Cooking like my mother

Tahari, a vegetables and rice dish, was a sunday lunch staple and was also prepared any time a sumptuous meal had to be prepared in a hurry. Mummy made this also on the day of Basant with yellow color of tahiri matching the yellow colors of Basant. Mummy made tahiri using gobhi (culiflower), matar (peas) and gajar (carrot) making this dish very colorful. Mummy was a stickler for finely grating the onions instead of chopping it. I think this made the onion masala really stick to other vegetables and rice making each bite more falvorful. She always cooked tahari in a pressure cooker which also allowed for flavors from vegetables and masala get mixed with the rice really well. I made this today and we ate it with mooli-tamatar (radish, tomato) relish, another one of mummy's easy yet favlorful relish recipe. Ingredients ----------- 2 cups rice 3 tbsp oil 1 tsp cumin seeds 1 tsp black pepper whole 3-4 tej patta (dried bay leaves) 1 tsp cloves 1 big onion, finely grated or ground in a f...

Mummy made bharwan shimla mirch (stuffed green bell peppers) with the stuffing made out of potatoes flavored with methi and saunf (fenugreek and fennel seeds). Since the recipes for making stuffed peppers is more elaborate, she had a simpler version that provided all the flavors with half the fuss. In this version, she cut the green peppers and potatoes and prepared it with the same masala as the one used for stuffing. When I made this last week, we ate it with parathas (pan fried bread) and plain yogurt. Ingredients ----------- 2 tbsp oil 1 small onion, finely chopped 1-2 green chilies cut in small rounds 1 tsp fenugreek seeds 1 tsp turmeric powder 1 tsp red chilli powder 1 tbsp coriander powder 2 tbsp feneel seeds coarsely ground 1 tsp garam masala powder salt 3 medium size potatoes, peeled and cut in small chunks 2 green bell peppers, cut in small pieces 1 tbsp amchoor powder Method ------- 1. Heat the oil in a wok on medium heat. 2. When oil is hot, add fenugreek seeds. Let it sizz...

The reaction from people of all ages who taste the appams for the first time is always the same - they find it delicious and they always assume that making it must be really complicated. I cant describe how surprised and pleased I was when Mummy introduced Appams to me several years ago in 2001 or 2002. I had eaten something similar in Bangalore but had no idea of how to make it. I was even more pleased to find out that Mummy had got me an Appam Patra, a special gadget/pan required for making Appams. Mummy had got these pans on special order from Madras. Since there was a high demand for the pans among anybody who tasted the Appam and also because they were not available in Agra, i considered myself extremely lucky to get one. This is a good example of how mummy was always seeking and embracing new recipes and making it part of the family tradition. Having learnt the recipe, I made it and served it to people who visited us and had a similar reaction. Anybody who tasted appams for the f...

Mummy thought about feeding us good food that was packed with good nutrition. One time when I was little anemic, she advised me to add more palak (spinach) in my diet. 'Adding other ingredients like paneer or potatoes (as in usual spinach dishes like palak paneer and spinach with potatoes) will prevent you from eating lot of spinach' she insisted. She gave me this spinach recipe with just 3 ingredients (not counting salt and oil) that allowed me to add more spinach to my diet and hence add more iron. I did not think much of the recipe when she described it to me but once I started to make it, I got hooked. I usually ate this with roti or paratha and plain yogurt. This recipe has also become a staple for me every time I have worried about my iron intake like during my pregnancies. Ingredients 1 tbsp oil or ghee 4 cloves of garlic crushed 1 lb spinach 2-3 red chillies broken in pieces or hot green chillies sliced salt Method 1. Wash the spinach and cut it in small pieces 2. Heat ...

I had made a big batch steamed pattodas roles(recipe previous post ) and I still had some left. Mummy had told me that you can even fry the steamed pattoda pieces like pakoras. I had never tried that before and I decided to give it a try. So sunday morning, I prepared some chickpea batter (using chickpea flour, salt, red chilli powder, amchoor powder, all combined with water to make a paste with heavy cream consistency. Spices can be added per taste) for pakoras and dipped pattoda pieces in it and fried it in oil till golden brown. Results were good. What will you call it? Pattoda Pakora?

I never had any formal training in cooking my mother's dishes. Not that it is common in India for mothers to formally teach their daugthers how to cook. We just learn by watching, by being a helper in the kitchen or just by hanging out. My most formal training happened when she visited us and I requested her to make this or that. This is one of those dishes that I learnt in that visit. Mummy and I had gone for vegetable shopping and she was surprised at the presence of taro leaves. She was even more surprised at the size of those leaves. As kid, I did not enjoy this dish but remember all adults in our family really relishing it. So I was skeptical at first but loved it after she made it. We liked the dish so much that we kept using all sorts of broad leave greens (spinach, collard greens, kale.) to make this dish that summer. Two weeks ago, when I was visiting a mexican groceries/vegetable market, I found the taro leaves and I knew I had to make this dish. The dish can be served wi...

Mummy's cake is one of those dishes that most of us will remember for a long time. She owned a oven for as long as I can remember. The older oven, once it stopped working, was painted and mounted on the wall and was used as an airtight little cupboard to store special snack/food items. She baked cake for the birthdays for anybody that mattered to her. If it was my birthday, no matter where I was, I knew she must have baked a cake for me. She had improvised her cake recipe over time. In the beginning, she used condensed milk but then when she visited us in 2000, she once showed me how to make the cake with ingredients almost always available in my kitchen. Lately she had been using yogurt in her cake recipe which I never learnt. I will ask didi (my sister) or my aunts for the recipe with yogurt. Then we had to also experiment with the temperature at which to bake. Her oven in India only had one setting and we dont know what it was. Last week was my son's birthday, first birthday...