How to: Samosas

Before I return home to India, my mother calls and asks me each time”What would you like to eat?  What should I make for you?”  I always find the question amusing and quaint and sweet, and put it down to one of my mother’s quirks.  But recently, I am becoming the same way.  When I’m feeling uncertain, I start with food.  I find that I can’t go wrong with a home-cooked meal for someone that I want to fuss over.  The food says things that I can’t put into words.  It makes things easy and affectionate.

This time when I was home, my mother looked at me on one of those early mornings, and said “what would you like for breakfast?’.  Now breakfast is usually a fruit-cheese-toast type of affair in our home, and so I when I tentatively said “nothing?” and received an odd look from my mother, I knew that she was talking about the real stuff.  Poha, upma, idli… and in my fantasy version of the breakfast menu…samosas.

Now my mother doesn’t care all that much for this delicious deep fried, potato-pea stuffed pastry best eaten hot with a cup of tea, or not anymore at least, and certainly not for breakfast.  Her love affair with samosas are a thing of the past.  Once upon a time, claims my mother, she would make her own samosas from scratch for an after-school snack.  My masi lends credence to this story, and adds that my mother never shared the precious samosas with her two younger sisters.

I’ve always loved hearing the story of those samosas, about how my  mother boiled the potatoes while kneading the dough and then heated the oil for frying while she rolled and stuffed the pastry with the spiced filling.  ”It took no time at all,” says my mother, “what’s in a samosa?”

Samosas

Makes 6 samosas

For the filling:

2 small boiled potatoes, or about 1 cup diced

1/2 cup of peas

1/2 tbsp of grated ginger

1/2 tsp cumin seeds

2 tsp coriander powder

1 tsp amchur powder

1/4 tsp garam masala

1/2 tsp red chilli powder, optional

1 tbsp oil

Salt to taste

For the pastry

1 cup all purpose flour

3 tbsps of melted ghee

1/4 tsp of salt

Enough water to make a firm dough

Enough oil for deep frying

Filling: Heat the oil, and add the cumin seeds such that they sputter in the hot oil.  Add the ginger and sauté for half a minute.  Throw in the diced boiled potatoes and the peas, and add the rest of the dry spices after a minute or two.  Stir fry for several minutes until the mixture appears cooked and the spices adhere to the potatoes.  The mixture can be coarsely mashed while stirring.  Taste and adjust seasonings if needed.

Dough:  Pour the flour onto a flat surface and make a well in the center.  Add the salt and ghee in the well.  Slowly, rub the  ghee into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.  The flour should loosely bind together when you gather it into your fist; add more ghee if it doesn’t bind.  Make a pliable dough with enough water.  Cover and keep aside for 15 minutes.

Divide into 3 balls and roll out little circles, about 6 inches each.  Cut the circles in half and run water with your fingertip around the edges.  Now turn the semicircles into cones, seal the middle by joining the two ends and stuff them with the filling.  Stick the edges together.  This is a simple-to-master but important technique.  Here is a video of my grandmother stuffing the samosas.

Finishing stuffing all the samosas and keep aside.

Finishing: Heat oil for deep frying.  The oil should be hot, but not too hot as the samosas will deep fry for a little while.  Slip in the samosas and let them fry for several minutes, flipping so that each side turns golden brown.  Serve hot with ketchup.

Back from India

I returned from my trip to India.  It was wintry, dark and bleak when we landed.  My house felt stark and empty and there was no food.  I struggled to adjust to the cold, the dry heat from the radiators, the need to cook again.

I’m more homesick than usual this time.  It’s growing harder to leave from the many households that I slip into in India.

The India of my memories is filled with noisy warmth and color and food that is startling in flavor.  In reality, when I arrive in Calcutta and take in the smell of the gray smog, and find myself tangled in the snarl of traffic on my way home, and taste the new cook’s mediocre cooking, I wonder what I was missing.  Then I see my grandparents and get enfolded in their warm embrace.  There’s my mother’s beloved face.  Even her two dogs do a customary dance around my heels, as though to say “where were you?” Agastya races through my mother’s house with the dogs.  I can hear his laughter.  My favorite aunt drops by for a visit.   Endless cups of tea steaming with ginger and cardamom arrive on neat little trays.  I cut into wedges of stinky cheese and pile them up on toast with my father at breakfast.  My grandmother’s cook plies me with hot samosas.

The first few mornings are the ones that I treasure the most.  I wake up early and gaze outside the window.  The same trees have grown older and appear a little fuller.  The boys are still asleep.  The air is cool in December and the feeling of being home, of becoming somebody’s child again, wraps around me like a blanket.  I’ve felt this way each time that I’ve returned.  It’s been more than fifteen years since I left.

Pav bhaji again, with fresh masala

I’ve written before about my favorite spicy street food stew that’s sopped up with buttered bread, but I’ve arrived at a new recipe.   My old recipe for pav bhaji was made with chopped vegetables in a pressure cooker.  Now, I use whole boiled mashed potatoes with lots of tomatoes, onions, ginger and garlic, all simmered in one big pot.  I’ve also given up entirely on pre-mixed store bought masala that’s been languishing on the shelves.  Fresh pav bhaji masala (my mom’s recipe) just brings the bhaji vibrantly to life.  Plus, I’m not left wondering what was in the mysterious store masala.  It also makes me think of the time when my masi brought home some dry ground pav bhaji masala from Mayaram’s in Calcutta to understand what made their bhaji so incredibly lip-smackingly delicious.  Her conclusion was that the masala had nothing special in it – the “secret” ingredient was just fresh grinding of the whole seeds.

Here is how to do it.

Pav bhaji masala (for 2 medium potatoes or to serve 2)

Grind to powder:

2 tsp coriander seeds

1 tsp cumin seeds

1/2 tsp of whole black peppercorns

2 cloves, the round tops removed

1 inch piece of cinnamon stick

1-2 dried red chillis, optional

1/2 tsp amchur powder (add separately)

Tips:

Potatoes: Begin with 1 boiled, mashed potato per person.  If you like, substitute half the potatoes with a mix of carrot, beans, peas, cauliflower.

Tomatoes: The volume of tomatoes must be at least as much as the potatoes or potato-vegetable mixture.  Therefore, a ratio of 1:1 for potatoes:tomatoes.  Very important.  If you feel that your bhaji looks insipid or not brightly colored enough, add more tomatoes, even if it’s late in the cooking.  In pav bhaji you can add raw chopped tomato at various points and keep on simmering the bhaji.  The flavor will be moist and marvelous.

Aromatics and flavor base: Finely chopped onions, ginger and garlic are a must.  About 1 cup of onions, 2 tbsp of garlic and 1 tbsp of ginger to serve 2.  Optional: but almost a must: finely chopped green chillies and diced green bell pepper.

Butter: Always cook your bhaji in butter, about 2 tbsps per potato.

For garnishing: chopped coriander leaves and a squeeze of lime.  Brightens the flavors considerably.

Recipe in a nutshell

1/2 stick butter

1 generous cup onions

2 tbsp garlic, finely chopped

1 tbsp ginger, finely chopped

1-2 green chillies, chopped

1/2 small green bell pepper, diced

2 medium potatoes, boiled and mashed

2-3 medium tomatoes, chopped

Dry pav baji masala, as made above

kosher salt to taste

1 cup loosely packed cilantro leaves, chopped

1 lime, cut into wedges

First, heat the butter in a large sauté pan.  Add the onions, ginger, garlic, green chillies. and cook until the onions are a golden brown.  Add the bell peppers and cook for a few more minutes.  Add the tomatoes, and cook for a several minutes.  Add the potatoes and vegetables, nicely mashed, into this mixture, and stir well.  Allow to simmer over low heat.  Add some water if needed, a quarter cup at a time, if the mixture starts looking too dry.  You can also add an extra chopped tomato if the bhaji appears to lack in color and vibrancy.  Add the dry masala powder and salt to taste as the mixture cooks.  Keep cooking over slow heat, stirring occasionally.  Remember, the longer pav bahji slow-cooks, the better it tastes (but within reason!).  Taste and adjust any seasonings.  Stir in chopped coriander and serve with wedges of lime and finely chopped red onions, along with pan toasted hot buttered bread rolls.

Maple walnut cake

It’s fall.  The air has turned crisper.  It’s still dark at 6.30am.  The leaves hang suspended in the air, as though awaiting their fate.  Some have turned yellow.  Some will turn into a bright red.  In past years, I’ve bundled my entire family into the car and we’ve set off to look at the changing landscape.  Whenever we’ve thought about moving to a warmer, sunnier climate, I’ve thought to myself “but what about fall?”  The trees appear so dressed up, so bedecked, as though for the grandest ball of the year, that I almost cannot bear to miss seeing them.  Each tree looks different.  When I look upon a hill, the blanket green having given way to individual reds, yellows, oranges that spring up in relief, I wonder how I would never have been able to see that tree and that tree had it not been for the changing colors of the leaves.  Then there are apples, pumpkins and winter squashes of all types.  I love sugar pumpkins and butternut squash.  This year prettily patterned carnival squash and sweet, deep-orange and meaty kabocha have made appearances in my pappu charu, pulusu and aloo kaddu.

This year we will be home for all of October.  I’m terribly nostalgic for the years past.  I’ve therefore decided to write out, briefly, three of my favorite fall day trips below.

I also want to share a recipe for an easy maple-walnut cake that I have *invented.*  It tastes so good, that it’s very difficult to not want to eat it all in one sitting.  If you have a jug of maple syrup sitting in your fridge from a spring maple syrup trip, walnuts lying around for the healthy snack that they make and some good quality vanilla extract, then this cake will be easy to whip up in moments.  This cake has taken a few tries to get perfect – and I’m particularly proud of how moist, walnut-y, vanilla-maple-toffee in flavor it is.

Two hour drives north of the New York city area:

1. Kent, CT: Take the Taconic State Parkway, which will be particularly beautiful at this time of the year, to reach Kent in the Connecticut Berkshires.  Drive across the antique covered Bull’s Bridge to Route 7 that becomes Main Street.  Kent is full of treasures: the House of Books with a lovely children’s reading room, a charming toy store, Belgique Patisserie that offers a fabulous selection of pastries and chocolate.   Further north on Route 7, stop to take the brief hike up to breathtaking Kent Falls before reaching Ellsworth Hill Orchards to pick apples and pumpkins.

2. New Paltz, NY: The I-87 will bring you to New Paltz, which offers beautiful views of the Shawagunk Mountains.  Enjoy a leisurely lunch at the quaint Village Tea Room with its excellent baked goods and local food, before heading over to Minnewaska State Park for stunning views of Lake Minnewaska or a hike to Lake Awosting, time permitting.  Spend some time picking apples at Stone Ridge Orchards.  Before heading home, shop for local dairy and produce at the High Falls Co-op.

3. Woodstock, NY: Woodstock, nestled at the base of the Catskill Mountains, is an upbeat little town.  Eat lunch in Oriole9’s light-filled dining room, with its lovingly crafted food made with local and seasonal ingredients.  Bread Alone Cafe makes delicious sandwiches.  Spend some time browsing the stores along Woodstock’s main street, including the fascinating Tinker Toys Too.  Drive to the little village of Phoenicia, for fabulous views along the way with a mandatory stop at Sweet Sue’s for their famous plate-sized berry pancakes or a fresh-baked fruit muffin.  The Woodstock Inn offers accommodation a block behind Main Street, right next to a stream that cascades into a waterfall.  When driving back to the city, eat lunch at Love Bites Cafe in Saugerties for thoughtfully put together sandwiches, salads and soups, and hearty oatmeal cookies.  For children: The Woodstock Animal Sanctuary, The Woodstock Wonderworks playground, Andy Lee Fields (a short walk from the center of Woodstock).

Maple Walnut Cake

Dry ingredients

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp kosher salt

1 cup walnuts

Wet ingredients (all at room temperature)

1/2 cup maple syrup, the best quality real stuff that you can find

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup or 1 stick butter

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup whole milk

1.  Heat the oven to 350F.  Whisk the flour and baking powder and keep aside.  Butter and flour a 9 x 5 loaf  pan.

2. Toast the walnuts over a low flame in a small skillet until a faint aroma of walnuts is released.  Remove and allow to cool.  Crush coarsely on a flat surface with a rolling pin.  Now collect the walnuts in a bowl and rub a little flour into the walnuts.  This will help them to stay suspended in the batter while baking.

3. With an electric mixer on the lowest setting, cream the butter, sugar and maple syrup for about a minute.  Add the eggs one by one until fully incorporated.  Add the vanilla essence.

4.  Now gently mix in the flour in two parts, alternating with the milk.  Don’t over-stir.  Fold in the walnuts and pour the mixture in the baking pan.  Bake for 30 minutes or so until the cake turns a deep golden brown on top and the sides pull away (the edges will be darker).  A tester poked into the middle of the cake should come out clean.  Remove from the oven, allow to cool for 10 minutes, run a knife around the edges and then upturn.

My adventures with milk

When I visited Ronnybrook Farm last summer, it was out of curiosity to see a big natural dairy brand.  They had a store in the Chelsea Market, a presence in the Union Square Greenmarket, and their products were even available at Sobsey’s in Hoboken.  Ronnybrook’s “beyond organic” milk was sold in quaint, impractical one liter glass bottles that seemed to hark from a bygone era.  A good friend had worked at Ronnybrook for a few months.  ”Maybe Ronny will give me a tour if I say that I’m a friend of his apprentice,” I thought.

When we arrived in Ancramdale and followed the winding road across the fields dotted with grazing cows, Ronny’s farm seemed less and less like the huge factory operation that I had imagined.  Ronny showed us his airy cow barn, the bottling operation, the butter churning machine, the yogurt making area. We spent some time discussing pasteurization processes, the homogenization of milk and glass bottles.  Ronny’s views registered on me rather faintly.  We played with Ronny’s calves that morning.  Agastya, then three, and Vasisht, five months old, frolicked in the grass.  We ate a pint of ice-cream and bought every flavor of ice-cream and yogurt to take home with us.  Milk too, but I thought I was drinking very good quality milk already: Organic Valley, ultra pasteurized, homogenized, very “fresh” milk that usually lasted two months from the date of purchase.

In the fall, I met my husband’s friend who said that she found raw milk from her neighboring farm in Vermont easier to digest.  I stared at her, having never met anyone who actually drank raw milk.  We found neatly lined bottles of raw milk in the cooler at Cricket Creek Farm in Williamstown on a fall leaf-peeping trip.  I bought the milk but gazed at it with trepidation for the days that it sat in my fridge.  By this summer though, I had grown bolder.  I brought raw milk back from the Hawthorne Valley Farm in Ghent, NY, and proceeded to make delicious chai from it every day.  But raw milk was nearly impossible to find unless I visited a farm that sold it.

More recently I spotted nymilk and milk from Battenkill Valley Creamery at Eataly .  These new brands made me curious.  I found a write-up on nymilk at Serious Eats, that explained pasteurization methods.  There was also a local New York milk taste test on Serious Eats where Ronnybrook and Battenkill had topped the charts.  I was intrigued.

Then a friend sent me a blog post about how the best milk for human beings to drink, if they were to drink milk at all, would be raw whole milk that wasn’t ultra pasteurized or homogenized and that came from free-roaming, organic, grass-fed cows that were raised without artificial hormones or non-therapeutic antibiotics.  Not all of this immediately appeared to be based on scientific fact, but it made me think of those black and white cows grazing contentedly at Ronnybrook Farm.  Of Ronny’s minimally pasteurized and non-homogenized milk.  Of the taste tests that the milk seemed to be winning.  Of that hard-to-find raw milk from Hawthorne Valley and Cricket Creek Farm.

I marched over to Sobsey’s and confronted the kindly proprietor.  ”I’ve been reading that ultra pasteurized milk isn’t really that great for you,” I began.  ”I thought the Organic Valley milk was better because it lasts longer.”

“The only milk I drink is from Ronnybrook Farm,” he replied.  ”In the days when we didn’t have a van, I would carry back the heavy glass bottles in the train for the store.  High heat pasteurization kills everything in the milk, although it does help the milk to last longer.”

I brought home several bottles of Ronnybrook milk that afternoon and stockpiled them in my refrigerator.  The milk tasted absolutely delicious: creamy, cold and straight from the bottle, with a lick of cream at the top.  I hadn’t had a whole glass of milk since I escaped my mother in my late teens.  Ronnybrook milk felt like an indulgence even though the milk tasted perhaps just as real milk should taste.  The kind of milk that my Indian ancestors must have imbibed and loved.  Enough to make them worship cows.  The kind of milk that I’d like my children to drink.  To make dollops of aromatic yellow ghee and creamy, food-for-gods desserts such as kheer.

Here is a recipe for kheer.  It’s basically a sweet rice pudding that’s fragrant with cardamom and basmati rice, but those words sound too mundane for such a soul-filling bowl of goodness.  This is Indian comfort food at its best.

Kheer (picture to come)

Serves 10

1 gallon of milk

1 cup of aromatic, long-grain rice like basmati, if possible from a recent harvest

2 cups, or less of turbinado or white sugar, according to taste

1 tbsp of ground cardamom seeds, preferably crushed by hand in a mortar and pestle

Optional: slivered almonds, a few strands of saffron,  raisins, cashewnuts

1.  Bring the milk to a rolling boil in a large, heavy-bottomed pan. Wash the rice and add to the milk.  Stir frequently to prevent the milk from coating the bottom of the pan.  Keep cooking, stirring occasionally, allowing the milk to boil until it reduces to about half of its original volume.  The rice will be fully cooked by now.

2.  Add the sugar to taste at this point.  Since the sugar releases water, the kheer will need to cook down further.  Allow the milk to boil down to about 1/3 the original volume.  The kheer should have a thick consistency but should still be liquid enough to pour.  Taste liberally along the way.

3.  Remove from the flame and stir in the cardamom.  Decorate with chopped nuts and saffron.

Eat as you like – hot, cold or at room temperature.

Pineapple upside-down cake

Just the thought of a pineapple-anything brings up faint, early morning memories of my family’s pineapple patch in Assam and of the tins and tins of luscious, golden home-canned pineapple that lined our pantry shelves in Calcutta at the end of pineapple season.  My mother often made pineapple trifle — a simple but delicious concoction of layers of chocolate bourbon biscuit dipped in pineapple juice alternating with whipped heavy cream that was studded with bits of fresh pineapple.  My grandmother’s single concession to Western style dessert was bite sized swiss rolls.  These were soft pinwheels of yellow sponge cake layered with strawberry jam that were topped with a cloud of whipped cream with bits of fresh pineapple and garnished with a sprinkle of chopped green pistachios.  I asked for pineapple upside-down cake to be served at my wedding in Jamaica.  In the excitement of the evening, I forgot to taste it.

That missed pineapple cake put me on a perpetual hunt for a good pineapple upside down cake recipe.  I watched Giada using boxed white cake mix and cooked fresh pineapple puree on television.  David Lebovitz’s upside-down cake recipe was primarily for apricots and nectarines, but I decided to do pineapples instead.  A few attempts with a whole pineapple, then with a half pineapple, one with sliced pineapple and the next with diced pineapple, led to this recipe.   Slicing created big heavy chunks of pineapple that didn’t cook down well, and also made the cake difficult to cut.  So I diced the pineapple instead, and used less, a half pineapple instead of a whole one.  I think Giada’s puree would have worked well too.

For this recipe, I begin by shopping for a ripe Costa Rican pineapple, which looks beautiful and ornamental in my shopping basket and while sitting on the kitchen counter.  The smell of ripe pineapple fills my nostrils as I slice off the top and bottom and firmly run my knife down the sides to remove the rough outer peel.  I remove as many brown “eyes” as I can while peeling.  The pineapple gets quartered, lengthwise, and I remove the hard spine down its middle.  Next, chopping and dicing.  All the while, my hands grow stickier with pineapple juice.  I cannot help but pop pieces of pineapple into my mouth as I work.  The yellow pineapple is sweet and tangy, and intense with tropical flavor. It has a pleasing bite, not too much fiber.  Bits of pineapple come apart in my mouth as I chew.

David’s recipe calls for a 10-inch cast iron skillet, and this is one of the many pleasures of this cake.  The black cast iron pan is heavy and rustic, and all the cooking gets done in this one pan.  At first, I melt butter and brown sugar, until the sugar becomes smooth and bubbly.  The mixture smells wonderful as it cooks, giving off aromas of butterscotch and caramel.  I set the pan aside to cool while I start on my cake batter.  It is very simple – cream soft butter and sugar, add the eggs one by one and then the vanilla.  Next, the dry ingredient mixture – flour, salt and baking powder – alternated with milk.  Voila!  the cake is ready to assemble.  The pineapples go evenly on top of the butterscotch and then the fluffy golden batter is poured in.  Into the oven, and then the smell.  oh the smell.  Of cooking pineapple, caramel and vanilla.  When the cake emerges, it oozes with caramel and pineapple.

This cake tastes particularly delicious when eaten warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Pineapple upside down cake

Inspired by David Lebovitz

Serves 10

1/ 2 a ripe pineapple, diced, about 3 cups

For the caramel:

3 tbsp of unsalted butter

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

For the cake:

Dry ingredients, whisk together :

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder, aluminum free

1/4 tsp salt

Wet ingredients:

8 tbsp butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs, at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup whole milk, at room temperature

1. Caramel: Heat the oven to 350F.  In a 10-inch cast iron pan, melt the butter, and add the sugar.  Cook until the sugar melts and begins to bubble.  Remove from flame and keep aside.  Allow to cool, then spread the chopped pineapple evenly over the caramel.

2.  Cake: Meanwhile, with an electric mixer on the lowest setting, begin beating the sugar and butter, until fluffy, about two minutes.  Add the eggs, one by one, until each is fully incorporated into the batter.  Add the vanilla.  Now, slowly and gently fold in the dry ingredient mixture in two parts, alternating with the milk.  Pour this batter over the fruit and smooth out.

3.  Baking: Bake for about 30-45 minutes, until a tester or knife inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.  The cake will have pulled away from the sides and will look firm in the  center.  Allow to cool for 15 minutes or so, and the flip over to serve.

Note: to serve warm, can later reheat in the pan or for a brief time in the microwave.

Grilled eggplant, three ways

Grilled eggplant chutney, Andhra style

How much do I love thee, eggplant?  Let me count the ways…

Alright, in too many ways.  I am beginning with one technique, that of grilling whole eggplant.

Now that the summer is at an end and those big baskets full of shiny eggplant are going to disappear from the farmer’s market, I am already feeling a keen sense of loss.  I wait months for luscious eggplant, that I can buy in armfuls and tote home as though I’m carrying not one but several precious newborns.  ”You have the best eggplant,” I’ll say to the tall, white haired, mustachioed farmer from Union Hill Farms.  He smiles, having heard this from me each week.  When buying eggplant, I look for bright, shiny skin, no blemishes and fruit that is light for its size, which means that the eggplant has fewer seeds and is less bitter.

There are two ways to grill eggplant in the kitchen.  The best way is to place the eggplant directly on a gas flame and turn it occasionally, until the skin gets burnt and charred and the entire eggplant becomes tender and very soft.  Line the stove with foil to minimize clean up as the eggplant will shed bits of black charred skin as you turn it with tongs.  Remove from the flame when you are easily able to slide a knife inside the eggplant, and clean off all the bits of skin.  The grilling takes a little while and your home fills with the smell of roasting eggplant, but the result is a very succulent eggplant, buttery, sweet and full of rich, smoky “bhuna” flavor that needs very little else.  Although you can also roast the whole eggplant in the oven at 450F, turning occasionally, for similar results, the bhuna flavor cannot be obtained in any other way.   Note: make sure the eggplant is very well grilled — eggplant that is even a little raw is not edible.  But overcooking in the oven can dry out your eggplant, leaving nothing but an empty shell.

Ways of using the grilled eggplant:

(1) Whole: Recently, my mother-in-law laid out several freshly grilled Italian eggplants with their heads on in a big flat dish.  She drizzled melted butter and sprinkled a generous quantity of red chilli powder and salt over the eggplant.  We ate the eggplant with hot basmati rice and a simple tomato dal. It was easy to eat three or four of these smoky eggplants each.  (pictured below)

(2) As a sweet-sour relish, called vankaya chutney:  This was a surprise discovery from my mother-in-law’s Andhra cooking repertoire.  A surprise, because I couldn’t believe how much I loved the sweet-sour-spicy-bhuna-yet fresh-umami flavor of the dish.  Mash up the eggplant flesh with your fingers.  Dress up the eggplant with strained raw tamarind extract, some grated gur or jaggery and salt.  Add bits of chopped onion, coriander leaves and sputter a tarka of mustard seeds, green chillies, and a dried red chilli in hot oil.  Mix well.  Serve with hot rice or eat it as I do, straight from the bowl with my fingers. (pictured above)

(3) Baingan bhurta: This is a North Indian style eggplant preparation, where the grilled eggplant is cooked with fried onions, ginger, garlic and tomatoes.

Fry in 2-3 tbsps of oil, about one cup of chopped onions per two cups of mashed, grilled eggplant, along with two or three cloves of chopped garlic, a thumb of chopped ginger and one or two green chillies.  The onions should be cooked slowly on medium heat until they turn dark brown.  At this point add one cup of chopped, fresh tomato and the eggplant, and cook, until the dish releases oil.  Add two teaspoons of coriander powder, one tsp of cumin powder, a 1/2  tsp of turmeric powder, 1/2 tsp of garam masala and salt to taste.  The addition of a little red chilli powder is optional. Cook a little longer and remove from flame.  Garnish well with chopped coriander leaves.  Serve hot with rotis or parathas.

Grilled whole eggplant dressed with butter, chilli powder and salt

Mexican wedding cookies

My first cookbook was a Ladybird children’s book called We Can Cook.  I was ten or eleven at the time, and my mother bought it at the annual Calcutta Book Fair.  My sister and I spent hours flipping through the slim hardbound volume, marveling at recipes for strange dishes such as “Welsh Rarebit,” “Shepherd’s Pie” and “Cornish Pasties.”  Most of the recipes required ingredients that appeared to exist only on another continent.

One recipe seemed to be within our reach.  It was called “jam tarts,” and it required a simple shortcrust pastry made of flour, butter and water.  Mom taught us to rub the cold butter into the flour with our fingertips and then add a little cold water such that a dough came together.  The dough was rolled out on a cool marble counter-top.  We cut little circles with a cutter to fit the muffin pan, and then pressed down the circles into the pan, to form shallow rims. Each tart shell was jabbed with a fork before the tray went into our tiny oven.  When the tarts came out, they were filled with spoonfuls of strawberry or mixed fruit jam and baked again for a few minutes.  The jam melted to form a smooth top in the pastries.

The warm tarts were utterly divine to bite into: buttery and crumbly, sticky with bits of warm jam.  This tart became our secret midnight feast snack.  We became adept at pretending to be asleep, and then creeping into the kitchen at night to quickly bake a small order of these treats.  In later years, my sister went on to earn a culinary degree and become a pastry chef.  As for me, well let’s just say that I’m still in search of a good cookie recipe.

Recently, I found myself at a Mexican cooking class at ICE where we made a very easy and tasty Mexican wedding cookie.  The nutty cookie dough had almond and pecan flour and was subtly flavored with vanilla and sweet, fragrant anise seeds.  At home, I decided to beat soft butter and sugar with an electric beater for a minute before gently stirring in all the dry ingredients instead of using a food processor as in the original recipe.  The result was a airier, fluffier cookie than the one from class, although I equally preferred both.  I’ve written out the recipes below.

Mexican Wedding Cookies

Adapted from the Institute of Culinary Education in New York

Makes about two dozen two inch cookies

1/4 cup almonds

1/4 cup pecans

1 stick cold butter, cut into pieces

1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar + more for rolling

1 1/2 tsps vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp anise seeds

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees

2. Grind the almonds and pecans in a food processor until fine.  Add the butter and continue to grind until you obtain a smooth paste.  Add the confectioner’s sugar and vanilla and process again.  Add the flour and anise seeds and process until everything is well blended.

3.  Roll the dough into small one-inch balls using your hands.  If the dough sticks and is hard to roll, refrigerate briefly.  Place the balls about 1 inch apart on an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes or so, until brown on the bottom.

4.  Remove from oven and cool for 15 minutes.  Roll the cookies while still warm in the remaining confectioner’s sugar. Let cool slightly more, and roll in confectioner’s sugar again.

Note: if you decide to use my method of using an electric beater, first beat the sugar and room temperature butter for a minute or so on the lowest setting.  Add the vanilla and beat a little more.  Separately mix all the dry ingredients – flour, nut flours and anise seeds.  Fold gently into the beaten butter and sugar, to make the dough.  Proceed as above.

A good egg

A few years ago I began buying cage-free hen eggs that were fed an organic vegetarian diet, and were not injected with hormones etc.  The eggs I presumed would be healthier and would taste better.  I didn’t find anything remarkable about these eggs.  Pale yellow yolks, the usual whites.  There was a subtle taste difference I thought, or maybe it was all in my mind.

Last summer, we were at the now-closed IGA grocery store in Red Hook buying last-minute groceries for breakfast.  In their egg aisle, I found boxes of eggs from a farm called Feather Ridge.  The box with its purple label proclaimed lots of things – more omega-3, quality & goodness from the Hudson Valley, fresh from the family farm — but I weary of labels, of wading through phrases and sentences that had to be researched further and that may or may not stand up to their claims, didn’t pay too much attention.  I returned home with that box and cast it into the refrigerator.

When I cracked open an egg the next morning as early sunlight slanted into the kitchen, I blinked several times.  The yolk that was sitting on the black cast iron pan was a large, brilliant, quivering golden-orange orb.  The whites were thick and firm.  I couldn’t even begin to describe the taste of that egg.  It tasted delicious, wholesome, fresh and I suppose just like a normal, healthy hen egg.   Later I found a write-up that described how Feather Ridge fed its hens a diet that included ground flaxseed.  I also found the following mentioned on Locanda Verde’s menu: We use organic eggs from Feather Ridge Farms in Elizaville, NY.  I pestered my local store to carry the eggs.  Michael Sobsey began making a weekly trip to the Tribeca farmer’s market to source these eggs for the Hoboken market.  He reported them as a best-selling product in the store.  I reasoned that once you had tasted this egg, you just couldn’t go back to a regular supermarket egg.

Since, I’ve become terribly interested in farm-fresh, local eggs laid by healthy and happily roaming chickens.  I’ve taken myself to Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills where Agastya found a precious egg nestled in the grass as we wandered around their huge flock of chickens.  I’ve also found very fresh, bright yellow yolk eggs laid that same morning whenever we’ve visited Sprout Creek Farm.

My recent visit to find eggs at Kinderhook Farm in Ghent, NY was an experience of a sublime sort.  Lee, the kind resident farmer, took me all around his breathtaking property.  It was a misty afternoon, sheep were scattered about nibbling tender green grass.   I could see cows in the distance on the gently sloping hills.  As we walked out to the fields, scores of colorful, plump, healthy and (am I really saying this?) sweet-smelling chickens came running out.  One bold bird stood so close to me, waiting to be fed, that I reached out and ran my hand down its firm, feathery back.  Lee showed us where the eggs were laid, in the front hatch of the red small barn-like egg mobile.  A raising of the hatch revealed a nesting hen and eggs of all colors – blue, speckled, green, beige, brown and white.  I peppered Lee with questions, while I plotted how I could get these eggs back in Hoboken.  For who could contemplate going back to eating an egg not freshly laid by a free-roaming, grass-worm-insect eating hen?  Especially once you’d rubbed the soft back of one.

I like to eat my eggs very simply – usually fried on one side in a small pat of butter, preferably in a cast iron pan.  This way I can taste both the yolk and the white separately, and the yolk remains slightly runny, bright yellow drenching my toast as I bite into an open sandwich of toasted bread and egg, topped with a few crumbly bits of cheese.  I’ve also discovered that any cheese – blue, soft, semi-soft, firm, and made with any type of milk and aged for any length of time – tastes great with egg and toast.  

To make a fried egg: heat up the butter on high/medium heat and break open your egg over the pan.  Turn the heat to low and let the white set.  Remove when the egg unsticks itself from the bottom of the pan.  Flip over if you want a more firmly cooked egg.

I also love an easy unda roti, which is an egg roll or wrap that makes good use of leftover Indian-style flatbread from the previous night’s dinner.

To make an egg roll: Whisk an egg and set aside while a dob of butter heats in a flat pan.  Pour in the egg and let it cook for a few seconds before placing the roti  on top of the still-runny egg.  Cook over a low flame for a few more seconds till you see the sides of the egg setting around the roti.  Flip over, cook for another few seconds and turn onto your plate with the egg side up.  Heap thinly sliced onions tossed in lime juice, add some finely chopped green chillies and sprinkle of chaat masala if you wish, and roll up the egg roti.  Serve with plain or spicy Maggi ketchup.

Of rice and dal…and pulusu

I never know what to make when we return from a trip.  We usually arrive back in time for lunch or dinner, and perhaps there is at most an hour before everyone starts getting really, really hungry.

This time, after a weekend away at Sprout Creek Farm, my mother-in-law promised us a meal in no time.  Four hungry adults milled about the room.  She put rice to cook in the rice -cooker, and toor dal to boil in the pressure cooker.  The dal had a generous pinch of salt and turmeric added to it before the lid of the cooker was closed tight.  Twenty minutes, a dab of ghee, and it would be ready to eat with the rice.  The rice was doing its own thing in the rice cooker.  Almost there, I thought.

Mom chopped up big pieces of eggplant in preparation for her famous vankaya allam karam, as the rice and dal cooked.  While the eggplant melted into thick, tender slices on the stove, mom prepared the onion-ginger-chilli-sesame paste for the eggplant with a quick turn of the food processor.  Unbeknownst to me, she had also set three quarts of water to boil in a big pot.  When she had a minute or two, she threw in vegetables into that pot, along with some tamarind extract and turmeric: small whole red onions that we had found at the farmers’ market; chunks of leftover bottle-gourd from the previous week; pieces of butternut squash and sweet potato.  Towards the end she added a simple tempering of asafoetida, cumin seeds, mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, and dried red chillies.  She also added a large chunk of jaggery into the pot.

When we sat down to eat, the simmering pot revealed a cooling watery broth that was sweet and sour and infused with the spices in the tempering.  The vegetables had grown swollen and soft, and had absorbed the sweet-sour flavor.  The onion and squash pieces that I heaped on to my plate, swimming in the watery liquid tasted very juicy.  The mixture of eggplant, rice, dal and this new dish, called pulusu was addictively delicious.   I, not a big rice-eater, continued to eat moundfuls of rice soaked in pulusu and mashed with the sweet-sour-spicy vegetables.  Although this pulusu lacked the more traditional curry leaves, green chillies and urad dal in the tempering, the lack of those ingredients somehow made the simple flavors sharper and easier for me to appreciate.  I was pleasantly reminded of my nani’s Rajasthani imli ka pani, a tamarind-sugar water that is served with piping hot bajra ka khichda.

Pulusu

(1) Bring to boil 3 quarts of water with:

• 1/8 tbsp of tamarind paste (Swad brand) soaked in warm water, and paste extracted

(2) Meanwhile, add vegetables and cook in the simmering tamarind water until soft.  Can add a balance of any and as much as you like from amongst the following:

• 4-6 small whole onions, outer skin removed
• 4-6 inch piece of bottle gourd, peeled and chopped into chunks
• 4 inch piece of butternut squash, peeled and chopped into chunks
• 2-3 small sweet potatoes, chopped into thick circles with the skin left on
• Pinch of turmeric, about 1/8 tsp

Tarka, to be added towards the end

• 1/4 tsp asafoetida
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
• 1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds
• 2-3 dried red chillies
• 1 tbsp of oil to sizzle the above spices

Optional in tarka:

• 2-3 green chillies
• 10-12 curry leaves
• 1 tsp of urad dal

For the very end:

• 8 ounces of jaggery, called gur
• Salt to taste

Cooking instructions – boil everything together, in the suggested order above, until the vegetables are tender.  Taste for the balance of sour, sweet and salt, along with spice (from the red and green chillies).  Adjust as needed.