Makke ki Roti – the way mom makes it

You have surely heard stories of chefs stirring sauces with their hands. My story involves my mother-in-law shaping old-fashioned corn rotis on the hot griddle with her hands. I am presenting a story here and not a recipe. I can’t follow this recipe and I won’t recommend you try.

She estimates amount of corn flour she will need based on how hungry the family is. Adds appropriate amount of grated radish, chopped radish leaves, salt, dry mango powder, hot paprika and water. Kneads to form a pliable dough.

She puts the griddle to heat on medium-high, and keeps following things handy - a bowl of water convenient to dip her fingers in, a tablespoon and a cup of vegetable oil. She shapes tennis ball sized dough in her hands and flattens each into a fat roti with her palms.

She oils the pan lightly, places the roti on the hot griddle, dips her hand in cold water and flattens the fat roti into a thinner one. Then she ladles oil along the edges so the oil slides underneath and cooks the underside of the roti.

These rotis take a few minutes per side to cook. She flips only when the underside is done and repeats the oil treatment. The flipping is done gently as the corn rotis break relatively easily due to lack of gluten.

Voila! They are ready to serve. The rotis are crisp on the outside, melt-y polenta-like inside. Traditionally served with mustard greens that has been cooked for hours into a buttery smooth piquant sauce.

Eggs and toast – never had it this good …

Eggs and toast

Following serves 2:
Soft boil couple of eggs, preferably from organically fed and farm raised hens.

Cut up two slices of fresh sourdough bread into thick cut french fry style pieces. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil on a pan and saute these bread slices until golden and crackle-y.

Crack open the top of your soft boiled egg, add some fleur de sel and freshly ground black pepper, dip the fried bread sticks in the yolk and enjoy.

Cup of espresso at the end with a slice of pannetoni is nice but not absolutely essential for a great start to the day.

Pimientos de Padrón with a touch of sesame oil and flower peppers

Padrón peppers tossed with smoked salt and sichuan peppers

These Spanish peppers have caught on in San Francisco Bay Area. Last few years they were expensive and scarce at the farmer’s market, a small basket for $5. This year, our neighborhood Asian market has a large bag of these for $5. Last year, I fried these peppers in oil until blistery. This year, I got lazy and decided to push these under the broiler. Surprisingly enough, they came out at least as good as fried if not better.

Yet another Delhi street food

This is one of the great street foods of Delhi – daal pakodas (fried lentil balls) served with grated radish and carrot and  topped with chutneys. Like a small plate of chaat, this is a multi-dimensional exploration of tastes and textures. The pakodas are crunchy and the lentil is tangy. The pakodas are neither too dense nor too fluffy and provides a nice bite. Grated radish and carrot adds a refreshing crispness. Horseradish overtones and bitterness of radish and sweetness of carrots adds to the dimensions of taste. Coriander/mint chutneys are savory, tart, and gingery. Tamarind chutneys bring the taste of molasses, and dates.

Home grown radishes	Frying lentil balls
Fried lentill pakodas	Add grated carrots and radishes

Sugar, Butter, Flour

Sugar Butter Flour

Our local pastry shop, “Sugar Butter Flour” serves up excellent pastries. Here is a loot from a recent trip – tiramisu, chocolate hazelnut, flourless chocolate and a key lime mousse.

Desi style Okra fritters

Following recipe serves two -

• Start with a dozen tender okra. Wash and dry thoroughly.
• Slit open with a paring knife and stuff a pinch of the following spice mixture – 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp amchoor (dry mango powder), 1 tsp anardana (dry pomegranate seeds), 1 tsp toasted and crushed cumin, 1 tsp red pepper powder
• Prepare a thin cake like batter by mixing 1 cup of besan (bengal gram flour) or chickpea flour with sufficient water, a pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp cracked pepper, 1/2 tsp anardana, 1/2 tsp crushed coriander seeds, 1/2 tsp nigella seeds, 1/2 tsp turmeric powder, 1/2 tsp of red pepper powder/flakes
• Prepare a mustard oil bath for frying – 1-2 cups depending on your fryer.
• Heat mustard oil to smoking.
• Coat the okra in batter, a few at a time, and fry until golden.
• Drain on a paper towel and serve with chutney.

 

Stuffing Okra with spices

Container gardening this summer

Aside from several batches of microgreens and salad greens, the bounty this summer has been quite varied.

Fenugreek leaves

Lemongrass

Summer squash

Oregano

Bistro Jeanty @ Napa, California

Washington Street in Yountville has been taken over by Thomas Keller. So, holding your own out here has perhaps been fun for the rest of the great chefs in Napa. Nearly a decade ago, we ate our first lamb tongue dish at Bistro Jeanty and instantly fell in love. Now that we have been to Paris pilgrimage, we can safely assert that the food here is authentic French bistro cooking. Ambiance is Californian, with golden sun, crisp air, and spacious seating. On a summer day, sitting out on the patio, sipping one of the local Napa wines is a delight. Here is what we ordered this time around: Warm lamb tongue salad,  pigs feet, duck and goat cheese pate’, butter cooked snails, a bottle of their table red and a plate of cheese for dessert.

Lamb tongue is mellower and sweeter meat compared to rest of the lamb and was served the same way as we ate a decade ago, with warm potatoes and salad greens, a light and delightful dish. Pigs feet was slow braised, the fork tender meat was shaped into pig feet shaped log, coated with flour and deep fried – a bit on the heavy side. Rillettes was rich but it was mellow and sweet on the nose. Snail came with a lot of heavenly butter. I unloaded each snail on a slice of baguette, perhaps 1/2 a teasoon of butter per snail. Yummy. A light red wine and my better half provided delightful accompaniment to the meal.

Lamb tongue with warm potato salad

Snail in butter and parsley

Chocolate, some more?

Askinosie Chocolate Hazelnut Spread ...

Balancing hazelnut and chocolate can be tricky. My better half has been wanting to take a crack at making a chocolate hazelnut spread. He eventually will, but for now, after some suitable procrastination, he surprised me with mail order from Askinosie, a chocolatier we have grown fond of over weekly doses of Scream sorbet. With chocolate as good as Askinosie, you don’t want the chocolate flavor overpowered, even with something as good as hazelnut. This spread is nearly perfect and since its arrival, has made its way on our home made biscotti, and crepes. A more recent guilty pleasure is with s’mores (marshmallows and graham crackers).

... with smores

I am mulling over the thought of crepes, chocolate hazelnut spread and marshmallows a la Breizh.

Quest for a guilt free paratha …

I have been on a quest for guilt free parathas for many years now. I thought I had it with my pea paratha but I stand corrected. A recent culinary experiment made me realize that an even better filling is edamame. Comparing shelled and frozen edamame to shelled and frozen peas, here is the nutritional breakdown:

Edamame 100 gm Calories 160 kcal Total fat 6.7 gm Total carb 13 gm Dietary fiber 6.7 gm (effective carb = 6.3 gm) Protein 17.3 gm

Peas 100 gm Calories 107 kcal Total fat 6 gm Total carb 20 gm Dietary fiber 4.8 gm (effective carb = 15.2 gm) Protein 4.8 gm

Edamame does bring its characteristic nutty flavor to the paratha. If you have a good hand with rolling the paratha with coarse filling, you can finely chop the thawed kernels and mix with necessary spices. They have lower water content compared to frozen peas and therefore don’t really need any pre-cooking.

Don’t let my culinary excursions make you forget what parathas are supposed to be like. Here is a recent article from Odd Ends discussing ghee fried parathas from Old Delhi’s Parathe wali Gali. Maybe for every year of eating healthy paratha, one can indulge in a bite of the ghee fried one.

Chilke ki roti – Vintage punjabi cuisine

Chilke (husk) ki roti

This recipe is from my grandmother’s generation that believed in the motto “waste not want not” and uses the husk of lentils to lighten up the traditional roti. Following recipe serves two.

Preparing the lentil: Take a cup of green mung bean (split or whole). Rinse the beans and soak overnight. If using whole beans, prepare for the beans to sprout and let the bean sprout for a day or so which eases removal of husk. When the beans are ready, place the lentils in a large container and fill with water. Gently rub the lentils to loosen the skin. Collect up the skin that floats to the top. Squeeze the skin to drain all water and set aside. If making daal from the washed and de-skinned lentil, click here for one particular recipe. The sprouts can be served as a simple salad when mixed with salt, pepper and lime juice.

Vin d’Orange

Homemade Vin d'Orange

Found a DIY Vin d’Orange recipe on NYT. Substituted rosé with white, used ceylon cinnamon instead and skipped the vanilla bean – ended up with something that is nevertheless wonderful. For a recipe as simple as this, quality of ingredients is definitely critical including the quality of rum. Best time to make this is when the oranges are tree ripened. Our version is made with Cara Cara oranges. It is a delightful summer drink when mixed with carbonated water.

This summer in India, we found a variety of refreshing summer drinks. Oh Calcutta in Kolkata served a thinned buttermilk and Keffir lime mocktail, and a roasted green mango vodka cocktail.Visit to friends gave an opportunity to try out FabIndia‘s sweet and salty drinks – lemon ginger, aloe vera, amla (gooseberry), and fruit punch. Keep an eye out for my experiments with buttermilk and Keffir lime.

“Shorshe Ilish” aka Mustard sauce Hilsa fish

Hilsa rubbed with turmeric and salt	Mustard paste
Add Hilsa to wok	Toss the fish in the wok

Since this dish is being cooked on day one of my visit to homeland, clearly this one is among my favorites. Between “posto” and “shorshe ilish“, it is hard to argue which one is the more quintessential expression of bangla soul. If you are thinking that being vegetarian or not produces a clear choice, stop right there ’cause Bengalis consider fish to be the vegetable of the sea. So there.

The key to this dish is the quality of the mustard paste. Poorly ground mustard paste will result in a bitter dish. So pay particular attention to the quality of mustard and how you grind it. Typically, hilsa fish is used for the dish but for those of you who don’t live in the vicinity of Ganges delta, weep and then feel free to improvise.

Ridge gourd “posto”

Writing from the Kolkata land. My mother is busy in the kitchen making some of my favorite foods. Posto is the Bangla term of a vegetable curry made with white poppy seed paste. One can use a variety of vegetables including potatoes, eggplant, or okra but my favorite uses ridge gourd.

Following recipe from my mother’s kitchen serves 6-8 people. One key feature of my mother’s cooking is use of mustard oil. The pungency of the oil does wonders to the flavor of the dish. Start with some fresh and young ridge gourd, about 1.2 kgs or so. Rinse, peel and chop (1/4 inch semicircular rounds) to make about 1 kg of gourd. Peel and chop 2 medium potatoes in 1/4 inch dice.

I am sad

I am sad. I tried to be happy, I did. I went to the local gathering of ‘gourmet’ roach coaches this evening. I went with a smile on my lips, hope in my heart, and appetite in my tummy. I went because chowhounds said good things about the gourmet truck movement sweeping this land of expanding midsections. I checked out the event on facebook. I checked out the reviews on yelp. I found that foodies on the web were gushing about LA’s korean taco trucks, NY’s creme brulee cart, and SF’s Indian street food. I decided that I wanted to be with the cool kids. And so I went.

The setting was appropriately foodie-hipsterish in the parking lot of a sketchy strip mall at the wrong end of Palo Alto. Folks had brought their own chairs and rugs to sit on, their own significant others (I think) to canoodle with, and their own kids (I hope) to lend a home-y feel to the proceedings.

What made the evening promising was the Curry Up Now truck at the far end of the parking lot. With a Korean taco truck next to it. And a Vietnamese truck next to that. There were others too, but a plan was already forming in my gut. Some chaat from Curry Up Now, a spicy Korean taco to follow, and Vietnamese banh mi with which to end the meal. Shared between me and my better two-thirds this would be about the right amount of food. But, alas, there was no chaat at the Curry Up Now truck. They were already out of a few things, but they did have samosas. Jackpot, baby.

A samosa is a fried pastry shell most often filled with potatoes and peas, or daal, or minced meat. But that is like saying a 25-year old Lagavulin is some good booze. Where is the poetry in that? A samosa is a delicate balance of textures (crisp shell, soft filling), spices (fresh and aromatic, never dull and muddy), and proportions (neither the shell nor the filling should overwhelm each other). Curry Up Now serve their ‘deconstructed’ samosas with “spicy chickpea curry (chana), tomatoes, red onions, tamarind sauce, and a secret green sauce”. Yes, yes, yes.

A few minutes of waiting sharpened up the appetite. And then I got this. It looked like a blob of minced beef hiding some mysteries underneath. We dug through the beef and found a soggy thick-crusted samosa cowering below. Maybe there were onions and chutney as promised, but the flavors were so muddy that I had difficulty identifying them. There was no sour component – either a chutney or a squeeze of lemon – to cut the fat. I was expecting poetry and got airport-lit prose. Now you know why I am sad.

Black rice pudding

Black rice pudding with coconut milk and garnished with tapioca pearls, Green Goddess, New Orleans

Yesterday, an energetic re-organization of my pantry reminded me that I have been aging Burmese black rice for at least an year. The rice itself was bought from a local branch of Whole Foods. I had also snagged myself Steen’s Cane Syrup during a recent trip to New Orleans. The two came together in a quick lactose free pudding last evening.

Pressure cook on low 1/4 cup of black rice, a pinch of salt with 2 cups of milk (2% lactose free or almond milk) for 1 hour. Add more milk to achieve desired consistency, add cane syrup to taste, perhaps a few spoonfuls of raisins and nuts and serve at room temperature.

Commis

“It was a sublime evening sitting in front of Chef Syhabout and his team.” “The educated love of food is evident in every offering.” “… studied grace of the kitchen …” “I was left speechless and incredulous.” Reading people’s comments on Commis sounded as if Ferran Adria himself had moved to my neighborhood. So before he decided to move shop from Oakland to somewhere where there is more there there, I decided to sample what others had been raving about.

With the help of opentable we got a reservation, read (some of) the breathless reviews on the web, and with some spit on our shoes and polish in our hair, off we went to Commis. For us ADD afflicted folks here is the summary – “Very good food with some minor issues. But the amount of hype Commis has received far exceeds the quality of food. Good service. Minimalist to the point of being IKEA-ish decor. Something should be done about that sodium vapor yellow/orange street light right outside the place.”

Korean Fried Chicken, Bon Chon

We live in part of San Francisco Bay Area that is famous for Korean food. So when the popular south Korea based franchise, Bon Chon Restaurant, opened a branch in our neighborhood strip mall, it was a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I got in. My neighborhood hole in the walls are just that. Decor is typically non-existent. Menu is minimally put together. Furniture, floor and walls have a beat up look.  The wait staff is typically a first generation immigrant who speaks rudimentary English. But this is an immigrant community and while these restaurants are not for special occasions, they can serve up a dish or two that are expertly put together. In general, fried food in Asian cuisine is less greasy. Korean tastes are fiery.  So, it is fair to say that I was expecting a less greasy and more spicy version of southern style fried chicken from a fast food joint, a Korean McDonald.

Grégoire’s – can I have some fried mashed potatoes to go?

Crab sandwich with chips

Deep fried mashed potatoes

Winters are a little drizzly around here. On these drizzly weekends, in lieu of long walks on the hills of Bay Area, we often find ourselves staying home with reruns of Firefly and surviving on samosa sandwiches. A few weekends ago, we decided to change the drizzly weekend routine and drove out to People’s Republic of Berkeley with the idea of lunching at Gregoire’s, a small hole in the wall that is purported to serve up gourmet lunches.

Samosa sandwich

Samosa sandwich – hot crisp samosa sandwiched between sliced white bread with some mint or coriander chutney. Conceptually, this is not far from chip butty.

In a pinch, ketchup can be substituted for chutney. Or Sriracha. In a pinch, wheat bread can be substituted for white. And by the time, you have substituted Trader Joe’s frozen samosa for the real ones, the purists will cringe. But it will satisfy the Punjabi-ness of your being.