Project Pickle

In school, my friendship with girls from the Marwari community was solely for one purpose only. Pickles.

I would often come back home to my Mum and urge her to make pickles like Moms of these other girls who would get a variety of pickles in their “tiffin”. My Mum relented, but only with bazaar-made pickles. Which were no good. Oily, full of artificial colors and almost tasteless.

I tried to befriend more Marwari girls for variety, you know. I had the palate of a pickle connoisseur at age 13! I could tell whose Mum’s pickles outdid whose. I maintained a sort of pickle-loyalty in my friendships with the girls who got the best ones in their lunch boxes, and shared them with me. After all I was a young girl with a lot of integrity. I think they also carried home feedback for their Moms. I sure did notice improvement in both taste and quantity in some of them.

One time, my new friend KJ even brought me a jar of green chili pickle her Mom made. That day I offered her my egg roll, but she declined politely. If I remember right, I think I also offered her some money in return for the pickle, but she was sweet not to let her entrepreneurial genes get the better of her. Friends we were for life!

Mrs J’s Green Chili Pickle did leave a lingering taste on my impressionable palate. After almost 20 years, I have replayed the flavors in my mind, and here is what I created today. In just under 30 minutes!

The inspiration of course is my chili loving husband, who calls himself a “chili fiend”, and can smack off 5-6 really hot peppers (which I serve on toothpicks) at any dinner at home.

I don’t know if I have a good pickle-thumb, but the beginning sure was easy.

This is pretty much an instant pickle and is ready to eat after a day of making it. And you don’t have to wait for the sun to be out! (Summers usually are the pickle-making season in India.)

KJ’s family is from Rajasthan, so I think this Green Chili Pickle too has its origin there. But I’d definitely like to know more about pickles/ or as they are called in Hindi - Achaar (from India).

You will most definitely find all the ingredients for this pickle in your kitchen:

200 grams green chilies
half cup freshly squeezed juice of lemon
3 tablespoon (yellow) mustard seeds
1 tablespoon fenugreek seeds
1 teaspoon asafetida powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
half cup mustard oil
Salt

Chilies are a premium purchase in North America. Not all supermarkets have them, and those that you do find in non-Asian grocery stores are often not hot. Even the Thai Chilies are pretty heatless to an Indian palate like ours.

Hence my spot of chili shopping are the Indian/Bangladeshi or Oriental stores.

Wash, pat dry and chop the green chilies.

Dry grind coarsely the mustard seeds.

Dry roast the fenugreek seeds and asafetida powder on slow heat. Do not leave them unsupervised and risk chances of burning them. Pickle is all about patience. Coarsely grind the fenugreek-asafetida mixture too.

Heat mustard oil in a pan. You know its ready for pickling when it almost reaches smoking point.

In a bowl, place the mustard powder and then add the fenugreek-asafetida mixture. The teaspoon of turmeric should be a non-intrusive spice to the hot oil which you will add last!

Let this mixture cool off.

Add this spice mixture and oil to the chopped green chilies, pour lemon juice and sprinkle salt.

Mix well and store in a dry jar.

The green chili pickle will be ready to eat with parathas the next day.

Usually such a small quantity of pickle doesn’t need refrigeration. The hot oil treatment tempers the spices which now have already been cooked. Its important however to let the chilies sit in the spices of at least 24 hours.

I can’t wait to see “Earth” raid that bottle of Chili Pickle tomorrow for breakfast with some sizzling alu ke parathe! I am sure he will be pickled pink…

It sure looks like a winner to me already.

What’s Stewing?

I am getting more and more fixated with fast and easy recipes. Surprisingly for the husband and my friends who know me, I was probably someone who could not have reached a culinary hiatus. At least P still believes I have mystery remaining in my spice bottles. But I am exhausted from all the time-taking, involved cooking I had been hitherto doing. Hence this Chicken Stew which essentially is a Bengali recipe but without all those complicated spices.

The Calcutta Chicken Stew is a comfort food which you can have in your PJs, snuggled in your couch with some fresh bread.

I used about six chicken drumsticks, skinless. I roughly chopped a medium size red onion. Diced vegetables like cauliflower, potato, carrot, and broccoli. Snipped off the ends of green beans and cut them in halves.
Heat butter (unsalted) in a large saucepan or soup pot over medium heat. Add the onions and sauté them for 5 minutes.  Add the chicken drumsticks (you can even use thigh portions or pieces of lamb). Cook until the chicken browns.

Add all the vegetables and 4-5 cloves of garlic and 1 inch ginger cut coarsely.

I do add a stick of cinnamon, two black cardamoms, 2 bay leaves and few whole black peppercorns for that deliciously earthy flavor in the stew. Season with salt and freshly cracked pepper.

I like to cut my tomatoes right on the pot of the stew. I added two ripe hothouse tomatoes to the vegetables and meat.

Add enough water to drench all the ingredients and cover the pot. Keep stirring till you see all the vegetables and the meat cooked but not mushy.

Add half cup of sweet baby peas. I did not add them while cooking the stew as I wanted them to retain their green and not get mashed up with the other hardy vegetables.

Finish off with a dollop of butter and some more freshly cracked black pepper. You could also add some freshly chopped cilantro to the stew.

Ladle the stew out piping hot in serving bowls and serve with pieces of bread.

Super Fast Chili Chicken

My Mum’s this Superwoman in the kitchen. (Fast and curious too). So is my Ma-in-law. And from what B tells me her Mother-in-law too! I guess this whole last generation of our Mommies are really fast with cutting, chopping, peeling, and spreading out quick meals for their families.

This recipe is for the Sloths and the Busy Bees alike. I have covered Men under the former, in case they were feeling left out!

I really don’t know whether Chili Chicken is Indian or Chinese. I’d like to believe its from India. But of course the undeniable Chinese influence on Indian cuisine probably has resulted in the creation of this mouth-wateringly, spicy dish.

While we are on the subject of Sino-Indian ties, here is an excerpt from a post by the irrepressible Jug Suraiya, about the serious Chinese antipathy towards India.

The so-called 'Chinees' food served in India (as in 'Raju ka Dhaba Brekfass, Launch & Diner Chinees, Muglai, Conti') from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, from Calcutta to Coimbatore, constitutes the biggest and most damaging culinary slander ever perpetrated by one lot of people against another lot of people in the cooking pot of human civilisation. To begin with, 'chow mein' (not to mention 'fried rice') does not exist anywhere in China, either in their kitchens or in their lexicons. To append the adjective 'Chinese' (or 'Chinees') to this unholy mess is insulting enough. Then to go ahead and eat it with aam ka achaar and kachcha pyaz as accompaniments to give it a bit of zing is to add the ajinomoto of injury to the provocation. Ahh soh!, you could imagine them saying in Beijing, with a sharp hiss of indrawn breath. Flied lice? Aam-ka-achaal? We'rr show you! And they chuck Panchsheel out of the window and go to see Pakistan about a nuclear bomb.

Couldn’t resist sharing that with you! His humor always did something to me. I think I stuck to The Times of India only to read his column on Sundays.

Okay time out on my digressions!

Back to this Chili Chicken I promised you to be super fast and delish at the same time. Its just the marinating of the chicken which takes a few hours, but that of course doesn’t need you to be around.

I started by cutting into small pieces these two chicken breasts I had. And put them straight into a marinade of half cup of white vinegar, 2 teaspoons ginger paste, 2 teaspoons of garlic paste, salt and pepper. You can forget about them for about three to four hours.

I am sure most kitchens have (red) onion, bell peppers- any color, and green chilies. To top off the Chili Chicken you will need few sprigs of cilantro leaves or chopped green onions.

Start by heating some veg oil in a non-stick pan for deep frying the chicken pieces. Crack an egg and add 2 tablespoons of corn flour in the bowl of marinated chicken. Mix well with a few drops of red food color.

Deep fry the nicely coated chicken pieces till they become golden red-brown in color. Don’t fuss about that extra oil in the pan, drain and keep it for another chicken recipe. (I pan fried my dumplings in that oil.)

Keep about a teaspoon of oil in the pan and add the one onion you had roughly sliced for the gravy. To that, add the slit green chilies. People who are heat resistant can adjust or choose not too add the chilies at all. But the end result will be nothing like what I made! :-)

Toss the bell peppers in and fry for about 5-6 minutes till you see the veggies getting a nice caramelized color. Add a handful of cashew nuts too. That’s when you add all the sauces.  

A tablespoon each of Dark Soy Sauce, Thai Red Chili Sauce, Chinese Sweet Chili Sauce and Tomato Ketchup.

Add the chicken pieces to the veggies and sauces and mix everything well. Add half cup of chicken broth or just plain water. The sauces already have a combination of salt and sweetness, so I would be careful and not add any more seasonings. You can probably add some freshly crushed black pepper to further the punch. Let the chicken, veggies and sauces cook on medium-high heat for 6-8 minutes.

That’s your easy, peasy, super fast Chili Chicken.

A very satisfying dinner that night - it took no time to put together. And even lesser time to eat it.

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But what I really crave like clockwork is the Chili Chicken from this Indian Chinese restaurant called Lin Garden at Pharmacy Avenue. Their chili chicken never disappoints. The couple who run this restaurant are originally from China but lived in India for many years. They play Bollywood music in their restaurant and speak Hindi and a smattering of Bengali.

Finger licking good – the Chili Chicken @ Lin Garden. But the chili assault can be a bit too much to handle even for a seasoned heat handler like my husband.

My Own Little Project Tiger

It was while I was painting a book mark for The White Tiger that the thought hit me. And the work-in-progress book mark soon became something with a bigger purpose than just a piece of (art) paper to help me find my way back to what I was reading!

The White Tiger was a Christmas gift from B&P among three other books from Amazon. I thoroughly enjoyed the tale of two Indias, a glimpse of both which I had seen growing up in Bihar, and later living in Delhi and Bangalore, even though some of it was lived vicariously. Okay, I am not going to spin a yarn of Balram Halwai’s life here.

This post is not about The White Tiger.

As I was painting the dark stripes with my carbon black acrylic paint, I wondered which little striped predator was being poached and killed in India at that moment.

I am from India. I grew up with Tigers. Well, not literally. But listening to tales and fables about the Tiger, which were innate to our culture. My favorite of all tiger characters is Shere Khan, delectably scary and deliciously real.

But life is not always a comic book, well not for the Indian Tiger at least.

I noticed this video has been doing the rounds on Facebook, and so are a zillion others!

I don’t know if we as a country realize we have a collective moral obligation to save the Tiger. Stripey the Cub has 20, 020 fans on Facebook as I key in this post. The number of people joining such clubs/ fan pages/signature campaigns and showing support to the cause of saving the Tiger is growing every minute. Great. But what next?

But the number of Tigers walking the forests of India remains alarmingly low.

On February 2, 2010, what’s the number of Tigers in India?

1411

If that’s an official census of the Indian Tigers, the actual number would be even lower. That’s probably a feel-good number for all the people who were waiting and counting when to really press the alarm buttons!

Sarcastic, eh? Yes. And rightfully so.

The other day I was alarmed and got hysterical watching a piece of news being reported on NDTV. I looked in horror as Amitabh Revi kept showing images of a Royal Bengal Tiger which was hunted down at the Namdapha National Park in Arunachal Pradesh and eaten by villagers in Numuk, while its skin was sold to some businessman for a whopping rupees one lakh and some change.

What were the ignorant villagers thinking? Do they still believe Tigers are a great source of aphrodisiac? Well, maybe its time they got Viagra out of vending machines.

I wonder if the NDTV reporter did any follow-up story with the District Magistrate or the National Park authorities or the Police of that district.

More alarming was the image of this little boy in the blue shirt. He was so close to the dead Tiger which was being readied for a royal barbeque as befits a king! The kid looked like he was enjoying this spectacle. Have his primary school teachers ever taught him anything about the extinction of Tigers? I will refrain from baiting myself into talking about the Indian education system here. Maybe another day, another post.

If I could just shake him up and the rest of the world! Before its too late. Before we only have stuffed toy tigers to gift our children, and documentaries on NatGeo to show our next generations and say – Look that WAS a TIGER!

Yes, its only a book mark sticking out. But that piece of paper is strong enough to stab at my consciousness.

I know I wouldn't trample on its pugmarks with my footprints…

And I know you will tread carefully too.

Lets give some dignity to the Tigers, after all we are soon entering the Year of the Tiger. Enough reason?

Some pictures of this majestic beast from my friend Jayanth Sharma’s lenses.

Monday Wasn’t A Blur!

Refreshed with all the natural Vitamin D I have been getting over the last few days, I was toying with the idea of recreating a Jamini Roy painting today. Which otherwise is just a distant dream- to own a Jamini Roy! I am neither a museum, nor a collector.

As a kid growing up in India, I saw postage stamps with Jamini Roy’s paintings, one way to commemorate this great artist . Even went on to collect some.

Many years later, I was introduced to the remarkable block printed sari my Mum one time brought back from Calcutta.  Jamini Roy never fails to inspire. Timeless.

As I look more at the works of this artist, I get drawn to the eyes he drew. Sharp, focused, very folksy!

My pick of his paintings is this doll he made in the 1950s. Almost reminds you of a rural Indian woman. A goddess in her own rights.

I started painting this today. I knew I was going to have my personal Jamini Roy, this is probably the only way I can “own” one.

Take a look at this little piece I painted on the first day of February.

And she sits pretty with my CDs