my parents' home near Mangalore earlier this month, I came upon a betel leaf vine that had spread expansively on the ground like a leafy carpet, clung tenaciously to a tree trunk and had even stretched itself further to gain a stranglehold on the outer walls of the water tank! No wonder it's called Nagvalli in Sanskrit, which means "serpentine creeper".

The green profusion refreshed my memory of an article I had read about a betel leaf

wine, one of the concoctions of Coorg housewives who have a knack for making wine out of any fruit, including grapefruit! In comparison to a wide variety of fruity wines that I've sipped - [more recently an apricot by Lindisfarne Winery that we picked up along with a crumbly Cheshire cheese at The Cheese Shop in Chester, UK] - and even a vegetable wine such as beetroot, a "leafy" wine seemed quite a novelty.

Not new to making a few mean wines myself and with the leaves available in abundance for free, I thought it would be worth a try. It would be easy enough to source a recipe from the Internet, I reckoned, and proceeded to gather a thick wad of betel leaves that I brought back with me.

The search for the wine recipe, however, drew a blank but led to other interesting discoveries, such as the use of betel leaf as a food wrap in cooking!

Cabbage, pandan, turmeric, colocasia, banana, grape, jack fruit and even teak leaves are widely used in ethnic cuisines. Think patrani machi, cabbage leaf rolls, pathrode, patholeo and dolmas, but betel leaves seemed a bit offbeat.

From the dozens of recipes on the Net, I chose the Vietnamese Betel Wrapped Beef because it didn't sound too daunting for a first attempt. Moreover, my mother-in-law used to add a couple of betel leaves when making ghee from home-churned butter, which enveloped the entire house and beyond with a delicious aroma. If betel leaves could make a more fragrant ghee, then shouldn't it be the same with meat? I wasn't sure if such assumptions worked, but was brave enough to try.

Making a few changes to suit our tastes, I replaced cornstarch as the binding agent with ground Bengal gram dal and the Madras curry powder with *baffad powder besides fortifying it further with some green chilli, ginger and garlic, in addition to the scallion, black pepper, fish sauce and salt listed in the original recipe.

For 15 betel leaves I used:

400 gms minced beef
1/2 cup scallion, finely chopped
3 teaspoons fish sauce
3/4 teaspoon black pepper powder
1 1/2 tablespoons baffad powder
2 tablespoons ginger-garlic paste
3 green chillies
3 tablespoons Bengal gram dal, soaked for about an hour to soften
Salt to taste
2 tablespoons cooking oil

Grind the dal together with the green chillies, ginger-garlic paste and the baffad powder and mix well together with all the other ingredients (except oil). Form into sausage-like shapes, about 2-3 inches long. Place them on the back of the leaf, about half an inch below the pointed tip and roll downwards towards the stem. Secure with toothpicks. In a foil lined baking tray, drizzle some oil and arrange the parcels, drizzle some more oil on top and grill in a microwave oven (which is what I did) or bake in a preheated oven for about 25 minutes, turning them over and basting them in between.

*baffad powder: a curry powder commonly used
in Mangalorean and Goan cooking

PS: We unwrapped the 'parcels' and discarded the leaves before tucking in. The meat had well and truly imbibed the betel leaf  flavour - sharp and smoky with a slightly bitter tinge. Although it was a nice change from the usual and everyone ate it happily, deep down I know it will remain a one-off attempt. Try it once if you're brave enough like me!

THOUGHT FOR FOOD
When life gives you lemons, find someone who has vodka and throw a party.
Ivan Minic

Lemon Bars

WHO can say no to these lovely, scrumptious lemon bars with a shortbread base and a tangy lemon filling? I had first baked them for our church fete last year and they got sold like hot cakes. Since then, I've made them a number of times and yet again yesterday as a special treat for my friend Lorraine's birthday.


What you need:


For the base:
260 gms maida (refined flour)
225 gms unsalted butter
60 gms powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

For the filling:


400 gms powdered sugar
4 eggs
50 gms maida (refined flour)
Grated rind & juice of 2 lemons
A little icing sugar for dusting


To prepare the base, cream together the flour and butter. Add the powdered sugar and salt and knead together. Press evenly into a greased and lined cookie tray. This quantity fits a 10" x 10" tray. Ensure the lining paper stands at least half an inch above the rim of the tray to prevent overflow of the filling down the sides.  Bake for 20 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 170 degrees C. Cool.


For the filling blend together all the ingredients till smooth. You can add one or two drops of yellow food colouring if you like and a dash of lemon essence, but this is not really needed, as the lemons have a strong flavour of their own.


Pour this over the base and turn back into the oven for another 15-20 minutes or till filling is set. Cool completely, mark squares and dust over with icing sugar. Yields 24 pieces.


PS: Four limes may be used if the lemons are unavailable. However, they'd still be a poor substitute for the sunshine yellow lemons with their invigorating, citrus fragrance.

Whey & Celery Refresher

I'VE never had any use for whey, except as a home remedy for an upset tummy, and so, down the drain it went whenever I made "hung curd" for dips or a cheesecake. Litres of it have since gone down the drain but that was before I attended the Upper Crust Food & Wine Show at the Lalit Ashok recently.

In his demo, Chef Mani Pathak elevated this same whey, that I thought was waste, to a sophisticated drink by using just a couple of simple transforming ingredients.

I tried it out for the first time today and yay (!) does it feel great to have moved from "away with whey" to "a way with whey"!

What you need:

400 ml whey
100 gm cucumber, peeled & deseeded
100 gm celery sticks
Salt to taste
A few drops of Tabasco



Keep the whey chilled. Chop the cucumber and the celery sticks. Blend both together and strain to obtain the juice. Mix with the chilled whey. Add salt to taste and a dash of Tabasco. Serve in shooter glasses.

Snake Gourd Salad

I’VE always found cooking vegetables a huge challenge, particularly all those boring members of the gourd family. So it was something of a pleasant surprise to find a refreshing salad made out of snake gourd - an instant hit with all at home.

It was at ‘Sri Lankan’, the ethnic restaurant at The Grand Oriental hotel in Colombo that we first tasted it. This restaurant lays out an authentic buffet of local food, cooked in a homely manner. At the live appam counter I remember how we watched in fascination as the chef poured a ladleful of batter in the heated chatti, twirling it deftly to give the appam its unique shape and texture – soft and fluffy in the centre and crisp and lacy around the sides. Now before I get carried away by the divine and delightful appams, let me go back to where I began.

Ever imagined eating RAW snake gourd? At least I hadn't until that day, and it wasn’t at all difficult to single out the ingredients that comprised this wonderful salad, the zing provided by the combination of black pepper, coconut, lime juice, salt and sugar. Try it once and decide for yourself if you're going to add it to your repertoire of salads like I did. For this salad, I normally choose the short variety of snake gourd. And it should be tender.

For one small snake gourd
you will need:

Half a green capsicum, sliced thin
1 small onion, sliced thin
1 green chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
Juice of a quarter of a lime
A large pinch of sugar
A dash of freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons of fresh, grated coconut
1 tablespoon of fresh green coriander, chopped
Salt to taste

After scraping the thin skin off the snake gourd, slice it in half lengthwise and clean it of all the pith and seeds. Wash, wipe dry and then slice thinly across. Toss it with the rest of the ingredients and lo and behold your salad is ready.

To break the salad’s green monotony, I also added one small red tomato, halved lengthwise, deseeded and sliced thin.

PS: In the salad pictured here there’s no green coriander because I ran out of it and it was too late to step out to get it. These things happen sometimes, don’t they? What's life without a little bit of imperfection?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Eat little, sleep sound.
Iranian proverb

Mangalore Tea Biscuits

LIKE people and places, it’s funny how certain foodstuffs too can evoke a sense of nostalgia. While in Mangalore recently, I picked up a packet of tea biscuits that my grandmother used to stock along with other goodies from the local bakery as a supplement to the wonderful treats that she herself dished out every evening for tea.

Although I have no archival evidence to support the claim, I’m told that these were first introduced in Mangalore by the bakers Andrew Pinto & Sons in the year 1850, which means they're about as old as the Indian Railways! Though not half as expensive or famous, they continue to be as typical to the region as Kayani's Shrewsbury biscuits are to Pune.

Although the original bakery has long since ceased to exist, several others now manufacture these biscuits and supply them to retail stores throughout the length and breadth of South Kanara district. Its cellophane packaging is most unpretentious but tucked between its mildly sweet contents for me are a host of sweeter memories!

No-Bake Oreo Cheesecake

READY-to-make, quick and easy packaged dessert mixes come in handy when you want to take the easy way out. Predictably, they won’t stand up in taste, richness or texture to the pudding or cheesecake made in the original, long-winded way, but they’ll do when you’re hard pressed for time and have hungry kids whose constant refrain is: “What’s there to eat??”

(If there’s no bread should they eat cheesecake?)

While in Abu Dhabi a couple of months ago, I was scouring the packaged food shelves in a hypermarket for anything new and interesting when I spotted the Jell-O Oreo Dessert Mix.

It’s a simple three-step mixing procedure, with clear instructions printed on the side of the carton. Inside were three sachets containing separately, the dark, rich Oreo crumbs for the base, the filling mix and some crushed Oreo cookies to fold into the creamy mix as well as for decoration. The only additional ingredients needed were butter and chilled milk.

Mixing and assembling took less time than it takes to shout "Jell-O Oreo Dessert Mix"… OK, so I’m exaggerating a wee bit, but well, it took less than seven minutes and once set, about that much time to polish if off.

I wasn’t out to impress anyone, so didn't bother to reach out for the flan tin which was hiding somewhere behind a stack of cake tins and set it in a glass dish instead. It doesn't hurt anyone to be lazy sometimes, does it?

THOUGHT FOR FOOD
I have long believed that good food, good eating is all about risk. Whether we’re talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime ‘associates,’ food, for me, has always been an adventure.
Anthony Bourdain

Baingan ka Bharta

WHEN I saw that big fat brinjal with its beautiful, deep purple, silky smooth skin at our friendly neighbourhood grocery store, I suddenly realised that it was ages since we had had baingan ka bharta. The dish of the day was prepared by my cook Mary (with a little help from me as the official taster) and it was superb, with a delicious smoky flavour from roasting the brinjal directly on the fire.

For 1 big brinjal chop the following:

2 medium-sized onions
1 large tomato
1 green chilli
2 sprigs of green coriander

You will also need:

1 tablespoon ginger-garlic paste
1/2 a teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon Kashmiri chilli powder
2 tablespoons cooking oil
Salt to taste

After scorching the brinjal black, peel and discard the skin. By now it will look rather pitiable and limp, but don't feel sorry for it. Remember that beauty is only skin-deep. Now mash the brinjal. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onions till transparent, add the ginger-garlic paste and green chilli and saute for a little bit on medium heat. Lower the heat and add the turmeric & chilli powders. Give it all a quick stir and put in the chopped tomatoes. When the tomatoes soften a bit, add the mashed brinjal and salt to taste and allow to cook covered on low heat for about ten minutes. Sprinkle the coriander leaves and cook for another minute. Garnish with more green coriander if you like. I love this with soft, fluffy phulkas.

PS: Some recipes also include half a teaspoon of garam masala and a sprinkling of lime juice.