The Potato Eaters

Baked Jacket Potato

Photos by Apurva Nargundkar

We grew up with a health-ignorant diabetic father with the sweetest disposition and a very health-savvy strict mother who continuously educated herself about his condition and (unsuccessfully) tried to control his diet. As a result, in this emergence of this calorie-consciousness and nutrition-knowledge, the innocuous potato was nearly forbidden in our home.

There was none of the daily “batata bhaji –poli” (roti) routine in the lunch box that was the staple of most of my friends at school. We were never given the option of a dumbed-down “kids’ meal” full of potatoes whenever our childhood enemies - karela and suran (yam) featured on the menu at home. Mother did not stock potatoes in the pantry but bought them in small batches as and when required. Most potato dishes were regulation boiled or stir-fried. Indulging in alu bondas or samosas from thelas or kiosks outside was frowned upon, while a fried potato dish to be made at home was deliberated upon with as much graveness as a fiscal budget.

The sinful spud, which we now take as a permanent fixture at home, had bootlegged a premium value in our small minds.   

When Mother got the delivery of her glossy 20-volume set of the World’s Greatest Painters one summer, she sat with us and showed and talked us through the volumes one-by-one.  

I remember looking at “The potato eaters” as we went through the volume of her favourite “mad master” Van Gogh’s works. Chances are that I must have picked that painting because of the name. Children can be greedy. Very, very greedy.

Chances also are, that Mother must have drawn our attention to the colours and brush strokes, to the gnarled hands of the peasants - so large and brown and knobby- almost like the potatoes they dug out from their fields.

She would surely have told us that Van Gogh meant to show the farmers as rustic folk, enjoying their simple meal of potatoes and coffee with the gusto of glitzy gourmands.

And it’s hard to believe that she hadn’t attempted to lead us from the colours, figures and expressions on the rustic folks’ faces to the underpinning social significance.

Knowing her, Mother certainly must have.  But I don’t know for sure. I was too fascinated to listen - by the idea of eating only potatoes for dinner. (Coffee was not allowed to us kids).

"Even these poor people got to eat potatoes!

Even the grown ups are eating potatoes!

Are these potatoes baked like the ones from your childhood?

Can we have only potatoes for dinner tonight?"

Yes, my earliest thoughts around baked potatoes were evoked by Mother’s entertaining and tempting descriptions of how her grandmother and mother would just push oiled potatoes, sweet potatoes, eggplants and corn cobs into the burning embers of the coal or lakdi chulhas (wood fire stoves) of her childhood, or throw them into bonfires when camping on family farms.

These were then taken out, the ash dusted and the yummy but incidental stuff was eaten hot. Some salads and spicy chutneys powders enhanced the flavours and textures. Drops of cold pressed oil or dollops of creamy home made yoghurt cooled and soothed the fiery chutney. 

These descriptions would make our mouths water.

When I was exposed to the western baked potato, I took to it as if it was a familiar dish from my own childhood. It was as if I always knew how eating a baked potato was a comforting thought, a gratifying experience.

I must say that as more and more was known about potatoes over these years Mother too progressed from her petro position regarding the nutritional profile of the potato.

By the time I had my kids, she was cruising comfortably at “Give the kids baked or mashed potatoes – they are a versatile food, rich in …”

Baked Jacket Potatoes

This is my family’s favourite supper. And I can bet my last ‘tato that my home baked potatoes are better than the ones at the Melbourne latest potato hotspot “Spudbar”.

Some varieties of potatoes lend themselves better for baking, the most popular being King Edward and Russet. But when you can’t access these, any good quality potato with clean unmarked skin and with the sprouts removed bakes well.

Contrary to popular belief, potato in its baked form is actually quite healthy and low fat (you will need to skimp on the toppings here). It has complex carbohydrates, iron, potassium, vitamin C and dietary fibre.

The toppings can be simple or you can doll up the humble spud with exotic toppings, making it a gourmet dish.

Ingredients

8 Medium sized potatoes (generally, I use about two medium potatoes per person for a full meal)

1 tbsp olive oil

Salt (sea salt flakes or crystals are the best)

Toppings

Garlic Butter or plain butter.

Sour cream (or hung curd)

Grated Cheddar Cheese or Mozarella

Tomato Salsa (or baked beans)

Coleslaw (I used a healthier option of finely shredded cabbage and grated carrots)

Chopped Red / Green/ Yellow Peppers

Sliced Green Onions or Chives to garnish

Sweet corn

Salt and freshly ground pepper

The more and varied toppings (preferably healthy) on the spud, the better, and you can let your imagination run wild.

Method

Preheat oven to 220C.

Wash the potatoes, gently scrubbing potatoes to remove the dirt, marks or sprouts and dry them. Prick the potatoes several times with a fork so that the steam escapes and the potatoes do not explode. Lightly coat potatoes with olive oil and rub salt onto them. Alternately, place them on a thin layer of rock salt.

Bake on the middle shelf for approximately 1 hour and a bit, until the skin is crispy and the potatoes are soft and fluffy on the inside. You may have to turn the potatoes once or twice to make sure the potatoes bake evenly.

Keep the toppings ready while the potatoes are baking. When the potatoes are baked, prepare them for serving by cutting a dotted line across the top with a fork and squeezing both ends towards each other to open it up. Sprinkle salt (check if you need any) and freshly ground pepper. Lash the cut potato with garlic butter and sprinkle grated cheese so that the heat of the potato starts to melt the two. Now add all the salad toppings, salsa or baked beans then top it with sour cream or hung yoghurt and sliced spring onions. 

Shortcuts

Shortcut Bajra Bhakri and Vaal Usal

Shortcuts have a negative connotation for me. I remember trying to take shortcuts on the way to school. But these truant tricks and transgressions would be corrected quickly, for the shortcuts were invariably the always-difficult paths, dark, dirty paan-pichkari stained or graffiti ridden unsafe alleys.

To come to think of it, I have never come across a bright, cheerful scenic tree lined avenue as a shortcut. Have you?

Yet we seek shortsighted shortcuts all the time. An Australian student welfare and learning support officer in my training organisation would always be at a loss to understand why our South Asian students always sought shortcuts. It was just beyond her, and me as their guardian in this foreign land, why they so gullibly believed unscrupulous agents who promised them shortcuts to jobs and residency in this land of opportunities for huge sums of money.

Ironically, all this while these students incredulously discarded our teachings that hard work and perseverance in studies (for which they were paying thousands of dollars) were a sure shot way to reach their goals.

Even in our dealings with the almighty we seek shortcuts.  A friend of mine in Oman used to break her Sankashti Chaturthi fast (and the purpose of her penance?) according to moonrise Indian Standard Time, for it was an hour and a half sooner than Oman time!

And we now have apps for poojas -“You can offer your prayers to Lord Saturn through the Saturn Pooja android application, which will help you to gain the blessings of Lord Saturn.” assures an Internet advert to pious souls fearful of the wrath of Shani Dev! A far cry from the pious and the timorous surreptitiously offering little vials of oil and a coconut to the fiery God in little alcove altars in street corners every Saturday - while chanting the “Shanimahatmya” under their breath.

At work as an auditor, I tell my clients there are no crosscuts to compliance with regulatory standards and quality assurance – only innovative interpretations of what is compliant! The only shortcuts that are useful are keyboard shortcuts, which, unfortunately, I never seem to remember.

But there are some shortcuts I wholeheartedly endorse and follow – such as going in for skinned and split “vaal dal” or bitter field beans. The flip side of this is that I trade off some nutrition to time. But the wretch-vetch requires too much time and trouble - soaking, sprouting AND peeling the vaal seeds or “dalimbis”.

Puneri purists, please don’t frown.

And the other shortcut will delight even die-hard deshasth traditionalists. Adding whole-wheat flour to jowar(sorghum) or bajra (pearl millet) introduces gluten to the stale and flat flours, so one is not only able to make good bhakris, but also roll them out with a pin! Unheard of? Read on!

Bajra Bhakri

Bajra bhakri is made for breakfast and lunch in winter during the “dhanurmas” which is when the ending in the harvest festival of Sankranti. Seasme seeds that get toasted add flavour and a bit of fat to this most delectable bread. Bajra Bhakri is usually accompanied by spicy bharli vaangi or the seasonal “lekurvali bhaji” and is also served with a pebble of jaggery and some ghee.

Like its cousin jowar, bajra is also gluten free, hence this shortcut solution. Don't be scared by the seemingly complicated method- the roti is made just like a phulka. Read on….

Ingredients

2 cup Bajra flour

1 cup atta (whole-wheat flour)

½ tsp salt (optional)

1 cup hot water (or more depending on the quality of the flours)

2-3 tbsp sesame seeds

Method

Mix the flours and keep some aside for dusting. Add salt and add hot water to the rest of the flour mixture and mix with a spoon. Then when slightly cool, knead it for a few minutes with the heel of your hands into a semi-soft smooth dough.

Divide the mixture into large lemon sized balls.  Dust your rolling surface with flour and place some sesame seeds on it. Press one flattened ball of dough on the sesame seeds so they stick. Roll the dough out like a roti with a rolling pin, without flipping the disc of dough. Take care to roll the disc it thin on the sides and slightly thick in the centre. Lift the disc, dust the excess flour and place it face up (sesame side) on to a medium hot tava.

Qucikly brush the top of this roti (sesame side) with some cool water using a pastry brush (I use my hands) taking care not to make it too wet, but ensuring that the entire face of the roti is moistened.

As the lower side gets cooked, the roti will leave the sides of the tava and it’s time to gently prise it free and lift it with a spatula and flip it over. After this side is also cooked for a minute or so (or until light brown spots can be seen when you lift the roti), remove the tava from the heat and place the roti on the flame (same side) moving it to make sure the roti puffs up (like phulkas). Take care not to burn the sesame seeds.

Once this side is done, quickly flip it again to roast the bhakri on the other side. The trick to make it puff up is to roast the roti from the edges first and then pushing it gently to the centre of the flame briefly to complete the puffing up.

The puffed up bhakri is like a pita bread or phulka – a good bhakri will have pocket formed within the two layers, the bottom layer slightly thicker than the top one.

Serve with white butter or ghee with greens, bharwan baingan, usal or with ghee and a piece of jaggery.

Vaaliachi Usal

Vaalachi usal is another coastal Maharashtrian recipe. Vetches (legumes) like Kadwe Val (bitter field beans) and Kuleeth (horse gram) are an important source of protein in this tough and hardy windward terrain that faces soil erosion from the wind and monsoon in the Western Ghats. No wonder tart kokum and sweet coconut are used in abundance – to balance the bitterness of the kadwe vaal !  

Ingredients

1 cup val dal (skinned and split field beans)

2-3 tbsp chopped onions (optional)
1 tsp coriander powder

1 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp goda/ kala/garam masala
2-3 tbsp fresh/frozen coconut (reserve some for garnishing)
A few curry leaves

1-2 green chillies (or more)
1 tsp amchur powder (another shortcut to extracting kokum!)
1 tsp grated jaggery (or use brown sugar as shortcut)
1-2 tbsp oil

½ tsp mustard seeds

¼ tsp cumin seeds

½ tsp turmeric powder

A pinch of hing (asafoetida)

Salt to taste
Chopped coriander for garnishing

Method

Wash and soak vaal dal in water for a few hours or overnight and drain the water before cooking.

Heat oil in pan and add the mustard and cumin seeds to splutter.  Add the green chillies and the curry leaves and the chopped onions in that order and mix and sauté. Add the masala powders, chilli powder, turmeric and hing. Now add soaked vaal dal and sauté. Add some water and cover the pan. Cook for 7-8 minutes and then remove the lid add jaggery and salt and half the coconut. Check the water and add if necessary. Cover and cook some more till done. 

Check and adjust the taste and garnish with the rest of the coconut and chopped coriander.  

Serve hot with bhakri or rice.

Lest we forget

ANZAC Biscuits

The full implication of our adventure hit us at the airport in Hong Kong, when we first exchanged our money for the colourful currency notes of our destination country, Australia.  Yes, never before had we seen such “frivolous and fanciful” yellow, green, blue, red and purple plastic notes like the Australian currency, except in Monopoly.

Apprehensive and exhausted from the day’s tour of Hong Kong, my husband and I looked at each other seeking reassurance. A month-long holiday in India, honeymooning with family and friends had planted the seeds of doubt. Were we embarking on a quixotic escapade, flying off halfway across the world, to a country we had never been to, with two young girls in tow…

A battery of questions assailed us-

Are we doing the right thing?

Did we have to do this?

Are we chasing a mirage?

Is this self-banishment? Self-exile?

Couldn’t we have eked out a living in the land of our forefathers?

Our grandparents had been freedom fighters, and we…!

It didn’t help that on the day we first landed in Melbourne, it rained like it did on the night they killed Duncan. I was so inadequately dressed – in sandals and a cotton jumper- try as I might, I couldn’t find off-season woolens in the desert land that had been our home for more than a decade. Well, I did attempt to keep warm with a pair of socks inside the sandals – after all  according to the girls, we were fresh off the boat!

We made our way to the shops during a lull in the rain, to buy groceries and essentials, mindful for the first time in years of a budget, still trying to get our heads around converting dollars to Omani rials!

We had no jobs, no credit cards, no mobile phones and no car.

Could we be more lost?

Shopping to stock our temporary pantry all over was like starting a home from the scratch –we bought salt, oil, mustard seeds and were surprised to find rice, red lentils and masalas and “poppadums” on the aisles.

Already, I had begun to feel better.

When we emerged from the store, it had already turned dark with the torrential rain and sleet. We had to literally plead a ride from a surprised (and scared) fellow shopper. The two of us stuffed our grocery bags in our unenthusiastic benefactor’s car- sullen and vulnerable - conscious that after so many years of climbing ladders we had slid down the snake, back to square one.

Back in the apartment, the cold and the wet chilling us to the bone, we were drawn to the fireplace like moths. Only when our brains had thawed a little, we warmed to the fact that this was the first time we were enjoying the much- romanticised sitting by the fire.

What really warmed us was the sweet surprise from inside the complimentary biscuit packs from the hotel that we had opened so unsuspectingly to have with a cup of hot tea. 

The ANZAC biscuits – as we learnt they were called- had a lovely familiar flavour of coconut, brown sugar that tasted like jaggery and butter that reminded us of the roasted aroma of homemade ghee!

We would find out that ANZAC biscuits are tough, hardy and nutritious biscuits that the wives and mothers of soldiers in the ANZAC corps baked to send to their sons and husbands. These biscuits had a long shelf life and gave the much-required sustenance to troops in the tough Turkish battlefront. The biscuits also fed the brave men serving their nations in an inclement land with sweet memories of home and hearth.

“These biscuits taste like your “policha laadu” Mum,” said the girls, as we opened pack after two-biscuit handy pack and discarded the buttery choc chip ones for this delightfully brittle bikkie.

“Yes, the “policha laadu” that Aaji used to make for my tiffin dabba!”, said I,  remembering the delicious, nutritious and convenient sweet laddus made with fresh or stale chapatis, home made ghee, gur, poppy seeds, cardamom and coconut.

Brave soldier-settlers on their first day in this new world, we clutched to this relic of the past we had left behind, and instantly felt at home.    

I made these biscuits to commemorate ANZAC Day this year- in memory of all those who laid their lives for the country and continue to do so.

And to relive and remember all the battles we fought and lost and won in making a place for ourselves in this country- our home.

The recipe is classic ANZAC, except for the almond meal, cardamom, nutmeg and poppy seeds!

ANZAC Biscuits

Ingredients

2 cups plain flour

2 cups rolled oats

1½ cups brown sugar

½ cup caster sugar

½ cup desiccated coconut (or more)

½ cup almond meal

1 tbsp white poppy seeds

1 tsp crushed cardamom

½ tsp powdered nutmeg

1 tsp salt

250 gms unsalted butter

4 tbsp golden syrup

4 tbsp boiling water

1 ½ tsp and a pinch baking soda

Method

Sift flour into a bowl and stir in oats, coconut and sugar. Melt butter and golden syrup in a deep saucepan. Mix the boiling water and baking soda in a cup and add  to the melted butter and golden syrup mixture while it is still hot. The minute you add this, the butter mixture will froth up. Mix through the froth gently with a spoon. Pour this wet mixture into the flour mixture and when slightly cool, mix it with hand.

Place rounded teaspoons of the mixture 5cm apart on greased baking trays lined with baking sheets. Alternately, roll a ball of the crumbly dough between two baking sheets till you get a sheet 1 cm thick.  Cut out heart shaped or star shaped cookies and place them on the paper-lined tray.  

Bake the biscuits at 150°C for about 20 minutes or until the biscuits feel almost firm. Remove from trays with spatula and leave to cool on wire racks.

Store in an airtight container.