Peel repeal!

Doodhi/Lauki (Bottle Gourd) Peel Chutney

One of the most interesting phenomena of the present times is the groundswell of people- men, women and children – evincing a keen interest in food shows, reality cookery shows, blogs, food photos on Pinterest and Flickr, YouTube videos, presentation shares, and what have you!

I am amazed by the journey we have travelled, starting with Sanjeev Kapoor’s Khana Khazana on the new exciting Zee TV in 1993 and Star TV's Yan Can Cook. Anyone can cook now! Watchers have now become presenters and their repertoire of dishes is astounding. Some tread where even the most experienced cooks would fear to! Food has gone viral and global, changing the coordinates and blurring the lines between the foreign and the local.

But my pet peeve is that a lot of food enthusiasts make dishes in isolation, taking the dishes out of their real life/time context?

Cooking is after all an organic process wherein one step always leads to another or one dish is a result of another or has been a cause of or impetus for another.

In real life/time, cooks have so many things to take care of such as the mise en place and workflow (there is no way we can afford the luxury of getting everything chopped, measured, pre-made/mixed/fermented/baked, etc.)

And not to forget the packing/ putting away or storage of dishes and the punitive, gruelling cleaning up! This is the only part of cooking that most of, and certainly I don’t like! And so, we glare in disapproval when presenters casually use pot after pot and discard pan after pan, use and throw scores of spoons of various descriptions into the sink and yet lick their fingers! No, no, no!

And we frown hard at presenters discarding the whey from hung curd or paneer, the water from boiled pasta, the seeds of continental cucumber, the peels of bottle gourd and ridged gourd, stems of herbs and greens! How we cringe when clean washed potatoes are peeled without a reason!

Yet, do we actually save, wash and dry pumpkin seeds on the kitchen window sill, so we could munch on them when dried!

Brought up in a family of great cooks who also firmly believed in the maxim ‘Waste not, Want not’, I follow quite a few of the family tips and recipes for making most of every things that’s available in the fridge or the pantry. Rarely would people go shopping for ingredients just for one dish or one cooking event. The shopping lists were not dictated by what was cooking; instead what was cooked was geared around what was available, in season or grown at home! 

Maharashtrian cuisine has chutneys made of stir fried peels of vegetables like doodhi (lauki), ribbed gourd (tori), lemon or yellow cucumber and raw peels of green cucumber and ripe banana peels, to name a few. These peels are an excellent source of nutrients, chlorophyll and dietary fibre. Not only do they add to the variety of fare, but they taste delicious, too!

I wonder how many people still make these dishes.

I dread the day I have to watch a demonstration of the making of peel chutney and worry about what the chef will do/ has done with the lauki flesh! 

Lauki/ Doodhi Peel Chutney

Ingredients

1 cup chopped tender lauki peels, chopped into small pieces

2 tablespoons chana dal

2 tablespoons urad dal

2-3 red/green chillies, chopped (you could use more!)

2 tablespoons freshly grated coconut

2 tablespoons dry roasted and skinned peanuts

½ teaspoon cumin seeds

2 cloves garlic

2 tbsp chopped coriander

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon oil

Salt to taste

Sugar to round off the taste (optional)

Tempering/ tadka made with 2 tsp oil, ¾ teaspoon mustard seeds and a pinch of hing (optional).

Method

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a kadhai, add the lauki peels and sauté on a medium flame for a few minutes. Add the dals and the peanuts and allow them to fry on low heat till they turn a light golden brown. The moisture from the peels will not burn the mixture quickly and in the time it takes the dals to brown the peels will also get cooked. Add the chillies and cumin seeds just before removing from the heat and allow the mixture to cool.

Place the cooled peel and nut mixture in a blender and add the fresh coconut, lemon juice, coriander, garlic, salt to taste and sugar (optional).  Add half a cup of cold water and blend into a slightly grainy paste. Add the tempering.

This chutney goes well with idlys, dosas, pesarratu, adai or anything that needs a chutney!

They also serve...

Bottle Gourd and Chana Dal Subji ( Lauki and Chana Dal)

 

In his sonnet ‘On His Blindness’ John Milton laments his inability to fully exploit his talent and fulfil what he thinks is his purpose in life- to serve God. Patience murmurs to him ‘Who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best’.

Sitting in Dr. Nagarajan’s office and listening enrapt to the brilliant scholar’s discourse on justifying the ways of God to men, I have been oblivious to the hunger pangs.

Sitting with friends during the break, I hand around my lunch box of bottle gourd and chana dal subji and chapatis freshly made that morning. My friends grab my box and pass it, er, toss it around like piranhas while I wait patiently to reclaim my lunch. As the only married girl in the class, I prepare my own lunch and whatever I cook gets polished off by the motley crowd I call friends. Two boys who live in the university hostel and two girls who think it isn’t hip to bring lunch in a stainless steel tiffin box. I get the box back and look at half of a torn chapati and a spoonful of lauki and chana dal subji with an indulgent smile…

Back in Dr. N’ office, we listen to his heavily accented but sonorous voice chant over and over again, ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’. Various nuances explained, interpretations invited from us students, insights that come with age and experience shared … in the midst of this charged atmosphere, my stomach rumbles the most embarrassing sounds of hunger. There is no way I can stymie the gurgling. I am hungry. I am reminded of my foiled plans for the lauki bhaji and chapati…

That is the moment of realisation, the dénouement- this humble vegetable in the tame rendition of bhaji with asafoetida, turmeric, fresh curry leaves from the garden and one small chilli has a special providence in the scheme of things!

Its silky mildness will give any spicy, onion-ginger-garlic-garam masala- curry very stiff competition. The lauki subji will not stand out and demand attention on a table laden with exotic spicy gravies, but anyone who is in need of comfort and succour will reach out and find this soul food. Battered palates and ulcer-sore stomachs will crave the doodhi- quite literally the vegetable full of the milk of human kindness. The lauki is never in our face, we seek it out.

Dr. N is reciting, and I zone out. All I can see in the eye of my mind is the tender and soothing lauki, patiently bearing its mild yoke.

It also serves as it stands and waits…

Lauki and Chana Dal Subji

1 small and tender bottle gourd, peeled and diced small

2 table spoons chana dal, soaked for 30 minutes

1 tbsp oil

½ tsp mustard seeds

A generous pinch of hing

½ tsp turmeric

1 red/green chilli (or more)

A few curry leaves

1 tsp sugar/sweetener (optional)

Salt to taste

1 tbsp grated coconut or powdered and roasted peanuts (optional)

1 tbsp chopped coriander to garnish

Method

Heat the oil in a pan and add mustard seeds to splutter. Add the chilli, curry leaves, hing, and turmeric and add the diced bottle gourd. Drain and add the chana dal. Cook covered. If the bottle gourd lets out a lot of water, it will cook in it and also cook the chana dal. But if it doesn’t, you will need to add a little water or a few tablespoons of milk. Another idea is to add the water in which the dal was soaked. Stir a few times, but replace the lid each time. In the last few minutes, let the subji cook without the lid to evaporate any excess liquid. Add salt, sugar, coconut or ground peanuts.

Remove from heat when you see the bottle gourd translucent and done.

Serve- garnished with coriander and with chapati!