The chest of hope!

Anarsa

Diwali reminds me of anarsas. And anarsas remind me of my grandmother and her astounding ingenuity. I recall vividly how once she had made huge quarter-plate size anarsas, which made perfect seed centres of huge golden yellow crepe paper sunflowers!

These anarsa sunflowers were one of the many fantastic presentations featured in the rukhwat of one of my aunts.

Rukhwat is a sort of a trousseau or a hope chest of bridal goods that were meant to give the young couple a good start in their domestic life. It usually consisted of embroidered linen, tableware, pots and pans, some furniture, flatware and other bric a bracs lovingly prepared for her new marital home and hearth by the bride’s mother or the bride-to-be herself and her maidens.

But unlike a trousseau, a rukhwat features more than just manchester. Possibly deriving meaning from the word ‘ruksha’ or dry, rukhwat was meant provide supplies in the form of ready-to-eat, long-life goodies and condiments to last the bridal entourage on their long and arduous way home. So pots of preserves, packs of dry fruit, spices, little bags of other supplies were generously gifted.

The rukhwats I have seen have ranged from utterly useless and clichéd stuff to the really worthwhile stuff packed or presented creatively. 

Why on earth would people laboriously weave a mesh of almost microscopic beads all around a fresh whole coconut- the coconut will soon go bad, won’t it? And woe betide those that made tacky wall hangings featuring a woman holding her nose in both her palms as if she were about to sneeze ( she’s actually meant to say ‘Namaste’ or ‘ Welcome’). Also, tell me, who would dare to break pieces off little idols made of dried shirkhand?

The more interesting and useful stuff, especially for the little me, were the over sized laddus, large bricks of chikkis or peanut brittle, foolscap cones made of candied puffed rice, huge chaklis also abounded. Perhaps, in the days of yore when girls were married very young, it was possibly a way to keep them happy and engaged with the idea – as if they were going to a party! Ha!

My aunt’s rukhwat was the first one I had come across. I was about 10 years old and absolutely awed by the two great artists working in tandem – one a chip off the other. Grandmother and mother had taken up the task of making the most awesome rukhwat till date! What creativity, what resourcefulness! All from one small town with limited supplies of craft material and food decoration supplies.

The most notable things that have stuck in my memory nearly forty years later are the beautiful peacock patterned georgette saree painted by Salma Arastu, now a renowned painter and philosopher in the US, a basket of miniature fruit made with rava laddu material that looked so marvellously realistic made by mother and the glorious sunflower anarsas.

I wanted this rukhwat for myself.

13 years after I first saw this rukhwat, I had a brilliant one myself - lovingly prepared by my mother and aunts, admired by one and all and used up by me over a few years.

But the rukhwat I have cherished the most and nurtured till date AND plan to pass on to my girls - is the portly pots of patience and perseverance, the huge laddus of love for the family, friends and pets and animals, the oversize chaklis of understanding of complicated and tangled human relationships and the firm set burfis of determination. And many many more pragmatic, fantastic endowments …

And the anarsas, of course…

Ingredients

2 cups rice
1 cup grated jaggery

1/3 cup sugar or 2 tbsp sweetner
2-3 tbsp poppy seeds (Khuskhus)

1 tbsp ghee

1-2 tbsp mashed ripe banana

Milk as required

Making the dough

Wash and soak rice in plenty of cold water. Drain the rice and replace the water the following day. Repeat the process for two more days. On the fourth day, drain the rice  and air dry in shade it by spreading it on a clean tea-towel. 

When almost fully dry, grind the rice into as fine a powder as you can and sieve it. 

Mix in the jaggery and the sugar/sweetener and store it in cool and dry place in a box to mature for 3-4 days. After this time, you will need to store it in the fridge, where it will keep for a few months.

Method

Just before making the anarsas, add a tablespoon or two of ripe mashed banana and  knead the mixture into a pliable and smooth dough using ghee. Use milk only if the mixture is still very dry. Make small balls of the dough.

Sprinkle some poppy seeds on a little flat plastic or glass dish and press a ball of dough onto it. Now grease your fingertips and thumb and flatten the ball making a small disc like shape. You will need to use your thumb to move the edge of the circle and the fingertips to flatten it. Very soon you will have a uniformly thick disc the size of a small cookie.

Heat oil in a kadhai and lift the cookie gently or upturn the plate onto your fingertips and quickly place it the poppy seed side up in the oil. This is a bit tricky, but you will be able to manage it with practice, or else, flip it in slowly and then turn it asap. Fry on a low heat, till golden brown. Drain and keep aside. 

Repeat this with the remaining dough.

Cool the anarsas before serving and storing. These delectable morsels taste earthy yet intriguing due to the rice wine like flavour!

These anarsas will last for a few days without refrigeration.

Phantom’s mesa: flipping through yellowed pages and evergreen memories

Black-eyed beans and rice in Harissa sauce

I am helping mum clean up - long forgotten insides of the cupboards and caverns of old tin trunks in the attic.

Or is it the recesses of our minds and hearts?

A report card from school, a hand written term paper from my post - grad days. Remnants of old photos, books- leather bound and gold embossed classics that Baba had bought so indulgently for me. I now realise how he must have scraped and scrounged his tight salaried budget to buy me those jewels.

Cheaper, but equally dear Enid Blyton and abridged Dickens, Bronte sisters, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Anna Sewell pop up to say hello. The bound selections of Reader’s Digest features that were our project one summer when Mother had got us to tear out sections of “It pays to enrich your word power” “Book Choice” and “ Drama in real life”, collate them and get them bound in marble grey marble print covers and maroon cloth stems remind me of the reluctance with which Dada and I did this task. But once we took these sorted collection of pages to the bookbinders near the Hanuman Vyamashala , we were fascinated by the craft and the process. We sat in the book binding shop watching the workers skillfully stitch the pages together and glue it all together with home made “lay” or glue made by cooking flour in water! Most of the workers seemed semi- illiterate or educationally underprivileged for book binding was considered a vocational trade taught to those who did not have the aptitude for “higher skills and education”.

Little did those binders from socially or economically disadvantaged strata realise their contribution to education, reading, inculcating a love for reading and to a rich literary culture!

It’s sad to see those bound volumes gone to seed- such a fall from glory…

And equally saddening is the plight of the colouring books and comics Mother has carefully preserved, in remembrance of our childhood…

I brush aside the cobwebs and impatiently swipe at the silver fish scampering across the pages. Flipping the dog-eared and yellowing stacks of the comics, I spy our favourite Phantom comics. I finally realise (and a quick Google search helped!) that the comic strip creator’s name is certainly Lee Falk- for the life of me I couldn’t figure out as a child if it was Talk or Falk- due to the stylized lettering!

The ghost –who-walks, Kit Walker, Diana Palmer, Uncle Dave, Devil the Dog and Hero the white stallion, the wise pygmy Guran … I laugh suddenly when I see Mrs. Palmer- Phantom’s MIL saying “Tsk, tsk…” that’s how we learnt to spell this onomatopoeic expression!

The clock is ticking away, Mother is asking me when I am going to finish and come for lunch… yes, yes, coming soon… I know now why my kids dawdle over books when they have to finish their chores…

Oh look! This one is with the mesa- the tableland surrounded by the tall cacti in the arid desert. How did the Mexican desert end up in Africa?!

But a more serious question used to torment me. In my little mind I used to be at a loss – how does Phantom end up atop the mesa?!

The mesa reminds me of a dish waiting to see the light of the day in my I-photo library… a mesa of rice with black-eyed beans in harissa sauce!

Black-eyed beans and rice in harissa sauce

For the harissa sauce

1-2 (or more) dry red chillies, seeds removed and soaked for 30 minutes
1 small red capsicum, roasted and skins and seeds removed

2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon garlic paste
1 teaspoons ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground caraway

¼ teaspoon black pepper

Method

Blitz all the ingredients together into a paste.

For the rice

2 cups basmati or short grained rice, soaked for 30 minutes

½ to 1 cup soaked black-eyed beans - sprouted is better (I don’t normally use tinned beans/ legumes)

1 small onion chopped

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Salt to taste

A pinch of sugar

2-3 tablespoon olive oil 

4-5 tablespoons crisp fried onions

Chopped coriander/ parsley to garnish

In a thick bottomed sauce pan heat the olive oil and fry the chopped onion. Add the soaked black-eyed beans and sauté for a few minutes. Add the prepared harissa sauce and cook a little more. Add the soaked rice and mix well. Pour 2 cups of boiling water into the mixture, salt and sugar and lemon juice and cook the rice as you would a pulao.  You could cook it in a slow cooker as well.

Allow the rice to rest for a while and then serve in moulded tabletops garnished with chopped coriander or parsley and fried onions.

P.S – use any legumes- red lentils, mung beans or chickpeas. Add some pasta to the rice and serve it koshari style!

Less is more, but it takes all sorts...

It’s a khichadi of all sorts!

(Photos by Apurva Nargundkar)

·         A rice dish with only five ingredients apart from salt, water and rice

·         Tasty enough to risk your reputation as a cook by posting

·         Innovatively presented

·         Photographed

·         Recipe written up

·         All done and dusted by the 25^th of July

Now that is a tall order for a dish in the Rice Bowl  Cookoff on my home food group!

It’s like participating in those team building games for survival where you are asked to pick up only 5 things in the event of an emergency and make a dash for your life. What should you take and what can you miss?

Or like the riddle of how a boatman who has to take a tiger, a goat and a bundle of hay across the river and can ferry only one of these along with himself.  How will he do this? If he takes the bundle of hay, the tiger will eat the goat, if he takes the tiger with him ....  okay, folks I think you get the drift!

From tiger to Tolstoy, what a ‘hotch potch’ or ‘khichadi’ of ideas and thoughts! How much land does a person need?  More is less or less is more? How much spice do we really need in life, er..., I mean in a dish? Do we have to smother dishes in spices and condiments and that anathema of mine- heat? Does food have to swim in artery-clogging oil, butter and ghee?

It was a very therapeutic exercise to be so disciplined. It was very excruciating to decide if the hing got the ditch, the bay leaf  was to be ignored (the chillies can sulk- I don’t care much about them anyway) but surely the pepper was disappointed at being cold shouldered like this!

A lesson in austerity and economy of ingredients surely brings out the real cook in all of us. Our habitual (or obsessive?) cluttering of the dish, the palate, the table, the party- gets a welcome break.

 From this churning or ‘Halaahal’ emerges a dish.  

Call it a khichadi (remember hotch potch?) or a pulao, this dish will stay true to its five ingredients.

And please welcome Sichuan pepper as my latest fad or fling!  

Sabut Moong Dal Khichadi

Ingredients

1 tbsp ghee

2-3 cloves

½ tsp Sichuan pepper

1 inch piece of stone flower

½ tsp of cumin seeds

2 cups basmati rice, soaked for 30 minutes

¾ cup unskinned green gram (sabut moong dal), soaked along with the rice

Salt to taste

Method

Heat ghee in a pot and add the masalas. Once they start spluttering, drained rice and sabut moong dal and toast for a bit. Add 4 ½ cups of boiling water. Add the salt. When the water reduces and the surface of the rice appears to have holes, cover the rice and reduce the heat. Check for all tastes and switch off the gas when the rice is done.

Serve with Tomato Saar or Kadhi and appalam or poppadoms the (poppadoms featured in the photo have been microwaved for 30 secs each)

This very healthy rice dish is doing the rounds of events-! It is my entry to Sangeeta and Vardhini's Show me your HITS event!

The Pyramids of Koshari

Koshari on the streets of Melbourne!

Walking in search of a quick bite to eat in downtown Melbourne one lunch time, we  found ourselves being led by the nose into a newly opened Egyptian eatery. We were greeted by the owner, an effusive gentleman speaking with a very strong yet attractive Arabic rhotic accent. The deep baritone rolling the Rs added to the ambience of the little place that replicated a roadside Cairo restaurant, as did the plastic flowers, vinyl table covers and hubbly bubbly sheesha hookas.

Nodding enthusiastically at my rather timid but hopeful query,” What’s that aroma? Is it something vegetarian?” he proceeded to describe the dish that was giving out the tantalising aroma.

“ This is Kosharrri…the national dish of Egypt… it is rrrice and macarrrroni and chickpeas and lentils and tomato sauce with cumin and garlic and maybe a hot hot sauce with more garrrlic and chilli…you like chilli, eh-  you Indian? Raj Kapoor? Amitabacchan? Hahhaa! I know, see?… and frried onions... I make frrresh frrresh for you!” The singsong intonation continued, but I suddenly started worrying about what kind of a dish he was talking about. Even in my most zealous ‘let’s clean the fridge and finish all leftovers, there are starving people in India and here we are wasting so much food’ I had not dared to mix such disparate things together and present them with so much aplomb!

But hunger and curiosity both fuelled by the appetising smells, got the better of us and after my routine tick and flick check on ‘no meat or chicken stock, no fish sauce, use fresh pan, no contamination for religious reasons (this one works for sure)’, we succumbed to his very hospitable offer to sit down and wait for him to fix us a portion each of the mysterious dish that smelt so good.  

Bursting with curiosity and as is our wont with anything new, we googled ‘Koshari’ on our phones to discover that it was a national dish of Egypt, very traditional and popular, that is was a fast food, a street food, very cheap and filling and even read a theory that the Koshari could possibly be a cousin of the Indian khichdi introduced to Egypt by British troops in the early 20^th century - that makes sense, khichdi= hotchpotch= koshari! ………but then where does it leave the claim that the Koshari is a traditional Egyptian dish?

When the plates arrived, heaped like little pyramids with stuff covered with tomato sauce and crispy onions, the mystery (and apprehension) deepened… but once we began our dig and excavated the mound, we realised it tasted every bit as delicious as it smelt! The variety of textures, the chewy pasta, the fluffy rice, the perfectly salted and floury chickpeas and the thick skinned soft centred lentils set teeth and tongue to task. The tangy and garlicky tomato sauce drugged with cumin facilitated the movement of the hotchpotch around the mouth and the crunchy fried onion sent star bursts of taste in between. The hot sauce, of which we had dared take only a little, was most remarkable in its taste and heat of capsaicin.  

We just loved this dish koshari! And like all the dishes we love, I had to make this at home. So here it is…

Koshari is served as a mixture of the cooked ingredients smothered in the tomato sauce and topped with crispy fried onions. I have assembled the ingredients in this fashion to show them (off!)   :)

Ingredients

1 cup brown lentils (sabut or whole masoor) (soaked for 5-6 hours, cooked with salt until soft, excess liquid drained)

1 cup chickpeas soaked and cooked as above or 2 cans chicpeas (drain the brine)

1 cup long grain rice (cooked with a little salt)
1 cup macaroni (or any short pasta) cooked al dente as per package instructions
3 large onions, sliced into thin rings and fried in oil until crisp and brown

For the sauce

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 teaspoons white vinegar

5-6 large cloves garlic (or more), crushed

1 heaped teaspoon roasted and ground cumin

1 teaspoon roasted and ground coriander (optional)

2 cups tomato paste (I used crushed tomatoes with seeds and blitzed them, so the colour wasn’t that great!)

Water to cook/dilute

5-6 dry red chilies (or more), seeds removed, roasted and ground into a powder

1 teaspoon black pepper

1-2 teaspoons sugar to taste (optional)
Salt to taste

Chopped coriander or flat leaf parsley to garnish

Method

Sauté the chopped onions in the olive oil and add the vinegar to keep the onions crunchy. Add the garlic and sauté more. Add tomato paste or pureed tomatoes and some water to adjust to a flowing consistency and allowing for some reduction. Add the cumin powder, coriander powder (optional), prepared chili powder, pepper, salt and sugar (optional). Adjust the taste to your liking. The sauce should be really spicy and served hot.

Combine the cooked rice, lentils, chickpeas and macaroni in a large pot or in individual portions. Cover with the hot sauce and sprinkle generously with the crunchy fried onions and chopped coriander.

Serve as a snack, a main meal or even as breakfast as the Egyptians do!

.