Cooking like my mother

Bhindi, also referred to as Ladies finger in India, is the Hindi name for okra. It is one of the beloved vegetables in India. I remember liking it from a very young age. Not that I ask everybody I meet, but  I am yet to meet an Indian who did not like bhindi growing up. In my house, my mother prepared it dry (no gravy) style. The technique for making this type of bhindi is similar to cooking other dry vegetable sides. For chaunk (a technique of tempering spices in oil used in Indian cooking and described here ), my mother used fenugreek seeds and then added onion and other spices, Bhindi in the wok, right after it is done Recipe Heat oil in a heavy bottom (2 tbsp) wok or skillet. When hot sizzle 1 tsp of fenugreek seeds. Add chopped onions and fry till slightly brown. Add coriander powder (1tbsp), garam masala (1tsp), red or chopped green chilli, salt, turmeric and chopped okra. Mix and cover and let it cook on medium to high heat. Stir every 5 minutes till done and not...

Prep One of the weeknights this week, i returned from work craving something steaming hot and flavorful. Coconut milk based curries have become a recent favorite for me because it can be prepared rather quickly with produce and ingredients usually available in the house. Richness and creaminess provided by the coconut milk makes the coconut milk vegetable curry extremely satisfying. This makes it almost perfect weeknight food on a cold night except my son is not so fond of anything coconut. It was only fair I made something he likes as much and most logical answer was to make Mapo Tofu. Mapo tofu did not need any extra effort than what I was already going to put in for my veg curry and this way I was going end up with two dishes for the effort of one and enough leftovers for next day's lunch.  Leftovers being putaway. Coconut curry simmering on the stove. Recipes There are more elaborate recipes for Mapo Tofu and Thai coconut curry in my reperto...

I bought Ragi (finger millet) flour over 6 months ago in hope of making ragi roti. But the idea of spreading roti with my hands kept me from trying to make it. Finally watching couple of you tube videos made me feel comfortable enough to give it a try this Sunday. Chopped shallots, green onion, cilantro ready to be added to ragi flour.  Cilantro, hot green chillies, yogurt, grated coconut ready to be blended into coconut cilantro chutney. C  I used lightly oil parchment paper to spread ragi roti. Enjoyed ragi roti with chutney and some leftover sambhar (from previous day). It turned out to be a 4 star recipe getting good reviews from everybody in the family. Recipe The two videos that I really found useful were this video that  shows how to roll out roti on a plastic sheet  and  this video which shows multiple ways of rolling out the roti .

Today I was going to make Sambhar. That would mean I need to soak some tamarind first. I have decided to soak extra so I can make sweet tamarind chutney (called 'Sonth') at the same time. Growing up this chutney was pretty much like ketchup is now for my kids. My mother would make a big batch so we always had it on hand. We enjoyed Sonth with all sorts of snacks ..chat, chola, samosas. I try to make this chutney whenever i am dealing with tamarind (and by dealing I mean process of taking out tamarind pulp - soaking, rubbing between my hands to separate pulp and straining) for another purpose. After you have got tamarind pulp, making chutney is really easy.  You add jaggery (or brown sugar) and few spices and let the  liquid simmer down. I am also looking to finish produce from last week in my refrigerator so I have decided to use part of Lauki (bottle gourd) for Sambhar but I will use other half for making a vegetable side with garlic, tamarind seeds and red pepper. I bought ...

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...

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...