Guests for Dinner

After a long time really, I will be entertaining formally at home.


I have planned a sit down dinner for 6 , proper Indian style with thalis. This can be a bit cumbersome for our foreign guests who are reluctant to use their fingers and happily use their knives and scratch the smooth, unblemished polish of my thalis. How it breaks my heart, when I hear the screach and I resist the urge to grab the knife and tell them "Use your fingers for God's sake!"


However, in true Indian tradition, I have to accept my dinner guests as "God who comes to my home" and keep my ungodly thoughts to myself.


This morning was spent shopping for the ingredients and as usual, I find it impossible to get all the stuff in one place. 


To begin with I needed to replace my 20 year old gas tandoor and spent the better part of the morning at Lohar Chawl looking for a shop that was open!  Most of the shops here were just about opening their shutters for business at 11.15 in the morning and that was irritating me quite a bit. I remember the good old days when I could finish all my shopping and get home by 12. These days it is well nigh impossible.


Then I went to Crawford for the veggies and fruit and was quite surprised to find some of the prices much lower than what they were last month. Of courseI am not complaining, but I wonder how long this blissful period will last.


In the afternoon my meat man delivered the meat and thankfully followed my instructions. So I marinated my lovely leg of lamb and slow cooked it in the evening while I went for my evening stroll.


While the lamb was marinating, I made a quick chicken curry with ground almonds and saffron, pulverised the mint, chillies, coriander and garlic to make the spiciest of chutneys - so spicy that the spice went up my nose! 


Now I just have to wait for the Baby Pomfrets  which I am going to stuff with mint and lime and grill in a banana leaf on my new gas tandoor. 


My guests arrive at 6 tomorrow evening and I will give them tandoori prawns and chilled beer while they continue with their business discussions till 8. 


Dinner of course will be the grilled fish, Lobster thermidore, smoked aubergine salsa, zeera rice, potato bhaji and ice cream.

Saluting the Beasts of Burden

I remember many, many years ago when my little daughter was interviewing for her kindergarten, she was asked where milk came from and she promptly replied "bottles"! Of course the teacher had a good laugh but considering the fact that my daughter had never seen a cow in her life, there was no way she could have made a connection between the animal and her beloved food. Children today will probably substitute bottle with a plastic bag or tetrapack for that is how milk is packaged these days!

Looking at the vegetables and fruit in the market neatly stacked in supermarkets or  in the fresh vegetable markets, one hardly gives a thought to their cultivation let alone the poor beasts of burden whose labour is used to help them grow.

So when I heard that the day after Ganesh Chaturthi the people of Maharashtra honour the beasts of burden by eating food that is not cultivated with their labour, I decided to at least go along to the market and see what could be eaten instead.

Even though it was raining cats and dogs, the market was full of vendors selling an assortment of leafy vegetables that go into this dish called Rishichibhaji. There was quite a bit of stuff too : tubers like yam, colocasia and sweet potato, red amaranthus, colocasia leaves , red pumpkin,  bits of boiled corn, okra and  drumstick that went along with the leafy veggies.

After I bought a whole heap of bhaji, I realised I didn't know what to do!

So I called up an aunt in Pune who told me that I should just wash everything well and then chop it into bits. Then, she told me, take a huge big kadhai or pressure cooker and heat up 2 tablespoons of oil. To this, she advised I should  add a teaspoon of mustard seed and after they had popped, a quarter teaspoon of asoefetida, some turmeric, chopped green chillies and then the tubers, pumpkin and okra ( one by one making sure that each one is partially cooked before adding the other ingredient), then topping off the whole lot with the leafy vegetables. The pot should be coverd and the leaves allowed to cook down. Then, she told me, you should add the pre-boiled bits of corn . The vegetable should be given one big stir and allowed to simmer for a few minutes more so that all the tastes mingle well.When I asked her for exact quantities, she laughed.

Then she said, the vegetable was ready to eat. I forgot to ask her with what? After all aren't rice and wheat flour cultivated with the labour of the beasts of burden???

Modaks for Ganpati

Today is modak eating day, thanks to the presence of Lord Ganesh in our home.

We got up late in the morning since we were going to have just a small puja and got down to making the modaks all 21 of them.

Yesterday evening we put together the ingredients for the stuffing, freshly grated coconut, strands of saffron, powdered cardamom and of course the main ingredient - sugar. We let it sit for a bit till most of the sugar dissolved, then left it on low heat with a cover to simmer for a while and let the sugar melt completely.

Then this morning we made the dough with Basmati rice flour got specially from Vanita Samaj's outlet at Shivaji Park. The trick to great modaks is to knead the steamed dough before it cools down. This is quite a toughie as you have to be particularly thick skinned not to feel the heat as you knead and pummel the dough to a smooth elastic.

Then, the dough is quickly portioned into tiny balls, each ball flattened and filled with a spoonful of coconut filling. The sides of the pastry are pinched together and fluted and brought together to close the mouth. The resulting Onion shaped pastry is then put in a steamer to get the most divine modak.........

Khasta Kachori at Shegaon Station

This strange looking brown lump is actually a very yummy snack known as Khasta Kachori.

These yummy things are not normally for my tummy being excessively over-spiced and hence almost always avoided. However, a chance visit to Akola almost thirty years ago introduced me to this delicacy. At 8 in the morning, the train stops at a sleepy district town called Shegaon which is renowned for its kachori. Somehow train journeys always make me hungry and since it was almost 12 hours since my last meal, I was ready to deviate from the norm and try Shegaon Station's Kachori with my tea. One bite and I was hooked. Unfortunately, no other kachori matches up to this and , I have tried in vain to get the recipe for this simply divine kachori.

Yesterday, I found a recipe of sorts , in my mother in law's book which had all the ingredients without any measurements! When I asked her how she could write down such a recipe, she said that you should vary the spices to your own individual taste!

So I have made my own recipe which I must say can do with a bit of alteration but before I come to the final and authentic Shegaon Station Khasta Kachori recipe, I will share what I did yesterday.

You will need for the filling :

1/2 cup of chick pea flour ( besan)

1 tspn of oil

2 tspns of fine fennel seed ( saunf)

2 cloves

1 Bay leaf

3 fat round red chillies

1 tspn of dried mango powder ( aamchur)

salt and gud to taste.

For the outer coating

1 cup of flour ( maida)

1 tbspn of hot oil

salt to taste

The besan should be lightly roasted in the oil . Gradually add the rest of the ingredients ( except for the mango powder and the gud). Keep roasting till there is a fine aroma of roasting spices and chick pea flour. Remove from the fire and allow to cool a bit before pulverising in the coffee grinder. Add the gud and aamchur till the mixture is a blend of sweet and sour.

This masala can be kept in an air tight bottle till required.

To make the outer covering, the flour should be sifted with salt . The oil heated separately and poured into the pile of flour. Knead into a dough with water and set aside for around 10 minutes.

To make the Kachoris, the dough should be made into tiny balls and rolled out into thickish roundels. Put a generous amount of the masala into each puri and close up the mouth to make a ball. Again roll out and deep fry in hot oil, lowering the heat after adding the puris. The puris should be turned over till they are evenly browned . Drain off excess oil and serve hot with sweet tamarind chutney or just plain.

One cup of Maida will make around 6 kachoris. The left over masala can be used to stuff another 6!

You can do what I am going to do ......make kachoris everyday, till I get the taste just right!

But, if any of you do have the original recipe............please please do share it with me.

Welcome to my table

My first experience with cooking was with old Miss Samson when it was compulsory for all the girls to learn Home Science. Most of the time was spent in the Cookery Lab as it was called, with the fan whirring in the back ground while Miss Samson droned on and on about culinary terms. Starting from A is for Acetic Acid till Z is for Zest. I can't remember how many pages of such terms we wrote and what purpose it all served for none of us as far as I remember went on to become master chefs or even gourmet cooks.

All that we were really interested in was the fact that we could escape from Quadratic Equations and the flying chalks of Mr. Lewis which we faced in the period just before Home Science. That and the fact that once in a month, we would actually be able to try our hand at cooking!

Little did I know then, that the knowledge learned in Miss Samson's classes would eventually be all that I would carry with me throughout my life.