Returning with recipes
Hiii!
So many things have been happening on the personal front the past few months. I haven’t really forgotten that I decided to write a newsletter. I tell myself, “Okay, as soon as this is done, I will have the time to sit and write.” As I get close to “it,” 7 other things line up on my to-do list. After dying there long enough, when I arrive at “Okay, let’s just write,” I realise that I have been holding on to the idea that the “right” way to do that would be to explain my absence, listing down headlines and details as needed, so I can come to the now, to finally see what else I have to say, to write. And that, dear lord, has been weighing me down immensely. So it becomes, “Maybe tomorrow,” again, and again, and again. I have been churning this in my head for months now, and I remembered only yesterday what my friend Vidhya said about the idea of my newsletter: It can be something I read, saw, felt, even recipes. Recipes!! On days I have the time and patience, I type down a few when someone requests for one on my Instagram story. They are all basic instructions, but I have wanted to write a little more along with it. Let me try.
A friend who now lives in the US asked for my kootu recipe yesterday. I promised to send it across. I am reminded of how food and memories and comfort are so closely knit, like a consecutive stitch pattern that holds the whole garment together. I absolutely, tremendously, whole-heartedly love my food. I am thrilled when I explore new cuisines, ingredients, vegetables. I am your average “Oh, I wish I could buy that” or “I wish I could try to learn makeup like that” girl, but the “I wish” that I usually pine for the most are local ingredients and vegetables I come across on Instagram, and I am yearning to walk through local markets, touch, cook, and taste these veggies, their earthy, authentic flavours intact. A touch of oil, a pinch of spice, a bit of salt, and that is it, just the taste of the vegetable. New, exciting. Almost similar to intimately getting to know someone who caught your eye. My heart flutters.
I also eat tasty trash that does nothing for my body and everything for my brain. On some vacations, I give healthy, sane food also a vacation from me. Full rebel. No one can stop me. I am an adult. I have adult money that I have earned, that I get to decide what to do with. Yes to spicy food, yes to street food, yes to all kinds of packaged snacks, yes to endless desserts, yes to giving in to all cravings, and sometimes, really just timepass. Most often, little to no regrets. And then I come back home. And it is almost like the musty, familiar smell of my hibernating locked house, churns up the yearning for a simple meal from my own kitchen. This meal usually has kootu or a rasam, if not both, in it.
Here’s what I do for a kootu:
Ingredients
2 chowchow, peeled & cut into cubes
1/4 cup cooked dal (I like making a mix of toor, moong, masoor dal, but any 1 will do)
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
Salt
To grind
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp jeera
Handful of grated or chopped coconut
2 green chillies
Tadka
Coconut oil/ghee (or any oil really)
Mustard seeds
Split urad dal
2 red chillies
A pinch of hing
A bunch of chopped curry leaves
Chopped coriander leaves
Method:
Boil your dal in a pressure cooker for 4-5 whistles. I usually add 1:2 or 1:3 water. I don’t have this down to a clear science yet. If you add an ever silver spoon to it, the overflow of water when the dal is boiling is so much more manageable - again, not sure why
Once, it is ready, in the same cooker, add the cut chowchow
Grind the “to grind” ingredients. Start with pepper and jeera with a little bit of rock salt. I remember my mother saying it helps the spices grind. Then add the green chillies and the coconut, with a little bit of water, and grind to a paste
Add the ground mixture with turmeric and salt, add some water if needed, and pressure cook for 2 whistles
Make the tadka, throw it in, and you’re done
I like throwing in a mix of whatever veggies I have. I enjoy this especially with chowchow, carrot, green capsicum put in together. I also like it when I swap chowchow with bottle gourd.
This kootu is a star on its own really, but goes so well with a spicy, quick-to-make rasam. Rasam is comfort food #1 for me I think. Such little fuss, so much comfort. As if the liquid gushing through my food pipe wants to throw its arms open and embrace all the organs it passes by, saying, “I know, she’s a psycho, I’ve got you.”
Here’s my favourite rasam recipe:
Ingredients
1 tiny lemon sized tamarind (to soak in water, or a small spoon of tamarind paste)
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
To grind
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp jeera
Rock salt
1-2 green chillies
A bunch of garlic, smashed with the skin on
(listen to your soul for how much garlic it needs)
1 chopped tomato
For tadka
Gingelly oil (or whatever you like)
Mustard seeds
Split urad dal
Hing
2 red chillies
A bunch of garlic, smashed with the skin on
(listen to your soul for how much garlic it needs)
Chopped curry leaves
Chopped coriander
Method:
Grind everything in the “to grind” list in that same order. Pepper and jeera with some rock salt first. Then go the green chillies and the smashed garlic. Finally the chopped tomato
I like to add some oil, dunk in the ground mixture, and sauté for a minute or two.
Now add the tamarind water/paste, add more water, turmeric powder, salt - taste test here. Remember that the tomato is also a pulip, the tamarind is also a pulip, so be mindful how much of each you are adding. If the mixture is too pulip, add more water in batches, checking each time. If you are not able to taste pulip at all, add more tamarind water/paste.
Wait for it to come to a boil. My mother would say that the right time to turn a rasam off is to watch for the foam forming on the top layer. It forms, continues to boil, and then starts to split. You immediately turn the rasam off.
Make the tadka. Or if you made it ahead smartly, add it to the rasam now. You are done.
My mother loves rasams. I think she can make at least a dozen variations based on what ingredients she has at hand, and how much patience she has on any given day. I might have inherited this love for rasam from having access to her expertly made varieties that will feature on the lunch menu growing up, at least thrice a week. I need to write about this separately one day. (deep breaths). Lemon rasam comes second to this pepper-jeera rasam only because it needs cooked dal, and on quite a lot of days, I cannot be bothered to make one more thing to make a rasam in my tiny kitchen.
Rasam and kootu and some basic poriyal on my plate, and I can feel the intense sigh of relief that permeates through my body. I have learned in the past couple of years to pair this with a protein of choice. The spread will already do the work of delighting your tongue and brain - the choice of how you cook your protein can be simple and straightforward. It is an accessory on this plate - necessary, tasty also hopefully, but need not worry about being at its stellar best.
I have also decided that I am going to attempt writing poems this month, using the prompts from @thealiporepost. Here’s a piece I wrote in about 15 minutes. (talking to myself in my head: I will not flog myself over whether this is the best possible thing, existing > perfection)
Day 2 prompt: Collections
I collect memories and
tiny little details about
people - seemingly trivial,
but the very building blocks of
how their image comes together in
my head - that one person
that sneezes like a cute filter
got slapped on the usual,
Earth-shattering sound, the one
that cannot stop their twitching
eye when they hear dumb
stuff tumble out someone’s
mouth - the one that will throw
their head back when a fake
laugh escapes their throat, and
the one whose grace from years of
formal dance training cannot help
but seep into everyday mundane things.
I collect their uncomfortable
eye fluttering, the throat clearing
that is always accompanied by
a nose itch that demands immediate
release, the eyes that bore into
your very soul, only to cackle like
a child, once the punchline has
landed - how very tender, very
human, each detail colour-coded,
tagged, put into their respective
folders - sometimes, for a very long time,
sitting untouched cluelessly, wondering
why they have not been summoned
up to the floating memory chamber.
But really, what to do with
these painstakingly collected
notes, now collecting dust, losing
sharpness in image quality: titbits,
the arch of an eyebrow, the
many moles splattered across the dip
in the neck, the scars they have hidden carefully
from the rest of the world that
you were cautiously, tenderly, lovingly,
one day allowed into?
If you have any recommendations for a collection of poems you dearly love, please send them my way? Here’s one from me. I came across Divi Maggo’s work on my explore feed on Instagram last August, and immediately ordered her collection of poems “Wilted flowers” on Amazon. Although I haven’t read the book yet, here are 2 for you to get a taste of:
Talk soon!
Thank you for being here xx