Kanda Pohe - a metaphor for Blind Dates

The Maharashtrians among us wouldn't blink at that title, but for the "non", let me explain -

In an arranged marriage scenario, when the prospective bride and family visit the prospective groom's house to size him up (or vice versa), the hosts typically offer Kanda pohe to the guests, among other things. The match making proceedings happen over a plate of Kanda Pohe and hence the metaphor.

Back in the days when me and my girl buddies were on the marriage market, it was commonplace to compare notes on the out come of our respective Kanda Pohe at the end of the week/month/day. "But you don't really do Kanda Pohe, you go on dates" , they'd say. Well, admittedly my Kanda Pohe had the appearance of blind dates, because my action plan involved meeting the guy over coffee/lunch/dinner depending on how well things were going, rather than the entire clan getting involved from the word 'go'. All the same, these blind kanda pohe were really focused, serious stuff as opposed to 'date' dates. I had a mental list (presumably the guys had theirs too) of the must have, nice to have and must not have criteria against which I was sizing up prospectives for my arranged marriage.

It was over one such metaphorical Kanda Pohe that I met Sushi, and here we are...married. I believe, the actual dish we ate ran more on the lines of butter chicken and daal tadka.

Back to the tangible Kanda Pohe though. I made this over breakfast one weekend. Simple really. You take about a cup of Pohe and soak it in water.(Pohe is beaten rice, beaten so that it absorbs cold water too. You can actually see it expanding visibly when u soak it in a cup of water for about 15 minutes). You then add some veggies in a kadahi (potatoes and peas will do) after chopping them fine. Don't forget the Kanda (onion) because that's the raison d'etre of the poha. Also don't forget to add oil in the kadahi before putting the veg in (almost forgot to mention that. Phew!)After the veggies are done, stir in the soaked (and bloated) pohe. Then add in turmeric and salt..and voila you are good to go.

Doesn't sound like much..but trust me, it makes a pretty neat meal. Perfect, now I see, for breaking the ice - "Er..nice pohe. So what are your hobbies?"

Post It Notes On My Refrigerator.

Yup..that's right..menu for week night dinner. We have turned over new leaves (that's the plan anyway) and are eating plenty of leafy greens. We are holding off all animals from the kitchen until the weekend at the very least.
And yes, Sushi has taken to reviewing, approving and signing off on the weekly menu.

The Strangest Dream I Ever Did Dream

It went like this. I was in one of those situations where I couldn't make myself heard. Like I am trying to scream and no sound would come out. I'm waving my arms about and kicking up quite a dust but no one seems to notice. Where do these situations happen? Mostly in dreams I suppose.
So, the reason for all that arm flailing, dust kicking and screaming was to get Sushi's attention (in the dream) as he was about to, get this, put 2 large tablespoons of white flour in his tea, thinking it was sugar. He had his first sip of the tea, and only then seemed to realise I had been frantically trying to get his attention all this while.
The invisibility cloak lifted, I tried to salvage the situation or rather the tea. I remember suggesting that we could add more flour to the tea, to get tea flavoured dough, which probably we could try and make some pancakes with.
Don't know how that would have tasted in after sleep reality, but I am willing enough to try that experiment with coffee liquor in place of tea.
The other thing is, I'm on the look out for a good dream interpreter these days.

Colourful Spirits

Guys, on a Friday night of merry making with buddies, go into a huddle, with a glass each of dubious murky brown substance. They probably have a bowl of peanuts by the side, and they talk "guy stuff".

Girls, when they make merry on a Friday night with buddies, like to dress things up. - Thus-


That's Pinacolada for you. Agreed, it needs pineapple not lemon to look pretty, but we had none on us then. What you do is, you start with some neutral coloured spirit. Then you choose a lot of juices in a wide array of colours and flavours to suit your mood. And then -- you dress things up. Like the pic above, it's Bacardi (or anything else, the neutrality of the colour matters - remember?) coupled with coconut cream and pineapple juice. Add the lemon to achieve a bit of contrast.

Here's another -
The same(or any other) neutral coloured base. To that, we added grape juice. So, I guess, this would be ..wine? What you are supposed to notice in the pic is the salt rimmed glasses(we stuck it on with lemon juice), the contrast the drinks make with the curtains, and the diamond rings on our fings.

The "Bloody Merry" below - that was crafted with a good deal of care out of pureed tomatoes, ground garlic and green chili (spicy was the mood), and, say it with me, a neutral coloured spirit.
Pretty neat huh?

Sushi, he invented an interesting cocktail too, because, I am after all his chief drinking buddy. O'course it's still murky brown coloured, but there's a legitimate reason for that. The cocktail in question is tea-based. We would have called it "Long Island Iced tea" had we not discovered just in time that Long Island Iced tea doesn't have ANY tea in it! Who'd have known.!! However, the neutral coloured spirit with iced tea tastes just fine - so we choose to call our little invention - "Iced tea punch".

Happy merry making and hope your spirits stay colourful.

The Mother of All Misunderstandings and Disaster Averted

So, there I was, googling along, like I usually do.
"Tiramisu" I typed into the search box. Click here, if you are hazy about what Tiramisu is because it is important that we have our basics clear in the first place.

Now, most of the recipes going around google say that if I am to make this the authentic Italian way, I should have at its base - Lady Finger. Lady Finger to me is "Bhindi". In Minnesota, or the whole of US for that matter, they like to call it "Okra", which is fine by me. Confusing, but just fine.

Tiramisu, I happen to have eaten at what I thought was a pretty authentic Italian place and some not so authentic Italian places too. It has always tasted delicious, but never like bhindi. Not that I don't like bhindi. In fact it's one of my favourite veggies.

I'm just getting around to wondering whether I should be using the over ripe bhindis or slightly new ones for my Tiramisu, when the recipe describes that I must dip my "bhindi" in a mixture of chocolate, coffee and brandy! Something felt terribly wrong! Very wrong! I googled again...

Care to know what "Lady Finger" is ? Here
Phew! That was close!

The Traditional Fish Curry

While my 'other half' is more excited about trying her hands at multi-cultural continental cuisine, I stick to honing my skills on the home-grown ones. Not that I don't like 'her kind' of cuisine (I do! what will all that cheese, shrimp, ham and the like), but I enjoy cooking 'my kind' more, since it feels quite empowering being able to handle 'n' types of spices and 'm' kinds of oils patiently and coming up with something finger-lickin' good!

So, the weekend gone by I felt like having the good-ol' fish curry that my mom cooked back home when I was a kid. Now, I am not an avid blogger (as you might have guessed; this is my first post!..even though Sashimi keeps mentioning me here and there in her antics), so I forgot to take pictures while I was cooking. I'll try to be more considerate next time ;).

I'll keep it short (I personally find ramblings very boring unless there are images/pictures/visuals to support the content). The fish of interest is Rohu (no idea what's the common name though scientific taxonomy attributes it to "Labeo Rohita"..thanks there, Wiki!). People in northern and eastern part of my country are quite fond of it.

So, I took a fistful of mustard seeds and garlic bulbs (or pods? or buds?..what's it called, dammit?!) and centrifuged them in my grinder with a little water. I added some red chilli powder, pepper, turmeric and salt in the resulting paste. That takes care of phase one. Oh, I forgot to mention that I had cleaned up the sliced rohu and kept it in refrigerator earlier, so technically this mustard business is in phase two.

A little mustard paste is smeared on the fish slices and shallow-fried (umm..well, you can deep fry it and have it just like that..it tastes yum!! but that deserves a separate blog entry, so we will proceed). Meanwhile I had heated up some oil (ok, this needs mention: "oil" everywhere in this post means "mustard oil", any other will ruin the stuff!) in another pan with a li'l bit o' fenugreek. The mustard paste is deep-fried in it till it turns golden-brown, at which point I diced a tomato in it. Well then, the deal is almost over; you put the fried fish in the mixture, add a little water, salt it up a bit, leave for 5 mins and you are ready to rock! We usually relish it with freshly-cooked steamed rice. Feel free to experiment and add you own touch!

My Week Night Veggie Innovations

We are doing what we can to reduce our calorie intake. (I can't say for sure if it's working, but isn't it the thought that counts, or some such thing) With this noble thought in mind, on most week nights we have fairly simply done vegetables - home cooked, and plain chapatis. Now, the part about "simple" and "plain" gets pretty depressing at times. One night, not very long ago, Sushi rebelled. He wouldn't see another lauki until Armageddon cometh. The hapless lauki in the mean time was pining away in the refrigerator, slowly changing hue from a fresh youthful green to a pale, forlorn yellow. It was very nearly on the brink of going a murky brown, and time had come to take decisive action and reconcile the warring parties.

That's when some forgotten memory started to stir and it turned up "Kofta Curry". Kofta, as I remember, used to be a part of my childhood meals. Grandfather's faithful servant, the forgotten species that actually reside in separate quarters in your house and pretty much do everything that there is to be done around the place, had this item in his repertoire. Incidentally, the "faithfulness" of Shankar dada is a subject that's up for debates and it invariably is, at a lot of family gatherings. He's even suspected of having evil intentions pertaining to the life of my grandfather, which if nothing else, does show a stoutness of the heart.

Well, baba, that's my grandfather, strolled out of this world at his own pace and time and no one does doubt till this date, the culinary abilities of Shankar dada. Which is not to say that I got in touch with him for the recipe of Kofta curry! He was known for other nefarious activities too like being a rickshaw puller to make an extra buck and peddling contraband articles, so I'd rather not run that risk! Nope the kofta curry recipe came from good ole google of course.

The recipe? Oh yes, that. All you need to do is to get the bai to grate the murky brown lauki(if yours is still in the green of its youth, you may not really want to wait for the murky brownish-ness). To the grated lauki you add seasonings as per taste . I used asafoetida, cumin and coriander powder, salt, red chili and gram flour to make it all bindy and sticky.

You then shape the bindy and sticky mixture into spherical kofta shapes..which when fried right gives this -

Onion and tomatoes and ..er...I forget exactly what, but general spices make up a curry. In that you swim your koftas . Thus -

Phew! And thus your home economy is saved from the near loss of good lauki. (Lauki, for those who call it something else is "Bottle Gourd")