Oats and gooL

Old fashioned, quick cooking, steel cut, oatmeal, rolled - you name it, and I have probably tried it, and liked it. The only type of oats that I don't like are the ones that come in sachets and have other ingredients added to it. They are good to stash at the office desk though, for when the mid-morning hunger pangs strike. There is just something ultimately comforting about a bowl of oatmeal in the morning, and that is rather odd coming from someone who had never eaten oats for the first twenty five years of their life, and never liked to eat anything sweet for breakfast.



These days, steel cut is on the morning menu. To be precise, 'McCann's Original Steel-Cut Irish Oatmeal' that comes in a pretty can with a retro design.

Desi roots die hard though. I usually cook it in a pressure cooker, using the oats:water ratio specified on the box. One whistle is enough, and it sure beats stirring and simmering it on the stove. I make a batch to suffice for a few servings as it keeps very well in the fridge. When I am ready to eat, I add some milk to it, and heat it in a microwave for a minute and half. That is where the virtuousness starts to decline because I then add in some raisins or dried cranberries, and a solid helping of brown sugar, which delicately melts to golden perfection. However, that is a fairly common way to eat oatmeal, so what's new. Well, sometimes I add jaggery making it slightly rustic and even more delicious. It is delightful!

Dudhi with Peanuts

Inspiration for cooking something can come from some odd places at times. Even tabloids! I don't recall when I saved this link in my ever growing list of recipes to try out, but when I was looking for something different to cook with bottle gourd (or dudhi or lauki or lau) I found it.


The 'lauki-groundnut sabji' looked simple, and particularly appealing with the use of garlic and peanuts, neither of which I usually associate with bottle gourd, even though they are familiar ingredients in marathi cuisine.

I weighed the gourd I had in the fridge and it was exactly 500 grams. Arre wah. Knowing that cups in India are often smaller than standard size cups, and also because it seemed like too much of a good thing, I decided to use only 3/4 th cup of peanuts, but when I was cooking, I thought that even that might be too much, so I held back some of it. Naturally, that meant losing some of the garlic and chili flavor too, which was part of the powder. Also, considering that the size of onions in India is much smaller than those in the U.S., I used only half an onion.

I cooked the vegetable right in the tadka, because boiling it in water does not appeal to me. So that normally takes 15-20 minutes depending on how tender the gourd is. Here is my version, with the quantities and method modified.



Ingredients

500 gms dudhi or bottle gourd
1 teaspoon + 2 tablespoons of oil
1/2 cup of peanuts
1 teaspoon of red chili powder
4 cloves of garlic
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
pinch of turmeric
1/2 an onion, chopped
salt to taste
a handful of cilantro leaves, chopped

Method

Peel the bottle gourd, de-seed, and chop into about one inch cubes.

Heat one teaspoon of oil in a pan, and saute the peanuts with garlic for a few minutes. Grind the mixture with the chili powder in a food processor and set aside.

Heat the remaining two tablespoons of oil in a kadhai or wok. Add the mustard seeds, and when they start to crackle, add the cumin seeds and turmeric, followed by the chopped onion and saute until it starts to change color to a golden brown.

Add the chopped bottle gourd and stir it in. Add salt to taste, lower the heat, and place a lid on the pan. Let it cook for about 10-20 minutes until it gets tender, stirring once or twice. If it sticks to the pan, add a few spoonfuls of water.

Finally, add the ground peanut mixture and saute for a few minutes more. Check for seasoning and then add the chopped cilantro leaves. Best to serve with simple polis or rotis.


Update: The link to the recipe in Mid-Day does not work any more since they reconfigured their site.

Prepping for a potluck

It was a much awaited event last week. A potluck dinner event where I was to meet many people, some of whom I know well, some of whom I had never met before, and others in between. Many of them foodies.

When the menu was being planned, I declared two dishes that I could bring - usaL and kobichyA vaDyA. I selected the kobichya vadya because every time I have made it for guests, I have received favorable comments and recipe requests. It is also one of my own favorite things to eat. The humble cabbage elevated with lots of different spices ground together. Usal was just one of the things that came to mind that is easy to scale for a crowd.

While most people make usal with one type of bean, I like to combine two or more types of beans. I chose matki, moong, and whole green masoor. Since the dinner was on Saturday, I soaked the beans on Wednesday. The next day I tied them up in a bundle, and by Friday I had beautiful sprouts.

That is when the anxiety began. I do not have a specific recipe for usal, and every time I make it with a different combination. Sometimes I add curry leaves in the tadka, sometimes I add onion, sometimes ginger and garlic, and so on. So what would be the best combination to make for a crowd? I got frantic. I called up my cousin and she said 'no tamarind in usal, never'. So I send some emails to friends who are great cooks. 'oh of course tamarind, always'. Phew. That is what I do too.

Eventually, the usal was yet another take as usual. I added onion, and also tamarind and jaggery. And goda masala, lots of it. I have never before made such a humongous amount of usal and had to stir it around super carefully, to avoid breaking the sprouts without breaking my neck. I tasted a little, and it lacked a certain something which a friend assures me can be taken care of by adding 'kanda lasun' masala. So I added that at the end, and checked again, and it was just right. Not too dry, not too watery.

The photo of the finished dish taken by a friend at the party.

Deconstructed Pav Bhaji

While this sounds like a fancy name, it could also be called the lazy person's route to the real thing by way of what is available at home. Bhaji literally means vegetables in Marathi, and pav is a yeast bread that accompanies it. Pav bhaji, which is a spicy reddish-orange mash of indiscrete vegetables served with the bread toasted in butter, has its humble beginnings as street food in Bombay, but is now found at many restaurants all over the city. I have made it many times now, but never ever have I been able to replicate the taste I remember. It could not be just the amount of fat the vendors use, because I have tried my darned best to cast aside all thoughts of calories and poured in rivers of butter into it, but it refuses to taste as authentic as I want.

I had just returned from a short trip over the Christmas weekend, and before I left, I had cleared most of the fridge. So here I was, getting hungry and with not many choices. It was gusty and rainy outside, so I did not want to go anywhere. There were two carrots in the crisper, plenty of potatoes and onions in the pantry, and green peas in the freezer. There was bread at home and tomatoes too. I chopped up a potato and the carrots and cooked them in boiling water. In the meanwhile, I started chopping up some onion and a couple of tomatoes. Heated some oil and butter in a large pan, added cumin seeds, onion, and tomatoes, and sauteed it till the tomatoes were cooked. Added some garam masala. Drained the other vegetables and added those too. Red chili powder, salt, pav bhaji masala, some more stirring and cooking, and it was done. Chopped cilantro for garnish and a slice of lemon on the side to adjust the tartness. What I did not do in this case was spend energy and time over mashing up the vegetable to a puree to achieve that glossy red effect, but that is why I can also give it a name like 'Deconstructed'.

The first post

To blog or not to blog was the question for me. For each time I was fascinated about starting my blog, I found a reason why I should not fall to the temptation. So even though I registered the blog name sometime ago, I did not get around to posting anything here. When I finally decided to go for it, I wanted a perfect first post, which was like waiting for perfect weather. Not difficult, but not necessary. So, perfect or not, here is a start.

I plan to keep this as a food blog, for the most part, hopefully with some travel thrown in. Like many other things in life, my taste is food has changed over the years, and I suspect it will continue to do so, in future. Hence the name 'evolving tastes'.