Gulab’s Gushtaba

It was the 1980s. Kashmir was still peaceful. And middle-class Bengali families chose it over Shimla and Dehradun as a great summer holiday getaway. We did too. It was a great family vacation, with the extended family joining in as well. Uncles, aunts, cousins and an annoying toddler sibling.

As a six-year-old, I was the hip, corduroy-clad tomboy. At two, my sister was a social embarrassment for me. I wouldn’t touch her with her pole. And she somehow thought spending time with me was her only goal in life.

Sibling revelry apart. My memories of Kashmir from that trip of ours is pretty vivid. Lush green valleys of Gulmarg, the narrow, rapid, murmuring brooks, the innumerous pony rides, the luscious roses and dahlias of the Shalimar Bagh. And when we were not enjoying all the scenic beauty or shopping for jackets, mittens, pullovers, and chinar leaf bedspreads, we were busy eating apples and walnuts after a marathon session of apple picking at one of the local farms. A lot of our time was also spent in living in a quaint houseboat on the Dal Lake.

His name was Gulab. He was the houseboat owner. He would row his own shikara and come visit us, his guests every day. Making sure we were well looked after, bringing freshly cut lotuses for the women in my family. He would sit and chat over cigarettes and kahwa with my father and uncles. He always wore the traditional pheran over his jeans and carried a kangri to keep him warm.

Gulab smoked a lot of cigarettes. One time I saw him smoke five cigarettes all at the same time. He tuck each between his five fingers and smoked. I think he was showing off his smoking skills. But that did not deter my Mum and Aunts to become friendly with him. Apparently he was an awesome cook. And had promised the ladies he’d teach them some traditional Kashmiri dishes.

The kitchen of our houseboat was huge. There were attendants who would make us fresh meals every day. Everything was made of hardwood. I would love to tap loudly on the floor with my shoes just for the acoustics. Very unusual for a kid who never knew anything but concrete mosaic floors.

In that enormous kitchen, Gulab held his court with three women hastily taking notes. Two Kashmiri recipes in one day. This was a bumper for the Bengalis!

Ingredients for Gulab’s Gushtaba are:

1 kg goat mince meat (ask your butcher to mince some fat with the meat)
Handful of fresh mint leaves
500 grams plain yogurt
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons fennel powder
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 tablespoon Kashmiri red chili powder
1 tablespoon coriander powder
1 tablespoon + half teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dry ginger powder
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon green cardamom powder
3-4 black cardamoms
1-2 sticks of cinnamon
3-4 green cardamoms
2-3 cloves
1-2 small barks of ratanjot (optional, traditionally a Gushtaba recipe does not use ratanjot)
One generous pinch of asafetida
1 teaspoon ghee/clarified butter
2-3 + 3-4 tablespoons Mustard oil
Salt

Start by pounding your mince meat. Add to the meat about 10 finely chopped mint leaves, 1 teaspoon fennel seeds, 1 teaspoon green cardamom powder, half teaspoon black pepper powder, 1 teaspoon ghee, and salt. Pound some more and make lemon-size meatballs and keep aside.

Heat water in a large pan and season it with salt, a couple of black and green cardamoms and a little drizzle of ghee. Bring the water and spices to a rumbling boil. Gently drop the meatballs one by one in the boiling water. Don’t overcrowd the pot. Release 4-5 meatballs at a time and cook for 3-4 minutes on high heat. Remove with a slotted spoon and keep.

For the one kilo mince meat that I used, I got about 20-22 meatballs made.

Let the stock/water from the meatballs cool down completely.

Meanwhile, shallow fry your chopped onions in 2-3 tablespoons mustard oil till they turn brown. Grind them into  a smooth paste and keep.

In a wok, heat 3-4 tablespoons mustard oil, add to it the bark of ratanjot and let it color the oil.

Remove the barks with tongs and add the whole black and green cardamoms, cinnamon and cloves. Let them splutter for a few seconds. Add the asafetida. Next add the onion paste. Sauté on medium heat. Now add the red chili powder, coriander powder, black pepper powder, dry ginger powder, fennel powder, green cardamom powder and mix everything well. Let all the ingredients cook on low heat for 3-4 minutes. Turn the heat off and keep.

Whisk the yogurt in the water from the meatballs. Slowly add it to the onion and spice mixture you have prepared. Make sure everything has cooled down before you mix with one another. Else, the yogurt will curdle. Bring the yogurt and spice mixture to a roaring boil. Season with salt.

Release the meatballs in the runny yogurt gravy. Cook on high for about 8-10 minutes. Turn heat off. Do a taste test. Add more spices if your taste buds want a balance of flavors. I had to add more pepper powder and fennel powder.

Add finely chopped mint leaves to finish your Gushtaba. Serve warm with plain rice or chapatis. A salad is recommended for a complete meal.

Enjoy Gulab’s Gushtaba. That’s all I have left in my food memory from almost three decades ago.

Ameena Alam’s Chingri Bhorta

I am always on the lookout for exquisite recipes. You know, those family treasures which you never find in cookbooks. And I am glad I have a set of people who always indulge me. So I wanted a rui recipe, and ended up making Ameena’s Chingri Bhorta, a spicy mash of tiger shrimps. That’s how much I love my chingri. And now second to the shrimps, its the owner of this recipe – Ameena Alam that I love!

Ingredients for Ameena Alam’s Chingri Bhorta are:

400 grams tiger shrimps, deveined and cleaned, cut into small pieces
1 small red onion, finely chopped
1 thumb-size piece of ginger, finely chopped
2-3 fat cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Few sprigs of coriander, finely chopped
5-6 green chillies, slit lengthwise
5-6 dry red chillies
3 + 2 tablespoons mustard oil
Salt

Start by heating mustard oil in a pan. Add the dry red chillies, ginger and garlic in it and sauté them on medium flame till the ginger-garlic become soft. Do not brown them.

Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to your blender’s jar. In the remaining oil, add the shrimps. Cook them till they turn pink. Remove from heat and add to the blender jar with the other ingredients. Make sure you scrape the oil if any from the pan into the jar.

Use the pulse mode in your blender or “mixie” to create an uneven consistency of the ingredients. Its okay for some of the shrimps, red chillies, ginger or garlic to remain chunky. That’s the idea of this bhorta.

Transfer the shrimps in a bowl, add the chopped onions, coriander, sliced green chillies, salt and add a good drizzle of extra virgin mustard oil, about two tablespoons.

Mash everything together and serve while the bhorta is still warm. Preferably with mushurir dal and bhaat.

Thank you, Ameena! Your Chingri Bhorta became an instant hit with the husband and I.

Amader Barir Chirer Pulao, Flattened Rice Pulao from a Bengali Home

Apparently some Professor of some University somewhere around the world put up a note in class about how he knows when students are “texting” in class, “because no one looks at their crotch and smiles”, it said.

Now that may have triggered some chuckles in campus, but that’s the reality. And it’s not the teens and tweens who are having endless conversations on their smartphone devices. Its us adults too. In between meals, meetings, coffee breaks, at the dinner table and while out on a date, and even while putting the baby to sleep.

Its wonderful how our two thumbs can do so much talking! Thank god there are no Dronacharyas around in this day and age. Between the husband and me, cell phones and television are banned during meal times. That is something I have learned from my own Mother. We wouldn’t have TV on during lunch or dinner, unless there was some life changing India-Pakistan cricket match happening. Cell phones with texting features did not exist then.

What did exist were plain old black telephones, with their black curly cords. Where people would chat for hours, without the fear of being charged by the minute. The receiver was so heavy, our hands would ache from just holding it. I still remember when as a 10-year-old, we got the first phone at home. It took us three years of wait time to have a phone connection back then in the late 1980s. But then it was another century then. The Nineteen Eighties. That was also the time, I as a budding pre-teen hated taking a lunch box to school. Though, now that I look back, I’d probably say my sister and I had the best lunches in class. Nutritious and interesting food prepared by my Mum every morning.

This Chirer Pulao was a winter favourite of hers. It makes for a sumptuous mid-day snack for growing kids if you pack it with seasonal vegetables and nuts. There were also no nut allergies back then!

The ingredients for Chirer Pulao are:

1 cup chire/chura/flattened rice, choose the thin, long-grain variety
1 potato, remove the skin and cut into small cubes
1 small red onion, finely chopped
Handful of cauliflower flowerets, cut into small pieces
Few green chillies, finely chopped
Half cup green peas (frozen or fresh)
Handful of broken cashew nuts
Handful of peanuts
Handful of raisins
Handful of fresh coriander, finely chopped
Vegetable oil
Sugar
Salt

Begin by heating oil in a thick pan. Add the cubed potatoes and shallow fry till they turn golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and keep.

In the remaining oil, add the cauliflower. Shallow fry till lightly browned and keep.

Add the peanuts (first), cashew and raisins in that order and sauté on low heat till the peanuts and cashew are lightly browned.

Add the green peas and cook for a few minutes without parching the peas and making them look all wrinkly. Keep them out with the potato, etc.

In the remaining oil, add the green chillies and onions and sauté till translucent.

Quickly but thoroughly wash the chire and drain in a colander. Add to the cooked onions, etc. Mix.

. Now add the other shallow-fried ingredients – potato, cauliflower, peas, nuts, and raisins. Mix well. Keep moving the wet chire around in the pan till it gets coated with all the other ingredients.

Season with salt and sugar and add the chopped coriander.

Do a taste test and adjust the seasoning if needed. Serve the Chirer Pulao warm in little bowls or send some packing for lunch to your kids’ school.

Indiyeah - Go Green with Desire

Hara chana, literally means green gram. A winter staple if you have grown up in Bihar like me. We would wait all year to snack on these crunchy, fresh chana. Nature makes them available in tiny little pods, which are a pain to open! But once you have cracked the puzzle, its a world of green goodness inside. My favourite to make with hara chana is a quick freestyle salad. I am also partial to hara chana being sautéed with green chillies and chopped red onions and eaten with chire bhaja. My Bihari friends however vowed about bharbhara, homemade hara chana fritters.

Peyaaj koli are those beautiful green onion flowers/buds you see all through winter in India. Chop them up and make a nice tarkari with it. Throw in some potatoes, maybe a handful of tiny shrimps too and you have cooked a winter storm, in a nice way. Or add them to your small fish curry. I however, am not a big fan of peyaaj koli. The flavour is quite intense if you like onions.

That guava was the solitary fruit in my Mum’s two-year-old guava tree back home. My Mum did not wait much longer to pluck the pyara from the tree. There was too much hullabaloo under the guava tree by squirrels, sparrows, crows and a certain crazy photographer from Canada. We shared one guava among five of us and ate it with beet noon, that potty-smelling salt! Guava is very good for digestion, in case you did not know.

Paan. Juicy betel leaves are stuffed with rich and luxurious spices and betel nuts to stain the lips and teeth of bonedi ladies and roadside Romeos alike. But my memories of paan always conjures up the image of my Mother’s Grandmother. She sat propped up on her bed, like a queen on her throne. Her silver betel-leaf box by her side. She would rest one arm on a paash balish, hold a paan leaf and dextrously dole out paan after paan with the other. Each paan treat was customized, depending on who she made it for. She never went to a dentist and lived till the ripe age of 95. Toothless by then, but still loved her paan.

Money plant. Every Indian home has it. Popular belief has it that the lusher your money plant is, the richer you will become. No one buys money plant in India. You always steal a stem when that soon-to-be-rich neighbour is not watching. You bring it home and grow it anywhere – vases, light bulbs, snaked on moss sticks, in a small pot by the washroom window. Or your workstation, just to get even with the boss.

Holy basil or tulsi. Just like the money plant, most Indian homes will have a little tulsi plant to worship or snip off to make that kaadhaa for cold. But unlike the money plant, no one steals a tulsi plant. You just walk up to your neighbour and ask for a sapling. Quite rightfully.

Bengali Mishti Pulao

The Bengali Mishti Pulao is something that I have always, always invariably overeaten. And that happens even with my own cooking.

When I was little, it was well-known in our family that “Rini loves Mishti Pulao”. So one time my grandmother and I went to lunch at a certain Kakima’s place. The kind lady had made my favourite – Bengali Mishti Pulao and Mangsho. I was about four, maybe five. I had a couple of spoons of the mishti pulao, and said to the unsuspecting aunt, who was probably looking to score some points with a five-year-old pulao connoisseur – “You do not know how to make Mishti Pulao, please learn from my Mama. She makes it the best.”

And I put my spoon down, much to the embarrassment of my grandmother. That was probably the last time we were invited over to that Kakima’s place.

My love for Mishti Pulao has rubbed on to LMN as well. And I am so proud about that. Last month when we were in India, my Mum made her signature Mishti Pulao and gave some to my daughter with little shreds of kosha mangsho. Undoubtedly LMN loved it. I think she even wanted some in her bottle!

Mishti Pulao is a sweet, aromatic rice dish for the blue-blooded. Its great on its own, but has the capability of taking you to Pulao Heaven if you eat it with slow-cooked mutton curry (or chicken curry), sometimes even chholar dal or alu-phulkopir dalna on that no-non-veg Shoshti day. Its so good, I could take it intravenously.

Though most of the times, I make my Mishti Pulao with high quality Basmati rice, you ought to make it with Gobindobhog rice, the short-grain rice every Bengali vows for. My Mishti Pulao even has fresh green peas in it, just like they serve in Bengali weddings.

Ingredients for Bengali Mishti Pulao are:

2 cups Gobindobhog or Basmati rice (washed and drained, kept in a colander/sieve for 10-15 minutes)
Half cup fresh green peas
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 heaped teaspoon turmeric powder
Handful of cashews
Handful of raisins
2 tablespoons ghee
2 + 2 green and black cardamoms
4-5 cloves
1 medium size stick of cinnamon
Quarter teaspoon grated nutmeg
2 bay
Few drops of lemon juice
Sugar
Salt
3 and a quarter cups of water

Begin by heating the ghee in a wok/pan.

Add to the ghee the bay, cinnamon, cardamoms, and cloves in no particular order. Give them a minute to crackle and make the ghee fragrant. Now throw in the cashews and raisins. Make sure you turn the heat to the lowest mark, lest the cashew and raisins burn.

As soon as they turn golden brown, add the rice. Mix it around to coat with the ghee and other ingredients. After about 3-4 minutes, add the peas, ginger and turmeric.

Mix all the ingredients with the rice. And move the rice around in the pan for 2-3 minutes on low-medium heat. Now add the salt and sugar. Mix and keep in the pan for a minute more. Its important to now turn the heat off lest the sugar melts and caramelizes the rice. That’s a spoiler.

Add the grated nutmeg and pour the rice into a microwaveable bowl, and squirt a few drops of lemon. Add three and a quarter cups of water, seal the bowl with a lid or cling wrap and microwave for 20-22 minutes.

Do a taste test and add more salt or sugar if needed. Serve the Mishti Pulao with Mutton Curry, Chicken Curry, Chholar Dal or eat on its own. And praise the Lord, for there is nothing compared to a bowlful of Bengali Mishti Pulao.