Besan ke laddoo 2.0

It's been about 6 months since I last witnessed the making of my mom's delectable Besan ke laddoo. The one reason I remember the last time so clearly was because it took great effort on my part to stir the ghee+chick-pea flour(besan) in the wok(kadhai) to get them to their characteristic light brown color, an indication of the laddoo reaching the correct amount of cooking/heating. In the process, I got sore arms for the next two days, and hence, I had an excuse for not doing pull-ups for a while. So, if you want to get big arms, try getting employed as a helper under a halvaee(the dude who makes sweets/halva).

It's almost become customary for my mom to make besan ke laddoo every time I come home, or more so, just before I am leaving home for college. Okay, stating this openly might get me into a bit of trouble with my college folks, but nevertheless. 

So here's my TAKE-2 on Besan ke laddoo.

For some reason , my mom had discussed the recipe for besan laddoo with her sister. She  comes from a family with a legacy of sorts in cooking. Nothing professional, but my grandmother was this really good cook. And that trait remains dominant in my mom, and all my maternal side aunts(Mausi, for convenience). 

So this time around, after getting a few tips from my mausi, my mom had a few new tricks up her sleeve. This was a good thing. Here's the tip my mausi gave...

If you mix in a small amount of ghee and milk into the laddoos before you work with them on the wok, it significantly improves the texture of the laddoo mixture, and quite obviously hence, it's taste!

Now you see, If you don't happen to be popular, you don't have to bother about losing your family's trade secret for some special recipe. Specially so if you are convinced that not many people will take great pains trying what you did.

But that definitely doesn't mean that you wouldn't like to be popular, does it? Moving on.

Now it was onto the wok. All of the pre-worked besan, and ghee(clarified butter), which turned out to be in about a 4:1 ratio was tossed into a wok, and fired up on high flame. Now it was a matter of time, and a lot of mixing, before they turned to that perfect-brown hue.

Then it was in with the powdered sugar and elaichi(cardamom), and more stirring, and tasting the mixture from time to time. 

Here's one thing. Do not add sugar while heating the besan-ghee mixture in th very beginning. The sugar tends to become brown early on, giving the impression that the besan is well cooked, in which case, what one would end up with is 

a) A lot of uncooked and wasted besan

b) Stomach ache, in case one miraculously managed to shape the mixture into balls, and more importantly, eat them!

All said and done, actually pretty well done, it was time to taste the final mixture. It was all fine. We just overshot the sugar. Usually, the ideal sugar:besan shouldn't exceed 1:2, until you are really desperately low on blood sugar. Our mixture clearly felt a tad bit sweet.

So it was back to the wok. With just a bit of besan, ghee and a bit of time, mom saved the day, as usual! And it was only a matter of time before I could gobble a few laddoos. But NO! Who wants to wait? I just scooped a bit of the laddoo mixture into a bowl and stuffed it into my mouth. HEAVVVENNNNN!!!!!

You see, shape is immaterial. As often quoted, 'Beauty lies within...' Someone mischievously rubbed off a few words. The original phrase must have been 'Beauty lies within the laddoo'. So why trouble mom to make balls out of the whole thing, when it tastes good without that last bit of effort? But the good soul that my mom is, she shaped all of the mixture into nice, cute looking things, which would eventually be devoured by desperately hungry and watering mouths!

I just feel happy for having sat next to her in mom's own little kitchen-endeavors, right since the age of 4, as early as my memory takes me. Each of my memories remind me of the exponential learning curve I went through. I hope it all adds up sometime in the times to come.

Cookie Crrrrummmble!!

Now, Sitting quietly is not a virtue I am blessed with. And to be frank, given a chance, I'd happily boast about my fidgety nature, although it does get me into trouble from time to time.
I heard this line somewhere very recently. It goes like "Nature tinkers. It isn't an engineer." So, today was a day to tinker, a day with nature.

Baking cakes is something I was familiar with. I was also no stranger to eating the whole cake by myself after baking it, quite literally. But somehow, cookies were an elusive culinary creation. In spite of containing the same ingredients of a cake, these things taste a lot different. That said, get the dough composition sufficiently wrong, and the cookie starts tasting like a squidgy cake, or the supposed cake becomes a 'tough cookie'....

A dozen recipes can be found on the Internet for baking the 'Perfect' cookie. But this was to be an adventure. Maybe not through a completely unbeaten path, as some bloke/lady, a long time ago, had already invented the cookie, but one can always deviate from the suggested path. A bit less of this, a bit more of that wouldn't turn the supposed-to-be-cookie into a fire-breathing dragon. Putting faith into this thought, I was on!
Another thing worth mentioning, before jumping into the whole Kitchen-scene is that, to start something new, right from scratch, one needs a very uninhibited and encouraging atmosphere. More on this, a bit later. For now, let's get baking!

I wouldn't bother with the exact composition of the recipe, as any Tom, Dick or Harry could tell you that.
Step one was to combine butter with sugar. The food processor was not working, so powdering sugar was out of question. So, IDEA!
I took the butter, melted all of it on a pan, added all the sugar and gave the whole thing a good stir. Although using heat to mix the whole thing faster isn't exactly rocket-science, one seems to feel extra-happy after pulling off anything properly for the first time, I guess.
After that came the eggs. To the butter-sugar mixture,transferred into a big bowl, I broke the eggs right in, and gave it all a nice 'beating' with a whisk. So that got sorted. By the way, almost forgot, these weren't normal run-of-the-mill plain flour/white flour/Maida cookies. These were Oatmeal ones...
So to the egg-butter-sugar mixture, I added about a cup and a half of wheat flour, and two and a half cup rolled oats, adding each one slowly. And there I was, with a sticky batter.
Throughout the process, one thought stayed with me. "What if the whole plan wen KAPUT??" All the flour, butter, sugar eggs and all going down the drain was a nasty thought in the back of my head. Both mom and my sister had got a whiff of my apprehensions. Okay, I actually told them what I was afraid of. So here's my little sister, all mature and understanding, saying something like "Chill! Only when you get it wrong will you know how to get it right the next time!" Following that, just a while later, it was my mom saying "It's credible enough that you are trying something by yourself, so chill..."
I was like "Hmmm..... Nice!"
And then, the batter was done.
I'd heard people eating cookie dough, and liking the taste of it. So I ate a bit of what I thought I had made was cookie dough. It tasted fine. Pretty good, as a matter of fact. But what if my taste buds were deceiving me?? I had to put the dough to the test! I needed a guinea-pig!!(My sister will SO surely kill me for this!!)

 She survived the experiment.. Turns out I wasn't the only one being deceived by taste buds...
Moving on....
By the way, here's where I'd like to mention the encouraging atmosphere that is most the most critical ingredient in the making of anything. My sister and I happen to have the fortune of being born to parents who have gladly allowed us a very wide margin for error. Failure has never been a big deal, although never encouraged, but is never looked upon as anything other than a stepping stone. So, it is ingrained in us that the worst thing that can happen is a small delay in reaching the destination. Given this kind of an upbringing, it just gives one a bit of room to be adventurous. And although what I seem to be doing here doesn't resemble SPELUNKING, it certainly looks possible.
Onto the baking tray! For one thing, cookie dough surely is one hell of a sticky, messy thing to handle. Use one spoon to scoop the dough, another one to remove the dough from the first spoon, and then use the first spoon to take the dough off the second spoon.... Yeah, doing it was more confusing.
With the greased aluminum tray ready, the oven all pre-heated, it was time to plonk the blobs of dough onto the tray, and into the oven. And then, there was this.......

Waiting

Then this......

Peeping out of impatience......

 And then, out came the first batch....

I could hear the non-existing audience applauding when I saw these. Had I been sentimental enough, I would have felt tears rolling down my cheeks, or something like that. Instead, I just picked one of these and popped it into my mouth. "Hmm.. Not bad... They could have done a bit better, sitting inside foe another 5 minutes", I though.
Somehow, another two batches rolled out, each, for some reason, seeming a bit better than the previous one. That must be something to do with some weird aspect of psychology, or....that I was actually getting better at it.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I remembered something stupid I had done during the day, which I hadn't noticed up till then.
I have this friend flying in from the Middle-East. So I sent her a message saying something like "Jumping across the Arabian Sea tomorrow, right?" Just that instead of typing 'Arabian Sea', I had typed Arabian Ocean....... Brilliant! There HAS to be something ABSOLUTELY UNNECESSARY that I manage to do somehow!

Apart from that, I felt everything else had fallen into place as planned. At the end of it all, I managed to pull off something that looked like this...

Even my dad approved these. Mom gave him one piece from the first batch, saying "Your son's making plans to kill us all. I ate one. Looks like he got the recipe wrong. Here, your turn to try...". His first remark? "This thing tastes like mud.."

Then.....mom gave him a piece of....the third batch of cookies, not a piece of her mind, thankfully.
And then he asked for another one, and happily ate it.
If there was something that sprang up in my head, strangely enough, it was this

All in all, it's just another cookie in my mouth....

The look...

It happens often. More so if you are in a hostel, I suppose. You are sitting/standing, just doing anything, preferably in the night. You know how the hostel never sleeps. And there comes the white knight in the dark night. I know, I should put my copyrights on that previous line. And what has the white knight brought along? Food! Okay, the whole scene can also happen in the day time, but then my cool line won't be valid. So we are talking about the poor knight. Obviously, little does he know that he is the knight, or whatever, maybe the vehicle for the food, that will end up in our bellies, which is a good thing, until of course he is good enough to voluntarily share his larder with the likes of you and me.

I mentioned the 'little does he know' part because in most cases, the guy doesn't really know what/who he is up against, which being a perpetually hungry, perpetually greedy bunch of people, perpetually willing to loot anyone and everyone of their foodie resources.

Let;s run the whole scene once.

The guy enters.

He sees the the predators are looming all around him.

He tries to keep things quiet, to himself. Sudden;y he makes a sound. (Damn that polythene bad on the floor!!!) He barely escapes slipping.

Three heads turn to see what happened.

They see him. More importantly, they see his prized possession.

(Shit.)

ATTACK!! He can run. He can hide. But as Enrique says, there's no escaping our love.....for food.

Okay, maybe nothing so dramatic. The problem is not that you have food with you. The problem is that others saw that you have food with you.

It's almost like this. When you find someone looking at your food, firstly, the food is no more yours for keeps, until you are a member of the 'shameless' category, to which, I too belong quite shamelessly, wherein you have no trouble watching people drool over your food.... okay, maybe not drooling over your food, which would make the whole scene pretty gross, but I guess, the point has been decently conveyed.

So when you see this guy eying your stuff, you feel helpless for having what the other doesn't. Besides that, one always is repeatedly reminded by his elders, albeit subconsciously, that 'Sharing is a good habit.', and as Bruce Willis says, old habits die hard. Even if they totally kill you in the process. And to top things off, there's always that look that we hungry kind have, that of an innocent cat. The same look, those big shiny eyes, that helpless cute face, maybe not the cute part of it, but anyways, the sort of face you want to 'ku-chee-ku', in spite of knowing that it has the ability to snap at you any time you give it an opportunity. And hence, you decide to part with a part of what was yours, reminding yourself that it is good to be good, and all sorts of bull of that sort. And then it comes. ATTACK!

Warning! Lock your doors after you enter to prevent collateral damage.

Corn on the mob!

I was pretty sure of not writing a post on this blog of mine, as hostel time means your cooking is mostly limited to boiling stuff(mostly the instant noodles kind of things)... Yeah, that's pretty much it. Never the less, mankind has found tricks to boil stuff that can taste good.
This post is dedicated to one of my room-mates. Credits....later, but I need to thank him for giving me something to write on.
So here goes.
THE BUGGER had been after us about getting corn kernels, each time we went out to the city/town(or whatever you can classify Calicut as). The first time out, he forgot about it. The second time, he bought them..finally! He's got a thing for corn, specially the spiced and overpriced stuff one usually finds inside/outside/nearby food malls....
So we got corn in the room!! Yaaaay!!!! Now what?
Next was a water heater... almost all rooms have this appliance. Then came salt..another friend's room(THE BUGGER's ex-room mate's to be precise). There was a plan to bring along some 'chaat masaala', the tangy powder/ mixture made from err... salt, rock salt.. umm... pepper, powdered cumin,mint powder..err, ya, all that and goodness knows what else. But no one had 'Chaat masaala'!! So we put in 'Chicken curry masaala' instead, which we borrowed from another friend's room... Yeah, even I am wondering how the chicken curry tasted. Another room-mate of mine had been invited to the 'In-Hostel-chicken-curry-party'. I did not bother asking him how it tasted. Fine, moving on... Oh yes, we got some cubes of butter(Okay not we, just my corn-obsessed fellow room occupant.[THE BUGGER])
And yeah, we washed the boiler properly. The only thing I did was washing the lid of the boiler...That's all. After that, we did the 'thawing', as mentioned on the packet of corn kernels. I guess the lengthiest part of cooking was the THAWING!!! The bugger was mad about thawing. That was the only line in the cooking instructions that the three of us, among the four in the room ever heard... obviously the fourth one being THE BUGGER!
So, thawing was over, all the additives, condiments and whatever we had in hand, plunged into the boiler happily, did their thing for about 15 minutes, AND PRESTO!!!!!
Just apart form this weird smell that lingered around for about 5 minutes, which according to one of us(not me), was Sodium Acetate. Although I have a feeling that I am supposed to know what this thing does to the food, I  have no clue, except of the fact that it is a preservative.
So, again, PRESTO!! We got stuff to eat!! We had made a pact to keep the room's door closed, but mistakenly, somehow the latch opened and we had a few peeping Toms and Jerrys' paying us visits. Never the less, whatever came out of the boiler, well, came out pretty good. Though the 'Chicken Masaala' never made the corn taste like chicken, which would have been a very.....strange thing, it definitely wasn't a bad idea, I guess.
THE BUGGER- Abhishek Jaiswal

Epic fail !!... Well, not exactly.

I like to experiment with food. Their normal form looks and seems far from intriguing. Yes, there are some classics that are better be left pristine, for instance, mom's Rajma-Chawal but with the rest, a fair amount of personalization and customization sounds is just, specially if one knows the original and nature of the original recipe. You may sometimes...actually have a 'recipe' for disaster, but in the hind sight, you just might end up knowing what not to do the next time.
For instance, I bring to you the 'Banana cake'.
Trust me, the day I thought of this dish, it sounded absurd to myself. But I was tired of the chocolate cake. Yeah, I could have tried a dozen more kinds of cakes, which sounded a lot more familiar. Somehow I was rather adamant about this one. For starters, I was slightly skeptical about the existence of the dish. But I had a sort of a mind map of the 'how-to-go-about' of what I was shooting for.
Nothing too acrobatic. I was pompous enough to check the recipe after I had put my creation into the oven(I was unhappy to discover that I couldn't apply for a patent for my creation.)
I was at least delighted that what I had thought of, as the steps of the recipe, were exactly the same things mentioned online. Yaaaay!!!!!
For the banana cake, take the chocolate cake recipe. Chuck the chocolate out of it(until that is that the next thing I will try...leaving the chocolate in place). Toss out one egg from the mentioned recipe(not if your recipe has only one in it!!). Blend one-and-a-half bananas with half a glass of milk and tip it into the batter. Beat the batter up like you haven't beaten a single soul in life! Take out all your frustration down on the batter!!! Beat the air into(Not out of) it!! Just beat it!!(R.I.P MJ!! Do the rest of the drill as the original recipe tells you to and VOILA!!

But, I had faultered somewhere...Not a glitch in my method, but that in my execution.
I forgot to put sugar. I realized this after all the beating and after putting all the batter into the baking tray. Strangely enough, I was feeling bloody lazy! So I just powdered some sugar, put it right over the beaten-up batter, mixed it all in and popped straight int the oven.
BIG MISTAKE. I was actually supposed to take all the batter out of the tray, put in the sugar, beat the poor thing all over again and then pop it into the oven.
I was particularly feeling bad for the batter. So I was like "Look, okay, don't cry! I'll spare you the horror, and myself the effort of beating you up. Happy?" The batter happily stepped into the inferno that awaited it.
45 minutes later, I had a cake... Instead of being light as a cloud, this thing squatted like a ruddy sumo wrestler!!  My fears came true!!!!!
But I am fine with things going bomb! It is sort of a pricey proposition to learning stuff.
Bullshit okay!! Why the hell can't I get it at first shot??!!!

ICE-CREAM SANDWICH

No apples, no jellybeans,nothing of the nerdy stuff in here...at least for now.
It is about the dessert. Ice-cream sandwich..

It was over 5 years ago that my mom took me to this pretty famous Ice-cream shop, down south in Church Gate,Mumbai. It was this shop,nothing very fancy about the way it looked, nothing pretentious, no glitz or glamour ,that which is an omnipresent trait of south Bombay. By the way, Bombay beats Mumbai HANDS DOWN,ANY DAY, ANY NIGHT,ANY MICROSECOND BETWEEN 11.59.59 hrs AND 00.00.00 hrs ..Phew!! Being emphatic about things takes quite a toll!
Sometimes, in the evenings, this shop packs in quite a crowd...quite a startling one at that for such a quaint looking place.

So the shop...Yeah, IT is located on the main road of a very posh locality,but for those who aren't looking for it, they will never see it. It's like platform 9 3/4... Remember that one??
It's like over 50 year old, run by a Parsi family for about 2-3 generations. The shop goes by the name K. Rustom. Goodness I love Parsis' for their influence on Mumbai's food culture!!!!
So I go to this place for the first time, I check the menu. These fellows have like 20 odd flavors. None of them are 'odd' as such. I spot this flavor 'bitter chocolate'(Dark chocolate basically) and I have a place I cannot live without visiting whenever I am back in Bombay for my vacations!

Now here's the deal. The ice-cream on offer has no magical texture like a Gelato or some other rich and fancy variety. It nevertheless tastes ABSOLUTELY AWESOME. Getting into minor technicalities, the ice-cream looks like a 300 ml Tetra Pak carton in terms of volume. They quite literally hand you the ice-cream as it is in your hand,just that on two sides of the ice-cream,they slap on a biscuit-wafer,wrap the whole thing in tissue paper and hand it over. Annnd you then happily chomp along!! Even the price is reasonable. 50 bucks a piece.
Here's what I frankly fear. These folks invented the ice-cream sandwich around 50 years ago, about the time, Douglas C. Engelbart had thoughts of making a Computer Mouse, never thought of their ice-creamy concoction worth calling an invention, kept running the shop, SOMEONE COMES ALONG, SEES THEIR CREATION, TAKES IT SOMEWHERE, MAKES IT MORE FANCY AND PUTS UP THE NAME 'ICE-CREAM SANDWICH'!!!! Notice the crescendo in my tone??
The story sounds very akin to Steve Jobs glorifying the mp3 player by giving the world the IPOD!!
(That device definitely was remarkable though...or so was his presentation!)
You see the tragedy how Apple's software is being challenged by something fancifully called the ICS?? See?? See??
But all said, the one place that shall remain my favourite place in my hometown, at least till either I, or the place shall exist,will be
87 Stadium House, Opposite Ambassador Hotel, Veer Nariman Rd, Churchgate, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400020
"Majja ni life!!"

Discovery!

It's been a while that I wrote a post on cooking. I recently realized that if one can't come up with something, there are 2 things...
1-Think more
2-Quit it.
It's not like you have many more options....well,if there are in your mind, OUT WITH IT!!
I had nothing new on the Foodie-frontier..
Then I suddenly had one. This one's  nothing fancy. Rather a bit too simple. But amazing stuff. At least quite so if you are damn hungry and will do anything to eat something in 5 minutes.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!! No FRILLS!! No FANCY!! I present to you...the humble KHICHDI
As far as 'Wikipedian' accuracy goes.... Khichdi is a South Asian preparation made from rice and lentils (dal). Frankly speaking, that's all there is to it.
So it all happened this one fine not-so-shiny morning. My mom was late for work. She had not made anything for the afternoon to feed her only son. Never mind.. So she was like... "Kiddo! I'll tell you the secret trick that my mom told me to fill my stomach"(that must have been told to my grand-mom by her mom and so-on-and-forth) I was like OKKAYY!! :)
So she told me the following....I just put the same stuff in steps...
1-Take rice:lentils(any variety/type you got at home) in a 1:2 ratio.
2-Wash this mixture thoroughly,drain the water off 
3-Whatever volume the rice-lentil mixture comes to, add 2-2.5 times that volume of water into a pressure cooker.
4-Add the rice-lentil mixture into the cooker too(yeah,don't forget this step please!).
5-Add turmeric,chilly powder and salt as per volume of your khichdi(Ideally,for one person consuming one cup small cup of the rice+lentil mixture,half a tea-spoon salt, a bit less than half a tea-spoon of turmeric,chilly as per your liking...)
6-Shut the cooker and put it on high flame.
7-Let the cooker "Blow it's whistle,baby" for 3-4 times at max....and 'There we go!!'(Do not let the cooker's whistle go off more than 3-4 times!!)
Eat it plain, with yogurt, or anything else you please to eat it with.  

Big MISTAKE!!!

I had written about this dessert called almond Mela'nge a while ago...and completely forgotten about it. I shouldn't have done that. I got the spelling quite badly wrong... Thankfully, the word I spelt wrong was not 'Almonds'. Otherwise, I'd have had to go and sit back in grade 5 or something..
Okay, for some reason, I ran into this word while watching a lady cook some french dish. Annd I made a discovery.
The word is... MIRANGUES... It is pronounced as Mer-(as in mermaid) and Rang-(As in boomerang)...so it sounds like Merang if you utter the word. Damn you!! French cooks!!!
Damn!! The guy who told you the 'Mela'nge-or-whatever-it-was' story was DEAF!!
Okay, I took the word at face value!! But damn the French...
You see, Right now, I feel like the guys in those 'BLOOPERS' type videos. Even better, I feel like a Newspaper editor who just found out that ... there's something wrong. Not with the article content,but the name.....
And, as we all know, it is a crime to spread wrong information.Hence......

Kaapi !! Indian Press

NFCUK- No French Connection,U Know
This one is for the coffee freaks/connoisseurs. If one belongs to the southern part of India,There is lot higher a chance of you being a coffee lover..simply because,the north side has more like the "Chai pila do yaar!" ("I'd love some tea,buddy!") population. I only belong to the south in terms of genetics. I have spent all my life in the middle. So,quite logically,I like both,tea and coffee. But,I have a lot more of the bean-gene,if I may put it correctly.
Here's the 'chase'. Ever since I tasted coffee, I just lost my 'thing' for the Instant variety. Now,I am not technically abreast with professional jargon like 'Body','Overtone' and stuff that is used to define the taste of coffee,but I do have a basic layman's(maybe a teeny-weeny bittttt more) idea of things. And,yes! I would love to know those terms! But,for now....

Those fancy expensive coffee shops/cafeterias have always caught my attention. Not for their fancy offerings kept on display(or maybe sometimes),but the dark roasted beans in the transparent contraption of unnecessarily big machines(espresso machine..) that squirt out the coffee liquor. These machines,apart from being unnecessarily big and complicated,are also unnecessarily expensive....Anything big,clunky,complicated and most importantly...expensive beyond the requisite are....out of the wishlist. I feel rather proud to call myself a miser,in the worldly sense. Not that I hate spending money. I have this knack of getting stuff done,a lot cheaper than most folks would do. What people call misery, I call frugality... Maybe later on that.
Another thing that caught my attention,was the FRENCH PRESS. This is also a fancy machine that caught my attention when I was watching this show DEXTER...The machine comes in the starting theme song. I looked up for it's price....about Rs.5000... a more fancy way to put it, about $100(more like $90 now...if you know why..)
So I was like...Hmmm....(That was all that I was like...)

I am proud of being an Indian for more reasons than I can count. But the best part is the 'Jugaad' mindset. This word is best defined in a book called Jugaad Innovation, that I read recently. Jugaaad means- Figuring a makeshift/quick and solution to the problem,without compromising on it's integrity.
There is this thing called Filter Coffee,a specialty of south India. The coffee liquor used in these coffees is extracted from the coffee grounds(powdered beans) using this stainless steel contraption.
I came across this utensil(Okay...no rocket science here) when my mom bought it while returning form our holiday in Coorg,Karnataka,as we had bought a lot of roasted beans.
When I saw the working mechanism of the French press and the espresso machine,and then saw the Indian stainless steel contraption, the concept used was a combination of both the expensive machines.
In the ESPRESSO machine,there is this condensed puck of coffee grounds through which,pressurized steam is forced to produce the liquor.
In the FRENCH press, there's this big container. You gave the grounds placed over a movable sieve.Hot water is poured onto the grounds. There's this plunger you press,the hot water is forced through the sieve,extracting all the coffee-ish goodness...and woalah!

The Indian machine is a lot less complicated,lot less cheaper...annnd basically uses the same concept as it's overtly expensive cousins...and the best part,tastes just as good. Wow!! How Do We Do It? Discovery channel should start a new show,specially for Indian innovative stuff,after their already amazing show, going by 'How Do They Do It??'

It's pretty simple..
There are two compartments in the utensil....The top one...and....the bottom one.
The top part has holes on it's bottom side.
Fix the top and bottom,
Put the grounds into the top part. There will be a plunger sort of a thing to press down on the grounds to compact them up. Use the plunger. Make a puck out of the grounds and leave the plunger  on the grounds,in the to compartment. Pour hot water...the kind left for 5 seconds after turning off the gas,post boiling.
Close the top compartment.
Do this at night. It takes like 2 minutes.
Wake up in the morning. Your liquor is ready!
The time it takes is worth waiting for. Besides, you wouldn't realize it pass by.

That's how we do it!!
Suggestions most welcome.

Sweet Chick-pea balls A.K.A Besan ke laddu

How hard can this be?? I tried my best while trying to bring out the most 'English' translation of the word laddu... Then I was like,Chuck it! What's in the name?
It' been a while I have done anything radical in the kitchen,except for the usual cakes,Doshas'(Mind you,it's not Dosa) and chapattis(usual for the past month,okay?)..
It's also been a while since I have been pestering my non to teach me to make Besan-Ka-Laddu.
Now,a brief history on my mom..
She belongs to a Keralait/Malayali family that has been settled in Rajasthan for the past...err...60 years. So,apart from the Malayali part of the scene that allowed her to get married to my dad(hmm...now I thank these people's orthodox nature),being from Rajasthan technically guaranteed....well...AMAZING FOOD!!!!!
Ya,so back to the Besan waala laddu. It is one of those things,that if you haven't tasted,your living isn't worth what you think it is. This is the stuff of legends(which one,I know not,but somehow it is!),without of course ruling out the fact that,it is being made by the right(rightful rather) hands.

Okay,Legend part is over,err....My mom's legacy part is over,...I pestering my mom part is over...
The whole searching the Oxford English Dictionary part is overrrr(No,I just made that one up..)....
Oh yeah!!!! The making part!!!
All you need is
Chick pea flour
Powdered sugar
Clarified butter...Arrey yaar GHEE!!!(If traditionally done...LOADS OF IT!!!!...)
Some nuts...use your head for this one
Cardamom(This,rather it's presence/absence makes quite a difference...)
Mayyyybe a few sprinkles of milk all along.
So mix Chick pea flour,the butter in a ratio where you get a sort of bread crumb consistency(Come on!! Search something..Go Figure it out!!!)
Mix in the nuts.Mix this in a preferably huge vat(not for first timers!! You don't want a huge lump of screwed up stuff on the first shot!! You'll never try the next time!!!!!!!)
Mix it all up till the whole mixture is brownish(Not till you realize...OH SHIT!!! IT'S BURNT!!)
If done right,the nose smells something worth dying for.
Now add in the sugar.Don't put too much of sugar..preferably 1/4th to 1/3rd of the amount of the flour.Stick to the lower side.
There's a reason to why you add the sugar towards the end I guess. Annnnnd the best part is.....MY MOM DOESN'T KNOW THIS ONE!!!! (Yeah,I fgured this one out.)Hahahahahahahahaha!!!
But that doesn't make my mom a lesser Amazing cook..But I feel bad that she doesn't ask questions.
You add the sugar in the end probably because,sugar on heating turns brown pretty fast. So if you add the sugar in the very beginning,the whole mixture browns up pretty quickly,and you feel that the flour got cooked all through...and hence,MAKE AN ASS OUT OF YOURSELF,apart from wasting a lot of stuff and killing a dozen people with stomach aches!!!
So sugar in the end!
If you go through the whole jig right,you end up with one of the few things that taste better than Lindt's 85% dak chocolate!
Mom says,if you really want this thing to taste heavenly,stay a bit higher on the GHEE front. Not necessary,but if you did all the rest properly(IFFFF),then that one tad bit extra(Please don't get too enthusiastic about this step,I am a fitness enthusiast.so...) actually helps.
I gobble one every one hour while I am awake(I gream of eating approximately the same amount while I sleep)...So,the thing gets over pretty fast. And thennnn.... I run like HELL!!!!!!
If you are a guy...and you buy this stuff from a shop...Man!! You are impotent!!!

That's why!!

If one happens to be keen about something,whatever the 'something may be' , what goes on in it makes sense to the person.
I love cars. What's strange is that I understood the working of a car in a dream.Please do realize that I am not lying. And yes,basically what I am tying to say is that something,that an engineer takes about a chapter to understand in a usual college,when uninterested of course, I understood the same thing while sleeping. Great! Isn't it?? So let's get cracking!! Only thing is that this article isn't about understanding the working of a car. I was just showing off.
This one is about stuff people don't ask questions about. As a matter of fact,this is about things people don't(usually) think about.
It's about why we add certain things in our food,and why we may not. It may be boring,but if you have read so far,and you clicked the link to this page(I frankly don't see why you would do it,but thanks by the way),I feel you'll sail through.
Have you wondered why you add ..... to your food??

.....#1-Flour/Atta/Maida(Maida is refined flour)- Flour or any of the mentioned ingredient is basically a derivative of grains like wheat,rice,chick peas,legumes and all dry forms of cereals or pulses,mostly cereals.
Why so? Most cereals/pulses contain carbohydrates as a very big majority of their composition. What carbohydrates do,in presence of moisture(Water,oil,any liquid) is that they stick together.So you have this doughy sort of consistency in some cases. What this sort of consistency does i provides body to what ever you are cooking. Look at a cake. A very big portion is all carbohydrates(up to 75%). Look at breads.Even rotis' that we have around..
Conclusion: Flour,when in doughy consistency is basically a filler in the food/dish.
An analogy to this in the mechanical engineering department is working of fiberglass. The resin and  the hardener,a mixture of it makes the fiberglass rigid. Here,the resin is a filler,basically increasing the volume of the mixture to be applied on the fiberglass.
The same flour,when used in a highly runny consistency,example being cornstarch used in soups(I hate it though). It thickens up the soup,again,giving the soup it's body.

....#2 Oil/fat(of mostly any kind)-We all know that oil is a good conductor of heat,basically it carries heat very well. Use of oil in food has a very basic concept involved. To heat the food faster. You say why not yous steam? Ever wondered how much time it takes to steam stuff? And as it is,in the current life and times of quick-to-do-xyz,who's going to wait that long? No wait,all haste-big waist...annnd What a waste!!
So we add oil to make the cooking process faster. Deep fried,shallow fried what's and not's...

If you add oil into anything for any other reason,there can be only 2 more reasons,bu the way
1-To make things go runny(Don't ask why you can't add water..please!)
2-To give a glaze to things..Yeah,that's what the people do to make things more appealing on the  rack dude/lady!

....#3 Eggs-Now,until you are a health freak,the reason you add eggs to any thing mostly,is to set things up. It's not what it sounds like..you ain't no secret agent being set up/framed or something,it's just the food...relax.
Seriously now. Have you ever boiled an egg?? It is one of the most mindless thing to do. And it does not qualify to be called cooking!!!
Yeah so what happens?You crack it open...and all the contents come running out all over your hand?? Yes?? What did you do?? Forgot to turn on the gas??
So,you(this time,start the gas,after keeping the egg in mostly boiling water,remove it and..) crack it open.Hopefully no gaffles this time,you get this beautiful pure white coagulated mass of protein with another firm ball of fat and vitamins. Basically the thing holds up it's shape,bozo!!
So,heat coagulates the whole eggy stuff,where ever it is in combination with mostly anything(except water ofcourse,until you plan to poach the egg...)
The yolks may be used to add richness(basically make you fat.....Mind you,egg yolks are good in moderation).

....#4 Vegetables,Meat,fruits- They are the main part of the big picture,being the DISH of course.

Yogurt/curd/cream-These things are added to increase volume,richness and sometimes to reduce sharpness in taste.
....#5 Spices-Do I need to explain this one? I haven't run into a more self explanatory word(apart from the word 'run').

....#6-Water-Volume,and to mix things up a little.
....#7-Pureed vegetables,fruits-volume,taste...
Mmmm what else am I missing? You know what? You think of other ingredients.It's quite logical you Let me know too,of what you think their uses are. 

Almond Meringues

I do not know how you get that weird looking french 'a' in the word melange(I can copy it from google,but I am just too lazy today..). But..But.. But.. it is absolutely surprising how you can make stuff that tastes brilliant,it's a dessert,and here's the best part..It is healthy. The only other dessert that you may come to call healthy(if you consider them in the category of desserts) is fruit.

Guess how many ingredients at max? Not 5,not 4,not 3,not 2..okay I was lying,it's 3
Egg whites,sugar and the most non obvious ingredient....Almonds. It was only after I finished eating that I realized that the thing had almonds........ .......... ........Okay,I guess there mighhht be a bit of gelatin too...Just a hunch(this time it's serious)
Okay now the story. I headed south of Mumbai after I had a few prior engagements. I went to my mom's office,I actually barged in,okay not like Arnold Schwarzenegger through a wall in terminator... I went in unannounced(Okay,they didn't have a mic for announcement..it's an office after all..)..Hmm..Not good,Not good.. I went in without notifying..(That sounds like we are living inside Facebook..) OKKKAY basically you get the point,I'm sure,Do not throw that rotten tomato on the screen!

So my mom's busy with her business and desperately wants me to go away. So she hands me this Rs .500 note and in her won subtle ways,basically told me to fuck off.. I happily did so. So now if I want cash,I'll go and sit in front of her when she's busy in her office(Hoping that is not for long..I want to earn my own stash!!!).
After fucking off from her office,I went to this bakery(one of the good ones in the city). The next part is funny. The bakery is called GAYLORD..
.
.
.
.Okay..moving on(Where do these fellows get these names?). Hey you!! Dirty mind!! Yeah you!! It's the lord of happiness!! Was it that difficult to figure out?? Even I figured it out after typing a paragraph..and then I felt enlightened..Time for you..
Gibberish aside,I asked the counter fellow what it's made out of.
He told me the three ingredients mentioned above. Actually,before he told me,I'd kind of figured it out..I'm smart you see?? Do you??(See..)
Okay completely serious now..Things following from now on are the reason I wanted to start this blog separately...The recipe hasn't been copied from google..I definitely didn't ask the fellow how to make it.. So if you check this thing and find the description similar to what follows,please give me an imaginary pat on my back..

I guess I figured how to make this thing.
1)First,get hold of egg whites(Do it however you can..)
2)Try and dissolve sugar into the egg whites..
3)add chopped almonds..
If you have tried whisking eggs for a prolonged period,you may have noticed these things turning fluffy.. If you do this for a while longer,they get to this light snow-ish consistency.
4)So what are you waiting for?? Go whisk that mixture.
   Okay,one thing to note...If you plan to whisk it all the way to the point where it turns into snow- white,it's going to be a pain in the.........arm.
preferably use some food processor for #4.
5)Okay,this should probably come somewhere after #3...I'm not too sure about this one,but I'll add it anyway...
Take about 3 tea-spoons of water.Add about half tea-spoon of gelatin powder(available prepackaged). Dissolve the gelatin.
Add a spoon or two of this mixture after step #3. Then...Happy whisking.
6)Put whatever you get after whisking into a PIPING CONE.Figure that one out yourself. I know what it is.But then I won't just let you bask in glory all by yourself.
Pipe the stuff in whatever shape you like on a sheet of butter paper.
7)Pop the thing in the oven...(and switch the oven on)...100 degrees Celsius about should do I guess
8)I am going to try it myself.

This feels like putting your intuitive(not even theoretical) knowledge to the test. The only potential mistake I can see is in that gelatin. But I guess it'll work.

How I got into it...

Hi,
I devote this post of my new blog  to 2 people who made me passionate about cooking.
1.Mom
2.दादाजी ,Dad's Dad

My mom's a crazily amazing cook. Okay she may not be the most creative of people in the kitchen,but the stuff she makes mm..umm mmm!! Absolute bliss! It started right since her childhood. She was one out of 4 sisters. My grandmother was an even crazier cook,as per my mom's description.And it wouldn't be too far off from the truth,as my mom is certainly the live testimony to that. So it is like the 10000 hour rule. My mom cooked from when she was about 10..theh she cooked during her graduation days,then she cooked even more after she got married...more,more more annnd more of cooking,and it must have been a while since she crossed the 15000 or even 20000 hour mark. I mean 40 years of pretty much relentless cooking,apart from totally burning her out, have been added her craft.. That too she juggled all of it while doing a 9-5 job,managing 2 crazy creatures that popped out of her,not to forget the third creature,who obviously popped out of somewhere else...annnd all the other more mundane looking outsiders who keep dropping by from time to time...
Each with a different set of demands to cater to!One word...WOW! I would certainly love to look at the world from her perspective...No not the exact same perspective,only the cooking part.
As a child,I sat next to mom when she cooked.Even now,as I am back from my college,I spend most of my evenings with my mom while she's cooking. The amount of stuff you pick up every time makes your learning curve look like the the exponential function plot.. If lucky enough(by the way,luck is,in my understanding,probability taken personally...) I would like to keep my learning curve that way. I have seen this very feminine approach to cooking that most people have in my immediate surrounding,this is of course ladies included!
So to them,I sing the song-Get over it(by Eagles)

2.दादाजी (Dadaji)
My grandpa is an ex-Air force guy.The 'guy' because he...is by long,far and wide(just to ensure the emphasis),the most coolest person I have met yet. My most vivid memories of my childhood(from age 3 or so) have been with him. He's 81 now. I still remember how,about 10 years ago,he'd come to our place. There was this park of sorts with these gymnastic's rings(those rings hanging from chains). He jumped,caught hold of it,did pull-ups,then kept his body parallel to the ground like for ever!!! Sorry for swearing,but FUCK!! So in short,He's awesome!!
Coming to cooking,now,my grandfather's all experimental with food. His credentials owe to his guts to to try completely bizarre stuff,with disasters no exception to his list of end results,but if Edison hadn't made 1000 mistakes,he wouldn't have made it to the 1001th trial that 'hit the spot'.
As a kid,when we visited my grand parents,my dad,mom,sister and grandmother went out,Dadaji and I stayed back. He isn't a very 'up for going out' type of a person. And I'd not mind missing my remaining family to give him company. He never speaks a lot. Strangely,neither do I. Specially in his company,I never felt the need to. As I write this,I also realize how much I have inherited from him in terms of my personality. We went about anything to everything with stuff that we found around. But bread,chicken,milk,eggs,tomatoes,onions and a few more things were mostly a staple..
He had a habit of consuming a small quantity of alcohol everyday,just the healthy quantity.. No ODing. So if we made something fruit-juice-ish,he just hit his share with a dash of brandy or something.. I guess it comes as a part of being in the Air force...
There was this one incident when I wasn't feeling too well. He gave me this brandy shot. He was like 'Take this,you'll feel warm'. I just gulped it down... BIG MISTAKE! The freaking thing burned me inside out!! But then there was this very soothing heat I felt inside. My cough,fever and all of it just fled from my body.I slept well that night. All this was apart from the fact that I felt super cool after consuming alcohol at 4...He told me that it was 'our little secret'..being the kid I was,this was like going on a secret undercover mission... Obviously he was slightly apprehensive about letting my mom know about this incident. But,much later,I realized that this was a very often used method to get rid of minor coughs and colds. Not that the incident left me an alcoholic for life.
I feel very proud for not having consumed any alcohol in spite of staying in a boarding college.

Even now when I visit my grandparents,If I am watching TV and दादाजी ain't asleep,I tune into some cooking channel..and Woalah!! WE GOT COMPANY!! I somehow feel very comfortable in our silence.He makes a not of the dishes we see. He may not try out all of it,as he used to,but he is not someone you can bear seeing sitting idle. If he is sitting idle,you immediately get a feeling that something's not right. He is the living proof to the fact that the human body is NOT meant to sit around for long duration!

Last but not least,this person totally deserves being mentioned,as a matter of fact,is kind of indispensable.
Sanjeev Kapoor. I very clearly remember watching his cooking shows with my mom,that came on every week ends on Z-TV.This fellow,single handedly changed the Indian cooking scene in the eyes of telly-watchers! He made cooking look cool and suave! The fact that he did not limit his cooking to Indian cuisine made the mind of the average Indian middle-class house-maker open to foods that would have otherwise taken a lot more time to become acquainted to the Indian palate. Yeah we did have the 'Chinese' and a Pizza hut or two but these weren't things you made at home.

I have a dream,probably like many of you out there to open a restaurant.. Hopefully I will turn the dream into a reality someday. So does my Drandpa. He wants it's name to be 'Mummy's kitchen'...
Let's see...