My Inner Bengali And The Green Beans Bhorta

I have told you about my pan-Indian looks, about my inner Malayali. Now here's another story.

 A few months ago, a relative of mine wrote his life story in which he mentioned my great-grandfather (henceforth referred to as GG), who was his uncle. Apparently, my GG liked living well and was given to spending a lot of money. One of his expenses, I hear, was on getting a cook from Bengal to come down to where he lived in current-day Andhra Pradesh and make rasgullas for him and his family.

 I wish my grandmother was around to tell me more about GG, who died before I was born. I knew he was wealthy and had a temper, but not much beyond that.

 Many years ago, even before the blogs came into my life, I discovered Bengali cuisine through a book. I took a fancy to it and would often make something from that book, a no-frills affair which tried to pack three or four recipes into a single, short page. I usually experiment with vegetarian food as it's simpler and I took a liking to mustard oil and panch phoron. I even made a chorchori with vegetable peels!

 Gradually, the blogs, including my own, entered my life, and during some discussion in the comments, Sandeepa once asked me if I was Bengali, or if The Spouse was. We are not, but I wonder if my GG's predilection for rasgullas and the length he went to for them, commissioning a Bengali cook, worked its way into the gene pool and manifested as my love for Bengali food. I don't eat even one rasgulla a year, somehow, but I do make something or the other from my Bengali cookbooks.

Now, of course, I have one more, Sandeepa's, and what I found utterly fascinating in that book was the green beans bhorta, a Bangladeshi recipe.

 It HAS to be a thick paste she said, when I checked with her, and I was a little disappointed, because I thought it would be another chutney, and a chutney's nothing exotic for us in the South, if you kept aside the fact that it was made green beans. I would have liked it to be a coarse, multi-textured affair, just so it would be new and different. And the recipe called for fried shrimp to be ground with the mix too - I thought I would fold it into the bhorta but I ended up grinding them in anyway. (My inner Bengali prevailed.)

 I was wrong - it was as unlike any chutney I've ever made or eaten, or even unlike any Bengali food I've ever eaten or made. It calls for sauteing, in a little mustard oil, a small onion, sliced, four to five cloves of garlic, eight green chillies and four cups of chopped green beans, in that order, till the beans are cooked. Cool it down and grind it with half a cup of grated coconut and fried shrimp. It has to be a thick paste, so if it has become loose or watery, dry it up in a lightly oiled pan. Garnish it with chopped coriander.

 I made enough for three meals and finished it in two days. The shrimp is optional, of course. When ground, it imparts a rather strong flavour/aroma to the mix, and you can choose to leave it out or retain it as garnish for a variation.

 Here's the bit of Sandeepa's book that stuck in my mind. Food, she says, is "life wrapped in a soft egg roll with slices of crunchy onion and bites of feisty green chilli." She arranged for me to get a copy of the book, and as soon as I got it, I read the introduction (and the acknowledgements where yours truly is mentioned). This sentence is from the introduction. I got thinking about life, eggs, onions and chillies and even made omelettes for dinner the next couple of days! The book is as hilarious and as full of joie de vivre as her blog. I know that whenever I want a laugh, all I have to do is read a chapter, or even a portion of it, and I'll be happy.

 bengali green beans

The Things I Don't Really Crave/Eat But Relish Making

 

Mango relish/paagu manga

Sometimes, I don't quite know why I do the things I do.

Sometimes I buy maida to make cake to get rid of extra fruit, and then I am stuck with the maida so I make more cake after letting it sit in the pantry for months.

I made marmalade last year simply because my uncle and I had a conversation about thick-cut marmalade and it seemed very romantic to make marmalade. Of course, it wasn't.

I don't really crave these things, leave alone eat them. Today, I gave away the marmalade to a friend who invited me for lunch.

Then, overtaken by an overwhelming urge to have some Andhra-style bobbatlu (poli/holige) after Ugadi went by, I used the last of the maida from God knows when to make them. I don't think I've kneaded dough in the last 14 or 15 years, if I ever did. But I plunged into it, literally. At one point, I couldn't extricate my hand from the dough, I couldn't even find it, it got stuck in it. A frantic call to a friend then had me adding ghee to the dough and rescuing my hand. I managed to make the bobbatlu which turned out better than I expected for a first-time attempt and earned appreciation from The Spouse and The Refuge of Failed Experiments (aka The Office).

The next day I attempted another batch but of course by then I had tired of the whole thing so I kneaded the very last of the maida, a little more ghee and the filling together and made sweet rotis.

Convinced I could now make chapatis, also something I don't really crave or eat, I bought a packet of wheat flour which is now resting unopened in my pantry. I was reminded of it today when my friend, who had me over for lunch today, mentioned the cooking classes she had been attending and a keema khameeri paratha (there was a fourth word in the name, I've forgotten) and offered to give me the recipe. I didn't rise to the challenge as I did in the above instances. I declined. The wheat flour will probably be given away soon.

A few weeks ago, my colleague treated us to a lovely green mango jam-kind of affair. She called it 'paagu manga, Tamil for 'mango in syrup'. It was all gold and languid syrup, and the mango pieces had a great texture, having lost their crunch after boiling but having acquired toughness and shape after stewing in the syrup. This was her grandmother's recipe from long ago, she said, and they used the relish as an accompaniment to curd rice, dosas and chapatis.

Of course, I had to make it, though I draw the line at eating it with curd rice and dosas. Having seen people eating chapati and jam in the hostel, I am more open to the thought of eating it with chapatis. I'm not saying I will, just that I'm less resistant to that idea.

About two weeks ago, I went home to visit my folks and came back with four green mangoes. I used one for dal, one is still in the fridge and I used the other two for this.

There are many notes below the ingredients and the method as I messed up somewhere, and had to do a lot of repairing, but let's get the basic recipe out of the way.

The ingredients

1 cup mango - 3/4 cup of sugar (that's the proportion - I used two mangoes, peeled and cubed)

Some honey

Some powdered cardamom

A smidgen of salt (my touch - optional)

Method

Boil the peeled and cubed mangoes in water just enough to cover them. For just three minutes and drain them immediately. Dry them on a cloth for a few hours.

Then make a one-string sugar syrup and I did, with help from the Internet.

Put the mango pieces into the sugar syrup and let them soak for a few hours.

In the evening, stir in some honey, tasting as you go along, and the salt and powdered cardamom.

My experience

After I boiled the mango pieces for three minutes, they became soft, I didn't know if they would hold their shape at all.

The sugar syrup turned to a hard sheet of sugar at the bottom of the bowl and was all liquid on top - maybe the mangoes had oozed liquid as well but they were swimming in more syrup than I had made in the morning.

I was tempted to throw it out but I let it stay in the fridge for about five or six days during which I sought repair advice on Facebook and got a few suggestions, of which I took one - fish out the mango pieces with a slotted spoon, drain off the liquid and melt the sheet of sugar. When I did that, I ended up fishing out very little sugar so I added a splash of water and heated it. It caramelised and I abandoned the attempt.

Sitting in the fridge, the mango pieces seem to have absorbed some of the sugar and attained a texture somewhat similar to my colleague's own paagu manga.

I simply added some honey and the cardamom and salt to the mangoes. It looked runny and I was disappointed again, but I resolved to let it stay in the fridge for a few days.

It seems to be thickening.

I ate with my popped amaranth cereal for some texture, it wasn't enough to sweeten it, though.

All in all, I am very taken with its process of maturation.

How, or whether, I will eat it is another thing entirely.

Mango relish Humour Musings

The Big Lunch

In my safe and cosy un-momentous world, some momentous things happened recently. No, no, I haven't quit my day job to go into blogging or all things foodie full time, I've not been invited to do a TV show, I haven't been discovered by a publisher - the momentous things are momentous enough for an un-momentous life.

 I stuck to a resolution of sorts to travel a little more, spend at least two days outside my city and I'm glad to say I've done that. I've visited four places and had a very fun, relaxing and restful time with my friends.

 I shaped up a bit within two weeks of starting a new workout - I always do but not so fast. I haven't lost any kilos, though!

On one of my trips, I found out that my friend considered me the fittest of our girl gang, and that when I went to Pune's Shaniwarwada, I was the only one to reach the top of the fort without any trouble. To add to that, she said she had noticed it that every time we went somewhere together, I had been the first to reach the peak. Now this was a revelation - I thought years and years of working out had not worked out because twice when we went to visit the Gomateshwara statue I huffed and puffed all the way up, always falling behind the rest of my companions - and the two visits were years apart, by which time I had racked up many years of aerobics and gym.

 Then the most momentous thing of them all - I finally hosted a lunch that was due to my colleagues for several years. The true old friends that they are, they never let me forget it, often ribbing me into embarrassment but somehow I never plucked up the courage to do it. Some of them had visited individually but never as a big group. Even when one of them said, "What Sra, come on, can't you just do it, all you need to do is cook a couple of simple dishes, order some and get us to bring the rest," I could not. I don't believe the first formal meal at my house should be a potluck - and I don't believe in calling people over and giving them only a little to eat. I know how it feels.

I cooked for eight people two years ago, who were older friends from my college days and whom I had never invited for a meal with family, either, but somehow this office lunch never materialised.

However, I finally gathered my guts and issued an invitation which was accepted with alacrity and this past Sunday. I had the previous day off and resolved to cook through the day and keep myself free and fresh with only the pulao to be cooked the next day. The biriyani was outsourced. We were a group of nine altogether, with six guests.

As soon as I woke up on Saturday, I realised we were still in the first week of the month and that we had not had our 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. power cut yet. My suspicions were proved right and the electricity went off a little before 9 a.m. At 11, I started cooking - by 2 p.m., I had only cooked two dishes. By 3.30, I had made another. I took a break then and started cooking again at 5.30 and went on till about 8 p.m. Then the next morning I made the vegetable pulao.

First, here's a look at most of what I made, I forgot to take pictures of a chutney I had made.

And here's the vegetable pulao for which the recipe is given in this post

 

I have a recipe on this blog which I vaguely remembered as containing coconut milk. I thought I was making that, but it turned out to be completely different. It even acquired a bright green hue, how I have no clue.

 I used a big pressure cooker.
 Vegetables, chopped: 3 cups (I used mixed frozen vegetables)
Basmati Rice: 2.5 cups
Mint: 20 leaves, washed and chopped
Green chillies: 2-3, slit
Thick coconut milk: 400 ml (2-1/2 cups in my measure)
Water: 2-1/2 cups
Garam masala powder: 1.5-2 tsp
Star anise: 2
Marathi moggu: 2
Bay leaf: 2
Ghee/Oil/Mix of both: 75 ml/4 tbsp
Juice of 3 limes
Salt to taste

Soak the rice for 20 minutes and strain.

In a heavy bottomed pan or pressure cooker, heat the fat and fry the whole spices.

Add the garam masala and fry for a few seconds.

Add the mint, green chillies, fry a bit and then add the vegetables.

Fry well "till raw smell goes and good smell comes".

Add the coconut milk and the water and let it come to a boil.

Add salt. When I tasted the mix at this stage, it seemed salty.

I had not yet added the rice but I didn't want to take chances, so I added the juice of three limes then and there, praying it would not turn bitter. It didn't.

Add rice. Turn off the heat after three whistles. My friends loved it and one of them said she found it extremely unusual, that she had never tasted a pulao with such a tang, so I thought it was worth putting on my blog.

Appealing To The Universe, With a Gourd

I haven't meant to become a columnist on my own blog, writing just once or twice a month, but that's how things are turning out, much to my dismay. The only good thing, among many bad things, that prevents me from doing that is that I wind down for the day earlier than I used to. I seem to be going through a slow and sluggish phase and I really wish things would change.

Let's see if the law of attraction works for me. Here I go throwing my wishes out into the universe: I wish things would change for the better, for you, me, everyone, the world. I wish we could be peaceful and content, with just enough desire to propel us on to achieving whatever we want. I wish for the strength and will to accomplish those dreams. I wish for patience and fortitude to stand me in good stead while I'm waiting. (But really, I just wish I get what I want without much struggle!)

I have several material wishes too: I wish we have a lot of time to follow our passions and interests, whether they are travelling the world, decluttering a life and home, or writing a blog or a book. Make that books. I want the abundance of health, time, energy, money and peace of mind to follow my dreams independently, and I want to look back on life and see one for which I can pat myself on the back. I wish the universe grants me this and much more. I wish it gives you whatever you wish for, too.

And of course I wish none of these wishes, when they come true, fall into the be-careful-what-you-wish-for, you-might-just-get-it category

Now while we wait for the universe to pool its energies and help us (and that may sound irreverent but I certainly don't intend it that way, the above-written portion of this post was written with much deliberation), let me show you how to make some snake gourd chutney.

There seemed to be a time in my mid-20s when the snake in snake gourds seemed to be going out of circulation. Till then, I only saw long, curly, grey-green snake gourds a mile-long suspended from their vines, draped over an uncle's arm when he visited from the village (this image is not mine, but it's one of my favourite movie cliches), sold whole in the market. It was also that smelly vegetable I never ate, among others, before I went to live in the hostel. Then when I set up a kitchen in a new region, I only saw what I thought was the antithesis of snake gourd or the form that gave it its name. It was very short and stubby, more gourd than snake. Curiously, the ridge gourd, which I knew only to be shorter and smaller, was very long and tiresome to process. They still are. While I see the long snake gourds back in existence, I rarely see the small ridge gourds.

I think this was made with the short and stubby ones.

Saute
2 cups of washed, peeled and chopped/diced snake gourd

in

1 tbsp of oil

after tempering it with

1/2-1 tsp of mustard seed
1/2 tsp of cumin
6-7 green chillies (or fewer)
1 tsp of black gram/urad dal
3-4 cloves of garlic

You need not tend to it constantly if you sprinkle some water on it and cook it covered on a low fire till transparent and tender, but not soft and wilted. You can add some salt midway.

Cool.

Grind to the consistency you like. I prefer it to have some texture so I don't grind it fine.

Add this mixture to

1-1.5 cups of beaten curds

Garnish with coriander, and curry leaf fried separately in a spot of oil. Or you can choose to add the curry leaf with the rest of the tempering.








Vegetarian/Vegetable Curds/Yoghurt

The First Time Happiness Bubbled Over - The Fifty-2 Weeks of 2013

Let's call it The First Time I Remember Experiencing Total Happiness. Many people say it's the day they had their child or the day they got married or the day they got a job, a carat(s) (or carrot(s), but not a stick), or the day that was marked by similar achievements, but for me it's nothing big like this.

This is something I persevered with and accomplished. Many times since, I've thought to myself that this was one of my happiest moments. Some of you might remember reading of my foray into cooking. You can read about it here.

I was waiting to join the University and needed to do something with all the free time I had, so I took up baking. Without knowing the ABC of anything culinary, of course. There were no blogs then to tell us how fulfilling baking bread was, and the few recipe books that we had at home didn't have much in them.

So I bought a book and would sometimes try out the cakes and desserts. Apple and ginger souffle. Caramel pudding. Devil's food cake. Pumpkin halwa. One of them was something multicoloured, and involved creating a dent(s) in the pudding by weighing it down with another vessel(s) - the hollow(s) that formed after it set was filled with other colours. Something like that.

 There were other confections that needed yeast. The bakery we patronised stored dry yeast and I bought a packet. I would religiously soak it in hot water, count out the sugar grains (yes, I've been watching my weight forever), slip them into the cup and wait for it to rise. Twenty, thirty, forty minutes would go by and nothing would happen. It would stink a bit but that was it, there were no bubbles, nothing to indicate it was working. It would lie there muddy and despondent, and it mirrored my mood.


I even have a recipe that involves yeast on the blog, you can find a recipe for Qatayef, stuffed pancakes here.

 After a few tries, I asked the owner of the bakery why it wasn't working. He said, "You have to use warm water, not hot water. You're probably using hot water. If you use hot water, the power of the yeast will go away," he said in his Malayalam-accented Telugu, his hands mimicking a running-far-away action.

He was right. I had been using boiling hot water and it was killing off the yeast. I went back all recharged and followed his instructions. The yeast worked beautifully. I still remember gingerly going back into the kitchen and peeping into the dish with great trepidation. There it was, tiny bubbles on the surface, a little bit of white foam, and a smell so yeasty it seemed nothing less than fragrant in that flush of triumph. I could see some movement too! I must have used a steel katori or a cup but it was nothing less than a petri-dish that day!

I don't remember what I made with the yeast but I do remember a savarin that was a great success, it could have been that same day or later.

Now tell me, what was the first time you felt total, total happiness?

This is my entry this week to The Fifty-2 Weeks of 2013 Project.

 Fifty-2 Weeks of 2013 Humour Musings Nostalgia