Cooking like my mother

I think of samosa as the king of all snacks ( described here ). In India, good samosas are available everywhere and trying to make it at home is not worth the effort. There are halwai shops (read here for a definition) everywhere that make good samosas and sell at a reasonable price. Usually each shops has a set time in the afternoon to make fresh samosas. Since most of the neighborhood knows this time, you can see people queuing up around that time to get the fetch freshest samosas while friends and family waits at home with chai on the stove. On a recent visit to my hometown Agra, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this tradition continues. I have been trying to learn how to make really great samosas at home since the time we moved out of India.  Over time, I have tried several recipes and learned to make them from scratch but making the dough, rolling and stuffing each one is a time consuming process. Here I am  making Samosas using a shortcut by stuffing the pota...

Fried roti chips with home made salsa My mother had lots of easy, creative ways to use leftovers and convert otherwise stale, tasteless food into something delicious. So when I have stale roti/parathas (Indian griddle bread), I fry them to make delicious roti chips.

If you read my previous post here , you know the basic steps to make dhokla - mix chickpea flour with yogurt, let it sit and ferment, add minced ginger, chillies, cilantro, and then steam the batter. You also know that adding Eno means you dont have to wait for the fermentation process. Since eno is used to add air bubbles to the batter, you no longer need to rely on sour yogurt to ferment the batter. Prior to eno days, we always added yogurt to the batter but eno made it possible to eliminate yogurt and just make the batter with water. I started to make dhoklas both ways - sometimes with yogurt, sometimes without. But I was never sure of the difference in the taste in the two methods. Last weekend we had some friends visiting us in the evening and I decided to make two batches- one with yourt and another one without. This gave me opportunity to taste them one after another... while I have still not picked a favorite in terms of taste, I definitely liked the one without yogurt! Ing...

Dhokla - I am not sure if I should describe it as a steamed dumpling or steamed bread. Dhokla is airy, light, flavorful steamed fermented chickpea flour batter and is usually had for breakfast or as snack any time of the day. I dont know when and how mummy first started to make it at home. Dhokla, while very common now all over India, was not as common in north when we were growing up. There is a story associated with how I learned to make Dhokla when I was doing my engineering at Roorkee (long time ago!). Mummy and papa had come to Roorkee before the summer vacation and we stayed back in Roorkee colony for a week or so before returning home. Mausi and mausaji from Rishikesh, who are both expert cooks were there too. My local guardian at the time, mamji, had signed up our whole family for making breakfast in the morning. It was fun to be part of a team with these experts cooks - we dazzled folks with unexpected variety every day and got lot of praise for anything, everything that w...

It has been sometime since I posted anything. But the good news (for me) is that I have cooked and collected material for lot of recipes. Let me start with one that has become a staple for weekend breakfast at our house. Namkeen sevanyee simply means savory vermicelli. When I was growing up, only way we ate vermicelli was in kheer (pudding). Mummy must have acquired the savory recipe from somewhere - don't exactly remember when and where. It was always a big hit served with any chutney and was part of breakfast rotation for mummy. Mummy made the vermicelli with vegetables on hand - cauliflower, potato, carrots, peas being the main ones. I have also used cabbage, green beans, bell pepper at times. Only trick here is to cook the vermicelli in boiling water and then run it under cold water. This little trick prevents vermicelli noodles from becoming one sticky mass. Mummy boiled the vegetables separately as well, sometimes the night before. This makes preparing this dish a snap. I do...

Mummy was always adding new pans, pots and cooking gadgets to her kitchen collection. Sometimes she discovered a new recipe needing that special gadget and other times she simply found a better, newer version of a gadget she alredy possesed. Whatever was the reason for her new purchase, we always benefited from it. She either bought the new gadgets for us or passed on the older version. Idli stand to make choti (small) idlies was one such purchase she made while visiting my brother in Surat. She bought several of these stands, keeping one for herself and giving others to my sister, sister in law and me. Idli, sambhar and chutney were standard fare for the parties at home. Idlies were considered light yet falvorful and festive, a departure from usual fried stuff like poories, bhatura served at parties. Making idlies was a ritual requiring lot of planning and multiple steps stating from soaking the dal, rice and then grinding and waiting for the batter to ferment. Recreating same taste ...

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...

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...