Oh how I miss thee ...

Oh how I miss thee...

the hurried kiss goodbye while one rushes to work early or the other;

'delivering' your coffee or lunch forgotten at home;

hanging out in the kitchen to catch up on the day;

All that seems in the distant past.

But now there's more to miss you in the here and now-

Where is the ginger that I need to slice and add to the cumin, now going from golden to black-ish in the pan. In its stead I find half a onion. It won't be a night of potato-jhol (tomato n potato soup with ginger, cumin and whole red chilli-peppers) - a cold nights' favorite.

Instead, it'll have to be a curry. Gotta think fast - cumins sizzle as does my heart for you :)

Now where would YOU put that knife - definitely not where it had lain before. Or the cutting board? It too felt lost in a corner.

Onions douse some of the ardor in the pan, saving the cumins, and thinking ahead like you would, I frantically look for tomatoes. Next to those I find the, hitherto elusive, ginger root - with some chagrin. If only I'd thought like you a tad earlier. Did I mention I miss you?

Onions and cumin won't hold out for long. Life in there needs some color to contrast with the monotone of reality. In goes turmeric and sizzles a bit, followed by chilli-powder, coriander and salt. And now some ginger and garlic with a dash of water. It's all rather tempestuous and colorful and the mind wanders back to similar times :) 

Salt? where is the salt - ah! its status has been raised one level to hobnob with the coffee and sugar.

On the other hand, newly added dainty spoons make short work of guess-work in the spice rack.

Oh! the mood in the pan is darkening again and it needs zest and a more sanguine outlook. In go the tomato paste from a half used can sitting forlorn in the fridge - missing you I suppose.

Peas are predictably in the freezer - cold and unemotional on their own. Potatoes by contrast are seething in the microwave. In go the peas to chill things a bit followed closely by cut up microwaved potatoes. It all needed some water to help mix things along and the lid to help simmer for a bit.

As I frantically hunt for the plate to dole out some of the concoction for tasting, I feel once again hapless and helpless, kinda like I always feel when head-over-heels in your love. They're discovered in a shelf which is a third cousin, twice removed of their original abode. But now the concoction lacks something ... what would that be - yes Garam Masala!! That hasn't wandered away.

Of course, what I miss most is how thoroughly you've made in forget the way to the kitchen....

We're Jammin'

Minnesota summers usually last 3 days, and sometimes when we're lucky, those days are warm too. Here is a normal schedule for the summer days:
Day-1: Pack winter clothes away. Wear shorter/fewer clothes and try your best to sweat it out under the sun, which may be behind cloud-cover.
Day-2: pick strawberries if not destroyed by hail/rain. Dip a toe in the pool.
Day-3: Quickly complain about the heat before unpacking winter clothes again.

This year, El Sol - the only real star in our vicinity - showed up only intermittently at our spring coming-out parties. It wouldn't have mattered except he was supposed to bring crucial ingredients for spring - warmth and sunshine. Without these, everything got pushed back a bit - including planting and growing of our staple foods - delicious berries.

But finally, on Fathers' Day, our local strawberry patch opened up for picking. We joined the throngs of parents desperate to show their kids that strawberries grow on plants and without any plastic container around them. The growers had been kind enough to arrange for tractor trolleys for hauling us from the parking, through manure scented slushy dirt road to the patch. There was some jostling and rushing to get on the trolley before people's decency trumped their desire to meet the strawberries and they stood back with the smug realization
"this isn't the last trolley leaving for the patch .... Or is it?!!!"

Despite superb organization by two young ladies who assigned rows to pickers, there was some confusion- due to the few people who were in a real rush to get through it, fill a basket and then probably post from the comfort of their cars about the experience in great detail not exceeding 140 characters. While cutting across rows, picking randomly they yelled out "We're done!", "Timmy, pose for a picture - great!", "We're leaving". One got the general idea that they weren't exactly too much into it.

Our picking by contrast lasted long enough for our kids to complain about the sun on their backs, an education on how "thistles don't grow strawberries" from a gentleman picking next to us, some pictures, a basket full of delicious juicy strawberries and a larger amount already ingested until we couldn't possibly eat another.

The berries we had picked (or had they picked us?) beamed and gave us rather inviting looks all the way to the car and during the drive home. By evening however, all their ardor was gone and they just wanted to rest in a cool, dark place - the refrigerator. Little did they know that their destiny involved a longer shelf life - in other words they were about to get into a real jam (pun intended).

As per the wise-fool we all know - the interweb - strawberry jam is simple enough - mix strawberries+sugar+lemon juice, apply heat and um, stir occasionally. We picked a simple recipe by the venerable Ina Garten of Food Network. But wiser and curioser souls than us had already traveled that path and raised questions about 'setting the jam' and 'amount of sugar', use pectin or ask the berries to BYO. And to say nothing about the arcane art of canning the final product so that it stays safe for posterity ... at least until the next week.
Instead of letting these concerns deter us, we decided to soldier on. Tweaking the original recipe (1.5 pint berries+2 cups sugar+1 lemon + 30 min of your life)
To
1.5 cups of sugar
2 pints (=4 cups) crushed strawberries (all their hopes dashed)
Juice of 1.5 lemons
We started by mixing the sweet (sugar) with the sour (lemon juice) and showing it some warmth on the stove for a few minutes. Add the crushed berries and brought it close to a boil on medium heat then lowering the heat let it simmer for a while. The berries in the pan often let their emotions bubble up, but then who likes to get out of the sun and into a pan. At this point I would like to warn the reader - when a recipe promises to be done in 30 minutes - it might be taking liberties with the truth to some degree. About 90 minutes later the contents of the pan looked something that vaguely resembled the third cousin, twice-removed of a strawberry jam.
By now, our food critics had retired for the night. So, next morning, with some trepidation we presented the finished product on two slices of bread to our two critics and waited with bated breath. Our joy knew no bounds when we got two thumbs up!!

Word in the fridge is, the berries in their new avatar aren't entirely disappointed either.

A delectable Ponzi Scheme!!

We all know of Ponzi schemes run by unprincipled charlatans or Governments. Recently we were willing participants in such a scheme, that asks nothing more than a few kitchen ingredients and promises wonderful taste - The Amish Friendship Bread.

As you would soon learn, its neither Amish, nor a plain bread. It is a sweet Quickbread more like a cake. But its middle name - Friendship - is definitely an important part.

So, about a dozen nights ago, someone handed a cup of 'starter' in a gallon bag, accompanied with a recipe cum instructions to my spouse. She and I decided to share the task. The instructions spanned a 10 day duration, with most days requiring me to follow the instructions verbatim - 'Do Nothing'. The remaining 2 or 3 days had incomprehensible (to me) instructions written in an ancient and secret script that only those familiar with the arcane and forbidden art of Baking could decipher.

The instruction cum recipe sheet sounded rather ominous - "Nobody except the Amish know the secret of the 'Starter'".
It added to the mystique by informing us that if we destroyed or lost the starter, then we could only wait for someone to give us another starter. That bag looked as valuable as a ticket to enter a secret society that is by invitation only. Needless to say I decided to stay as far away from it as possible, lest my expertise at being a rather dexterous kind of klutz did quick work of this mysterious and magical ticket, leaving us at the mercy of another invitation, and further leaving me at the mercy of the sovereign that rules over me.

The thing in that gallon bag soon seemed to acquire a life of its own as every now and then the bag bloated up and had to be relieved of the gaseous buildup. The tiny microbes in it seemed to be belching out green-house gases more than the cows that are now being accused of flatulently heating up the planet. (Has anyone looked into the role of yeast in global warming?)

The previous night was chosen as an auspicious one by my spouse to bake a sweet cinnamon bread with it. And what a wonderful delight it turned out to be. Great with tea, even better with coffee.

On our part, we too passed the starter on to other friends who might enjoy it.

But now the adventure - our brief sojourn into the mysterious world of delights will soon be over. And we will then be waiting for the next magic ticket - the starter - to have another go.

P.s. What gave away the part about it not being Amish was '1 packet vanilla pudding' among the ingredients :-)

A Wednesday ...

(No, we're not talking about the recent Bollywood thriller.)

It was a Wednesday, a few weeks ago when I was asked by the First Lady of the household to drive over to River Market in Stillwater and pickup the first bounty of nature produced and packed exclusively in our name by our favorite CSA - Little Flower Farm.

Honestly enough I wasn't very excited by the idea -
(The following statement will give you a glimpse into the workings of my mind)
either they would send too little produce that won't suffice the week, or too much and it would spoil. To say nothing about how exactly we would go about planning our meals around it. Who would I talk to - about it - at the pickup site etc etc. Big Questions gnawing at my little mind.

Yet again, I am glad to be working under the tutelage of the head chef of our domestic kitchen, aka the benevolent Dictator of the household, who set about systematically proving me wrong, as soon as the prized box was delivered in her hands. I looked gingerly on (pun intended) as she sorted through, what looked like a scary, leafy green monster into lettuce, Swiss Chard and an assortment of aromatic herbs.
At the same time her other 2 hands had put a pan on the stove, drizzled some EVOO (extra virgin olive oil), chopped garlic and started sauteeing it. By now her first set of two hands had chopped up the Swiss Chard into less intimidating pieces and was selecting the herbs to go with. Dizzied by the dexterity of so many hands flying around, I needed a drink and headed to the table - where I was served with a delectable concoction entitled - "swiss chard sauteed with garlic and parsley, served with pappardelle pasta, seasoned with lemon-pepper and garnished with parmesan cheese" by the head-chef herself. A title that contains the recipe as well.

Thanks to our CSA, a mundane midweek day has been transformed into a celebration of gastronomical delights - so much so that it has begun to rival the king of the week - Friday. And another unmentionable fact is that it is taking me - a carnivore of convictions - another step closer to total herbivorism. In this age of globalization, it is somewhat comforting to know that on at least few days - the food we eat was grown on a 2 acre farm 25.6 miles away from our kitchen. Call it our own way of going local.

Of Sandwiches and control

What might buying a sandwich have to do with control issues one might wonder!
A lot, especially if you pay attention.

On one end of the spectrum is Jimmy John's where you in effect, cede all control over how your sandwich turns out. About 120-130 seconds after you uncertainly utter the number of the sandwich you want, and while you were still thinking of the veggies you might request or dressing you might want to hold, to assuage your guilt, the sandwich wrapped up is in your hands. If you start getting proactive and start rattling off your preferences right after choosing the sandwich number, you might as well be talking to the wind. The friendly order taker patiently waits through, what apparently she thinks is your "yadda yadda ... blah blah ...", until you pause to catch a breath, when she yells only your number to the production crew.
It makes you wonder though, somebody must have sat down to decide how much lettuce or mayo should go or not in a sandwich. From the taste of the finished product, that somebody seems less likely to be a chef and more likely a corporate head honcho.
See now what I meant about control? For your lunch, you in effect ceded control to a corporate suit to decide its specifics. I am sure it makes you feel so much better :-)

If it bothers you though, there is the other end of the spectrum in - Subway where the preparer is an artist of a very liberal predisposition and in effect refuses to accept the certainty of anything on her canvas - your sandwich, even bread. So you make choices over every little detail - salad/sandwich/wrap, bread (6 kinds), cheese (no,yes,double out of 5 kinds), toasted or not, meat selection and quantity, veggies out of a dozen choices and finally dressing - out of yet another dozen choices.
You cannot just point to a sandwich off the board and hope to escape the decision-tree that ensues. At the end of which, you have lost all interest in food and just want to pay and escape their clutches. No guarantee of taste here either, but at least it was you in the driver's seat.

If either extreme isn't for you, there is a middle of the road at Potbelly's where you have either choice. Pick a number and let them do it all, or pick a number and customize. They achieved this nirvana by limiting your choices to a handful (again that head honcho, but at least not a micro-manager). But if this were it life would be too simple. I have been there many times, but somewhere they manage to sneak in, what seems like a pint of olive oil into the sandwich, which drips to the wrapper, smears on your fingers and seems to stay with you for at least a week.

Any better suggestions? All I want is a decent sandwich.

Natural healing through spices

The spice-rack of an Indian food lover is usually a chaotic assortment of a large number of spices with wide ranging tastes, smells and flavors. From sweet-smelling cinnamon to vile tasting fenugreek, from earthy cumin to sharp cloves there are many individual flavors and smells to choose from and an almost unlimited number of combinations. Besides being excellent additions to food, these spices are also said to hold medicinal properties.
Many of us have suffered natural remedies for everyday ailments at the hands of our mothers or grandmas. Here's a list of recommendations for medicinal usage of Indian spices. Now before you read any further, let me warn you not to depend on these remedies as your fallback option in case 'healthcare reform' begins to suck big time. The author a.k.a. I offer no express guarantees for the efficacy of any of these remedies. Heck! I don't even think many of them would taste good either. Now that the standard disclaimers have been dispensed with, here goes:

COMMON COLD: Mix a gram of cinnamon powder with a tsp of honey to Cure cold.
Prepare tea adding ginger, clove, bay Leaf and black pepper. Drink twice a day.
Ginger tea is very good to cure cold. Preparation of tea: cut ginger into small pieces and boil it with water, boil it a few times and then add sugar to sweeten and milk to taste, and drink it hot.
DRY COUGHS.
Add a gram of turmeric (haldi) powder to a tsp of honey to cure dry cough.
Chew on a whole cardamom.
BLOCKED NOSE: Tbsp of crushed carom seeds (ajwain) and tie it in a cloth and inhale it.
SORE THROAT: 1 tsp cumin seeds (jeera) + few small pieces of dry Ginger to a glass of boiling water. Simmer it for a few minutes, and Then let it cool. Drink it twice daily. This will cure cold & sore throat.
Boil carom seeds (ajwain) in water and inhale the steam.
BACKACHE: Rub ginger paste on the back to get relief.
HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE: Chew 1-2 garlic cloves first thing in the morning with water.
(Nobody may come near you all day leading to a relaxed mind ;-)

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE: 1 tbsp ginger (adrak) juice+1 tbsp ground cumin seeds (jeera) twice a day.
MIGRAINE: Boil 1 tbsp pepper powder + a pinch of turmeric in a cup of milk, and drink for a few days.
TURMERIC: Apply turmeric powder to injuries to stop the bleeding. It also works as an antiseptic.

HEADACHES.
-Use 5 almonds with hot milk in your daily diet.
-1 gram black pepper + honey or milk, twice or thrice a day.
-Apply almond paste (or raw almond butter) to forehead.
-Eat an apple with a little salt on an empty stomach everyday.
-For headaches caused due to cold winds, apply paste of cinnamon in water to forehead.
TURMERIC
-Turmeric can be used in treating arthritis due to its Anti-inflammatory property. Add 1 tsp turmeric powder to a Cup of warm milk every day. Apply paste locally to affected areas.
-Turmeric lower cholesterol prevents formation of internal blood clots, improves circulation and prevents heart disease and stroke.
HICCUPS: Take a warm slice of lemon and sprinkle salt, sugar and black pepper
On it. Suck on it until hiccups stop.
HIGH CHOLESTEROL
-To 1 glass water, add 2 tbsp coriander(dhania) seeds and bring to a boil. Let the decoction cool for some time and then strain. Drink this mixture twice a day.
-Sunflower seeds are extremely beneficial, as they contain linoleic acid that helps in reducing the cholesterol deposits on the walls of arteries.
SINUSITIS
-Mango serves as an effective home remedy for preventing the frequent attacks of sinus, as it is packed with loads of vitamin A.
-In cup of water, boil 1 tsp of Fenugreek seeds and reduce it to half. This will help you to perspire,
dispel toxicity and reduce the fever period. OR Tie a tsp of black cumin seeds in a thin cotton cloth and inhale.
TONSILLITIS
-Squeeze a lemon in a glass of water + 4 tsp honey + 1/2 tsp salt. Sip it.
-To 1 glass boiled milk, add a pinch of turmeric powder and pepper. Drink for 3 nights.

Call of the Orient...

Last Friday, like every weekend my sleek Aussie temptress beckoned me for yet another tryst. Not being very strong willed to resist her charms, I answered her call. It just so happened that we were both longing for the pleasures of the far East and an idea occurred to me - 'Honey'.

To be precise - 'Honey mustard grilled chicken'. I am drawing a blank for a better, more imaginative name for the dish we concocted. If after reading, and hopefully trying the recipe, you are struck by a sudden inspiration for a name, please let us know.

In our quest for Asian inspired grilled fare, we have had several follies, few accidental discoveries and even fewer moments of true genius. Described here is the distillate of all those experiences. Without further ado, here is the recipe:

The bird:
2.5 - 3 lbs chicken in grill-able size pieces. (too large and you have to discount for the inevitable charcoal crust. Too tiny and frequently it becomes all charcoal)

The marinade:
4 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp mustard preferably the kind with coarse ground seeds.
1 tbsp horseradish sauce (or a couple packets of Arby's Horsey sauce ;-)
2 tbsp ginger-garlic paste. Easily substituted by a tablespoon of each - finely chopped up.
1 tbsp ground black pepper
salt to taste
optional- for an extra kick - add some hot red chilli-pepper.

Whisk it all together and apply generously on the skinned and patted dry chicken.
Leave it in the fridge overnight or at least for 3-4 hours.

Our sizzling Aussie gave the chicken thigh pieces a beautiful caramelized glaze in about 5-6 minutes each side. Needless to say, you gotta consult your own grill on this one.

Heavenlicious - may be an incorrect adjective as per British or American English, but then as we say out in the far East - communication is only partly via language. (totally made up!)

Hope you like it.