Laced to perfection

Appams

She was the epitome of a perfect homemaker who made perfect Swiss rolls, cakes and cookies and sent the samples over in plates covered with dainty crocheted doilies.

Never a hair out of place, she wore crisp starched cotton sarees all the time and was ever so house-proud. She would warmly welcome anyone home at anytime, even when we caught up in the stairwell, and offer them golden banana chips and well-wrought acchapams (roce cookies) she had made just that afternoon.

Even her kids were the most obedient boys, their rooms were spick and span, the beds always made (did they ever loll in bed - or even sleep, for that matter?).  The volumes of “Tell me How” and “Tell me Why” stayed tightly packed in their shelves, the boys’ toys all basketed and their 1000 piece puzzles still very much together.

Was it any wonder that this flawless woman, Sophie – my neighbour in Oman introduced me to the most perfect lace appams I have ever seen?

No, not even in the impeccable Syrian Christian household in Kanjirapalli where we spent a wonderful few days. Nor in the supposedly best appam place in Kochi.

“ I made appams and eshtu,” Sophie says one Friday morning, flashing me a bright smile, as effervescent and ethereal as the discuses.

Eshtu is Malyalee colloquialism for stew.

Friday was the Arab Sunday.  

Well, not any more, I am told.

I thank her, but am unsure if I should invite her in or get rid of her so we can attack the appams while they are still crisp on the lacy edges…

Fortuitously, she chooses to leave and we tucked into the filigree edged appams.

There is something irrepressibly exciting about unexpectedly receiving a covered dish from a neighbour. It’s the taste of someone else’s cooking, the serendipitous discovery of new dishes, an opportunity to learn something new, an affirmation of your own superiority, the license to eat all the oil and heat you never dare to use, the chance to censure the cook.

But Sophie’s dishes were always a class apart from those that came in the standard steel plate (covered with a napkin) that I always returned filled with much better stuff than the salver had delivered.

Her eshtu has feisty spices soused with coconut cream; the sauce so smooth and the vegetables chunky. The appams, delicate as heirloom French lace, with raised soft centre as otherworldly as a UFO.

The stack of appams depletes and the stew is all but slurped out of the bowls…

That heavenly calm is replicated each time we make appams, 20 years to date.

As it did, last Sunday morning, when in celebration of the long weekend the appams once again nestled amongst the lapping stew in our tummies.

This is the Chettinad variety of appams, for it has the dals as opposed to the Kerala one which has only rice, yeast and coconut. Toddy is also used as a starter.

Appam

Ingredients 

4 cups raw rice

1 cup urad dal

¼ cup chana dal

1 cup cooked rice

1 tsp methi seeds

¾ cup thick coconut milk

½ tsp dry yeast

1 tsp sugar

Salt to taste

To make the batter 

Wash and soak the rice. Wash the dals and methi and soak them for about 4-5 hours. Grind the rice and dals and methi with a little water into a thick smooth paste.

Develop the yeast in a little warm water and sugar and add it to the batter. Add the coconut milk and mix thoroughly and keep covered in a warm place for 4-5 hours or overnight till it ferments and rises.

You may knock back the fermented batter and it will spring back with renewed vim in no time. Add salt just before making appams.

To make the appams

Heat a non-stick appam chati or tava, a very shallow wok with a lid. Once hot, lower the heat and rub the insides with a paper towel soaked in oil or a half onion dipped in oil.

Using a standard soup ladle with an upright handle, pour a ladleful in the centre of the appam tava and using both the hands hold the tava by the handles and twirl the pan so that the batter swirls around in a wider circle.

Once you achieve the perfect circle, set the tava back on the stove, so while the batter sticks to the sides, any excess batter will flow down the slopes and settle at the bottom, where it will rise and create that crater like centre. The batter that has stuck to the sides is naturally thinned and forms a perfect lace like pattern with perforations with the cooked froth.  

Cover the tava with a lid and increase the heat for a minute or so, then lower the heat.

The appam is cooked within a couple of minutes. The sides come loose on their  own and you can easily lift the appam with a spatula. 

My appam tava is very good, so apart from the first time, I don’t need to use any oil. But if you must, drizzle a few drops of oil just before covering the appam.

Serve hot with vegetable eshtu.

Or, with some coconut milk laced with brown sugar.

Currying favour

Bharela Ringan Bataka

All my favourite ingredients – the usual suspects – the seed/nut triumvirate, eggplant, potatoes and besan. My latest proud possession, my Tuffware langdi pan and a traditional cooking technique that intrigues me - the panyachey zhakan or “lid filled with water”. The recipe from my favourite cuisine - Gujarati…

This dish is simply currying favour.

As it did with Suranga Date, my very wise, witty and wonderful blogger friend from Mumbai - who has this knack of capturing the soul and spirit of a recipe and story and presenting it in a fabulous fable... 

Do visit her blog Strewn Ashes to see how Suranga paints a milieu of a mass wedding ceremony of delicate vaangi ben (and other brides) and robust bataka bhai (and other grooms) at the Langadi Function Hall...

Tuffware Langdi

I have seen many variations of this dish; some make it with tomatoes, others without. This one with tomatoes is possibly a Kutchi variation. The combination of all these ingredients makes this typically Gujarati – but there is one key ingredient missing.

Can you guess what is it that gives it the Gujarati-ness?

Ingredients

6 small sizes ringan (eggplants)

6 baby bataka (potatoes)

2 tbsp thick tomato puree or two small tomatoes, finely chopped

For the stuffing

1 tbsp coarsely powdered roasted peanuts

1 tbsp toasted and roughly crushed sesame seeds 

1 tbsp toasted desiccated coconut

2-3 tbsp besan

1 tsp garam masala/goda masala/ Badshah undhiyu masala

½ tsp cumin powder

1 tsp coriander powder

1 tbsp ginger garlic paste

½ tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp red chili powder (or more)

Salt to taste

2 tbsp oil

For the tempering

4 tbsp oil

1 tsp mustard seeds

½ tsp cumin seeds

A pinch of hing

Method

Heat a pan and add 2 tbsp oil and roast the besan until light brown and fragrant.  Cool and mix all the other ingredients for the stuffing. Check to adjust the taste to your liking.

Parboil the potatoes in salted boiling water (only about 50 % done) and when cooled, cut each potato into half almost all the way down, so the two halves are not separated. There is no need to peel the potatoes if the skin is clean and unmarked.

Wash eggplants and slit into quarters, almost all the way to the calyx.

Stuff the eggplant and potatoes with the stuffing, pressing the cut veggies together to keep the stuffing in.

Heat 3-4 tbsp oil in a langadi pan (squat and wide bottomed pan) and add mustard seeds to crackle. Then add hing, turmeric, chilli powder, potatoes, and eggplants and shake gently to coat the stuffed vegetables with the tempering. Sprinkle any remaining stuffing over the eggplant and potatoes. Cook covered with a water bath- a deep dish filled with water, until you see the water in the dish steaming.

Remove the lid and gently move the vegetables around the pan. Now add tomato puree or finely chopped tomatoes. Add a little salt to taste – only for the gravy. If required, add a little water to keep the mobility in the gravy. Cover again and cook till done. Check the potatoes and eggplants for doneness and for the tomato gravy to release the oil.

Remove from the heat and let it stand for a few minutes.

Some people make this in a pressure cooker or pressure pan.

Garnish with coriander (I didn’t have any when I made this!)

Serve hot with roti, bhakri or puri.

And the missing ingredient is 1 tsp of sugar or grated jaggery... to be added to the stuffing!

Awesome Autumn

Apple and pear crumble with orange and persimmon sauce 

Photos by Amruta Nargundkar

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

John Keats nags me thus – voicing my fears that my busy work schedule may not allow me to pen my own ode to the glorious season before it ends today.

Worldly commitments get the better of willful creativity.     

Many eons earlier, John Keats had haunted me, albeit differently. I owe to him the understanding of the significance of autumn as a season.  Keats’ paean evoked finer sensibilities, introducing themes of rich auburn beauty, mellowness, fruition, and hope -emotions I had never before associated with the falling of leaves and the slanting rays of the sun.

How could I?  The only tree I had seen shedding copiously and colorfully during the miniscule winter in arid Hyderabad was the humble but bitter neem. But then, the neem only created a litter of yellowed leaves, a thick tangled mat of long sticks and a shower of bitter slimy fruit plopping on to the ground, spilling their pips in the process.

The medicinal neem also lacked the rich romance of 'the last leaf' that O. Henry’s Johnsy had pinned her hopes on. 

That short story had been another revelation of the magnificence of autumn - in the description of the quaint artists’ village, the frail girl who had almost given up on life, and the kind but gruff artist, Behrman, who never gave up on his dream of painting his masterpiece one day. The story had all the drama my little mind loved. It symbolised hope, sacrifice and the spirit of giving. And most importantly it had a happy-sad ending that I cherish even today.

Over the years, when my own summer was blazing over our business in Melbourne, autumn was often an annoying time. The maple trees lining the street at the front of the office building dumped their leaves like the rakshas Raktabija, who had special powers to make each drop of his blood that fell to earth give rise to another demon of identical size and strength. I regret being the Kali who cursed the dingy dun leaves, the business(like)woman who bought leaf blowers after leaf vacuums after leaf rakes to stem the fall.

But then, my role at the time was to ensure occupational health and safety, maintain the professional presentation of the campus yet cut down the cost of cleaning. Surely it was common knowledge that pollen gave us hay fever, which meant illness in every home, staff absence, and loss of work-man-hours.

Until one day, as I was walking to work, oblivious to the beautiful crisp morning and mindful of the heavy burden of worries, a beautiful leaf came drifting from the hateful maple tree and landed gently on my nose, stopping me in my tracks and bringing me back to my senses.

The leaf was my totem?

How much was I missing out on in life? Seasons came and went, but the only way I was relating to them was by groaning about the leaves that would litter and the extra cleaning it would require dreading that the air conditioning would fail and staff and students would suffer and complain that the roof would leak and the roof gutters would get blocked and cause flooding about hay fever affecting workforce productivity…

Looking at the desiccates with new respect, I marveled at how the trees would know without referring to their Outlook Express calendars that it was time to sprout and time to shed, time to bloom and time to brown; how the winds knew to blow on time and in speed to make all the leaves fall without the need of a project planner and gantt charts; and how the earth knew to rotate and revolve causing seasons without a Global Positioning System… and so on.

When we first came to Australia friends had told us about a little town called Bright in the Great Alpine Region of in hinterland Victoria. Bright is famous for its brilliant displays of autumn foliage and for the annual autumn festival the town puts on. For years I waited to go there.

Finally we got to it this year.

Everything turned out perfectly. The day was as rich and complete as the season. The landscape was brighter than any we had seen. Contrary to what the weatherman had predicted it was the kind of day I love, very sunny and bright, not a wisp of a cloud in sight and at mid-day it was a pleasant 15 C.

The place is aptly named Bright; a whole town resplendent with the glorious colours of the season, mighty maples and tall poplars in hues russet to gold, red to pink to purple, a celebration of life!

We collected leaves, bought eggplants, squashes and coloured peppers from a cute old lady at the local farmers’ market in Myrtleford, and lovely autumnal fruit, Hachiya persimmon, Beurre Bosc pears, quinces and apples. I am grateful that the browning pears bravely clung on to life and the persimmon held its juices until this week, waiting from me to make time to cook them in celebration of autumn.

Almost a month after we returned I am still smiling at the memory of the day. The heavens were truly and very generously conspiring to make this a memorable and joyful day for us. I am also smiling that I got to pen these lines.

After all, as Keats said, a thing of beauty is a joy forever. The poem, of course, is Ode to Autumn.

Apple and pear crumble with orange and persimmon sauce

For the sauce

Ingredients

1 large Hachiya persimmon – skin removed and flesh roughly pulped

1 large orange  - grate the zest and reserve for the fruit filling and use the juice the orange in the sauce

1 tsp lemon juice (only if required)

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp unsalted butter

A pinch of salt

2 tsp corn flour

3-4 tbsp water

Method

In a small heavy saucepan melt the butter and add the sugar to it. As soon as it begins to caramelise add the persimmon pulp and the orange juice. Add the lemon juice, if required, and a pinch of salt and bring the mixture to a simmer on low to medium heat. Stir frequently, and as soon as the mixture starts simmering add 2-3 tbsp of water to the corn flour and mix thoroughly. Slowly pour the corn flour mixture into the saucepan while vigorously stirring the mixture until the sauce thickens.  You may not need all of the corn flour so add slowly, and stir quickly. It should have some body yet pour nicely.

Remove from heat and set aside.

For the crumble

Ingredients

3 large apples, cored and thinly sliced

3 ripe pears, peeled, cored and thinly sliced

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp brown sugar/sweetener (only if required)

1½ tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

 All the zest from the orange mentioned above

For the topping

Ingredients

¾ cup self-raising flour

1 cup rolled oats

½ cup brown sugar/sweetener

¾ tsp powdered cinnamon

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup cold butter, grated

1 tsp olive oil for the dish

Method

Preheat oven to 170 C. Assemble the sliced fruit in a bowl and sprinkle the lemon juice, orange zest, spices and sugar/sweetener over the fruit and toss to coat. Arrange the sliced fruit in an oiled pie dish.

In another bowl, combine the flour, oats, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt. Add butter to flour mixture and then work the butter into the mixture with your fingers until it is completely mixed. Evenly spread the topping over the fruit, pressing down slightly with your fingers. Arrange the slices on the top in a pattern of your choice.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until fruit is tender, juices are bubbly and topping is crisp.

Rest it for 10-15 minutes.

Pour the prepared persimmon sauce on the crumble and serve warm. You don’t need any cream, but it does taste good with fresh cream or ice cream.

Store leftovers in the fridge and serve cold or warmed.

This not only makes a great dessert, but also a sumptuous breakfast.