Facebook food fraternities

 Methamba मेथांबा (Sweet and sour mango relish)

For the last year or so, Facebook foodie groups have been the newfound playing fields for me. Logging on to FB, I invariably turn to these groups before checking out updates and newsfeeds. This is no ogling food porn! I log onto them all the time, post- prandial, too - for they are more than just for food!

These groups have a sweet support system of appreciation and commiseration. One feels chuffed and at times overwhelmed by the positive response of friends and readers. Then there is the tartness of teasing and tongue-in-cheek poking fun between friends. Often the savouriness of sallying a dish critically leads to a healthy discussion and loads of learning. The trace ticking off bordering on the bitter heightens all tastes and brings friends together with tenacity and renewed resolves!

Kuch Khatta, Kuch Mitha aur Kuch Teekha, an active and interesting foodie group on FB recently celebrated its first anniversary. What a phenomenal growth the group has had! Just one short of the magic number 3333 – a minute ago when I checked on its page!

When Donna Pinto, the talented and enthusiastic matriarch of the group asked me to post a recipe that signatures the group’s name, I knew instantly what I was going to post- this lip-smacking, tongue clicking raw mango relish called ‘methamba’ in Marathi!

The word methamba is a combination of two words, methi meaning fenugreek and amba meaning mango. This saucy relish is not limited to sour and bitter of the two eponymous contents, with jaggery adding sweetness, the chilli heating it and the salt catalysing the coming together of all the tastes.

This used to be made almost as a temporary side dish- like a gap filler before the preserves in their porcelain jars or martabans on the annual pilgrimage were ready to be consumed after a few days or so of starting to pickle in the brine and spice.

But their temporality was not a concern at all, for a methamba was hardly ever going to be left unfinished to go bad!

Try this and see how long it lasts in the jar! You won’t rest until the last of it has been carefully scraped out of the jar!

Methamba

Ingredients

2 cups raw green mango, peeled, deseeded and diced
¾ tsp powdered methi  (fenugreek seeds)
½ cup grated jaggery or brown sugar OR half jaggery and half sugar (adjust according to the sourness of the mango)
2 -3 tsp kashmiri red chilli powder (or more)
½ tsp mustard seeds
2 tbsp oil (or more)
¼ tsp hing (asafoetida)

¼ tsp haldi (turmeric)
Salt to taste

Method

Heat the oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds to it. Once the seeds start to splutter, add the methi powder, hing and turmeric and add the raw mango cubes immediately without letting the spices burn. Allow the mango to cook for a few minutes. You can add a little water if the mixture starts to dry out and burn, but in the interest of a longer shelf life add some more oil. Well, not that this will linger on for long! Then add the jaggery and allow it to dissolve in the mixture fully. You need to move the mixture around to mix it well, but try not to mash it too fine as a little texture adds some drama to the methamba. Now add the red chilli powder and see the mixture turn a brilliant red when the oil gets tinted gloriously by the chilli powder. Check and adjust the salt, chilli powder and jaggery. The mixture is supposed to be a combo of sweet/sour/spicy. Once ready the methamba will get this glossy and saucy translucence. Remove from the heat and let it cool. Store in a clean and dry glass or porcelain jar and refrigerate the leftover.

Methamba is great with roti, bread, masala poori, thalipeeth, dosas and chillas of all descriptions and also in a burger!

Ladka and Dodka

Ridged Gourd (Turai or Dodka)Chutney

As kids, we knew instinctively our elders meant business when they coaxed, cajoled and then warned us about finishing our vegetables. This ‘dandaniti’ was used to reinforce the underlying rule that everything on the plate should be polished off.  The explicit threat, which has been made good at least once in my lifetime, was that leftovers in the plate would be plastered onto the disobedient ingrate’s head.

No kid in our gene pool at the time dared kick up a fuss when asked to finish up the veggies on their plates, nor did we have an outer of “Here you can have the alu fry or jam with your chapati instead…”

Times change, as they have to. But with the changing times we saw this rule losing its inevitability. Thankfully, child psychology has replaced good old Chanakya's dandaniti.

I would like to think I have been a good mum, going by the fact that at 8-9 months my first-born wouldn’t eat din-dins without a subji, or that there are very few vegetables that my kids are reluctant to eat.

One of their pariah vegetables I can concede is the karela (bitter gourd), and it helps that the girls also come half way by happily eating only the spicy gravy of a karela subji. The other two that have needed more work are ridged gourd and chow chow (Banglore Baingan).

Both these vegetables have a very special ‘back to basics’ significance for hubby and me, but the girls wriggle their way out by pleading queasy. Now, there is nothing one can do to overrule this ruse. Especially when they wax eloquent about how the translucent and almost fluorescent green flesh of the two reminds them of extraterrestrial beings (it’s actually more graphic and gory than this, but I am sparing my food blog readers these details).

Suffice to say, the Marathi word for ridged gourd is ‘dodka’ and funnily, this word is also used as the opposite of ‘ladka’ as in favourite (masculine).

But I take heart from the fact -while teasing them mercilessly about it- that the girls love chutney made out of peel of ridged gourd and hog ridged gourd pakoras.

So the other day, when I set out to make two subjis as one of them was ridged gourd, a spirit not unlike Puck the knavish sprite, got the better of me. I metamorphed the gourd and the girls loved it. 

Why hadn’t I thought of this before? It was only a matter of texture, not taste. How many years of a gourd-less life they had led in vain?!

From now on, the dodka will be made only in this way. Which way?

Read on to find out more.

I know, I know… the chow chow still remains to be charmed, but another time.

Ridged Gourd Chutney

3 cups roughly cut (peeled) ridged gourd (check for bitterness)

1 tbsp oil

3 tbsp peanuts (roasted just enough to peel the skins or use ready blanched peanuts

1 tbsp sesame seeds

2 tbsp dessicated or fresh coconut (optional)

3-4 green chillies (or more)

¾ cup coriander (or more)

1 tsp cumin seeds

¼ tsp hing

1 tsp lemon juice (or more)

½ tsp sugar or sweetner (optional)

Salt to taste

1 tbsp tadka made with oil and mustard seeds (optional)

Method

Heat the oil in a pan and drop the chopped ridged gourd into it. After sauteing it for a while on low heat, add the rest of the ingredients except the lemon juice, sugar and salt. Turn up the heat if the gourd lets out excessive water and let it dry up, while constantly stirring the mixture.

The test of readiness is when the coriander starts emanating its characteristic  ‘fried’ coriander aroma, which signals that the gourd has let out all water to evaporate and has now been cooked. Turn the heat off. Add the salt, sugar and lemon juice to taste. Allow the mixture to cool. 

Blitz it in the mixer to get a grainy chutney. Add some water only of you want the chutney runny and thin. Temper it with the oil and mustard seeds tadka if you like.

Serve with roti, chapati or rice or even with snacks. It is very becoming in a sandwich too! 

This is one chutney you can serve warm or even hot!

For variation- you can add a bit of raw garlic to the mixture just before grinding.

Wasabi Kobi?

Wasabi Kobi Koshimbir

Among the first batch of students in the training college Shishir and I established, was a boy named Wasabi. He had joined after the term started, so I hadn’t handled his enrolment forms. For some weeks I thought his real name was Wasabi- how was I to know? We hadn’t yet become experts at distinguishing between Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese names and faces- any further than this and I traipse into typecasting…

Wasabi was a small but sharp, irrepressible boy, full of energy and with a dry sense of humour.  Every time I addressed him by his name, usually to indulgently or exasperatedly ask him to stop being naughty, disruptive, sit down or shut up, a snigger would slowly travel up and down the aisles of the class rapidly accelerating into jeering and the boy would go red in the face. Wondering why everyone teased him so much over his name, I asked a colleague – only to learn that Wasabi was not his real name. I still hadn’t got the implication, so was told that wasabi was the name of a hot Japanese sauce and Wasabi got the nickname, as he was piquant as!

The revelation hit me like wasabi in the nose. I burned at the bullying happening right under my nose, but more so at my ignorance! 

Well, that set me marching right back into the class and as it coincidence would have it, we were doing a basic communication module titled "Work in a socially diverse environment”- and I was facilitating the class as well as learning heaps myself. There was so much to learn about and to be aware of.

We were scared of calling anyone ‘young’ or ‘old’.  Terms used casually hitherto had to be re-examined if they amounted to name-calling, actions such as teasing or jesting could border on bullying.  The use of the masculine third person singular pronoun to indicate generic pronouns appeared to exclude or marginalise women, so various composite words and neologisms like s/he, he/she and even ‘they’ were used in a war on grammar. 

And ‘impaired’ and ‘challenged’ became new suffixes.

New fad? A social necessity to minimise social and institutional discrimination or offence? I had to find out. If only to avenge the years of merciless teasing for being ‘big’ or ‘horizontally challenged’ by loved ones and unloved, unloving ones.

Now I was on a mission to correct everything and anyone in my path. I revised all polices and procedures of the school purging them of the third person singular masculine pronoun that referred to students and teachers. Out went the practice of noting nicknames of international students on the official attendance sheets and result records. This was actually the best part of the exercise.  I didn’t mind learning to pronounce their names, as I was happy they were making an effort to pronounce mine!  Also, I used to feel sorry for those poor lost souls hitting a nadir of homesickness in the first month or so after coming to Australia, especially when they were rechristened – Elvis, Ozzy, Ringo and yes, I had even come across bovine names such as Bluebell and Buttercup.

But even in this decade, political correctness has met its nemesis.  Being politically incorrect today is a matter of pride to for some who deploy such meliorating strategies to describe their unorthodox and perhaps honest stance.

Verbose as it may seem, politically correct, inclusive and Plain language saw us through our acclimatisation process, but occasionally I do feel a smidgeon of uneasiness about the extent of correctness.

Can something be too correct?

Like the time while touring Japan and my 14 year old showed us a classic Engrishism in a guest satisfaction survey that asked tourists very politely if they had found the food - not enough, enough or too enough?!

Speaking of Japan, let me go back to our friend Wasabi – er, no! to our dish of the day - Wasabi Kobi

Kobi in Marathi is cabbage. Looking to introduce some heat into the cool cabbage koshimbir (salad) one day, I impulsively added a pinch of wasabi powder to it.  

Ingredients

2 cups finely shredded cabbage (don’t grate, just slice with a very sharp knife – bruised cabbage tastes bitter and smells bad)

½ cup grated carrot

½ cup diced tomatoes

½ cup chopped onion (you can use spring onions as well)

1 tbsp chopped coriander

A pinch of wasabi powder or paste

1 tsp lemon juice

Salt to taste

A pinch of sugar

A tsp EVOO (optional) or go ahead and give it proper rai-jeera-hing tadka with dahi ki mirchi.

Method

Toss everything together in a large bowl and chill and serve.

The koshimbir goes well with rice and curries, masala pooris or even with pasta!

Bagharey Melbourne!

Bagharey Baingan

Diwali is in the heart and hearth. An exciting time, we kids felt a special elation if loved ones, family and friends, uncles, aunts and cousins joined us in the celebrations. For that matter, we were always excited to have house guests – everyone (meaning the adults) was on their best behavior and in the most cheerful mood, made plenty of goodies to eat, gave a lot gifts, organised fun activities such as sightseeing  – and we got away with taking a lot of liberties that we wouldn’t usually be allowed as parents wouldn’t remonstrate us in the presence of guests. Now that was Diwali of the biggest sort!

And when one visits his grown up nephew and niece and their families to celebrate Diwali after decades, it is also Diwali of the biggest sort. Uncle Bakul, our baba’s kid brother visited us last week. A 50^th celebration was thrown in as a special feature, but the rest of the time we just vegetated. Uncle Bakul took us all on a happy trip down memory lane, talking about friends, happy memories and sad ones, naughty and funny ones, family dynamics and the analyses of ‘what went wrong’, anecdotes and family fables. Life experiences, lessons learnt wantonly and willy-nilly were shared along with daily routines and current complexities.  Years melted away, distance faded, three generations met on level playing field. 

All this in chaste Hyderabadi Hindi or Dakkhani…

And can food be far behind? Uncle Bakul’s likes, dislikes and food quirks were fondly revisited. The potatoes that were his staple with the only exception made to ‘binees’ (green beans in Hyderabadi parlance), the thick plain daal that he enjoyed with creamy dahi. He was surprised and delighted that we remembered.

But why wouldn’t he, for he was almost like an older brother to Dada and I. He was the agile athlete who played kho-kho every evening, the very clever doctor who we rarely saw slogging over his books, the guy with the most number of friends I had ever seen in those days, and the young gun who was the first in the family to gather escape velocity to soar his wings globally…

When it was my turn to entertain him, I made his favourite ‘Bagharey Baingan’ and was he ecstatic at the rendition, although the slightly seedy versions we accessed in Melbourne were no match to the beautiful, glossy, dark amethyst aubergines in India.

But the baghar or ‘tempering’ of zesty spices benevolently closed any and all gaps - as did the Diwali in Melbourne!

Baghrey Baingan is a famous Hyderabadi dish, made with the most succulent brinjals in a spicy sauce that reflects the wide-ranging regional influences of Marathwada, Telengana and Karnataka in its unique combination of nuts and seeds of, spices, sweet, savoury, slightly bitter and hot tastes.

In my childhood, a typical Hyderabadi menu at weddings and other functions used to have bagharey baingan as their mandatory inclusion along with biryani, baghara bhaat or alu bhaat, mirchi ka salan and dahi ki chutney.

Ingredients

12-15 small brinjals / aubergines (try to get the deep purple, glossy ones)

1 cup chopped onions

1 tbsp garlic paste

1 tbsp ginger paste

8-10 curry leaves

1 tbsp thick tamarind paste (or according to taste- this dish is quite sour)

1 tbsp grated jaggery or more (to balance the sourness of tamarind and bitter element provided by the methi and the brinjals)

Salt to taste

Oil to fry the brinjals and baghar (or tempering)

For the gravy

4 tbsp ground nuts

4 tbsp sesame seeds

4 tbsp desiccated coconut

1 tbsp khus-khus

2 tbsp cashew nuts (optional)

1 tsp oil

For the tempering

4-6 tbsp oil

2 inch quill of cinnamon

3-4 cloves

3-4 green cardamoms

2 bay leaves

1 tsp mustard seeds

¼  tsp hing

A pinch of methi powder

As many green chillies as you want – I used 2

1 tsp red chilli powder (or more)

1 tbsp garam masala powder

1 tbsp coriander powder (freshly roasted and ground, preferably)

1 tbsp cumin powder

1 tsp turmeric powder

2 tbsp chopped coriander to garnish

Method

Heat the oil in a pan and roast the groundnuts. When lightly browned, add the sesame seeds. When these begin to splutter and puff up, add the khus-khus and cashews. Keep stirring all the time so the nuts/seeds don’t burn. Add the coconut in the end and switch off the heat. Keep stirring the mixture to toast the coconut to a very light brown. Cool the mixture and then grind it with water, making a grainy paste.

Prepare the brinjals by washing and quartering them whole, stopping short at the calyx. Don’t remove the calyx and the stem (only if it isn’t thorny). Check the insides of the cuts to ensure there are no hidden surprises there.

In one Marathi version, these slit brinjals are stuffed and cooked on slow fire. But in this version, they are deep or shallow fried till half done in oil. Heat about one cup of oil in a heavy flat-bottomed pan and shallow fry the brinjals. Turn them around gently to ensure uniform frying, but let them cook only half way through. Drain and keep the brinjals aside.

In the same pan, make sure there is enough oil remaining to fry the onion and masalas and brinjals, usually about 3-4 tbsp. Add the mustard seeds, dry whole spices and let them splutter. Add the curry leaves, green chillies and chopped onions and sauté for a minute. Add the garlic and ginger paste and sauté further and add the methi powder, hing and turmeric. Then add the gravy mixture and stir well. Make sure there is enough water to cook the gravy without burning. Add all the powders, including the garam masala and red chilli powder.

Let the mixture boil on medium heat for about 10 minutes stirring from time to time and then add the tamarind paste and jaggery and salt. Check the taste, adjust according to your taste and let the mixture cook a little more, till you see the oil separating from the gravy. Now reduce the heat and gently lower the half-cooked/fried brinjals into the gravy, holding them by the stems. Cook the brinjals in the gravy without disturbing them much. The brinjals will release some oil.  their Check if the brinjals are done, usually takes about 7-10 minutes, depending on the quality of the brinjals. You will also need to decide how thick you want the gravy to be. Remember the gravy thickens when cooled slightly, so make allowance for serving time and resting time.

Let the dish rest covered for a while and garnish with chopped coriander before serving it hot with biryani or plain rice or rotis of any description.

This gravy can be used to make another popular Hyderabadi dish – Mirchi ka Salan as well.