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Recipe: More Peas, Please! – Pea Soup

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I have been very inspired to make some pea soup thanks to seeing it on the Instagram feeds of many people whom I’ve been following keenly lately. I find the bright green hue of pea soup very, very attractive. We feast with the eyes first, as I say often. The colour green itself denotes good health, promotes a sense of calmness, and has associations with healing. Peas are still in abundance on the market right now, as I mentioned in my previous post on peas paratha (I hope you enjoyed that one; always happy to hear from you!). So my inspiration, which became both my photographic and culinary craving, was fulfilled. So, of course, was my appetite.

The technique that I find works best while making soup is to ensure that the flavour of the vegetable used is not drowned through the addition of too many spices. What I also enjoy deeply is tasting the flavour of the vegetable itself. You may have noticed this about my zucchini soup recipe too, which kept things minimal so as to elevate the key element. Personally, I also prefer my food in general to not be intensely spicy. This is rather un-Indian of me, but I do love to savour every ingredient. To me, when you cook and eat mindfully, you can taste the season of the harvest, the sunshine and natural elements that raised the crop, the work of those who brought it to us, and of course the love within the preparation itself. There is something about such an experience that contributes to well-being, just as much as power-packed ingredients ensure that our health and immunity stay strong.

In fact, when I was studying Macrobiotics, we were taught to hand-crush rather than use a blender. So the ingredients would be coarsely ground. In a soup, we have not just the liquid, but could also chew on the small pieces. This was where I learned the unique pleasure of slowly tasting the vegetable properly. Coming from a traditional Indian household, I hadn’t really grown up with soups, even though my mother was very inquisitive about culinary methods and was among the first in our community to take baking and foreign cooking classes. So I did not get into them until much later, and my fondness for them is associated with that time in my life where I learned all about the Macrobiotics ethos and began to observe the difference it made to my life. In fact, have a slight preference for soups over salads (although I do love both, as you know), and that is probably for this reason.

A mindful and mildly-seasoned method of preparing soup helps you distinguish between the different kinds, the different vegetables used. In the case of this recipe, if you have access to homegrown or organic peas, you will especially notice the distinct flavour. Those can be particularly sweet and fresh. They also cook faster. Soups are easier to consume as well, and are both filling and light at the same time. I hope you’ll explore my other recipes in this category if you are a fan of them too.

 

Pea Soup

(Yield: 2 servings)

 

1 cup shelled peas

¼ cup spring onions

2 teaspoons olive oil/butter

Salt to taste

A pinch of pepper

2 cups hot water

1 tablespoon fresh cream (for garnish)

 

Add the olive oil in a pan. Once it has heated, add the spring onions. Sauté for a few minutes, until tender.

Then, add the peas. Stir, lower the flame and cover with a lid. Allow the peas to cook until they are tender to the touch.

Add the hot water and then add salt and pepper, to your preferred degree of seasoning.

Stir, then remove from the flame. Allow to cool. Then, blend this peas mixture into a thick, coarse purée. You may use your blender for convenience, or you may experiment with the Macrobiotics way described earlier.

Return the blended mixture, now a proper soup, to the pot. Allow to cook, stirring occasionally. You may adjust the water quantity to your preference.

One it has cooked, scoop out the soup into bowls and serve garnished with fresh cream. You could also sprinkle some more spring onions, fresh and finely chopped.

As I said earlier, the secret to this one is really in keeping the spices as minimal as possible. I believe that salt, pepper and a hint of lime (if you like tanginess) are more than enough to add flavour to a good soup, and everything or anything else is an additional twist.

Soups are always soothing to consume. They really are a comfort food. I hope you’ll enjoy this one as much as I do, and that you have the kind of experience that I do when I have it – savouring the taste of the peas slowly and enjoying the warmth of the soup.

 

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Recipe: Gujju-Style Cluster Beans – Guar Dhokli

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I’m the inquisitive type, and I love to know about everything that I eat. Recently, an ice cream recipe I was trying out called for guar gum, which made me wonder about its relationship to guar or cluster beans. With a little insight from Wikipedia, I learned this fun fact: guar gum, widely used internationally, comes from the guar seed and is exported from India. Guar gum is a thickening agent, and used in food industries around the world. Unfortunately, the processing the raw seed undergoes renders the final product rather unhealthy. Still, that takes away nothing from the goodness of guar itself. This wonderfully healthy vegetable hasn’t made an appearance on my blog so far, probably because it is not enjoyed by most of my family. But I know from experience that it is an acquired taste. I’ve been making it in a typical Gujarati style recently, in the form of guar dhokli. You may remember my dal dhokli recipe from years ago, and will be familiar with the stew-like concept behind it. This is similar: parcels of dough, known as dhokli, are cooked in a gravy – this one, full of nourishing guar.

Cluster beans are a bitter vegetable. The dhokli part of the dish balances this flavour out. Guar dhokli on the whole is a dish with several textures and flavours, and healthy too. As someone who enjoys a wide variety of vegetables, including unpopular ones like this one, I can safely say that a nice preparation, along with awareness of the benefits of an ingredient, can change one’s mind about it. This one contains: glyconutrients and a low glycemic index (making them good for diabetic diets) and folic acid (good for pregnancy diets). More generally, it is good for blood circulation, lowers bad cholesterol, and is rich in minerals, iron and Vitamins A, B and K.

As I mentioned, my family members aren’t fans, but I am. However, I too detested guar when I was growing up. My mother would make guar dhokli often and I would pick the guar out of the gravy and just eat the dhoklis, much to her fury! Funnily enough, once I got married and moved away, whenever I visited her I would request guar dhokli. It had a nostalgic quotient, and it truly began to grow on me. At this point, I would even go as far as to call guar one of my favourite vegetables. Some day, when my kids find themselves having a strange craving for it, they can look up this recipe. I am certain they will also have a change of palate as they get older.

The typical thaali that we eat at my house daily consists of a dal bhaat (dal and rice), rotli and a shaak, which is some kind of vegetable curry. This is the most basic Gujarati meal, and will be found at most households at lunch-time. Some may make it more elaborate by having one dry vegetable and a gravy one, or a savoury item and a sweet. But the core three elements remain. What happens in my home is that I often end up cooking some guar or some ridge gourd (which I I enjoy in a South Indian stir-fry, and have shared the recipe before) or some other vegetable that the others don’t like. So this just-for-me preparation becomes one extra dish, in addition to the core three.

When it comes to my kitchen, there are certain items that only I make. This guar dhokli happens to be one of them. Another one of my specialties is this Gujarati potato and brinjal curry. These recipes were transferred from my mother’s hands to mine, and somehow they just don’t taste the same unless I make them myself.

While preparing this guar dhokli, I pondered about how this authentic recipe has been preserved through the generations. My mother was only 19 when she moved to Chennai, and my siblings and I were born and raised here, just as my own children were. Still, we speak pure and perfect Gujarati at home, and the majority of the dishes we ate growing up were authentic ones. Even as I enjoy fusion food and amalgamating cuisines, I still find a way to maintain cultural and language traditions, even while integrating elements and influences. Food, of course, is the most beautiful way to do this – it’s amazing how we can enjoy diversity and also enjoy authenticity at the dining table.

Guar Dhokli

(Yield: 3-4)

 

Gravy

¼ kilogram cluster beans

2 tablespoons oil

1 teaspoon ajwain (carom seeds)

Salt to taste

A pinch of turmeric

1 tbsp dhaniya jeera powder (coriander and cumin powder)

½ teaspoon sugar

2 cups water

 

Dhokli

¼ cup whole wheat flour

¼ cup chickpea flour

Salt to taste

A pinch of turmeric

A pinch of chilli powder

1 teaspoon oil

¼ cup (or less) water

 

First, prepare the dhoklis. Make a tight dough with the above ingredients, adjusting the water accordingly. Now, make small discs with the palm of your hand. Set aside.

Then, prepare the gravy. First, wash and cut the guar into the desired size.

In a pressure cooker, add the oil. Once it has heated, add the ajwain. Next, add the chopped guar. Add 1 cup of water and allow the vegetable to cook until it is tender. This takes no more than 1 whistle.

Once cooled, open the lid and add another cup of hot water and then add the dhoklis that were set aside earlier.

Add the remaining spices and stir gently.

Once cooked, allow to cool for about 5-8 minutes. Your guar dhokli is now ready.

This dish is best served with rotis or rice, since it has a gravy component.

There you have it – guar dhokli, a dish that can turn a rather unpopular vegetable into a hit. Try it yourself and tell me what you think. I hope this recipe inspires you to bring the cluster bean into your repertoire, on repeat!

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Recipe: Perfectly Pleasing – Peas Paratha

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Peas are in abundance right now – they are in season, cheap to purchase, good for health, and I for one am glad they are flooding the local market. It feels like I am making something with them every day. Recipes I’ve shared with you in the past, like this harra bhara kebab, pea-pomegranate festive kachori and chura matar are being relished at my dining table. I’ve even begun using peas as substitutes for staples. For instance, I usually send my family members off to their offices with some aloo paratha in their tiffin carriers, but the potatoes have been swapped out for – you guessed it – peas. I would like for you to experience the lovely pea-stuffed parathas that they are enjoying at the moment too, so that’s exactly the recipe that I’ve decided to share this week.

Since I am now preparing as well as eating these pea parathas daily, I’ve observed that they are healthier and lighter than aloo parathas, which makes them more suitable for the mid-day meal when one’s work has to be resumed after. The best accompaniment for them is yoghurt and a cup of simple salad – add these two elements and you’re all set with a nice lunch. Traditionally, parathas are meant to be generous in size, but I prefer to make them small. They look pretty and dainty, fit more easily into your Tupperware or tiffin carrier, and the overall presentation just looks and feels nicer. That’s quite important for any meal, not just a special one. When a loved one opens their lunchbox at the office, the dishes within would have been prepared hours earlier and may no longer be warm or as fresh, so making them look attractive makes a difference.

I’ve been using peas grown in my region, but I must admit a preference for those harvested in Jaipur or Delhi at this time of year. The weather there is more conducive to this vegetable, and the yield is smaller in size and so sweet that it can be eaten raw (and even used in desserts, like in peas halwa). I have friends who grow peas on farms there, and visits from or to them during this season would always include some fresh produce. Sadly, no one is able to travel much at the moment, but the local variants are still much enjoyed in my home.

As I was preparing the peas for my photo shoot, I smiled as I recalled helping out in the kitchen when I was growing up. When we were kids, my siblings and I would have a competition about who would peel and shell the most peas. These were a chore that our mother often assigned to us, and this is how we would make it more interesting. The winner had no reward and the loser had no punishment, but this game was just a way for us to pep up a boring activity. Once again, as I did while sharing the previous recipe, I reminisce about how kids of my generation always found ways to keep ourselves entertained. We were innovative and creative in the absence of technology. What sorts of games did you play to make chores go by faster?

Peas Paratha

(Yield: 4-6)

 

Peas stuffing

1 full cup crushed green peas

1 teaspoon aamchur powder

1 teaspoon roasted cumin powder

1 teaspoon ginger/green chilli paste

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon oil (to roast the peas)

 

Paratha dough

1½ cups whole-wheat flour

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon oil

+ Oil for shallow frying

 

Divide the dough and the stuffing separately into equally-sized small balls (lime/lemon-sized).

Roll one dough ball out, and place a spoonful of the peas stuffing in the centre. Gather the dough around the peas and make a smooth round ball, using gentle pressure.

Dust some flour onto the ball and roll out again delicately, making sure the peas do not come out of the dough.

The method of stuffing the paratha with peas is similar to the method for making puran poli, which you can refer to in this post here.

Heat the tava over a medium flame. Once it is hot, place the rolled paratha on it and cook. Flip and spread a ½ teaspoon of oil evenly around the edges and shallow fry both sides until light golden brown spots appear. Repeat with the remaining parathas. Serve.

As I said earlier, some yoghurt and a bit of salad are great accompaniments, but even eaten on its own this peas paratha is flavourful. It is a perfect light meal, and it is lunchbox-friendly, cost-friendly and health-friendly too!

 

 

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Recipe: Simply Satisfying – Ven Pongal

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Here in Tamil Nadu, the harvest festival of Pongal has begun, and all over the state families are celebrating the occasion. Delicious, piping hot chakkara pongal is customarily consumed, but alongside it ven pongal (white pongal, made with freshly harvested rice) is also made. Oh, and let’s not forget certain creative yet authentic pongal renditions that are out there, such as this red rice and jaggery pongal. As you can see, there are many kinds of pongal, and this year, I thought I’d share with you a lovely savoury one.

Ven pongal is a traditional breakfast, one of my own favourites. It is a part of regular temple offerings too. This ven pongal is similar to a khichdi, which is a basic mixture of dal and rice. Unlike khichdi, it’s to be eaten with chutney or sambar. While khichdi is normally eaten for lunch or dinner but seldom for breakfast, with pongal it’s the reverse. As I mentioned, it’s a breakfast dish, and is rarely seen at other times of the day or night – except when it’s eaten for tiffin, which is what we call a late afternoon meal in this region.

Whenever I have breakfast while out and about in Chennai or elsewhere in Tamil Nadu, I always reach for the ven pongal. To me, it takes pride of place on the restaurant menu alongside its more famous counterparts, idli and dosa. The latter two are the “safe choices” that most people usually stick to, but I love ven pongal for breakfast and find it just as reliably made across the state. It’s very refreshing, filling, satisfying and healthy – and sees me through the day up until a hearty lunch.

The rice that I use in the pongal made on Pongal comes from our farm, and I observe a local tradition on this day. As is custom, this is when I store rice for the household for the whole year. The older it gets, the better it tastes. It is preserved well through a natural method: the raw rice is dampened with castor oil, and neem leaves are layered on it as I fill the storage barrels. This ensures that bugs stay away, given the humidity and the climate of this region. This raw rice is eaten throughout the year. When it is rinsed before use, the castor oil goes way, and any residue left is healthy for the body in any case. You can see a part of the process in the photograph below.

My love for this dish started in childhood. We had many Tamilian friends in our neighbourhood, so my familiarity with South Indian flavours and cooking began early. The house beside ours had girls of my age, and so we used to hang out together all the time. In those days, there were no TVs, computers or other electronic devices to keep us distracted indoors, so our hobbies were to run around, climb trees (eating fruits from them and being bitten by hairy caterpillars, as I’ve recounted on this blog before), play fun games that kids no longer seem to do and generally make a racket.

With these particular neighbours, we often spent the late afternoon together. I would go to their house at around 3.30pm, right in time for tiffin. We would sit on their front porch, enjoying leisure time together. My friends’ grandmother would oil, comb and braid their long hair and decorate it with jasmine. As she did, she would tell stories. I would watch their grooming ritual, listen to their Paati’s tales and enjoy the snack of the day. Very often, it was vada (savoury fried dough) or ven pongal, like the recipe I’m sharing with you today.

While I was growing up, my mother would sometimes make this too. This was because I would bring recipes back and forth between the different homes in our neighbourhood. Pre-blog and even pre-Internet, I already loved the exchange of kitchen techniques and secrets! South Indian families we grew up with also ate quite a bit of Gujarati food as a result. Of course, festivals meant gathering together and sharing meals too. It’s funny how connected we all were in that time before cellphones. I had such a lovely, inter-cultural upbringing – it contained food, heritage, granny tales and so much more from my family and well beyond. I feel like my children missed out on those simpler times, since technology began to dominate when they were little. I wonder how the generation of today fares, with even more at their disposal, and perhaps with even more disconnection in the world. What are your thoughts on all this?

Ven Pongal

(Yield: serves 3-4)

 

½ cup split mung dal

½ cup raw rice

3½ cups water to cook

2 tablespoons ghee

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon whole black pepper

3 tablespoon split cashews

2 teaspoons finely minced ginger

Salt to taste

A handful of curry leaves

 

Mix the dal and rice together and rinse well. Heat a pan and add the mixed rice and dal to it. Sauté until they release an aroma. Do not allow the grains to turn colour.

Now, add the water, salt and 1 tablespoon of ghee. Pressure cook until tender. This will take approximately 20-25 minutes.

In another pan, add the remaining ghee. Once it has heated, add the cumin seeds and pepper. Next, add the curry leaves and ginger. Finally, add the cashews. Once this tempering has turned golden, add it to the steaming hot rice mixture.

Mix well and serve warm. It can be eaten on its own, or with sambar or chutney.

Whether you’re having this as a festive dish, or just snacking on it at tiffin or breakfast, I hope that you find it as delicious as I do. If you happen to enjoy it while sitting on your porch or balcony with dear friends, as I used to as a child, I’d especially love it if you could paint me a picture of those special moments in the comments! Food is such an intrinsic part of bonding, is it not?

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Recipe: Spiciness From Spain – Patatas Bravas

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Last week, I shared the recipe for a saffron crème brûlée, a close rendition of my favourite dessert, crema catalana. Nostalgia for the vibrant city of Barcelona and for all the delicious food I’ve enjoyed there also made me fondly recall how I love patatas bravas too. It’s a typical Spanish dish, with a name that translates to “spicy potatoes”, and I’m so happy to share this recipe with you too.

Patatas bravas fall into the category of tapas or small plates dishes, and can be found delicious and cheap all over Spain. The best I’ve had was at a small and nondescript place, popular with the locals, that a friend took me to. They originated in Madrid, but I first enjoyed them in beautiful Barcelona, naturally. My husband used to export garments and I would accompany him on business trips to the city. We would often end the busy days with a plate of spectacularly-made Spanish potatoes. No trip, however short it may have been, was complete without some patatas bravas.

Intriguingly, I learnt that the Europeans did not consider the potato an edible item when it was first brought there from the Americas. It was looked down on by the elite as food that was only for labourers, who needed its energy benefits. The Spanish armies did consume it for this reason, however. When famines hit in the 18th century, the durable potato finally found pride of place in the European palate. Imagine: they deprived themselves of such deliciousness earlier!

Now, of course, the potato is hardly seen as humble. At El Tomás de Sarrià, the Barcelona restaurant that is most famous for the patatas bravas, their preparation of the dish is so renowned that the son-in-law of the King of Spain, numerous famous football and handball players and other celebrities have been known to frequent it.

But really, who doesn’t love potatoes? At home, we consume them in any form. Fried, sautéed, mashed, you name it. As much as I personally love them too, I do try to avoid eating them because I know how addictive they are. Once I start on just one wedge, I can’t stop myself from reaching out for more. Funnily enough, this is the same complaint – or compliment, rather – that I receive about my almond brittle. It happens quite often that a customer will call me up and say, “I couldn’t stop munching on them and have finished the batch you sent already! Do you have more?”.

These cherished “demands”, that I so gladly fulfil, also come from my family. For instance, whenever I make shakshouka, the family wants potatoes on the side. I discovered that patatas bravas are a brilliant accompaniment to that egg-based dish, and this multi-continental medley is much enjoyed at home. Every time I up my game a little bit, such as by substituting some plain vegetable dish for something more exciting like patatas bravas, the family decides that that’s the combo that they want ever onward. Do you ever find this happening – as your repertoire expands, the meals you prepare become more elaborate because the people you cook for begin to ask for specific dishes more frequently?

Our potato obsession at home is so intense that my husband even went so far as to buy an air fryer so as to eat healthier and feel less guilty about his consumption. But I personally feel that it’s better to have the oil-fried version occasionally than to use the air fryer every day. So that machine has been shelved for now, gathering dust in some poor corner. In the meanwhile, we are enjoying our almost-authentic patatas bravas, made with oil and love and lots of other good stuff!

Patatas Bravas

(Yield portion: 1, serves 2)

 

2-3 cups diced potatoes

2 cups oil for frying

Salt to taste

 

Alioli

2 garlic pods crushed

¼ cup mayonnaise

 

Bravas sauce

¼ cup olive oil

1 tablespoon paprika

1 teaspoon chili powder

Salt to taste

1½ teaspoons corn flour

1 cup vegetable broth

 

Patatas bravas are easy to make, and you begin with the potatoes and prepare the two sauces while they are frying.

Heat up the oil in a pan and deep fry the potatoes until they are golden. Drain them on a paper and then place them in a wide bowl.

Prepare the aioli sauce by crushing the garlic well and mixing it into the mayonnaise. Stir until well incorporated.

Prepare the bravas sauce by first adding the oil to a saucepan. Once it has heated, add the chili powders and flour. Stir till toasty. Then, add the vegetable broth gently and stir till emulsified. Boil on a low flame until the sauce thickens (this will take approximately 3-5 minutes). The sauce should have a consistency that can be drizzled.

To assemble the dish, simply drizzle the two sauces, aioli and bravas, over the fried potatoes and serve hot. You can also add some mayonnaise or sour cream, if you prefer.

I wonder what these patatas bravas will taste like if I swap the regular potatoes out for sweet potatoes. I’m definitely going to give that experiment a try…

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Recipe: Post-Diwali Downtime – Millet Upma

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After the abundance of sweets, treats and fried foods of Diwali and Navaratri, hopefully accompanied by equally large helpings of blessings and joy, it’s back to trying to eat clean and healthy. This month is all about giving the body’s systems time to settle down before the culinary excitements of Christmas and the New Year beckon again. In this part of the world, this is also a time of rains, which call for immunity-boosting and warming foods as well. With all of this in mind, and taking a cue only from what I’ve been preparing for my family and myself, I’m delighted to share the recipe for a type of comfort food that is ideal for this time of year: millet upma.

Upma is a kind of porridge that is consumed across South India, in several variations. Its base may be semolina, vermicelli, corn, whole wheat or rice. Here, I have chosen to use a millet as the base, specifically the little millet. Millets and soups are perfect for the current weather. While soups are not really a part of the local cuisine, millets have a very long tradition of usage here. I’m quite an advocate for cutting down on white rice consumption in favour of nutritious millets, and you can explore many more millet-based recipes in my blog archives if you’re interested in doing the same.

As well as being a great place to start if you’re new to millets, this dish is also just the perfect way to start your day. Now, the truth is that millets taste healthy, which you know means that the family will fuss over it and make faces – at first. But as I’ve observed from my own grown kids, a millet upma is most welcome at breakfast after a night of partying or feasting. It’s just the kind of thing that calms body and mind, and boosts energy levels at the same time. So I choose a millet upma at the right moment during other times of the year, but it’s whipped up quite frequently in my kitchen in the post-festive period. We also have it as a light dinner, with more vegetables added to the mix. It’s especially great if you’re like me and have dinner early, as the millet gives you energy for the remaining hours of the evening, while still being easy to digest at night.

When cooking millets, the amount of water you add will depend on the size of the grain. Heavier millets – bigger in size and darker in colour – are traditionally used in monsoons and winters as they take more time to digest, hence warm the body for a longer time. However, I’ve chosen a sort of in-between. The little millet, known in Tamil as samai, is a larger grain but has a lighter colour. Use the millet of your preference, and do remember that depending on the type, you may need to pressure cook it or soak it overnight. You will also need to figure out the water level so that the result is a dish that is tender and crumbly. The consistency of the cooked millet should not be sticky.

Millet Upma

(Yield: 2-4 persons)

¾ cup little millet

¼ cup finely chopped onion

¼ cup chopped beans and carrots

2 tablespoons oil

¼ teaspoon mustard seeds

¼ teaspoon cumin seeds

A few curry leaves

1 green chilli

1¼ cups water

A squeeze of lemon juice

Salt to taste

Rinse the millet and set aside. Heat a kadai and add the oil. Once the oil heats up, add the mustard and cumin seeds. Allow them to splutter and then add the remaining vegetables, green chilli and curry leaves.

Cook until the vegetables become tender and then add the water. Once the water has boiled, add the millet. Then add the salt and stir well. Keep the flame low, cover the kadai with a lid, and allow all the water to be cooked. The millet grain should be tender and not sticky.

Add some lemon juice and stir gently. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot, and enjoy the taste of a healthy meal that your body will thank you for!

As I said earlier, there is a long history of millet consumption both in India as well as in my household, as shared here on my blog. I hope this millet upma recipe intrigues you into exploring this food category further. I’ve got a whole range, from the traditional – bajra ghensh, seven-grain khichdo, ragi dosa with peanut chutney, chakkara pongal, ragi kanji and little millet rice with green beans poriyal – to the innovative or internationally-inspired – vegan millet thayirsadam, vegan chili and Indian veg millet salad. I’d love to know about your own journey with millets, too!

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Recipe: Tastiness From My Terrace – South Indian Ridge Gourd Stir-Fry

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As a Gujarati who was born and brought up in Tamil Nadu, I am lucky to have the advantage of knowing and being a part of both cultures. Naturally, this extends to the cuisines as well. Although what is served for lunch nearly every day at home is a standard Gujarati thaali, which consists of rotis, a sabzi or vegetable and some dal, you can see the influence of my multicultural upbringing in the style of of some of the dishes. For instance, the sabzi of the day may be something cooked in a South Indian preparation. This ridge gourd stir-fry, or peerkanga pirratal as we know it in Tamil, is one such recipe in my eclectic repertoire.

I grow ridge gourd on my rooftop, and terrace gardening has also shown me firsthand the beautiful logic of Nature, which has designed things so that the produce that is most nourishing for those who live in the local climate is what grows best in that land too. Take the ridge gourd: high in water content, rich with fibre and minerals, and therefore just perfect for the weather of Chennai wherein our energy is easily depleted by the heat. If you live here, loading up your lunch bowl with this ingredient gives you exactly the boost you need for the rest of the day.

Of course, rounding out the standard meal would be some form of carbs, also known as the bane of my life. So here’s the trick: the Buddha bowl trompe l’oeil. Serving style and visual presentation always impact our perception of what we’re consuming. By putting just two tablespoons of white rice into a bowl and filling the rest with this ridge gourd stir-fry, I don’t have that miserable feeling of holding myself back by skimping on the main part of the meal. Instead, the vegetables themselves become the main part of the meal. This dish is very much in the category of comfort food, and I sometimes literally eat bowlfuls of it!

This South Indian ridge gourd stir-fry is very simple, very unassuming and very wholesome. Just salt and turmeric are quite enough to enhance the natural flavour of the chief ingredient. In addition to the ridge gourd on my rooftop, there are coconut trees in my backyard that yield fruit all year around. I use my own homemade coconut oil and add freshly grated coconut to this dish too, so almost everything in this dish is homegrown and pure. Even a little kitchen garden can make such a difference to our cooking. There really is something special about cultivating and consuming our own ingredients.

Doing so is also a link to a traditional way of living and a traditional way of eating, and these are subjects I think about a lot, given how we need both of these for the sustainability of our planet. M husband and I love time-honoured dishes, but our adult children feel they require much more novelty and diversity in their diets. Being in sync with Nature and seasonal rhythms is important for our vitality too, and I wonder if this is something one becomes more aware of as we age and our palates change. Growing bodies and younger bodies with dynamic lifestyles do need more carbs and sugars, certainly. As discussed in my previous post, it’s quite interesting how kids and senior citizens have very similar tastes. I have been listening more and more to what my body, somewhere between those two extremes of life, needs. In my case, vegetables are what it often craves. If you’re the same, you’ll find much for your repertoire in this blog’s archives. While re:store is all about baked indulgences, the recipes here are more often than not about bringing pleasure and nutrition into everyday meals.

South Indian Ridge Gourd Stir-Fry

(Yield: Serves 2-3)

 

4 cups peeled and chopped ridge gourd

A few curry leaves

¼ cup grated coconut (optional)

2 tablespoons coconut oil

¼ teaspoon mustard seeds

¼ teaspoon cumin seeds

¼ teaspoon urad dal

Salt to taste

¼ teaspoon turmeric

½ cup water

1-2 green chillies

3 tablespoons soaked mung/yellow dal

 

In a pressure cooker, add the mung dal and the cut gourd. Add salt, turmeric and ½ cup of water. Allow to cook until tender (this should be about 2 whistles).

In another kadai, add the coconut oil. Once it has heated, add the mustard seeds, cumin seeds and ural dal. When they start to splutter, add the curry leaves.

Immediately after, add the vegetables from the pressure cooker and stir well. Once the concoction starts boiling, turn off the flame and add the grated coconut. You can skip this ingredient if you aren’t a fan, or if it isn’t available. Mix well. Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot. This is usually an accompaniment to rice or rotis.

This South Indian-style ridge gourd stir-fry is a recipe I picked up along the way, and prefer to the Gujarati version that my mother used to make, which required chili and coriander powders. That said, sometimes it feels a bit painful when I’m confronted with very deeply-rooted authentic Gujarati dishes and find myself at a loss about how to prepare them. Fortunately, my sister who has had much more exposure to that cuisine is within reach, as well as friends and fellow bloggers, and I usually find what I’m looking for and learn through trial and error.

In fact, this gives me an opportunity to ask you: is it true that ridge gourd peel can be used in a chutney? Have you prepared this, and if so, would you care to share the recipe?

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Recipe: Not Quite Authentic, But Quite Amazing – Green Quesadilla

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We can’t get enough of food inspired by Mexican cuisine at home, and after last week’s Mexican-style pineapple salad, I thought it would be perfect to share another delicious recipe in the same vein. This green quesadilla, truthfully speaking, is re:store style – a cross between Indian and Mexican, but leaning towards being an Indian dish with a Mexican name. For the culinary purists out there, no, this is not authentic. For the rest of us who love our fusion food and things that taste good under any moniker, I can assure you that this green quesadilla is quite amazing just the same. If you don’t believe me, ask my mother-in-law, who at 85 relishes it to the point of requesting it specifically when it’s been missing from our menu for even a week!

I can’t recall exactly how it came into being, but can make a vague guess that I must have had an excess of broccoli in my kitchen one day. I must have decided to pack it all into a quesadilla, to use up my stock while also ensuring that my family got a good load of greens that day. I do know that when I began serving it to them, my grown kids didn’t blink twice, distracted by the yummy cheese that holds the “tortilla” together (you’ll see why I use the quote marks when you read the method). I realised then that this dish is ideal for my readers with kids, especially younger ones who detest vegetables and need to be tricked into having them. In fact, calling it a quesadilla – even when you’re using ingredients that are so basic to an Indian kitchen – will also help with this, as children are always curious about trying new things and are likely to enjoy the novelty.

It has since become a staple at home, and I usually accompany it with a soup of some sort. Depending on your personal preferences, I can recommend several of my recipes for this pairing too. From the richly indulgent to the comfortingly simple, I have shared quite a range on this blog. Do check out my minestrone, zucchini soup, vegan whole corn and lemongrass soup, broccoli and almond soup or watermelon gazpacho at leisure.

Long before I encountered real quesadillas, and long before those of us who grew up in Chennai had the slightest clue what Mexican cuisine was all about, I enjoyed another dish based on the same concept at my friend Sharmila’s home. Whenever a small group of us would land up there after school, surprising her mother who would be unprepared to serve lunch for unexpected guests, she would take some rotis and whip up a simple, but extremely satisfying, treat for us. She would put some jaggery between two rotis and flip them on a pan with ghee. The jaggery would melt, bind the bread together, and would ooze out so appetisingly the moment you took a bite. Looking back, I can imagine how this clever innovation came into being. I’m sure you can too. Do you have a dish like this, one you put together in a rush one day that then became a regular?

The category of so-called quesadillas is, as proved by Sharmila’s mother, a highly diverse one. Sprinkle some idli podi on it and make it a South Indian version. Change up the veggies so they fulfill a specific dietary restriction, or to make a colourful version. Add textures or ingredients that you like. Just remember that the cheese is the main factor. Without it, the whole thing will literally fall apart!

This green quesadilla makes for a filling dinner, or even a healthy snack. I flatten and slice it like a pizza, but you can also roll it up like a kati roll. Serving it in different ways will also keep your kids (or their grandmothers!) happy and enthusiastic. Isn’t it so interesting how our tastes when we are very young often have much in common with our tastes when we are very old? With that in mind, I’m delighted to share with you my recipe for a green quesadilla that is sure to satisfy several generations of your family!

Green Quesadilla

(Yield: 3 quesadillas)

 

Dough

¼ cup all purpose flour

¼ cup whole wheat flour

¼ cup water (or enough to make a tight dough)

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon oil

 

Filling

½ cup broccoli

¼ cup green bell pepper

¼ cup spring onions

2 teaspoons olive oil

Salt to taste

1 pinch pepper

½ cup grated cheese

 

Butter to cook

 

Make a tight and smooth dough using all of the dough ingredients and set aside. When it’s ready to be worked with, make six small balls of dough. Roll them out with the help of some flour. The method in my roti post may be useful here if you want to know how to do this.

Cook all six rolled-out rotis on both sides partially. Set them aside.

In a pan, add the oil. Once it has heated, add the vegetables. On a medium to high flame, stir the vegetables and cook them al dente. Add salt and pepper and mix well.

To assemble the quesadilla, place three rotis flat. Then, scoop the vegetables on top of them, making sure that most parts of the roti are covered. Now, sprinkle the grated cheese. Cover each of these prepared rotis with a plain one, sandwiching the veggies. Press down with your hands.

Add butter or oil on both sides of each quesadilla and cook on a hot griddle. Flip carefully. The cheese will hold the vegetables together, but be gentle anyway, else they will open up.

Cut them in half and serve. You may add jalapeños to the vegetable mix, or serve some alongside. As I said earlier, a soup makes a great accompaniment if you want to round it out into a full meal. A salsa or dip of your liking will also make it more delicious as a snack. You may want to adapt my peach salsa recipe, using complementary ingredients.

There you have it – a cheesy, nourishing dish that somehow blends the comfortingly familiar with the intriguingly foreign. Do you also make your own quesadilla-ish recipe, using the simple Indian roti, and how do you do it? I would love to know!

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Recipe: The Goodness Of Gooseberries – Star Gooseberry Rice

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I literally grew up under a star gooseberry tree – the very same tree that you may know as amla or nellika. I loved the fruit of that tree so much that I braved its hairy inhabitants, known in Tamil as kambili poochis (blanket worms, a type of caterpillar that becomes a moth). These small creatures have a self-protection mechanism of dropping their spiky, needle-like hairs onto the skin of predators or threats – such a little girl greedy for some ripe fruit! How many times would I have run crying to my mother with one hand full of green star gooseberries and the other one holding the sore spot lanced by caterpillar hairs? She would painstakingly have to remove each one, and this was a pretty frequent occurrence. Even caterpillars could not keep me away from the fruit that I craved!

Although a long time has passed since then, I still have a star gooseberry tree in my home now. Like all native trees that seemed to be everywhere in Chennai when I was growing up, they are scarcer now, and I cultivate those in my backyard with care. I repeatedly tell my children stories about my misadventures with the caterpillars that lived on the one in my childhood home, mostly because I don’t see them any longer. I wonder if this has something to do with urban pollution, and with how we are misusing our planet. We as human beings are responsible for the disappearing bees, and the extinction of so many other species. Even though the caterpillars can literally hurt me, they are proof of the health of this planet, and I hope to see them crawling in my garden again some day.

The variant of the gooseberry tree I have at home is the same as the one I grew up with. It is the ribbed or ridged star gooseberry (nellika), not the softer, more rounded amla. They are closely related fruits and you can use either one in this recipe. I prefer the star gooseberry for its sour taste, whereas the amla has a hint of bitterness. I enjoy this fruit so very much that I don’t just eat it plain, but incorporate it into my cooking as well. This star gooseberry rice is a wonderful way to bring its unique flavour into your meals. Pickling is another great idea, given the fruit’s naturally intense taste.

The best-known benefit of all Indian gooseberries is that they have a very high Vitamin C quotient. They are also very good for fighting sinus-related issues, boosting immunity, beautifying skin and hair and improving digestion. The leaves and roots of the tree also have a long list of uses in traditional medicines, in anti-viral, anti-venom, analgesic and other capacities.

This post came together between a friend mentioning eating star gooseberry rice one day, a trip down memory lane about those hairy caterpillars, and more recent memories from journeys around India.

On some of my travels, I have noticed gooseberry-shaped artistic motifs in borders and jalis at different monuments and temples across India – including even at the Taj Mahal – and this made me think about how India has always been a land of plenty. I understood that these motifs of so many common culinary and botanical elements that we take for granted – including not just star gooseberries but pomegranates, mangoes and a great variety of flora and fauna as well – are ways to celebrate that bounty, depicting the amazing harvests that grow here. Among all our many exotic mysteries and riches, the natural wealth of India attracted so many to our shores, and still does. We have so much to be proud about.

Star Gooseberry Rice

(Serves 2)

2 tablespoons sesame oil

2 tablespoons groundnuts

¼ teaspoon methi seeds

¼ teaspoon mustard seeds

¼ teaspoon cumin seeds

½ teaspoon channa dal

½ teaspoon urad dal

1 green chilli

2 cups cooked rice

Salt to taste

A pinch turmeric

A few curry leaves

4 grated star gooseberries

1 grated tablespoon coconut

Finely chopped coriander leaves (garnishing)

In a kadai, add oil. Once it has heated, add the groundnuts and allow them to splutter. Next, add the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, channa dal, urad dal, methi, green chilli, grated coconut and curry leaves. Mix well. Now, add the grated Indian gooseberries – whichever variant you have on hand or prefer.

Once the mixture turns lightly golden, add the rice, salt and turmeric. Stir well.

Garnish with the coriander leaves and serve.

I hope you’ll enjoy that unique flavour of this star gooseberry rice. If you’re a fan of rice dishes in general and are always looking to spice up your plain steamed rice, you may want to explore the many recipes I’ve shared earlier that do exactly this. Raw mango rice, dill rice or spinach rice make for exciting daily staples. Vegetable biryani is perfect for a small celebration. If you want something a little more exotic, this glutinous black sticky rice with mango is quite a delight. Do try them out and let me know what you think!

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Recipe: Stemming The Summer Heat – Banana Stem Buttermilk

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Dairy is a huge part of the pan-Indian diet, and among its many forms, buttermilk is consumed across the length and breadth of the country during the summer. It is mentioned in Ayurvedic texts as a coolant, and provably has this effect on the body. In lore, it was among the delicious goods that Krishna often stole from the cowherds, with his mother Yashoda usually discovering his theft quickly and reprimanding him for it. It has been in our history and mythology for millennia, and in our kitchens as well. A few years ago, I shared a recipe for spiced buttermilk, and today I am sharing one for a flavoured variant: banana stem buttermilk.

As I mentioned in a recent recipe, my mother made butter at home while we were growing up, and its sour residual buttermilk was used in kadhi and other dishes. As a beverage, I prefer my buttermilk less sour and make it with fresh homemade yoghurt, which you can also get into a daily routine of preparing yourself.

How the straightforward buttermilk that I regularly consume came to be pepped up with banana stem is really a photographer’s story. Some time ago, I had been preparing banana stem poriyal, a Tamil stir-fry side dish, when something caught my eye as I was slicing the ingredient. A beautiful geometric pattern (designed by Nature) along the edges of the stem captivated me. I was moved to pause my cooking and pick up my camera. Somehow, as I worked, the thought of adding the ingredient to our regular post-lunch buttermilk occurred to me. From stir-fry to shoot subject to summer heat-buster, the humble banana stem had quite a journey in my hands that day.

Though it is humble indeed, and sometimes neglected for this reason, banana stem is a much-loved ingredient in Tamil cuisine due to its powerful health benefits. It is most famous for being able to dissolve kidney stones, and also has anti-diabetic and detoxification properties. It is rich in iron, fibre, potassium and Vitamin B. It can be eaten raw, but not everyone’s constitution reacts well to this, so you can lightly steam it before consumption without losing much of its nutritious qualities too. Although I was inspired that day to put my photographic muse into my afternoon drink, it was not a brainwave that simply came out of nowhere. Somewhere in my growing years, at some friend’s house or another, I certainly drank banana stem buttermilk. As a local, accessible and inexpensive ingredient, it has always been put to good use by cooks over the centuries.

As mentioned, we have buttermilk with our summer lunches daily, or else a banana. Either a drink to cool the body down, or else the fruit of the same plant to assist with digestion. This was the case when I was a child as well, when my mother would prepare plain buttermilk that was seasoned with nothing but salt and cumin powder. During the summers, our school holiday time, we would play with our neighbourhood friends in the afternoon, climbing trees and tiring ourselves out in a happy way, then have a glass of this and go off for a siesta. The drink was especially vital because it would also be mango season. Mangoes in high quantities increase body heat. Of course, we would have gorged on them, so something had to be consumed to counter this.

Buttermilk really is a summer beverage for so many reasons, and I always find it interesting and awe-inspiring how Nature laid everything out for us in such a way that there is always a seasonal logic. Isn’t it marvellous that yoghurt just takes 3-4 hours to set at this time of year, when it is a more necessary part of our diets, as opposed to needing to set overnight in winter? To this natural design, we also add our common sense: we consume cooling buttermilk during the day, when the sun is high, and not at dinner time.

As a Gujarati born and brought up in Tamil Nadu, bringing the local banana stem into my traditional buttermilk was an intuitive choice. You can make it with other flavours too. The sweetened version of this drink, the lassi, is similarly versatile, and you may remember a fruity version from my recent mango series.

Banana Stem Buttermilk

(Yield: 2 cups)

1 cup chopped banana stem

2 cups yoghurt

1 piece ginger

¼ teaspoon asafoetida

A few curry leaves

A handful of chopped coriander leaves

1 green chilli

½ teaspoon roasted cumin powder

Salt to taste

2 -3 cups water

Juice of half a lime/lemon

Chop the banana stem and soak the pieces in water. Set aside while you prepare the other ingredients. If you tend to find consuming raw banana stem difficult on your digestion, lightly steam it beforehand.

In a bowl, prepare the yoghurt by adding salt and cumin powder. Add 2 ½ cups water and beat well. Keep aside.

Discard the water that the chopped banana stem was soaking in. Put the chopped stem pieces into a blender. Add the green chili, coriander leaves, asafoetida, ginger and curry leaves. Add the remaining ½ cup water and blend well. The quantity of water you use depends on how thick you want your beverage. Then, strain the thick purée into the prepared buttermilk. Add a dash of lime/lemon juice, for a bit of a sour tang.  Beat well. Consume immediately, before it starts to change colour.

I hope you’ll enjoy this nutritious banana stem buttermilk! I’ve shared quite a few summery beverages over the years, and here are some more recipes for your enjoyment too, shared with good wishes for your health and well-being: strawberry-rose smoothie, barley lime drink, rose sherbet and curry leaf and raw mango cooler.

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