Cooking like my mother

My mother belonged to the generation of cooks that cooked with ingredients they had. If a recipe called for something that was not on hand or not available or was too expensive, she could easily find a good substitute. Since moving out of India, I am trying to apply same principle to my cooking. There is definitely a huge variety of fruits, vegetables and spices available here, but every now and then I am reminded of a fruit or vegetable that is just not available here. 'Karonda' is one such berry that I have not found in US. Here  is a wikipedia page describing this berry. At my house, Karonda was used to provide tartness to chutneys and also cooked with green chilies in a quick 'karonda-hari mirch' pickle. In the tradition of cooking with ingredients one has, I have found cranberry to be a good substitute for Karonda. During Thanksgiving time, when it is hard to miss cranberry in the store, I cant resist making this cranberry relish the way my mother made kar...

Mummy made this sweet chutney using amiya, hindi name for unripe, green mangoes. Amiya's tart flavour makes it a good choice for pickles and chutneys. Every year, when amiya was available in the market, the sweet chutney is amongst one of the many pickles/chutneys mummy prepared. After making a big batch of chutney, she stored it in several clean glass bottles. One of those bottles used to find a permanent place on the dining table because we consumed the chutney in variety of ways almost whole day. Sometimes we spread it on top of a toasted bread for breakfast or snack, other times we ate it with roti/paratha with the regular meal, and then there were times we will scoop it on top of mathari or crackers or eat it plain like it was a dessert. 'Radha, now why does the picture shows apples and not mangoes?' you ask. If I were to pick one food related thing I have missed most about India, I will have to pick mango (atually there may be a tie between guava and mango). Ripe man...

In our house (as in most houses in India), it was common to serve raw 'salad type vegetables' with the meals. We called it 'salad' though we ate it more like a relish along with all other food. The choice of vegetable to serve as 'salad' depended on what was in the season. Cucumbers, tomatoes in summer and radishes, carrots in winter. I love the one mummy made with radish and tomatoes. It is visually very appealing and very falvorful and her special touch was to grate the radish instead of just cutting it. Grating the radish allows flavors to get mingled with tomato very nicely. The recipe is so simple that one can not go wrong with it. I use daikon, the type of radish available in India in winter months. You start with peeling and grating the radish, squeezing grated radish between your hands to take out the juice and mixing it with chopped tomatoes, chopped cilantro and green chillies if you can handle the heat. Then you add a litle bit of salt and lime juice ...