Random Sampling : Sagar Sweets, Mahim, Mumbai

No, I am not going to get statistical in my posts, 'random sampling' is essentially foodie indulgence which doesnt fall in any clear category (stores/restaurants/home) - the catch-all 'Miscellaneous'. :)

On Sunday, we made a quick stop at Sagar Sweets to buy some mithai for Ganeshotsav. And the way Dad, Mom and I betook ourselves was so indicative of our foodieness - or the lack of it.

Dad - walked straight into the store, bought what was required and stepped out.
Mom- stayed back in the car
Me - totally distracted by the trays (platters, salvers, plates...) of food being set out on folding tables on the pavement outside the store; bugged the poor guy laying it all out with my questions; clicked a few dozen pictures on my phone camera; finally bought a booty of goodies to taste!

The holy month of Ramzaan is on and that pocket of Mahim is predominantly Islamic. Muslims fast through the day during Ramzaan and can eat only during the night. Therefore, in the Muslim pockets of the city, during Ramzaan, come evening, and the streets are lined with stalls serving exotic food, traditional dishes you might not get through the year. Makeshift stalls come up, restaurants set up tables and stalls outside the premises as take-away counters, and crowds throng the streets. The month-long fasting ends with Eid when the celebrations continue through the night.
Sagar Sweets, being a combined bakery-and-sweetshop owned by a Muslim family, had on offer an interesting multitude of dishes being laid out in preparation for the evening. Some of them were instantly recognised, but thanks to my questioning the guy arranging all the stuff on the tables (poor chap was so bashful, I suppose he never had a curious female asking him to explain what all the dishes were!), every offering soon had a handle.


The yellow squares were blocks of bread pudding, freshly baked.



The green porridge-like dish in the silvery tray was doodhi halwa (doodhi/bottlegourd/calabash, is slowly simmered with thickened milk, nuts, sugar to form a comforting, rich mash)

The samosas looked plumciously inviting!



The puff pattices (patties?) looked the deal - layers and layers of flaky puff pastry swaddling a spicy-salty vegetable mash

And the piece de resistance - heaps of shallow earthen bowls containing phirni. (A porridge/pudding made of thickened milk and rice - flavoured with kevda/rose water)




I bought the puff pattice, the bread pudding and of course, the phirni. We did a taste test the next day and the results were:


Puff pattice - the ususal: too-oily, too spicy yet addictive. Nothing spectacular.

Bread pudding : We were a little disconcerted with the sunny yellow colour (though the blistered golden-brown top was reassuring) - we thought it would be too eggy. I do not like custard-based puddings that have an eggy aroma - and it's worse when the eggy scent is tried to be covered up with a stonger flavour like artificial vanilla or cardamom - because then you get 2 distinct smells - egg and the vanilla! But this bread pudding, despite its rich yellow colour had absolutely no whiff of egg. There were eggs in there - the silken smooth set texture couldnt be achieved without them - but no hint of the strong eggy flavour at all, and just a hint of vanilla. The barest hint. Oh, this pudding was divine- velvety smooth and not overly sweet. Score!

Phirni - Oh my goodness. This version of the popular dessert was even better than the one I'd sampled in Amritsar . Rice flour and milk slowly are simmered together with a few plump grains of rice to create a soft, smooth porridge which is then left to set in shallow earthenware bowls. The earthenware bowls leach excess moisture away giving a set, spoon-hugging consistency.

This phirni had achieved that wonderful textural balance between smooth and nubbly; and had a delicate almost-set consistency. And flavoured with a very light touch of kevda (kewra) jal (An extract distilled from pandanus flowers - gives a floral and sweet fragrance). Its easy to go overboard with kevda, giving a cloyingly sweet aroma but this was sublime!

As he was scraping away at the last of the phirni at the bottom of the clay bowl, Dad mumbled "Eid is on the 21st - gives us plenty of time"

:D

EDIT 27/08/09: Had visited Sagar again today. This time I reached there when business was brisk, at 7:30 PM. And laid out on the tables outside was a veritable feast for the eyes...... In addition to all the goodies I mentioned in the post there was:

1. A huge kadhaai (wok) in which golden pillows of malpuawere being fried

2. A tray full of sunset-orangejalebis , glistening with syrup

3. Another tray with massive helpings of shahi tukra (fried bread served with thickened milk-with-nuts)

4. A collection of little plastic bowls filled with mini rasmalais

5. Ditto of individually decorated creme caramels (caramel custard)

I stared at all this goodness in a haze of sugar-induced euphoria - AND walked away with just 4 little pots of phirni - to be given away!

Am I not the most virtuously good person you ever knew? ;)

Kitchen Experiments : Vegetable Khichadi a la Dad

Today was yet another 'fun dinner' (to quote a friend) at our house - Khichadi (made by Dad) and SevPuri (made by Mom). What was I doing? Well, I was acting as sous-chef to Dad - doing all the peeling-and-chopping, laying the table - all the non-starring roles. :-( ;-)

As I said in a previous post , Dad favours easy, one-dish meals - dishes which are flavousome and wholesome. Today's khichadi was yet another such dish - and kudos to Dad, he made up the recipe himself!

Rice. Lentils (moong daal - with the shells on). Carrots. French Beans. Onion. Garlic - just a touch. Spices (Goda Masala)- the barest whisper. And salt (to taste, of course. :-) )

A bit of saute action in a wok(onion, garlic, green chillies). Followed by the veggies. And the rice and lentils. Topped with recently-boiled water. Seasonings adjustment. (masala and salt). Covered and left to cook till the rice-and-lentils-and-veggies are just-cooked. Care taken to not let them become mush.

Served piping hot. Ghee - optional.

A full tummy and a smile on the face - mandatory. :-)P

Kitchen Experiments - err....make that Kitchen Disaster!

I had a holiday in the middle of the week and thought it would be an excellent time to try replicating one of my favourite sandwiches at Subway in my kitchen. The Chicken Meatball Marinara is one sandwich you can enjoy without any guilt - if you eat it the way I do. No cheese, no mayo-based sauces - and Subway doesnt butter the bread, anway. Simple and flavoursome. But paying INR 105 for such a simple dish makes me break out in goosebumps - so this sandwich was next on my 'To Try' list.
However, given my family's vegetarian leanings, the supply of soya granules in the store supboard and the plethora of 'veggie meatballs' recipes on the Net, I decided to make a vegetarian version of my favourite sandwich.
And it flopped - miserably!
The details are too painful (and too long!) to get into, and in all honesty, I wasnt going to post this spectacular debacle on the blog at all - but I learnt a few important lessons which I would like to share with other fledgling cooks:

1. Soya has an incredibly resistant flavour. NOTHING can cloak it. Only a few spices/aromatics complement it and make it taste yummy. (Far-eastern condiments do the trick - not surprising, given soya's origins!) Do not overestimate your ability to give lift to the flavour of a soya-based dish - the meaty-yet-not-meat aroma is all pervasive.

2. Think twice (nay, several times!) before you substitute one type of nut for another. Each nut has a different flavour and oil content. My recipe called for powdered pecans/walnuts and having powdered peanuts on hand (danyacha koot!) I used that instead. DISASTER! This was the step that was the beginning of the end, as far as my sandwich recipe went. Peanuts, too, have a strong flavour (sweetish) which cannot be masked easily. I wanted the nuts to give the 'meat'balls just some bite and body (not flavour) and they ended up doing just the opposite - they made the dough runny(because of the oil they released) and peanut-flavoured!

3. Dont try to salvage a dish which is beyond repair. It's best to throw a failed experiment in the bin - rather than slave over it for hours, expending time, energy and money trying to make it edible. The effort is like a Wagnerian opera - things just keep on getting worse and worse till the end comes (ie. you snap, throw away the dish and storm out of the kitchen in a haze of tears/anger/bitterness)

I was so disheartened by this disaster (I am normally a reasonably talented cook!) and the peanutty smell pervading my kitchen, that I thought I wouldnt be able to face another kitchen experiment ever again. But, now, after a passage of 3 days, I feel better. Perhaps I am not upto juggling with ingredients and playing around with established recipes yet - but that doesnt mean I can't come up with my own, from scratch! :D

The miracle of Katra Ahluwalia

A flurry of messages from friends telling me that they'd read my blog 'inside-out' made me want to do the same. :D
As I was browsing through my posts on Amritsar, I was shocked to see NOT ONE POST describing the miracle of Katra Ahluwalia.

Katra Ahluwalia....located at the end of one of the numerous winding lanes oppsite the Golden Temple in the heart of Amritsar.Tangled electricity transmission cables hang overhead, parked cycles and motorbikes block a foot or two of the 6 foot-wide-lane, constant traffic - pedestrian and bikes/cycle rickshaws-tries to overtake you in the 4 ft of road left empty, the old mouldy buildings close in on either side of the road....as you walk deeper and deeper into old Amritsar.

Finally (well, actually, its just a 5-min walk!) you reach a clearing of sorts. A junction, if you care to call it that, where 3-4 lanes meet. Located in this prime real estate (yeah, right) is the epicentre of Amritsar's culinary delights. 'Gurdaas Ram Jalebian Waala' sells the most intoxicatingly delicious gulab jamuns and jalebis. A trip to Amritsar is futile without having sampled the fare here!

The store (I cant even call it that, its just like an open verandah of an old building) is resolutely no-frills with old and decidedly grimy looking walls and furniture.



But chances are, you'll never even notice this - because the first thing you would notice (if you're reasonably sane) are the kadhaais full of jalebis being fried in bubbling ghee. And the gulab jamuns glistening a golden brown in pans of syrup.







The gulab jamun here is a thing of beauty and grace. The size of a golf ball, it has a glorious golden-brown hue and the radiance of having soaked in just the right amount of syrup. You get one gulab jamun for a paltry Rs 4, in a 'dron' (a small bowl made of dried leaves) The spoon slips through with the greatest ease, the texture is so soft. But it is not overly squishy - it maintains the exquisite balance between firm bite and soft, soft meltingness. Drooool....

The jalebi, on the other hand looks like the gulab jamun's poor cousin.



It is not very attractive to look at - with its uneven appearance (some spirals are thin while others are swollen and misshapen) and dull orange-brown colour. (I adore a golden, delciate filigreed jalebi!). But take one bite.......................... and you're lost. The first crunch (yes, it is a resounding crunch!) floods your mouth with piping hot syrup, redolent with the aroma of ghee. It is an explosion of flavour! Each ungainly spiral is a mouthful of pure pleasure. You get a dron-full - about 4-5 small jalebis - for Rs 5. The prices make you weep.

As you recover from your reverie (the gulab jamuns and jalebis put you in a semi-trance), you notice that the tiny square (clearing/junction) is filled with like-minded people who are busy with their own dron-fulls of bliss. This place might be shabby and unkempt - but the satvik perfume of ghee-and-sugar that pervades all the tiny alleys and lanes more than makes up for the humble surroundings. Despite the 'heart of old Amritsar' location, this palce is easy to find - just ask anyone outside the Golden Temple and they'll give you directions to this treasure trove of goodies - if not walk you there themselves.

I know I am being repetitive - but I cannot stress this enough when I say that a trip to Amristar is futile if you do not sample the gulab jamuns- and more importantly, the jalebis at Katra Ahluwalia. Almost as futile as skipping the Golden Temple or the Wagha Border. Dont miss it.

Rasam on a rainy day

Today dawned as a dreary, cloudy, grey day - with slick roads testifying heavy showers during the ngiht.
It was a day which made me feel like turning off the alarm and cuddling back beneath the sheets, and not think about going to work.

However, what could have been a dull, lifeless morning was transformed into a thing of joy and vibrance and energy - by the entrance of the culinary delight called rasam.

Mrs.B.N. very kindly dropped off some piping-hot, just-made rasam to start the day for Dad and me, Mom being out of town for a couple of days. The rasam was so hot, I really wonder how she carried it with her bare hands!

As Dad prised open the lid, the first spice-laden wafts that arose from the container tickled my nose and suddenly made the day look brighter and full of promise. The gently unfurling curls of steam, the resplendant red-golden-orange-yellow colour (the pictures just dont do it justice!), the spicy scent - all contrasted sharply with the cold and wet gloom and made my blood sing! :)




Rasam is the South Indian equivalent of chicken soup - simple, nourishing and incredibly tasty. It is essentailly a clear soup or broth, based on lentils rather than meat/vegetables. Sour and spicy are tha hallmarks of rasam - be it lemon rasam, tomato rasam, tamarind rasam or pepper rasam.

This rasam was made using MTR (a famous cooking-aids manufacturer and restaurant) rasam spice mix. But it had all the genuine heartiness of flavour of the real McCoy (the kind made at home from scratch, using Grandma's recipe). On slurping a sip, the first taste was sour and salty - and just when I'd concluded that it wasn't adequately spicy, the aftertaste of spice tingled my tastebuds in an altogether delightful way. Though if I was to be nitpicky, I would wish for these two tastes - sour and spicy to be present together throughout each sip and not as separate components on the taste timelime.

But that one point aside, MTR and Mrs. B. N partner each other perfectly to create a delicious, mood-lifting elixir! :)


When the cat was away, this is what the mice had for breakfast :P EDIT (15/08/09) - Mrs. B. N., suffering from pangs of guilt at having used ready-made spice mix and a few shortcuts for making rasam, sent some true blue rasam over today - made entirely from scratch. If the MTR rasam was good, this was SUPERLATIVE! Perfect balance of sour, spicy, salty and just that elusive hint of sweetness - yum! Thank you, B. Aunty!! :)