JUMP TO RECIPE I usually fight shy of writing anything in the realm of religion except when it's linked with food. Hailing from a Hindu family where religious devotion towards deities is nurtured, I didn't grow up to embrace the dogmas fully. However, what continued to intrigue my restless mind is how food was and continues to be inherently tied in the rituals associated with religion. I have clear memories from my childhood home(s), an altar was raised in the northeast corner of the house where idols were adorned, bathed, fed and prayed everyday. Over thirty years, I have watched my mother light a lamp at the altar and place an offering of food or bhog in brass ware. On an ordinary day the bhog would be simple like raw and uncut fruits, misri (crystallized sugar lumps) or jaggery while a festival or a special occasion would find her stirring up grains, pulses and even vegetables without any onions and garlic, served along with a batch of sweet treats. The plethora of non onion-garlic preparations for a bhog often included this delicacy, Ram Rochak Tarkari — potatoes and eggplants cooked in earthy and fragrant spices to form a thin gravy, topped with fried dumplings called muga bara made of mung beans — a recipe inspired from a temple kitchen in Odisha. The Odia word tarkari translates to gravy — mélange of vegetables cooked in a broth which the western world would best describe as a curry. Ram Rochak on the other hand translates to something that is delightful to a person named Ram. Whether the reference of Ram is a subtle hint towards the Hindu god, Lord Ram or to the chef at the temple who was perhaps named Ram is a matter of speculation. I do not have the sources who could resolve the dubiety behind the name. The perfectionist in me isn't happy with this oblivion but I'd give it a shot to best explain what I know. To write about food and religion and not attract attention is perhaps implausible in the present day world, and writing about Ram Rochak Tarkari behests putting on kid gloves. My association with this bhog from the Haribaldev temple at the small town of Baripada in the state of Odisha in India is rather epicurean. The initial years of my childhood were spent in the quaint town of Baripada, resonant in the sounds of the babbling Budhabalanga river, winds swaying past the wilderness of Shimlipal hills, harboring the temple architectures of the 15th and 16th centuries. East India Company's Major James Rennell's famous atlas recorded this ancient Odia town as Burpuddah in the 1779 edition. Typically served with a porridge-like rice and green gram preparation called, Dala Khechudi, Ram Rochak is offered as bhog during the Rath Yatra or chariot festival at the Haribaladev and Gauranga temples, homes to the favourite god of Odisha, Lord Jagannath, an incarnation of Lord Krishna along with his brother Balaram and sister Subhadra. The acclaimed Jagannath temple at Puri, also called Srimandira, is believed to be the prime home of the brothers-sisters trio. While all these temples worship Lord Jagannath, some traditions and practices differ, like the Ram Rochak Tarkari which is unlike any other preparation for Jagannath bhog in most temples of Odisha. The temple kitchen in Puri, rosaghara, strictly prohibits the use of non-indigenous vegetables such as potatoes and tomatoes, along with many others, in the making of bhog, referred as mahaprasad. The Ram Rochak from the Haribaldev and Gauranga temples was also largely bereft of potatoes, and was offered as Muga Bara Tarkari back in the days. Ram Rochak, which is rich in protein, due to the green gram dumplings, is served with another preparation Dala Khechudi, which also contains green gram with rice. This inclination towards plant based proteins is mappable to the Bhakti movement that emerged in Baripada with Chaitanaya Mahaprabhu and the Panchasakha, similar to the favoring for dal in Bengal instead of fish through Vaishnavism and Chaitanya Bhakti movement, during the medieval period. In an elaborate article, Rath Yatra foods: Ramrochak Tarkari and Dala Kechuri by Madhulika Dash, researcher Satwik Mahapatra mentions, with the change in thought process towards religion, eggplants most likely got introduced into Ram Rochak along with the muga bara, an upshot of the Bhakti movement again. The article further mentions, “Since then,” says Debabrata Praharaj, a fourth generation priest at the Gauranga temple, “Ramrochak Tarkari has been served with eggplant. It later saw the addition of potatoes (evolved around the neo-Vaishnavism phase), a produce that is still banned from most temple kitchens in the state. But for the Chaitanya temple, the tarkari remains a representation of the early teachings of the Vaishnav cult that believed in equality and inclusion, and encouraged people to bond over common shared interests such as views and food. And thus, needed it to be all inclusive.” Odia cuisine is as much influenced by temple kitchen cooking styles as by the agriculture and local customs and cultures. Home kitchens seem to have borrowed elements from the temple kitchens' modus operandi and added their personal touch to many dishes like dalma, ghanta and even this little known Ram Rochak. In homestyle preparations, you will often find potatoes and eggplants. The use of the variety of spices is limited in a temple kitchen — seems illusory when you think of the heterogeneity of the spread that is cooked and served to the gods and goddesses and thousands of people. Red chili, ready made or pre-made seasonings and blended curry pastes are not allowed while they are handy in a home kitchen. This push-pull of sorts has yielded dishes in the Odia cuisine that are humble to look at the surface but bursting with flavours in every bite. My memories of Ram Rochak evoke memories of that home in Baripada where I played made-up games at the veranda as I waited for Singh uncle (our chauffeur) to show up with his jeep, my mother scuttling behind me to put morsels in my mouth and my father tugging my hand to kiss me goodbye as he went to work, promising to get food from the Haribaldev temple at lunch. Memory is a wicked game I feel sometimes, the closer I drift towards it impelling my mind to recall, the hazier it becomes. What a paradox! Thanks to food that I cook from my memories, tugging to pure bliss that's rendered, the stretch between what was and what I remember tends to dilute a bit. What about this recipe? This recipe is along the lines of the Ram Rochak Tarkari prepared in the Haribaladev and Gauranga temples in Baripada but not a strict replication of the temple bhog. I have used dry red chili in the tempering which is perhaps not done in the temple-cooking. Many families in Odisha who are aware of the Ram Rochak Tarkari add their personal touch to this preparation, and this recipe thus has some obvious variations. Eggplants are native to India, and the green coloured eggplants that I have used in this recipe are commonly available in Asia. I was lucky to find them in the supermarket in Whitehorse, labelled as Thailand Eggplants! You can make them with the regular purple coloured eggplants too. Although potatoes are not used in many temple kitchens in Odisha, Ram Rochak includes it. I do not peel the potatoes for this recipe as that's how my mother made them. I have made the recipe with the potatoes' skin off too, but I like this version more. Keep the potatoes and eggplants cubes large and chunky and cook them tender but not mushy. Odia cuisine uses a lot of vegetables which cook faster such as eggplants, pumpkins, ash gourds, raw papaya, plantain and more. However, the vegetables retain their shape after cooking as well. You can ensure this if you cover the dish intermittently and not turn the vegetables too much with the spatula. A key ingredient in Ram Rochak is the mung bean dumpling or bara. Some recipes use one part mung bean (green gram with its skin on) and one part moong dal (green gram with its skin removed). However, I make it with it mung beans alone as I like its texture and taste better. Ensure that you soak the mung beans well and make a thick batter when you grind the beans. A thin batter will not yield the dumplings! Remember we're not making crepes or pancakes, but dumplings that would be fried. To make the spice or masala paste, use a sil-batta or a batan if you can. The idea is to keep it slightly coarse. Using a sil-batta or a batan oozes the flavours without crushing the spices to the hilt. With the lack of either, I replicate the effect using a pestle and mortar. Recipe Ingredients For the dumplings: 1 cup Mung beans soaked for at least 3 hours 2 green chilies 1/2 inch ginger Salt to taste For the gravy: 2 medium or 3-4 small eggplants cubed large 3 medium potatoes cubed large Masala paste: 1/2 tsp cumin, 3-5 peppercorns, 1/2 inch ginger 1 bay leaf 1 dry red chilli 1/4 tsp cumin 1/4 tsp mustard seeds 1/4 tsp asafoetida 1/2 tsp turmeric 1/2 tsp red chilli powder 2 tbsp oil 1/2 tsp ghee (optional) Method Prepare the dumplings: Wash the soaked mung beans. Add ginger and green chilies, and make a thick paste or batter in a blender using minimum water. Note: Do not add too much water to make the batter. Start with two teaspoons of water and then add more if needed. The consistency of the batter should not be runny. Take the paste out of the blender, add salt and mix well. Heat oil in a wok or kadai, and add spoonfuls of the mung bean paste to make the hot oil. Let the dumplings turn golden brown on one side and then turn to fry on the other side. Fry until the dumplings are cooked and fried well, and then keep aside. Make the masala paste for the gravy: Add the ginger, cumin and peppercorns into a mortar, and pound and grind using a pestle while adding small amounts of water. You can also use a blender for this. Note: For best results, use a sil-batta or a batan if you have. Make a coarse runny paste and keep aside. Make the gravy In the same kadai or wok, heat oil and then add bay leaf, dry red chilli, cumin and mustard and let everything crackle. Add asafoetida and sauté everything for a couple of seconds without burning anything. Add the ground masala paste and continue sautéing for about a minute. Add the red chilli powder and turmeric and sauté again for a few seconds, and then add few spoons of water. Cook the masala for about 2-3 minutes or until the water starts to evaporate and the raw smell of the ingredients disappears. At this time, add the potatoes and sauté for another two minutes to let the potatoes get coated well in the masala. Add some salt, mix well and then add about 2-3 cups of water.Cover and cook for about 3-4 minutes on medium heat. Open and increase the heat to high. Add the eggplants, mix and then cover again. Cook for about 3 minutes on medium heat. Open and check the doneness of the vegetables, and if they seem cooked, add the fried mung bean dumplings. Note: Ensure that the vegetables are tender and cooked, and only then add the dumplings. Mix everything well, and add more water at this stage if required. Adjust salt. Cover and cook for 4-5 minutes on medium heat. Once done, turn off the heat. (Optional) Open, add ghee and quickly cover the wok/kadai for a few seconds to let the fragrance of the ghee seep into the gravy. Turn off the heat. The Ram Rochak is ready for serving! Enjoy it with the classic Dala Khechudi or plain hot rice or chapatis. If you enjoyed making this recipe, don't hesitate to drop in your comments or tag me in Instagram! I love hearing from people how they liked my recipe!

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe Another day, another rasam? No? Well, I grew up with rasam at least 2-3 times a week. Served either as a soup or tossed over rice, this much loved South Indian deliciousness has had place in our diet. With one or more seasonal ingredients, a handful of spices and any available souring agent, a pot of rasam (called chaaru in our house) was prepared readily. There's no dearth to how many varieties that are possible, but the moringa leaves rasam somehow struck a chord with me. Have you ever been obsessed with an ingredient? So much that you would leave no stone unturned until you cook it in all the ways you love? Ever since we moved from Toronto to Whitehorse, and peculiar Indian produce became hard to find, I've seen this obsession grow in me, and stronger. So when I spot something that I usually don't get in the markets here, I get a a big lot and make everything that I know with it. Moringa leaves are one of those things that I had never expected to find here. Whitehorse has been surprising me, and how! On the weekend grocery run, I witnessed moringa leaves yet again! The first time I had found them, they were sitting pretty on the shelves (labelled mallungay leaves, product of Vietnam) where I usually find curry leaves. After getting lost in musings on food parallelism, I had brought them home and made a lovely sahajan ka saag (moringa leaves stir fry). The blog on it is due — noted! Rasam: what does it mean? This time I made a rasam. The word rasam refers to a category of soups in the South Indian cuisine although variants like saar and chaar exist somewhat farther in the north as well. The Charaka Samhita describes the Sanskrit word, rasa as "Rasyate aswadhyate rasanyaha rasendriyana eti rasa" which means the particular sense which is perceived by the tongue. So rasa is the special sense experienced through the tongue, the rasendriya, and the taste buds. Deriving from rasa, a rasam or the soupy dish brings forth a sensory experience of the constituent substances. Apart from the many medicinal benefits that a rasm encompasses, at its best, it's a serialized eulogy to the six basic tastes or shadrasas as defined by Ayurveda: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent. Cultural anthropologist, Deepa Reddy, provides a much beautiful and more elaborate exposition on this theory in her magical blog, Paticheri. And, there's more: What is rasam? Making a rasam, albeit uncomplicated, is an art of harmonizing flavours at its core. I laid out an anatomy of sorts in an earlier post to help you understand the layers of a rasam that lend a certain depth and character to this mysterious broth of South India. Coming to moringa leaves. If I have to describe the benefits of this wonder plant, I rather point you to Pink Lemon Tree, where Shanthini Rajkumar explains how moringa is a chockful of nutrients. Everything of the plant is useful, and the leaves especially are a joy when it comes to cooking. You needn't go into the trouble of making a powder (I know it's a thing in the west). They're good as is whether added to a rasam, sambar or dal or simply stir fried. Rasam as a home remedy Spring is in the offing and the continuous ups and downs of temperatures always throw me in turbulent seas! I come from a country where mothers and grandparents are the doctors-on-call at home. An Indian kitchen is nothing short of an apothecary — something along these lines is what Deepa once said. The moment any family member experiences an ailment, the first instinct in an Indian household is to resort to the rasvati — Sanskrit for kitchen — and bring out the pestle and mortar and the pots and pans, forage cupboards for bottles of spices or go scouting in the backyard for herbs. In few moments of pounding, crushing, stirring or boiling, a remedy will be presented to the unwell and peace would be restored, at least until the actual doctor is consulted! Although rasams are not primarily medicines, in my family (and I'm sure in many others) they're treated as such, and quite seriously. Sipping a bowl of rasam (or eating honey and peppercorn soaked ginger) when you're sick is no laughing matter in my house, and to a large extent it serves its purpose. Drink a bowl of hot rasam when you have a bad cold and you'll never regret! The seasonings are a treat for the olfactory tract, opening up clogged sinuses, providing relief in an instant. You repeat the bowls in some intervals, and your meal and medicine are done at once. Growing up with such practices at home, which can seem as sorcery to many, I'm conditioned to look for ingredients in the kitchen that can provide relief in the time of sickness. And, even when I'm fully hail and hearty, it's the kitchen again and the makings in it that nurture the body and provide the much needed immunity in my family. With fresh moringa leaves and a load of good tomatoes in the fridge, it had to be a moringa leaves rasam for my weary soul today. Moinga Leaves Rasam: How it came to my family? Rasams in my parents' house are called chaaru in the southern part of Odisha, a direct adaption of the Andhra word and dish. Needless to say it's a south Indian influence. But this rasam is quite different from our usual chaaru. How this recipe landed in my mother's kitchen is somewhat up in the air. My father has a bosom friend, Uncle C, whose family hails from both sides of the border between Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. He also happens to be an avid cook, and many rasams and chaarus have found their way to ours from his. On the home front, my maternal grandmother has many (read many many) Andhra acquaintances, and she being from Berhampur, undoubtedly has a lot of Telugu influence on her food. Somewhere amidst these amalgamations and cultural exchanges, this murungai keerai rasam was recreated in my mother's kitchen and became a family favourite. Our chaarus are usually clear soups with no use of dals whatsoever. This recipe is a clear divergence from that, and yet not a manifestation of an authentic Tamil rasam or perhaps it is! Hard to say because a lot of different recipes exist for the very same rasam. While there's no standard rasam/chaaru podi that we use, this recipe seems to inculcate the idea. It brings together coriander, cumin, peppercorns, mustard and tur dal for the podi which are ground with tomatoes, garlic and ginger. A bit of coriander leaves are also added and the paste is rendered coarse, not fine. In my mother's crude way, the tomatoes must be crushed with hands (remember hands also render flavour), the spices and dal ground separately, and the ginger, garlic and coriander leaves pounded separately as well. All the three are then brought together and mixed in a bowl. The moringa leaves are cleaned and washed and allowed to boil with a cup of water taking care to not overcook them. A 5-7 minutes is good enough. For the tempering, mustard seeds, dry red chilies and asafoetida are used, generating a pungent aroma. The tomato and spice mixture is cooked in this tempering for a couple of minutes before adding the boiled moringa leaves along with water extracted from a blob of tamarind. Salt and turmeric are also added of course. The entire concoction is allowed to simmer, bubbling away for a couple of minutes and then served hot. Thelivu Rasams, but this one is not While many rasams are clear soups, better described as thelivu in Tamil, like the moola chaaru from Odisha, there's a distinct category of rasams which come with enough residue of the broth. This murungai keerai rasam also falls in this category, or at least the way it's made in my home, it's never a clear soup. There's ample residue of the ground dal, hand crushed tomatoes and other ingredients, and we relish it, wiping every morsel of rice with it, munching on some roasted papads on the side. The rice is not mandatory though. This rasam can be had as a soup as well if you don't mind the residue! Pro Tip Overcooking moringa leaves is a strict no-no! A gentle boil and then a simmer later is enough. The entire cooking process should not take more than 20 minutes. Ensure that you don't miss any of the spices for they are key to the flavour balance and distinct characteristic of the rasam. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 1 bunch moringa leaves (1 to 1 & 1/2 cup) For the dry masala (podi): 1 tbsp each of coriander seeds, cumin seeds, peppercorns, pigeon pea (tur dal), 1 tsp mustard seeds and 1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds 2 small tomatoes, washed and roughly crushed with hands 6-7 cloves of garlic 1-inch ginger 3-4 strands of coriander leaves and stems 1 tsp turmeric 1 lime sized ball of tamarind For tempering: 1 tbsp oil, 1 tsp mustard seeds, 2 dry red chilies, 8-10 curry leaves 1/2 tsp asafoetida 1 tsp salt or to taste Method In a bowl, pour water over the tamarid ball and keep aside. Dry roast the ingredients mentioned for podi one by one, and then cool and grind to a coarse powder. In a saucepan, add the moringa leave with 1 cup of water and boil for 5-7 minutes. Meanwhile, pound the ginger, garlic and coriander leaves. Next, in a bowl mix the crushed tomatoes, ginger-garlic-coriander paste and spice powder using your hands. Switch off the heat and keep the pan of boiled moringa leaves aside. Place another vessel on medium heat. Add oil and once hot, add the ingredients mentioned for seasoning - one by one. Pour the paste made in step 4 and sauté it for a few seconds. Add turmeric and salt and cook for about a minute or two. Add the moringa leaves along with the water and let it simmer. Extract the water from the tamarind and add the dark tangy water to the simmering broth. Stir and let it come to a roaring boil. Taste and check seasoning and adjust if required. Switch off the heat and serve hot.

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe If you read my previous post then you know my journey with fiddleheads, which are known as kasrod in Jammu and parts of the Himachal region in India. There are subtle regional nuances that I laid out in the post along with the Kasrod ki Sabzi recipe. Today, I'm writing about the fiddlehead fern pickle I first ate in Katra, a small town in Jammu, many years back during a family trip to the shrine of Vaishno Devi. Quoting from my previous post, I remember the kasrod ka achar, fiddlehead ferns pickle, served with with our meals during that trip. Steaming hot rice, Mah da Madra (Urad dal cooked with yogurt) or Kulthi ki Dal (horsegram) and tablespoons of the fiddlehead pickle on a steel plate are prominent in those obscure memories of the hills. That was my first encounter with fiddlehead, fermented in coats of mustard, chili and turmeric with the punch of salt binding them all. A Google search will yield some version of this pickle recipe. However, I don't write so much for the recipes as much for a dish or an ingredient's milieu, and to chase my own thoughts leading up to creating a dish or the people behind them. After all, there are so many recipes that one can master (or not), but knowing the context of our food can enrich our eating so much more and naturally exalt our cooking process. (There's a recipe in the end if you're eager!) In northern India, fiddleheads grow in the silent vast elevations of the great Himalayas, far from human traces in the upper reaches of the states: West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu-Kashmir. Jammu is one of the three regions of the Jammu-Kashmir state, with the mid Himalayan range Pir Panjal in the north, the state of Punjab in the south, Ladakh in the east and close to Pakistan in the west. In Jammu, fiddleheads grow wild in the Shiwalik mountain slopes, overlooking the plains fed by the Chenab, Ravi, Tawi and Ujh rivers, and similar to other hilly terrains elsewhere in India, they're valued in Jammu as well. Pickling fiddleheads, kasrod as they're called in Jammu, is part of the food culture of Jammu's Dogra community. To understand the relevance of this practice, it's important to delve deeper into Jammu's geographical location, climate and agriculture and their effects on its people, the Dogras. The Dogras who initially inhabited the area between the slopes of Shiwalik mountain range, the sacred lakes of Saroiensar and Mannsar, later spread over whole of the Jammu region, and emerged as a regional domain from the Duggar Raj, flourishing as the Dogra dynasty under Maharaja Gulab Singh from 1846 to 1947. Colonel R.D Paloskar writes in A Historical Record of the Dogra Regiment: A Saga of Gallantry and Valour: Dogras are the inhabitants of the hilly regions of Jammu and Kangra. Originally, it seems those who inhabited the territory of the erstwhile Jammu state were called the Dogras, irrespective of their castes. Later, the British called all those who enlisted in the army from the Rajput hill states as Dogras, purely for military convenience. Thus, the Hindu fighting classes of Jammu, Kangra, Chamba and portions of Hoshiarpur, Gurdaspur and Sialkot came to be called the Dogras.” In Baburnama, Babar describes the centuries old primary invasion route into India. This route was across the 800-km long Hindu Kush mountains, buttressing the Pamir Mountains at the juncture of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan's borders, and through the Khyber Pass. Crossing the Indus river, invaders came to Punjab through Rawalpindi, Sialkot and Gurdaspur, and then to Delhi through present-day Chandigarh. The Dogras live in the area on the eastern and north-eastern fringes of this route, which directly impacted their history, culture and lifestyle. The other aspect that has influenced the Dogra way of life is the rugged topography of the region. The research paper, Songs of Separation: A Study of Select Dogri Folk Songs, Bhaakhs mentions, "The foothill pediment zone ‘Kandi’ lies between Shiwalik hills in the north and Jammu plains in the south...in Jammu province, Kandi belt is 10-30 km wide, stretching from Akhnoor in the west to Kathua in the east...About 57 percent of total area of these districts is under Kandi belt...the upper portion of Kandi belts consists of low hills covered by shrubs and forest, and the lower terrain has cultivated lands and gully beds. It has undulating topography, steep and irregular slopes, erodible and low water retentive soils and badly dissected terrain by numerous gullies. The major land and water management problems being faced in the Shiwalik hills and Kandi belt include excessive runoff, soil erosion, land degradation and erratic water distribution in space and time, hampering agricultural production." The strategic location of Jammu on India's primary invasion route pushed its people to the heights of valor and strength against intruding forces in the past, continuing to harness the spirit of soldiering in the subsequent generations. Working in the defence forces of the country, Dogra men were away from home most of the time. Considering the nature of land and terrain in the region, agriculture is subsistence, and military has been a chosen occupation for income and survival. Many Dogra villagers are also known to work as labourers outside Jammu, leaving women to take care of families back home. Women, who are thus cardinal care givers, as is the case in most parts of India, are left alone and many times lonely, emoting their feelings through songs called Bhaakhs. Nidhi Verma elucidates in her thesis, "Through Bhaakhs, women vent their longing for husbands or beloved. Bhaakh also expresses the pain women undergo being away from their maternal home, their roots, their childhood friends, and how they deal with their pain. Women in the traditional Dogra society were not allowed to visit their maternal home after marriage. And if the husband also leaves her alone to resume his services, her life revolves around her duties and work. Bhaakhs reflect her strained feelings as she is isolated in a new place." In these special folk songs, Bhaakhs, the glory of Jammu's food also finds place. With lands rugged and unsuitable for extensive farming, you would not imagine a rich repertoire of dishes in the Dogra community. But, you'll be surprised by the plethora of food Dogri women cook, a strong hint at the resourcefulness of the women folk and their ingenuity in the kitchens, making the best of what they were left to do at home. Legends describing the lifestyles of royal Dogra families, bring up the food that wives of Dogra warriors cooked including pickles to welcome their husbands' return from battlegrounds, and how couples united over delectable dishes after long separations. In India, if not everywhere, of the many things that can narrate a community's eating choices and preferences, pickles are definitely illustrative of what the people making them cherish and what they want to perpetuate. Pickles or achaar as they're called in India, which may have been abated as mere condiments in the modern era, are actually mains in the meals of several communities. Living through years, assimilating in spice and layers of oil and salt, they are culinary timestamps carrying spoonfuls of cultural mores in the subcontinent. The mountain life in general entails extended and harsh winters when fresh produce is scarce. So in Jammu, there is a natural inclination towards dals or lentils and forest produce like gucchi (morel), kasrod (fiddle head), tarad (Dioscorea belophylla - a type of edible yam), teu or dhio(Artocarpus lakoocha), lasooda (Cordia dichotoma), keora (agave), katrair (Bohenia variegata) and more. The unavailability of year-round fresh produce also makes preservation of fruits and vegetables in various ways, including pickling, integral to mountain life. Like all hilly regions, this holds true for Jammu and its Dogri people who have a long standing pickle bequest with handed-down family recipes of pickles made from forest produce like fiddleheads along with commonly grown vegetables like aloo (potatoes), gajar (carrots), jimikand (elephant yam foot), kadam (kholrabi), beans, galgal (Hill Lemon), mooli (radish), phaliyan (green beans), and mirch (red and green chilies). For many, the achaar tradition in India is effervescent with memories of summer holidays spent at grandparents' homes and mellow winters atop terraces watching ceramic jars filled to the brim, tiffin boxes daubed with oil or glass bottles packed in suitcases, smelling of someone's home. Since every community across the length and breadth of the country have their own styles and methods for pickling, depending on the vegetables, fruits or meat they want to preserve and enjoy, and the spices and oils favoured and available in the region, almost anything that's edible and can find its way to the plate, has the potential to be pickled in India. For this reason, pickle making is also regional culinary knowledge, and learning to make pickles and continuing the tradition is a way of honouring that old art form. Along the same line of thought, this fiddlehead pickle from Jammu is a facet of the Dogra community's food proficiency sealed in many bottles. The origin of the word achaar maybe Persian, but the associated techniques, especially pickling with oil, and heritage are unique to India. In the northern half of the country, mustard oil is favoured for pickling while in the southern half, sesame oil is more common. Similar to other hilly regions in north India, mustard oil is the chosen fat for pickling in Jammu. The inclination for mustard oil in the colder regions of India is understandable. Mustard has warming properties and tends to keep the body warm in cool and cold climates. Known for its antimicrobial, antibacterial and anti-fungal properties, mustard oil is a safe bet to preserve pickles and extend their shelf life. So, remember a good quality mustard oil is key to most of the north Indian pickles. Going back to pickles and the use of mustard oil, it's also notable that mustard oil is a sharp pungent note to itself that works well in pickles. Indian pickles are made using salt, acid, sometimes sugar or jaggery along with a combination of spices and oils, and this entire concoction creates conditions inhospitable for bacteria and fungus which can spoil pickles. Like other northern states in India, pickles in Jammu use the golden amalgam of mustard seeds powder with mustard oil that lends a much needed sourness to the pickles. Fiddleheads which are grassy and nutty in flavour and balance well in a spice mix of mustard, turmeric and red chilli powder, and dollops of heated-and-cooled mustard oil with generous amounts of salt help preserve the wild greens throughout the chill of winters. As the mustard ferments it makes the pickle tangy and stabilizes the heat of chillies and other spices and steadies the excess of salt. Food in the hills is simpler and minimal, both in its flavours and textures, and that holds for the Dogri food as well as their pickles. By no means this simplicity implies ennui. Robust with mustard oil and hints of spices like mustard, cumin, chillies, turmeric, Dogri pickles are enough to enliven a plate any day. After returning from a 24 km trek (12 km one way) from Vaishno Devi, the sight of hot dal ladled on a bowl rice and topped with kasrod ka aachar has remained special in my memories just like the afterglow of sunsets clinging to hills, which may all be the same yet each is exquisite on its own. Although made all over India, pickles I feel, deeply reverberate the mountain life. Untouched, slowly fermenting in transparent bottles under scant sunshine, pickles in the mountains take their time to mature and become useful as food and develop the intense flavours for which they're loved. Time is a convoluted concept in the mountains I feel, a touch and go at times. It seems to lollygag atop the hills, so slow that sometimes one wonders if it exists. Paradoxically, this slowness also gifts the abundance of it as Philip Connors rightly says, "The greatest gift of life on the mountain is time. Time to think or not think, read or not read, scribble or not scribble -- to sleep and cook and walk in the woods, to sit and stare at the shapes of the hills." Amidst the seemingly existent folds of time, things and people are let to be, like the Dogri women of Jammu who have stirred and churned the best in the solitude of their kitchens, perhaps entwined between feelings of thrill from self-discovery and strange fears from the misgivings of their beloveds' return. For me, kasrod ka achaar from the hills of India represents that ascent above the expectations growing pell-mell from fast culture. Achaar in general is a paradigm of how wonders can happen if we truly comprehend and carry through slow food — I'm not just saying about slowly cooked or slowly made food but letting food be — and one made of foraged greens like kasrod only makes it better. Pro Tip The key ingredient that gives this pickle its character is mustard oil. If you don't have access to mustard oil, you can use oil infused with mustard seeds. It will not be exactly the same flavour wise but will work. Note: In the US and Canada, mustard oil bottles come with a label, "For external use only", and I would encourage you to read Nik Sharma's article, The Truth About Mustard Oil: Behind the "For External Use Only" Label on Serious Eats to help you decide whether to cook with mustard oil and understand the reasoning behind the American/Canadian labels on the mustard oil bottles sold here. Coming from India, I'm fully aware and habituated with mustard oil, and will not budge from using it! I use black mustard seeds to make the powder, but the brown or yellow ones or a combination of different mustard seeds will also do. The yellow and brown mustards are less pungent — so they'll not give as sharp a flavour to the pickle. Always taste your pickle before leaving it to ferment in bottles, so that you can adjust salt as needed. Bonus! You can use this same recipe to make any other kind of pickle as well like carrots, yams, kohlrabi, radish, beans or chillies! Recipe Did you read the pro tip? Ingredients 200-250 gm fiddleheads 2 tbsp mustard powder 2 tsp turmeric 1 tbsp red chilli powder 1/3 cup mustard oil Salt as per taste Method Clean and wash the fiddleheads, stringing the mature ones. Wipe with a clean cloth or paper towel and then chop into small pieces. Spread on a clean cloth and sun-dry for 4-5 hours or until all water has evaporated. In cooler places, this can take up to a day. Heat mustard oil to its smoking point and keep aside to cool. Meanwhile, mix all the dry spices along with salt in a bowl. Add the clean dry fiddleheads into the bowl and mix again. or After mustard oil reaches smoking point, reduce heat, add salt, turmeric and chilli and mix. (Don't add the mustard powder now! Mustard powder/paste in hot mustard oil can turn bitter.) Then add the clean dry fiddleheads and cook for 1-2 minutes. Turn off the heat and keep aside to cool. If you opted to only heat the mustard oil and kept it to cool, now pour the cooled oil over the fiddleheads and spice mix and bring everything together with a clean spoon or clean hands. Be careful to not have wet hands or spoon while doing this. Else, there are high chances of moisture developing in the pickle and spoiling. or If you opted for the second method and mixed fiddleheads, spices except mustard and oil, and left it to cool, now is the time to add the mustard powder. Taste for salt using a separate spoon. Adjust salt if needed. Fill sterilized glass bottle(s) with the pickle, and cover with a clean cotton cloth and tie using a string/rubber band, and leave the bottle(s) in a sunlit place for the mustard to ferment. Ensure at least 10 days of fermentation before eating. Instead of covering with cloth, you can seal the bottles with the caps. But the advantage with cloths is that it allows any remanent moisture to escape in the sun. Once your pickle is ready, enjoy with flatbreads or rice and dal. Always use a clean spoon/fork when taking out a portion from the bottle. It will last for even up to a year if you treat it the right way!

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe The ability of the human mind to retain and remember continues to intrigue me as I grow older. Whenever I look back at the phase of life when I was in school, sometime before teenage hit and the time behind it, I remember less of things conspicuously. I try harder then, often attempting to hold thoughts, almost in a grip. Like heaps of falling sand, flashes of time seem to fade away, and that's when the value and purpose of my blog becomes clearer, and stronger to me. The story of kasrod (as fiddlehead ferns are called in Jammu and in Himachal), is one such tale of time slipping and me trying to hold onto what I recall. There are many names of fiddlehead in India. Lingri in the Kullu valley while lungdu in the Kangda valley and kasrod in Chamba in Himachal Pradesh, lingdu in Garhwal while kaaron in Kumaon in Uttarakhand, niyuro in Sikkim (and Nepal), dhekia xak in Assam, kasrod in Jammu and Kashmir and therme thoppu in Coorg. I somehow always call it kasrod because that's how I first came to know it in Katra. Growing up, holidays were usually to places that had some spiritual significance. No surprises that my parents took me and my sisters to visit the Vaishno Devi shrine in Jammu when I was about 10-12 years old. Following an overnight train journey from Delhi to Jammu, few hours of halt, and a 50-km taxi trip through winding roads and cool mountain winds, we arrived in Katra, from where we trekked 12 km to the temple. I remember the kasrod ka achar, fiddlehead ferns pickle, served with with our meals during that trip. Steaming hot rice, Mah da Madra (Urad dal cooked with yogurt) or Kulthi ki Dal (horsegram) and tablespoons of the fiddlehead pickle on a steel plate are prominent in those obscure memories of the hills. That was my first encounter with fiddlehead, fermented in coats of mustard, chili and turmeric with the punch of salt binding them all. I was excited to take a picture of that bowl of dal-chawal topped with fiddlehead but our humble camera had exhausted its battery. Phones didn't have cameras then! Honestly, my parents weren't enthusiastic about food photos although I can't say I had anything else but curiosity about new ingredients in food at that time. No one in my family then knew what is fiddlehead and I didn't see them in the roadside markets either, where you usually expect to find local produce except as pickles. That's because fiddlehead is not usually cultivated as produce although it's commercially harvested in spring in many places. It grows on its own in wild wet corners of the world, from Himalayas to Assam in India and across North America and parts of Europe. An age old fern, fiddlehead is part of the traditional diets across Asia and Native Americans for centuries. Until I moved to Canada, I never knew how significant fiddlehead is to Canadian spring. Emerging from the leaf litters in the forests, fiddleheads announce the arrival of spring in many parts of Ontario, Quebec and the Canadian East coast as well as British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan in western and central Canada. Writer, naturalist, historian and lecturer, George Ellison who conducts plant identification workshops says: "When leading field trips, my first response to fiddlehead queries is the obvious one. I point out that fiddleheads aren’t a species of fern but a growth form. Most fern species — to a greater or lesser degree — display the characteristic fiddlehead shape when they arise from the plant’s underground rhizomes. The “fern leaf” differs from the “true leaf” of the flowering plants in its vernation, or manner of expanding from the bud. In the ferns, vernation is circinate; that is, the leaf unrolls from the tip, with the appearance of a fiddlehead, rather than expanding from a folded condition. This unfurling strategy helps the immature frond make its way upward through the soil and leaf litter. It also protects the developing leaflets (pinna) that will comprise the leafy portion of the mature frond. The first fronds to appear in a new season’s growth are purely vegetative; fronds unfurling later bear the spore capsules (sporangia)." The North American Ostrich fern species bearing fiddleheads is reputed to be utterly delicious and safe to eat, and many go foraging for these twirling-at-their-tip beauties in the wild. I get my stock from the fruit stand here in Whitehorse. The lady there is always generous and kind as she empties little baskets of clumping leaflets into my shopping bag. While locals in Uttarakhand eat this commonly, as my Kumaoni side of the family and food photographer and recipe creator, Sanskriti Bist from Garhwal confirm, I had never got an opportunity to cook it while I lived in India. The timing of my visit has to be precise as this fern has a short season. My friend P who always brings out the best in Kumaoni food shared how her mother makes it. She strings the mature greens and uses the younger ones as they are, and sautés with some salt and coriander. Some locals also make it with ginger, garlic and tomatoes. Sanskriti's Phupu Nani makes an onion tomato masala and tops it with boiled lingdu. It isn't cooked a lot in urban homes though. My mother-in-law, P, and Sanskriti agree it's enjoyed as a stir-fry or gravy in the remote villages in Uttarakhand or by people who know how to forage it and appreciate its grassy-nutty flavour. The narrative is similar in Himachal Pradesh where the migratory tribe, Gaddis, forage fiddleheads amidst other edible plants while moving their livestock across plains in the winter and hills in the summer. In the far north east of India, it's more common in homes I feel, where it's foraged and celebrated as an edible green. Lessons in Slow Eating from a Naga Kitchen on the Goya Journal has a lovely recipe of fish cooked with fiddlehead ferns. It's also foraged down south amidst hills in Coorg and made into delicious palya. Chef Shawn Adler says, "And while these furled fronds may be gone in a flash, they’re very versatile, so you can enjoy them in a multitude of ways during their short season", and I couldn't agree more. In a CBC episode of Forage, he explains how to identify wild fiddleheads, the stage of growth when they're edible and how to sustainably harvest them. He makes a beer-battered tempura which I absolutely love apart from the Indian styled pickle and this stir fry that I make with a bare minimum pantry staples. I will write about the fiddlehead pickle or kasrod ka achar in the next post. Until then, if you have access to edible fiddleheads this season, don't miss out the opportunity to make this simple and delicious recipe. Ferns show up in fossil records before flowering plants, and that's a hint to how old fiddleheads are. Surviving through ages and thriving in the enclosures of hills and mountains, fiddleheads unroll from their tips — following a journey from top to bottom, symbolic of our own odyssey of understanding our being. The closer I have moved to mountains, the more I have realized how small we are in the vast layout of the universe, how survival is sometimes a challenge at altitudes and how simple the solutions of food can be in that context, how little we know of our own food systems and cultures, and how much remains to remembered, explored, written and preserved. Pro Tip You will never go wrong with fiddleheads no matter what you do! Their sweet like asparagus, grassy nutty like green bean and fibrous texture like broccoli stem makes them great ingredients for different kinds of dishes like stir fries, gravies, salads and fritters! Fiddleheads are extremely versatile, and while they're tasty on their own, they also add a ton of texture and flavour when cooked with mushrooms, fish and/or bamboo shoots as stir fries or gravies. Recipe Did you see the pro tip? Ingredients 1-2 cups fiddleheads, washed, stringed and roughly chopped (String the hardy mature ones, younger ones can chopped as is. Also discard any brown papery leaf parts on top) 2 tsp oil (if you like mustard, use that or any healthy cold pressed oil of your choice is fine) 1/4 tsp cumin and mustard seeds 3-4 cloves of garlic, pounded 1/2 inch ginger, pounded or finely chopped 1/2 tsp red chili powder 1/2 tsp turmeric 1/2 tsp coriander powder 1 tsp salt, or to taste Method Boil the chopped fiddleheads for 5-6 minutes ensuring they're tender and hold shape. Strain and keep aside. In a pan, heat oil. If using mustard oil, let it smoke up. Reduce the heat, and add cumin and mustard. Once they splutter, add ginger and garlic and sauté, till they lose their raw smell. Add the boiled fiddleheads and sauté for 2-3 minutes. Then add chili, turmeric and coriander powders and give a good mix. Add salt and sauté for another minute. Reduce heat, cover and let the greens cook in the steam for about 2-3 minutes. Switch off the heat, mix and then serve with rice and dal/beans gravy or ghee smeared rotis!

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe Kohlrabi, the word being a combination of German words kohl meaning cabbage and rabi meaning turnip, although native to Europe, is a celebrated vegetable in the Kashmiri cuisine in India. This stew like preparation of kohlrabi using Kashmiri culinary style of subtlety renders a dish that's reminiscent of comfort food. Kohlrabi is known as Ganthi Kobi in Odia, the language of the people of Odisha where I was born and grew up. When we lived outside Odisha, we knew it as Ganth Gobhi, and let me tell you that it was one of the most rarely eaten vegetables at home. I remember mother forging it into cutlets or mingling it with some other vegetables in a bharta or making pickles out of it to ensure we ate it. It's intriguing that sometimes things that we never enjoy eating as children are the ones that we embrace once we set foot outside our homes. My journey with kohlrabi, a vegetable that originated in northern Europe and was unknown until about 500 years ago, is a similar one. The same subtle flavour that I did not particularly find exciting on my plate became cherished after I discovered the magic of Kashmiri cuisine. On a rather torrid summer day in Bombay, sometime when the British Council Library used to be located at Nariman Point, I had stepped out of the library following a failed attempt of finding a good book to borrow. My friend had a membership, and I had accompanied her all the way from New Bombay to the library. Both of us are nerds, and what could be more exciting than books? However, that day's expedition had been unexciting — you know the ones when you're keen to find an interesting book to read but nothing on the shelves entices you? So, leaving M at the library who wanted to research on some material she had been lucky to find, I went on to grab an ice-cream sandwich at Rustoms, a 15-minutes walk along Marine Drive. Hot weather doesn't discourage Bombayites to walk, and when you have the seaside boulevard at your disposal, an umbrella for some shade and a handkerchief to wipe the sweat keep you going. Few meters before Rustoms, I spotted the usual roadside bookseller. "I could get lucky" I wondered, and hurried to see his collection. Amidst my wonted fiction targets, I saw this book, Kasmiri Cusine through the ages by Sarla Razdan. While the book wasn't in its best shape, the exquisite pashmina shawl map was clear on the cover, Dal Lake sitting serene on the inside page, flanked by lofty mountains and lush forests. Black and white photographs of Jhelum narrated the story of this mystical land, and beside a flower laden boat, Sarla's words stirred me instantly: "Lunch at 9 am. That is my earliest food memory from Kashmir. When I was a little girl in Srinagar, my mother used to spend hours cooking the simplest of things like (collard greens) and batta (rice) for her three children. A pressure cooker was, of course, a dream. So lunch was at nine in the morning, to arm us for the rest of the day, as we left home." Several miles away in Bombay I could visualize Razdan's home scene, reflecting on my own childhood where lunch was served at 8 before I and my sisters boarded the school bus. I had never been to Kashmir nor eaten typical Kashmiri meals ever, and yet the book drew me in. Sarla Razdan's descriptions of home and simple food had made a place in my heart already. Few pages later, I had paid the bookseller and arrived at Rustoms, relishing an ice-cream and imagining the food of this slice of heaven on earth, Kashmir. Such is the power of food, it's ability to connect people and evoke memories lending common ground to share and create. Back home, I and Auntie A (my then landlady) went through the book together, cruising through the many photographs of the old and new Kashmir and the delectable food of the valley. Auntie A shared her stories of her trip to Kashmir after her wedding, long back when the political situation of the land was far from today, browsing through the multitude of vegetarian recipes in the book. Contrary to many people's perceptions, Kashmiri cooking is rich in many varieties of vegetarian dishes. Kohlrabi is called monji/monje in Kashmir, and Kashmiris truly esteem it. It grows easily and abundantly, and being cold tolerant, it continues to grow on the fields in winter, so much that a little frost even helps it. In a place like Kashmir where winters can be tough, it isn't surprising that kohlrabi is valued for its hardiness and availability when little of anything else can be hard to find. Kohlrabi, like other members of the Brassica family, takes well to pungent flavours like mustard oil, asafoetida and ginger used extensively in Kashmiri cuisine. It also blends very well with the dried Kashmiri masala known as ver masala. In Kashmiri cooking, the leaves of the kohlrabi, haakh (any kind of leaves are called haakh in Kashmir, popularly referred as saag in Hindi), are also used along with the stem, making the entire dish wholesome, healthy and delicious! Kashmiri cuisine is one of the oldest in the world and a witness to many foreign influences. Many people are often reticent about cooking Kashmiri food, because, like any other delicacy, it demands a certain degree of instinctiveness and finesse in techniques and methods. Even after measuring the ingredients by consummate spoons and cups, the cook's discernment goes a long way in enhancing the flavours. Cooking with fewer ingredients is more complicated, because, lesser the ingredients, greater is the ability involved to control the behaviour of each constituent. The philosophy of "less is more" shimmers throughout most dishes in the Kashmiri cuisine, holding nafasat, the Urdu word for refinement, in its behest. Sarla Razadan's book was my first lesson in Kashmiri cooking, and later I discovered exquisite Kashmiri food bloggers including A Mad Tea Party and Spice Roots whose beautiful recipes from the Kashmir valley inspired and taught me well. I have cooked many Kashmiri dishes over the years, and every time I recreate something, I continue to learn anew. Like most things in cooking, practice improves your judgement and instinct in balancing flavours in Kashmiri food. It's this delicate balance of mustard oil, whole red and green chilies and asafoetida that brought about a newfangled flavour profile in kohlrabi for me. I can't imagine a simpler way of cooking this underrated vegetable and one that generates such indelible flavours with so few ingredients. By no means I claim to be a master, although I have developed my own relationship with Kashmiri food. Kashmiris rely on haakh (greens) and chawal (rice) as their staple food. It's so common in households that until the Kashmiri pandits migrated to other parts of India, haakh wasn't part of special meals like weddings. So, you can imagine how Kashmiris have kept their hands in preparing leafy greens! Since monji haakh is an everyday homemade dish, it's nevertheless simple and easy to put together. Kohlrabi is also cooked with meat and fish in the Kashmiri cuisine, and the greens are also cooked with eggs or paneer. Haakh and kohlrabi are winter vegetables, with a season lasting from autumn and throughout spring. To cook a tasty monji haakh, the freshest produce will yield the best results. I remember a lady who used to by the side of the gate at the City Lights market at Mahim in Bombay, selling vegetables which are most often not welcomed by many, including kohlrabi. On my way to the Dadar West local railway station from my college, I didn't mind walking an extra 15 minutes to her paraphernalia and gather the best kohlrabi. She would jab the vegetable in the center to make sure it was tender. Kohlrabi can grow large and woody, but always taste great when young. Kohlrabi tends to get softer after cooking while still holding its shape, a characteristic of bulbous stems. It's often confused as an underground root while its actually over-ground stalk. Pro Tip The freshest kohlrabi yields the best monji haakh. In case, your kohlrabi is a bit old, try adding a pinch of Kashmiri garam masala or ver masala. If your kohlrabi is at its prime, you don't need garam masala at all. Kashmiris don't finely chop the leaves of a vegetable or the leafy greens. Remove coarse and hard stalks but keep the leaves whole. You may cook this in a pressure cooker, especially if you don't slice kohlrabi and rather keep them as cubes. Although I find it easy to make in pan or wok by the traditional technique of braising and simmering. If you use a pressure cooker, manually remove the pressure once done and don't let the leaves sit in the steam within. This can lead to leaves loosing their vibrant green although the taste wouldn't be diminished. Over spicing this recipe with anything other than the mentioned ingredients is a strict NO! It will largely alter the flavour and overpower the delicate flavour of the kohlrabi stem and leaves alike. Mustard oil is already a pungent ingredient and sufficient to lend flavour to the dish. You may make it with any other oil, but the taste won't be the same. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 2-3 kohlrabi with leaves 1 tbsp mustard oil 1/2 tsp asafoetida 2-3 dried red chilies 2 whole green chilies (you may prick the chilies slightly) 1 tsp salt, or to taste Method Using your hand, remove the long stems from the bulb or use a knife to cut off the stems. Remove the leaves from the coarse stems and keep aside. You may tear extra large leaves into two but don't chop them too small. Peel the kohlrabi and slice the bulb into medium thick pieces. Give the leaves and sliced bulb a rinse and keep aside. In a wok or pan, heat mustard oil till it smokes. Then, add asafoetida and the kohlrabi slices. Braise them for 3-4 minutes and then add 3 cups of water, and then add salt and chilies. Bring it to a boil. Add the leaves and give a mix. Now cover and cook on low heat for 5-7 minutes. Open the lid and then let it simmer on medium heat for 15 minutes or until the leaves and vegetables are tender. If cooking in a pressure cooker, use about 2 cups of water and cook for 5 minutes (1 whistle on high pressure and another 1-2 on medium heat), and after removing from heat, release pressure by lifting the whistle using a spatula. Serve with rice and some yogurt.

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe A mushy concoction of grains and lentils or millets at its heart, a khichdi is the ultimate one-pot meal of India, one dish that has myriad forms, ranging from traditional to contemporary. It's so wholesome in nutrition and so easy to make that even Britishers anglicized it to kedgeree in the colonial times and relished it for breakfast everyday. It's the most ubiquitous food in Indian cuisine, and also the oldest in the subcontinent, or at least amongst the oldest of foods people in that part of the world have eaten. Fed as the first solid food to a child and opted as light food for ailing adults, customized for celebratory nosh-ups and somber meals alike, khichdis have multiple faces throughout the length and breadth of India. Originating from the Sanskrit word khiccā, khichdi is also mentioned in the accounts of Ibn Batuta, the famous Moroccan traveler who visited India in the 14th century. Read this article to better acquaint yourself how ancient khichdi is and the varieties of khichdis Indians make. My encounter with khichdi is old, just like any other Indian. Not restrained by any specific recipe, khichdi is versatile and forgiving, a class of food and not one particular dish. Today, I'm talking about one such khichdi, which is made in many homes in India, and with alterations in the tempering or chaunk as it's called in Hindi, renders variation in taste and consistency. This khichdi is a mix of rice and split mung beans, and loaded with fresh winter vegetables. Have I told you that I am never excited about rains? Being a Bombaywali, I had no doubt accepted the quintessential monsoons that all locals are acquainted with. But there were days when the umbrella betrayed me, and I returned home with muddy water filled in my shoes, hair soggy in the mist after the rain. I issued oaths about trains running late due to waterlogged tracks or for the sheer irony that the taps at home were dry while it poured hard outside. I’d scrub and clean dirt off my feet and sweat off my face, taking mugs of water from the bucket Auntie A, my then landlady, kept aside. And then, I’d ease a little, settling down on the divan, grabbing the bowl of piping hot khichdi and a cup of ginger chai kept on a folded Midday paper on the side table. "Ugh! I can't do this anymore..." I'd announce putting a morsel in my mouth, "...this struggle of commuting amidst the madness of rains." "Barsaat ne har saal aana hai puttar, tu kyun inni importance deti hai? Yahan paida nahi hui toh kya, hai toh tu Bambai ki na? Subah tak bhool jayegi aaj ki barsat." "Rains are to come every year dear, why do you give it so much importance? So what you're not born here, you're from here after all. You'll forget this ordeal in the morning." And just like that she could talk me out of it, comforting me with her khichdi and her words, like the nonchalant fisherwomen in Mario Miranda's caricatures, who walked no matter how hard it rained and how wet their fish got in the baskets over their head, speeding past other Bombaywallas. Rice and moong dal boiled into a mushy blend, tempered with ghee and cumin roasted an earthy brown, a chili or two for the much-needed sensation of hot on the tongue, some asafoetida enduring the rest of it, and a generous sprinkle of green coriander leaves. That’s about it. There was nothing more in that khichdi, that staple dinner on most rainy days with Auntie A in Bombay. When the somewhat existent winter arrived, rains wouldn’t cease suddenly. It’d be a slow deluding process and Auntie's typical khichdi would find some seasonal accompaniments. Carrots, spinach and peas would be cooked with dal and rice, some onions or tomatoes for change. Simple khichdi would turn into vegetable masala khichdi, smelling delicious as usual. Meal after meal, day after day, Auntie dished out food from her relatively small kitchen in a moderately sized house over years. When I turn the pages of time, I still find her there, sitting on a stack of pillows lined up on that stool, a window overlooking the gas stove on which she cooked, the walls a tone of sepia, her demeanor diluting in that moment. Auntie passed away from this mortal world, leaving behind a legacy for me, one that lets me render khichdis of all kinds bearing her semblance, humble on the outside, a certain depth on the inside. I have lived elsewhere in India but I love Bombay. There’s no part of me that doesn’t. Despite its exasperating throngs and pricey cubbyholes, the many heartbreaks and an excessively damp quarter of the year, I love that city which was home for a decade of my life. How can I not, for it gave me Auntie A and the gift of her food, her steady old wrinkled hands that taught me how to cook and nuskhas (tips/formulas) that are lifesavers in my kitchen till date. Pro Tip: Auntie A's tip for khichdi was standard, "paani se na dar aur chaunk ache se laga." "Don't be scared of how much water to add and temper it very well." I've often been asked what's the ratio of water and grains plus lentils while making a khichdi. It depends on the type of lentil you're using. Here are some pointers: Dals usually swell up after getting cooked, so their quantity tends to increase while rice stays as is. Lighter dals like yellow moong dal, red masoor dal and tur dal cook faster, and tend to use less water. Whole green moong dal and chana dal are heavier and require more water as well as produce khichdis that are not easy on the stomach. I prefer using both rice and dal in equal parts because I like dal to dominate more than rice. You can also use 1 and 1/2 parts rice and 1 part lentils as well. So, is there a golden ratio? While the ratio could vary slightly depending on the dal you use, the standard that will not fail is: for 1/3 cup of rice and 1/3 cup of dal, use 3 cups of water for a thicker consistency khichdi, and 3 and 1/2 cups of water for runnier consistency. If you're using a heavier dal, using more water is advisable. For lighter dals, less water wouldn't harm. Always keep a pot of boiling water ready to adjust the consistency after cooking! Tempering is key to the taste of any khichdi. Cumin, asafoetida, chilies, ginger are few things which always work great for tempering no matter what kind of khichdi you're making. Heat oil to its optimum temperature to let the spices lend their taste and health benefits to the fat. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients Note: You can convert this khichdi into plain dal khichdi by not using any vegetables. You can skip the onions and tomatoes too. 1/3 cup rice (preferably medium long) 1/3 cup split green moong dal (or split yellow moong dal or tur dal) 1/3 cup sliced carrots 1/3 cup green peas (fresh or frozen) 1/3 cup spinach washed and chopped 1 small onion sliced (if it's a large onion, use a quarter of it) 1 small tomato chopped (if it's a large tomato, use a quarter of it) For tempering: 2 tsp ghee or oil 1 tsp cumin seeds 1/4 tsp asafoetida 1-2 red or green chilies chopped 1/2 inch ginger pounded 1 tsp turmeric 1/4 tsp red chili powder (optional) fresh coriander for garnish 1 tsp salt, or to taste Method Note: If you're making it without vegetables, you can do the tempering in the pressure cooker first. Then, add the dal and sauté for a few seconds, then add rice and water. Wash the dal and rice separately, and keep them ready in two bowls. Keep 3 cups of water on the side as well. For a slightly runny consistency, you can use 3.5 cups of water. Heat 1/2 tsp ghee or oil in a pressure cooker or instant pot, and add the washed dal in it. Sauté for a couple of seconds and then quickly add rice, carrots, peas and tomatoes. Stir to mix. Add water, salt, 1/2 tsp turmeric and stir again. Note: If you're using frozen peas, don't add them now. Add them when you make the tadka later. Close the pressure cooker or instant pot and let the ingredients cook. For pressure cooker, cook on high heat for 1 whistle and 2 whistles on medium to low heat. For instant pot, cook on high pressure for 7-8 minutes. Once done, take the pressure cooker off the heat. For instant pot, it'll automatically switch off. Let the steam release naturally after that. Do the tempering: Heat a pan or wok, and add the remaining ghee or oil. Once hot, add the cumin seeds and let them sizzle. Add asafoetida, red chilies and onions and sauté for a couple of seconds. Turn the heat down a bit and add ginger. Sauté and then add remaining turmeric and red chili powder (if using). Stir to combine. Keep boiling hot water ready on the side, and open the pot or cooker in which you boiled the khichdi, and see if you are happy with the consistency. If you want it more runny, add hot water and more salt to adjust taste and consistency. Once the onions seem cooked through, a slight red-brown colour, add spinach and (frozen peas if using frozen ones) cook till the leaves wilt. Pour this tempering over the khichdi or vice versa. Mix everything well. Garnish with coriander and serve hot with yogurt and pickles!

Jump to Recipe Print Recipe Food has always been the biggest and perhaps, the strongest source of nostalgia for me. There is a subtlety associated with food nostalgia, something that evokes intense emotions. More than the sight of food, its smells travel longer in our memories and stay for times to come. For instance, the smell of pav bhaji for me — an umami medley of vegetables mashed up with spices and butter, scooped and cleared off the plate with griddle-toasted quarter loaves of bread. Pav Bhaji, conceivably mundane to locals in Bombay, was a newfangled joy for me in early 2000s. Considering that my mother is an excellent cook and impeccable in her creations in the kitchen, she never encouraged me or my siblings to loiter for street food when we were children. Needless to say we didn't enjoy generous pocket money to be spent on food that vendors sell on the roadsides in India. Moreover, pav bhaji wasn't a street food in the small towns of India where I grew up, at least what I remember from my equivocal childhood memories spread across multiple places. Pav Bhaji is quintessentially Bombay food, its name spins off the cosmopolitanism that expounds Bombay. Pav (pao in Portuguese) was introduced by Portuguese in Goa and travelled to Bombay, and this foreign food proved a consummate fit for the Indian bhaji (vegetables). With the outbreak of civil war in the 1860s and Abraham Lincoln's navy blocking the Mississippi and New Orleans, Manchester's looms were halted, leaving cotton prices to skyrocket. The time was ripe for astute businessmen in Bombay, believed to be the Gujarati traders who moved from Surat to Bombay in the 1660s (with their dhokla, fafda, khamni, patra and thepla that started a snack revolution in India centuries later). The discerning traders worked late into the night in the American and European time zones, when cotton rates were wired in and orders were wired out. At these wee hours, wives were asleep at home while their hungry trader husbands fatigued at the Bombay cotton exchange. This led to the food stalls outside cotton mills to create a late night food, pav bhaji. A mishmash of leftover vegetables was cooked with tomatoes done to goodness, culminating in a gravy smelling of spices and oil settled on a griddle, and served with buttered loaves of bread. While this version of the story narrates the story of pav bhaji originating on the streets of Bombay, another version claims pav bhaji to have originated in homes of the cotton mill workers and travelled later to the streets. The toiling working class of Bombay in the 1800s slogged 12 hours a day at the textile mills setup by the British. To ensure that the men sweating at the mills weren't famished, women of the households came up with a quick-fix meal that was suited to their economic impedition. A medley of vegetables was cooked in typical Maharashtrian spice blend and packed with bhakri (an Indian flatbread) in the tiffin boxes. The pav replaced the bhakri in the later half of the nineteenth century. I tend to lean towards the latter story than former because the first pav bhaji stalls outside the cotton exchange are believed to have come up in the 1950s or 60s, much later than the American civil war or the mill culture of Bombay of the 1860s. Moreover eating out wasn't common in those times, and as Kaumudi Marathé — a popular voice in the Maharashtrian food scene — explains in her writings that snack items were limited to fritters (like batata vada and bhajiyas) available at railway stations or public places. Irrespective of its origin, whether it was a consequence of housewives cooking in the chawls (blocks of apartments for mill workers) or the ingenuity of street vendors, pav bhaji lies at heart of the mill culture of Girangaon which undoubtedly shaped the face of Bombay in the twentieth century. It goes a long time back in Bombay's past, and has travelled beyond Bombay making a place for itself in every household menu in India. While the Maharsahtrians make it spicy, the Gujaratis lend a sweeter note, the Jains make it without onion and garlic while the Punjabis top it with copious butter. Globalization has diversified pav bhaji further. So, you would easily find cheese or pasta added to pav bhajis these days. Commercialization has further led pav bhaji masala (spice blend) to be used in other kinds of foods, like masala dosas, tava pulao and misal pav. Throughout my years living in Bombay, I have loved eating the non-spicy, free of food colour pav bhaji at the famous Amar Juice Centre in Bombay, and I have also waited in queues outside the iconic Sardar Pav Bhaji to savor the utterly buttery version of pav bhaji served there. On every other trip from South Bombay to my then home in New Bombay, I have packed a plate of this legendary dish from Cannon Pav Bhaji outside the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus or CST station. I have shamelessly devoured my friend, Rishita's lunchbox at office as her mom makes the most amazing pav bhaji and I have also unabashedly declared to my elder sister that every time I visit her, she must make her typical pav bhaji. That's pav bhaji for me — memories of Bombay slathered on a plate. What about this pav bhaji recipe? No two pav bhajis would taste alike.This is because the spice blend, pav bhaji masala, used in a pav bhaji could vary depending on the brand of the masala. The taste is also dependent on the quantity and kind of tomatoes, the variety of vegetables and the usage or absence of butter. My version is more home like, and I like the texture of my pav bhaji slightly on the chunky side. I boil the vegetables and potatoes separately: chopped vegetables with minimum water and potatoes with skin-on and submerged in water. I don't use any added food colours and thus, the colour of my pav bhaji is never a strange red. To add an oomph to the colour, I sometimes add beetroot. I usually rely on Everest Pav Bhaji masala when I don't have my homemade pav bhaji masala ready. For the vegetables, I use bellpeppers, cauliflower, green beans, carrots, peas and potatoes. The gravy is predominantly tomatoes with a small portion of onions. I tend to add less butter in my pav bhaji and prefer it that way. There are two stages when I add butter: in the beginning when I start tossing the onions and in the end when the gravy is almost done. I recommend making it in a thick bottom pan, skillet or wok that is wide. When all the vegetables are mashed together, the quantity will double and you would need space on the skillet to keep tossing and turning the gravy around. The more you sauté it, the better will be its texture and taste alike. Can I make it vegan? Yes! Replace the butter in the recipe with an unsweetened vegan butter like cashew butter or sunflower butter, or go butter free totally. How can I make the pav bhaji masala at home? To make my version of pav bhaji masala at home, dry roast 2 tbsp coriander, 1 tbsp cumin, 1 bay leaf, 3-4 cloves, 1 black cardamom, 1/2 inch cinnamon, 1 tsp peppercorns, 1/4 tbsp fennel, 2-3 dried whole red chilies, 1/2 tbsp amchur (dry mango powder), a pinch of nutmeg and a strand of mace in a pan, cool the spices and then blend together with a pinch of salt. Recipe Ingredients 2 cups of chopped vegetables like green bell pepper, cauliflower, green beans, carrots, beets 1/2 cup peas 2 medium potatoes boiled 1 onion finely chopped 3-4 tomatoes finely chopped 1/4 tsp cumin 1 tsp ginger and garlic minced or paste 1 tsp red chili powder 1/4 tsp turmeric 3 tbsp Pav Bhaji masala 1-2 tbsp of neutral oil 3-4 cubes of unsalted butter Salt to taste Method Make the bhaji: Boil the potatoes in an instant pot or pressure cooker, and keep aside. Add salt to the vegetables in minimum water and boil using the same pressure cooker or instant pot. Heat a thick bottom pan or skillet on medium heat and add oil and half of the butter butter. Once the butter melts, add cumin and then the ginger garlic paste. Let everything sizzle and then add the onions. Sauté for about 3-4 minutes and then add red chili powder and turmeric. Mix and sauté again for at least 3-4 minutes. Add the tomatoes and keep sautéing until the tomatoes soften. Lower the heat slightly and check your vegetables. Peel the boiled potatoes and add them to the boiled vegetables. Mash everything as finely as you can using a potato masher. The mixture should appear like a porridge. Get back to the skillet and turn up the heat. Add 1 and 1/2 tbsp of pav bhaji masala and sauté the tomatoes more, until they lose their juiciness and mix well with the tomatoes. Use the potato masher to smash the onion-tomato mixture. Add the mashed vegetables and mix everything well. Add the remaining 1 and 1/2 tbsp pav bhaji masala, and continue blending and mashing with the potato masher. Check seasoning and add salt as required. Add remaining butter and mix again. Once everything looks well combined and you're happy with the consistency and texture of the bhaji, turn off the heat. Keep the bhaji aside. Toast the pav: Slice open the pav or dinner rolls with a knife. Place a griddle or pan on the stove and heat some butter or oil on it. Add a pinch of red chili, and then place the cut-opened loaves on the griddle. Move them on the griddle in a swirling motion and turn to toast both sides. Serve the bhaji piping hot with toasted pav with some raw chopped onions and wedges of lime. So, bread with mashed vegetables! What could possibly be so compelling about this dish, you may wonder if you have never eaten or made pav bhaji! Wait till you make it. I bet you will wipe your plate with extra pav to finsih every bit of the bhaji on your plate! Often the most simplistic foods are the ones that make us feel at home. Dishes that don't challenge you with the complexity of techniques and skills. They have an assurance no matter how bad you cook them, they will taste good and make you feel full, and I feel pav bhaji exemplifies this best! If you make this recipe, don't forget to tag me on Instagram or drop in your comments here! I will be happy to hear from you and know how you liked my pav bhaji! Related Posts Sai Bhaji

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe The simplest dishes are often the hardest to make and also toughest to cook in a way that they taste good. Sooji upma, Indian semolina made into a breakfast delicacy which could be thought as a savoury halwa is one such dish that entails an understanding of how flavours balance each other to generate taste that's appealing. In India, sooji is used extensively to make breakfast or lunch preparations like upma, idli, uttapam and sweet dishes like halwa as well as added to batters for making fritters to lend a crisp texture. In many parts of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha, it's extremely popular for quick servings in the morning or mid-day meals. My family being from Odisha wasn't an exception — upma was our breakfast on more days than I can count. “I came down as soon as I thought there was a prospect of breakfast.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre. This thought of Jane describes me every bit. As long as there's breakfast, I will show up! John Milton definitely taught us that "morning shows the day", which I take a step further, breakfast makes the day! As long as I can remember, I have always been excited about breakfast. It's the meal I care about most. Not that I care less about the other meals, but breakfast usually sets the tone of my day. Mother always made filling breakfasts on weekdays to keep us on toes until we opened our lunchboxes in school. On weekends, the face of breakfast changed depending on how packed was the day with chores — more chores in the morning meant late lunch and so a heavy breakfast to keep the noisy children at bay. I've deeply appreciated everything mother cooked, and even when there was something on the plate like roasted semolina lightly tempered and simmered in hot water, I never complained. I'll be honest. I didn't grew up loving sooji upma. Mother's version was rather plain, and perhaps that's why it was always topped up with a spicy aloo jhol (potato gravy) or ghugni (dried white peas gravy); the jhol being served with hot pooris for lunch. My paternal side of the family were flag bearers of this combo while the maternal side favoured sooji upma with copious amounts of coconut chutney. Neither struck a chord with me because the upma itself was insipid. My love for this ubiquitous breakfast first blossomed in Mumbai with a plate of idli chutney and some subtly spiced upma at a roadside vendor's shop. Everybody called the owner Anna, meaning brother, who showed up at exactly 6:30 in the morning outside our hostel. While walking to the railway station to board a local train and head off to the daily grind, people would pick up a pack of idli, vada and upma or quickly have their breakfast at the stall. Anna also sold fresh filter coffee and a special lemon or tomato rice on some days. Apart from the idli, I always went to his shop for the rava/sooji upma. His upma didn't have a ton of ingredients — curry leaves, mustard, ginger, green chilies, very few onions and the quintessential south Indian tempering of chana and urad dal. It was utmost tasty on its own, and needed nothing else. Sips of coffee and spoons of that sooji upma made me happy, not to mention Anna's extra special packing of the leftovers and warm wishes for not just the day but the life ahead. Bangalore got me very close to sooji upma. On moving to a new city after living a decade in Mumbai, I was lucky to unwind with sister M. For a month while I took a break and hunted new jobs, I also got to learn her take on the sooji upma. She added roasted cashews and stalks of fresh coriander, ideas she picked up from the Udipi style upma she had in her college days in Manipal and added big squeezes of lime in the end. Before serving, she would add scoops of the hot upma to a bowl, press it to make a mould, and then invert the bowl over a plate. I later found it was typical in many neighbourhood eateries as well. In her wonderful book, Vegetarian India, Madhur Jaffrey says, The Western world has no real equivalent for upma. It is somewhat like a risotto, except that it's not as dense and heavy, and not so wet and molten either. It is perhaps more like Chinese fried rice, except that it is a little wet and tends to collect in small clamps. Upma is, in the last analysis, delicious in itself. I don't think I have ever come across a better description of upma, especially to someone who may never have heard of it or tasted it. Upma is a class of food rather a single dish. The grains that are most commonly used to make upma are semolina (sooji/rava) and flattened rice (poha), and sometimes whole wheat or cracked wheat, dalia. However, there are more varieties of upma in the contemporary world like bread upma and quinoa upma. In Tamil Nadu and southern Karnataka, coarse rice flour is also used to make upma that's called akki tari uppittu locally. In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, it's common to eat upma wrapping in pesarattu, a soft crepe made of green whole moong dal. In Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, upma made with flattened is popularly called as aval upmavu in Malayalam and atukulu upma respectively. In Udipi, upma is made with coarser rava and referred as sajjige. In it's basic form it's a carb that's easy to put together and gets done quickly and has the flexibility to absorb the tastes and seasoning of spices and vegetables that increase its nutritional value. Although the western world understands sooji or rava as semolina and for the lack of a better word, Indians also refer it as semolina outside India, it's a bit different from the true semolina, the kind that's used to made pasta. Sooji or rava is made from soft wheat while semolina is made from hard durum wheat. Sooji is a lot like polenta, although cooks much faster and renders a lighter and fluffier texture. No matter which version of upma you make, if you can master the art of making this modest dish of the Indian cuisine, your definition of easy recipes is bound to change! Don't forget to have a hot cup of coffee to wash it down your throat — a combination that is always great. Pro Tip: Since I always longed to eat a palatable sooji upma, I got a knack of it once I understood the layers beneath the overall dish. Begin with a fragrant and slightly spicy tempering. The combination of mustard seeds, curry leaves, ginger and green chili never fails. I ensure two types of nuttiness. One with a handful of chana and urad dal and the other with some cashews. If using onions, keep them chunky and just a handful of chopped bits are enough. A pinch of sugar and a bit of lime balance the flavours and round up the spiciness of the chilies. To this you can always add vegetables as you please. And, if you don't, your upma will still taste amazing! The ratio of sooji to water that I like best is 1:3. For 1 part of sooji, use 3 or 3.5 parts of water. Semolina absorbs water very well, so you needn't worry about how much water you add. The more water you add, the longer it may take to absorb and come to an edible consistency. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 1/2 cup sooji (coarse semolina) 1 tsp ghee (optional) 1 tbsp oil 1/2 tsp mustard seeds 1/2 tbsp chana dal 1/2 tbsp urad dal 6-7 cashews 1/2 tsp ginger chopped 1/2 of a small onion, chopped 1 green chili chopped 6-7 curry leaves 1 and 1/2 cups water 1/2 tsp salt or to taste 1/8 tsp sugar 1 wedge of lime 3-4 coriander leaves with stalks, chopped Method In a pan, add 1/2 tsp ghee, let it melt and then add the semolina. Roast on low flame for 2-3 minutes. Take the sooji out of the pan and keep aside. You may roast it without ghee also. In the same pan, heat oil and then add mustard seeds and let them crackle. Next add chana dal, urad dal and cashews. Let the dal and cashews turn slightly golden. Next add ginger and cook till its raw smell disappears, and then add the onions, green chili and curry leaves. Sauté until onion is translucent. Add water, salt and sugar and bring it to a boil. Now, let it simmer for 2-3 minutes to infuse all the flavours. Now, start adding the roasted sooji, continuously mixing it to prevent any lumps. When almost all water is absorbed, reduce the heat to low and cover and cook for 1 minute. Then, turn off heat, add lime juice, coriander leaves and the remaining ghee. Give a good mix. Serve hot! You may add some chutney or refreshments on the upma!

#rozkakhana series Jump to recipe I must have been less than 10 years old when I visited Rishikesh for the first time, and the only time I have been there. Perhaps I was younger. Our memories are so peculiarly selective—details are often blurred as we grow old. My parents took me and my sisters on immensely long trips during the summer break albeit to places that had some spiritual connection. Rishikesh, part of Devbhoomi, land of gods as Uttarakhand is often referred, was an obvious choice. I still crease up with laughter at that family picture taken on Laxman Jhoola, my eldest sister trying to play along the typical coaxing before every photograph, "smile please", my elder sister almost ready to get out of the frame as mother held her tightly and father nudging me to simper. I and my sisters with our windblown bob cut hairs and bangs look quite riotous in it, and it's evident we weren't willing to pose. It was a relatively hot day, and all of us had taken off our sweaters and other must-have gear for the hills, our scarves tied by mother's bag and jerseys by our waists. I remember we were hungry, eager to devour plates at the local eatery we stopped by next. It was a shack down the suspension bridge, a few blocks of walking distance. Unadorned and rustic, the eatery had wooden benches outside for travellers to sit and enjoy all the pahadi khana—food of the hills. A dense crowd outside was foolproof to father that the food would be good, although mother has always been slightly disapproving of eating at such places. I ate pahadi aloo gutke for the first time at that tiny joint selling large portions of food for really paltry prices from what I recall. There was a relish of greens on the side, with hot gahat ki dal and steamed rice. Food is such a pneumonic. Every time I think of Rishikesh and that trip, that bowl of aloo gutke emerges crystal clear in my memories. Although India has an elaborate expanse of mountainous regions including, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, parts of Punjab, Uttarakhand and Sikkim, the Hindi word pahad literally meaning mountains or hills, strangely gets associated with the state of Uttarakhand and its many quaint cities only. And, anything from the hills or the mountains means pahadi. It was many years later that I married into a pahadi family and realized that the tempering in the quintessential potato stir fry of the hills isn't seasoned with usual mustard seeds as I had first thought as a child, rather with seeds of a rare wild plant called jakhya in the local dialect, which goes by the botanical name, Cleome Viscosa. Black in colour, it's much smaller than mustard and adds a distinctive crunch and fragrance. As my mom-in-law learned from panditji, head cook in our family home at Haldwani, she enlightened me that jakhya isn't cultivated as a traditional crop like mustard. It grows of its own accord on the rugged Himalayan Terai and Sivalik Hills, often as a second fiddle beside other native plants. Uttarakhand is divided into two regions, Kumaon and Gadhwal, and jakhya happens to be a dominant member amidst spice jars in all homes in both these terrains. Dogged life in the hills, especially in the upper altitudes, has many lessons to offer on simple and slow living. The extensive use of native Himalayan spices like jakhya, timur (a variety of pepper), faran (or jimbu, a herb from the onion family), gandhrayan (a Himalayan herb), bhaangjeera (hemp seeds) in the Kumaoni and Gadhwali kitchens is a deliberation on how locals prepare and eat food in its most unedited form. My husband, a champion of slow living and simple eating, loves pahadi aloo gutke as much as he loves the other non-pahadi versions of it. Whether it's the sookhe aloo or aloo jeera (potatoes tempered with mustard or cumin), or the dosa waley aloo (the mash potato filling that goes inside a dosa), he loves them all. He has fond memories of aloo gutke, gutke means pieces in the Kumaoni dialect, his Bua M (Aunt M) made—eminently charred at the bottom, smelling of mustard oil, crispy on the outside and soft inside, done to perfectness but not mushy—and ladled with love on a plate of hot pooris or paratha, bringing heaven all the way to his mouth in every bite. Since that's the way he likes it most, I intentionally char the potato chunks a bit more. It's an art, the char. You don't want to burn them but you definitely want the brown roasted edges and bottom on the potatoes. Finding jakhya outside the Himalayan belt can be hard, although globalization has been helpful in making things available at our fingertips. Ever since my papa-in-law got me a good stock of jakhya for me from a pahadi mela (local fair in the hills) in 2019, my Canadian kitchen hasn't seen dearth of it. While many will propose aloo jeera as an equivalent, purists will dismiss the substitution of jakhya with mustard or cumin. I'm with the latter on this one. For an authentic taste like how it's made at home, and to genuinely call a potato stir fry as pahadi aloo gutke, cooking it with mustard oil and tempering it with jakhya are key. The rest are extremely basic pantry spices. Make this easy stir fry on a weekday or weekend and enjoy with dal and rice or flatbreads with some raita. There isn't much you need to do. It needs 20 minutes of your time and some easy techniques to create this magical dish of the hills. Pro Tip: Pahadi aloo gutke literally means big chunks of pahadi potatoes, a variety of potatoes that grows in the mid-lower region of Himalayas where Uttarakhand is located. While you may not find this variety of potatoes easily outside this region, you can still cook any variety of potatoes in this fashion. Pahadi potatoes cook much faster, and do not need pre-boiling. If you're using any other variety of potatoes, simply boil them before hand and you're sorted. If using a pressure cooker to boil the potatoes, do not cook them beyond 2 whistles to prevent turning them mushy. If boiling in a pot, boil until an inserted fork comes out effortlessly through the skin of the potatoes. To ensure maximum char and crisp edges, shuffle the boiled potatoes in a vessel before adding into the pan for sautéing, and once you season the potatoes, cover and cook them on medium heat. The steam helps to cook and soften the potatoes from inside while the medium to high heat helps to roast them nice at the bottom and on the sides. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 4-5 medium sized potatoes 2 tbsp mustard mustard oil (or any oil of your preference, although mustard will provide authentic taste) 1 and 1/2 tsp jakhya (dog mustard or wild mustard) 1 tsp turmeric 1 tsp red chili powder (preferably a variety that provides colour but isn't too hot like Kashmiri or Deggi) 1 tsp coriander powder 2 dried whole red chilies 1 tsp salt, or to taste 2 tbsp fresh coriander leaves with stems, chopped Method Boil the potatoes in a pressure cooker on medium flame for 2 whistles only. Remove from heat and let the steam escape naturally. OR Wash and cut the potatoes in half. Boil 4-5 cups of water in a tall pot and add the potatoes into it and boil for 25-30 minutes or until the potatoes are done and tender on pricking with a fork. Note: If you're using the pahadi aloo variety available locally in Uttarakhand, you'd not necessarily boil them beforehand. They easily soften when covered and cooked in a pan. Remove the potatoes from the hot water, peel and chop them into large pieces. (optional) Add them to a colander or dish that has a lid. Now shuffle the potatoes in the colander/dish slightly by shaking swiftly so that the edges of the potatoes get ruffled. This will ensure crispy edges when they're finally sautéed. In a bowl, add 1 tsp oil, turmeric and red chili, and mix to make a paste. Add a few drops of water to adjust consistency. This ensures that the spices don't burn while you toss the potatoes on high heat. In a pan or wok that has a lid, add the remaining oil. Heat the oil to smoking point if using mustard oil. Once hot, add jakhya, let them sputter and then add the dry whole red chilies. Move the chilies in the pan with a spatula and let them smoke up. Now reduce the flame slightly and add the masala paste and cook for 30-40 seconds. Add the boiled potatoes and stir to combine. Once the potatoes are coated with the masala, add salt and stir gently taking care to not break the pieces. Cover and cook on medium to high heat to let the potatoes char from the bottom. Open in between and check the crispiness. This should take about 10-15 minutes. Remove from heat, add fresh coriander and serve hot!

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe Print Recipe Idli has been my comfort food since childhood. Hot idlis out of the steamer, dipped in veggie-loaded sambar and spicy chutneys give me unparalleled joy! For those of you who do not know what an idli is, it's a savoury cake made by steaming fermented batter. The batter is usually partly rice and partly urad dal (whole skinless black lentils) or semolina (sooji or rava). Rava idli is the one that is made with semolina fermented with curd (dahi) or yogurt. I usually resort to rava idli when I do not have the time to make the typical rice and urad dal batter, which takes a longer to ferment in a colder region like Canada as compared to the tropical Indian subcontinent. This south Indian delicacy is perfect for any meal, but I love it as breakfast or brunch. As rava idli is slightly on the heavier side as compared to the regular idli, I usually prefer it in a day-time meal than the night. However, if my meals in the day have been lighter, I do not mind indulging in dinner occasionally. Rava idli owes its birth to the now famous south Indian food chain, Mavalli Tiffin Room (MTR). As the staple idli-ingredient, rice became scarce during World War II, MTR experimented to use semolina with curd to create an idli batter. This gave us the famous rava idli. Typical from the state of Karnataka in India, rava idli is usually served with tangy runny potato curry and coconut chutney. The fact that food shortage resulted in the invention of rava idli intrigues me a lot. I wonder how many times innovation has been driven by necessity more than curiosity. And, the answer is uncountable times. Rava idli became famous. But there are countless creations that we perhaps make in our kitchens resorting to the unavailability of an ingredient, but fail to document it or take it for granted. What kitchen equipment do I need to make rava idli? You would need an idli steamer or an instant pot or a pressure cooker. This recipe uses an instant pot, which is an electric pressure cooker. You will need an idli stand or a trivet on which you could keep steel cups/bowls in which you would shape the idlis and then place inside your steamer/instant pot/pressure cooker. How long will it take to make rava idli batter? Rava idli uses an instant batter implying that the batter does not take a long time to ferment. After mixing semolina and yogurt with water, ensure that you leave the batter undisturbed for at least 20 minutes. If you can keep it for an hour or two, it's great but not a necessity. If you did not already know, fermentation produces good bacteria which is beneficial for health. Pro Tip: I have tried making the batter with Greek yogurt, and I haven't been quite satisfied with the results. I recommend using curd. However, if you don't have access to curd, use a plain unflavoured yogurt. I use Astro Bio Best yogurt for my recipes that require the Indian dahi as an ingredient, and the result is always good. Let the curd and semolina react and naturally ferment the batter for about 1 hour or at least 20 minutes. If you keep the batter undisturbed for a longer time (say 1 hour), you need to add less baking soda later. I recommend using coarse semolina and always dry roasting it (if it's already not roasted) on very low heat for about 3 minutes, cool it and then use to make the batter. This helps in puffing up the semolina and the tempering helps the flavour. While mixing water into the batter, I recommend using your clean hand than a spatula or spoon. I feel this helps the batter ferment better. Do not be scared to add more water to your water. Semolina is very forgiving in terms of the water added to it as compared to rice or lentils. Your batter will turn out fine despite adding more water. LESS WATER IS A BIG NO! Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 1 cup coarse semolina 3/4 curd or plain yogurt For tempering the semolina: 2 tsp neutral oil, 1 tsp mustard seeds, 1 tsp chana dal, 1 tsp white urad dal (optional), 1/4 tsp asafoetida, 1-2 green chilies finely chopped, 1 inch ginger minced, 5-6 curry leaves (you can skip if you don't like the taste or don't have access), 8-10 cashew nuts (optional) fresh coriander leaves chopped salt to taste 1/4 tsp baking soda Method Place a pan or kadhai on low to medium heat, and add oil. Once the oil is heated, add the ingredients mentioned for tempering semolina, one by one. Let everything crackle and then lower the heat. Add the coarse semolina and then toss it for about 3 minutes on low heat. Turn off heat, remove the pan from the stove and let it cool. Add the curd or yogurt into the tempered semolina and use your clean hand to mix everything well. Into this mixture, add some water. Start with half cup of water, and add more if needed. Note: The consistency of the batter should not be runny, it should be like a pancake batter or thicker. But, don't worry if you added more water. Semolina will soak up most of the water! See the pictures in this post to get an idea of how the batter should look like finally. Add the coriander leaves, and let the batter rest for about an hour or at least 20 minutes. Check the consistency of the batter. It would have soaked up a lot of water. Add about 2-3 tbsp of water and then add the baking soda. Give a good mix but do not overdo it at this stage. Note: Over working the batter after baking soda is added can tend to flatten the idli. To help it rise well, don't over mix after adding the baking soda. Grease the idli plates with oil and ladle the rava idli batter onto them. Meanwhile add half cup of water to your instant pot, and switch it on. Activate steam mode. Note: I usually leave the last plate on the idli stand empty as it tends to touch the water. You can also place a trivet and make your idli stand sit on it. Place the idli stand inside the instant pot once you can see the steam emerging. Close the lid of the instant pot, and steam cook at high pressure for 3-4 minutes, keeping the valve in venting position. Set a manual timer and then switch off the instant pot when the timer goes off. Let the steam escape naturally (should take 3 minutes) or manually release it. Open the instant pot. Your rava idlis are ready to be devoured! I love having it with some tomato chutney or a veggie-sambaar. A sweet and sour potato curry will also be great as a side!

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe Print Recipe Between 2004 and 2007, my father was on the verge of retirement after forty years of banking service in the Indian government. His job during this time kept him and my mother relocating between small towns around Indore. So once in very two or three months, I would pack my bags at my hostel in Bombay and catch an early morning flight to Indore. They would always come together, my mother and father, to pick me up from the airport. We would load the trunk of our modest Maruti 800 and set off on a six hour drive to reach home in Burhanpur. I love watching a city in the early hours of the day when everything is slow and the smithereens of life seem to float in the fresh morning air. While my father drove and my mother asked a million questions about how life was back at college, I would eagerly wait for our breakfast halt. Somewhere near Krishnapura Chattri, my father would slow down and ask where we wanted to have poha jalebi, a quintessential Indore breakfast and snack. After a much momentous discussion, (by then my father would have turned around a number of shops) we would stop at one of the poha joints at Rajwada or head off to Anand Bazaar. In a matter of minutes warm yellow flattened rice would be ladled onto our plates from a fervid poha kadai and garnished with chopped onions, pomegranate, jeravan sev and loads of green coriander. Two servings of piping hot chai glasses at the least and mother would bring out a half eaten packet of biscuits from her bag, Parle G or Marie usually. Father would often vouch for extra jalebi and mother would refute quite easily. "Only one more, I promise", my father would nudge, and mother would let him have it if I agreed to share. We would get poha usal at times in the final round and all three of us would bite off a single jalebi one after another. With bellies full and hearts happy, we would proceed home, meandering the gullies and markets of Indore — father pointing at some old building or fort and talking about its history, mother sparing no effort to change the channel on the radio with me half asleep in the backseat. The drive got shorter, three hours, when my parents moved to Anjad in 2006. But our halts at poha joints never changed. Sometimes we discovered new shops and sometimes we stuck to our favourites. My parents moved to Bhubaneswar in 2007, and I have never been back to Indore since then. The nostalgia of those journeys and the sunshine coloured poha adorned with ruby like pomegranate often lingers in my mind. That's the thing about food, it's a mnemonic. More than a decade later, I heave euphoria whenever I remember Indori poha and recreate it in my kitchen. This inevitable breakfast, brunch and snack staple of India goes long back in the food history of the country. A possible reference to poha occurs in the epic, Mahabharata where Sudama, Krishna's childhood friend reluctantly offers him chivda on meeting after many years. Krishna is a wealthy king and Sudama is daunted by his royalty and wonders if Krishna would appreciate the humble poha. Far from disdaining, Krishna relishes every bit of the chivda. Although many dismiss this as fable, the veteran food historian and nutritionist K T Achaya remarks in The Illustrated Foods of India that beaten and parched rice is called chipita or chidva in Sanskrit, also pronounced chivda or chevda. This mention is confirmatory that poha has been around for a long time in India. Even the British could not keep off its popularity and effortless cooking; just add hot water over the dry flakes and they fluff up in minutes. Add milk or yogurt, top it up with bananas, jaggery, honey or sugar and you have an instant porridge ready. Food writer, Vikram Doctor mentions in an Economic Times article: In 1846, The Times of India reported an order from the Bombay garrison that whenever native troops were to be transported by ship, “the commissariat department will supply only grain parched, and ‘powa’, for their use on the voyage.” In 1878, the paper reported that a troop of sepoys was detained at Cyprus for want of ‘powa’ for their journey back home. I favour poha or flattened rice to the usual rice for its low glycemic index and high iron and carbohydrates content. It's much lighter than rice and so straightforward to cook. I still like rice, and perhaps love poha because it's a less-processed unpolished version of rice. Paddy is cooked partly and then dried in the sun for hours until it turns slightly hard. This semi-cooked sundried paddy is then pounded and flattened to form poha in different textures —thick, thin, medium, extra thin. Being bland, these flat rice flakes can absorb a variety of flavours, creating a plethora of dishes along the length and breadth of India. Growing up, poha appeared in two avatars at home. As instant breakfast with bananas mashed into chuda (as poha is called in Odia) in milk or curd, and some sugar sprinkled on top. This is a common breakfast in many Odia households although I was fond of it as a savoury breakfast or snack called chuda santula or chuda upma, tempered with curry leaves and mustard seeds and sautéed with onions and sometimes vegetables like peas, carrots or beans, topped with cashews and raisins. Seemingly close but largely different from the Maharashtrian poha I grew fond of later in Bombay, and a far cry from the Indori poha we got to know in Madhya Pradesh. There are greater varieties in the southern states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Though they all may look similar, different ingredients and their assimilation with poha create a multitude of layers in the dish's taste and appearance. While poha is the signature dish of both Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, and prominent in the neighbouring state of Gujarat as well, the origin of poha is still under conjecture, though within India. Food critic and historian, Pushpesh Pant elicits the theory that poha travelled to Madhya Pradesh from Maharashtra. In an interview with The Hindu, he says: The Holkars and Scindias came to Madhya Pradesh from Maharashtra where the dish is popular. In Madhya Pradesh, wherever Maratha rulers went you can find common dishes like shrikhand and poha. So, it is logical to assume Maratha warriors brought it to North India and the Malwa region. What sets the Indori poha apart from any other poha is the addition of fennel seeds that impart a sweet fragrance and sev or bhujiya — a dough of gram flour and spices, and potatoes at times, is pressed through a sieve and deep fried in oil to form a crispy snack. While Maharashtrian poha is usually topped with freshly shredded coconut and chopped coriander leaves with a distinct flavouring of potatoes and onions, the poha in Nimar-Malwa region always has either crushed kachori or bhujia sev or a couple of jalebis on top. The famous Jeerawan masala of Indore is a careful spice mix of some 20 spices, and the same spice blend is also used to make the popular Jeerawan sev. While chilies, peanuts and pomegranates may take turns seasonally, the bhujia sev and jalebi are the constant flavour manipulators in the poha served in this region. The crunch and tang provide a characteristic taste and bite to the poha, rendering a memory that makes it stand out amidst its hundreds of cousins. The Indore Mithai Aur Namkeen-Vikreta Vyapari Sangh (IMANVVS), an association of sweets and snacks manufacturers, started documenting four popular food items of the Malwa region in 2019, which includes Indori poha, in an attempt to get Geographical Indicators (GI) tag for these food items. The efforts of the association are understandable as a GI tag defines the origin of a food or agricultural produce, and impacts the profitability and reputation of local sellers and manufacturers. Though poha has travelled everywhere in India and has found diverse identities across home kitchens, commercial restaurants and confectionary and snack shops, it's important to remember that the base ingredient of any dish alone does not make up its individuality. Think about biryani. Although quintessentially it's a combination of rice and meat or rice and vegetables, would it be appropriate to think an Awadhi biryani, hailed as the pioneer of the dumpukht style of cooking, same as a Kolkata biryani which significantly tastes different owing to the use of potatoes? In a country like India where food is largely regional and has been influenced by climate, agriculture, culture and ethnicity, understanding the subtle nuances of similar food across places in geographical proximity is vital to understand Indian food holistically. This brings me to an interesting and often unintelligible concept of food appropriation. As Coral Lee, Associate Editor at Food52 says in an article, "After all, it’s a fine line between appreciation and appropriation, respect and fetishization, celebration and profit." Having understood this, it's fair to say that one culture creating the food of another culture does not always mean food appropriation. If that was true, then diaspora food such as the Indo-Chinese chili chicken, gobi manchurian, fried rice and Hakka noodles would stand no chance to be authentic. While the Scindias and Holkars may have brought poha to Indore and were instrumental in making its use and consumption rife in the Malwa plateau and the surrounding areas, the indigenous people of these parts of now Madhya Pradesh lent their own style and charm to the poha preparation, deeming it as authentic as any other poha dish. This is how food travels and gets assimilated in new cultures and homes, and finds new dimensions in the process. The underlying point to consider is how much are we willing to question the origins of what we eat and learn about culinary cross-cultural exchange. What we learn is not an end but a precursor to sensitive, respectful and compassionate adoption of culture, history and cuisine. How can I recreate Indori poha at home? Indori poha is a typical street food in Indore as well as made in almost every household in the city. The process to make this poha is as simple as any other poha. What makes this preparation unique is the addition of Indori sev and a spice blend, Jerawan poha masala. Peas or pomegranate and onions are added on top along with a good heaping of the sev. While it was easier for me to find these two unique ingredients in India, not to mention the many packs of the sev and poha masala my parents took with them when moving from Madhya Pradesh, it's almost impossible to get these in Whitehorse, Canada. How can I make Jeerawan masala at home? When nostalgia hit hard, I started making the Jerawan poha masala at home — thanks to a rough scribbling of the ingredients from a store bought pack in the past. Out of the 20 spices mentioned on the pack, three ingredients were again difficult to find, black stone flower, cobra saffron and long pepper. After looking at a few homemade Jeerawan masala recipes and experimenting on my own, I have understood that this spice blend uses many ingredients that we use in garam masala. Black stone flower is not a mandatory ingredient, cobra saffron can be replaced by any other saffron or turmeric and long pepper can be replaced with peppercorns. To make it the way I make it at home, you can follow a simple and easy process in the recipe below. I make a good batch as this spice blend is quite versatile. You can sprinkle it on salads or chaat, add it to make bhutte ka kees and even add to the batter for making pakodas. Like garam masala, this spice mix has a combination of fragrant and earthy ingredients, and a slightly hot and piquant character. So use it in moderation and as per your spice tolerance. I also have a short cut for you in case you don't want to make this masala at home and can't find it in stores. To one tsp of garam masala, add 1/4 tsp amchur (dried mango powder) and 1/4 tsp fennel powder. How to make Indori sev at home? There are many recipes available online. If you're adventurous in the kitchen, you may try! I tend to use any store-bought sev that I have at home. This recipe from Hebbar's Kitchen is one of my favourites! Recipe Ingredients 1 cup thick poha (flattened rice) 1 tbsp oil 1 tbsp peanuts 1/2 tsp mustard seeds 1/2 tsp fennel seeds 2-3 green chilies slit 8-10 curry leaves 1/4 cup potato cut into small cubes (optional) 1/2 tsp Jeravan masala (or to 1/2 tsp of garam masala, add 1/3 tsp amchur and 1/3 tsp fennel powder) 1/4 tsp turmeric powder 1 lime (1/2 to squeeze and 1/2 to serve) 1/2 tsp sugar salt to taste freshly chopped cilantro 1 tbsp pomegranate seeds 1 small onion chopped (optional) 2 tbsp sev of your choice For the Jerawan masala: Whole spices: 1 tsp coriander, 1/2 tbsp cumin, 1/2 tbsp fennel, 4 cloves, 5 peppercorns, 1 black cardamom, 1/2 tsp caraway seeds, 1/2 inch cinnamon, 1 bay leaf, 3-4 dry red chilies depending on how spicy you want Powdered spices:1/2 tsp amchur (dry mango powder), 1/2 tsp saunth (dry ginger powder), a pinch of nutmeg powder, 1/4 tsp turmeric, a pinch of asafoetida, a pinch of black salt Method To make the Jerawan masala, dry roast the whole spices in a pan until you can smell the aroma. Take them off the heat, cool and then add the whole spices along with the powdered ones in a blender and grind coarse. Wash the poha thoroughly in a colander or vegetable strainer under running water, and let the poha rest and drain in the same colander. In a wok or thick bottom pan on medium heat, add the peanuts and sauté to lightly roast them. Take them out of the wok and keep aside. Add the diced potatoes to the same pan and sauté. Lower the flame and cover and cook with few splashes of water until the potatoes turn soft. It should take about 4-5 minutes. Once the potatoes are done, raise the flame to medium and add the mustard seeds, fennel seeds, curry leaves and slit chilies and let them crackle. Add the poha along with the Jerawan masala (or the replacement as mentioned in the ingredients) and turmeric. Toss and then squeeze half a lime and add sugar and salt. Mix everything and take the pan off the heat. Add cilantro, onions, peanuts, pomegranate seeds and sev on top. Serve hot with sweet jalebis if you can or just some freshly brewed chai. Every bite of the poha is a whirlpool of flavours. Tangy, spicy, sour and sweet - experience everything and relish this glory of Indore on your plate at breakfast or evening snack. I even make it for high-teas and it's loved so much. You cannot go wrong with this recipe. It's so easy and oh, so delicious. If you make this Indori poha, share your joy with me! Post your comments here or tag me on Instagram!

#rozkakhana series Jump to Recipe Print Recipe How do I start writing about #poha (flattened rice), the ubiquitous showstopper of breakfasts or snacks in any #Indian home? I don't know whether it's the consequence of a conventional Indian upbringing or simply a personal preference that I like my breakfast hot and savoury, and poha undoubtedly ranks high in my list of most resorted hot breakfasts. This modified version of rice is light, easily digestible and filling. I sometimes eat it for lunch too, or even dinner when there's dearth of energy to cook but a desire to cling to comfort food. Almost every home in the western, eastern, central and southern India cooks a version of flattened rice. It has many names: poha, pohay, chiwda, chire, chuda, aval, chevdo, pauaa, bajil, atukulu. And even this list of names seems incomplete for this beloved rice of India, which is soaked and softened in water and tempered with onions, spices and vegetables or sprouts and sometimes toasted off with a combination of nuts, raisins, spices and coconut pieces to be eaten as a flaky snack food. The northern states in India have also adopted it with much enthusiasm, lending the preparation their own twists. The more I explore the history of this exquisite variety of rice, the more I realize India seems to be the only country that celebrates it with such gusto. Quoting from Madhur Jaffery's book, Vegetarian India: Why it was that other countries with ancient histories of rice culture do not have any version of flattened rice. Some have puffed rice, another "instant" version suitable for a quick meal, but no one, to my knowledge, has the much-loved Indian poha. There are many different ways of cooking poha. I can safely say that about hundred permutations and combinations of ingredients are easily possible to render a different variety of poha preparation. Each method is unique and influenced by the style of cooking and staple ingredients in the particular region in India. For example, in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, poha is usually cooked with potatoes, onions and peanuts. The central state of Madhya Pradesh introduces fennel seeds and sev (crunchy short noodles made of chickpea flour) in the preparation while the states of Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Kerela eat water-soaked and drained poha in yogurt or milk, topped with jaggery or sugar along with the savoury versions. Some south Indian states spice it up with more chilies and lend sourness with tamarind and tomatoes. And, I have not even covered half of the varieties of dishes that can be made from flattened rice What about this recipe? Although I grew up eating my mom's east Indian style of poha called chuda upma, the Maharashtrian version of poha has become close to my heart over the years. This recipe is my favored style of making poha. It's made with onions (kanda in Marathi) and batata (potatoes in Marathi). I swear by this recipe because it's so easy and cleaning is a breeze. The end result is a sunshine-yellow mildly tangy dish with the whiff of roasted nuts, not to forget the play of fresh coriander leaves. You can skip the potatoes and peanuts from this recipe, or skip one of these, and the dish will still taste heavenly. I can guarantee that. You can also substitute peanuts with cashew nuts or add green peas along with the potatoes or simply add peas without the potatoes. You get an idea how you can mix and match the ingredients, right? Pro Tip: Soaking the poha is critical in any preparation that needs the flattened rice to be soft. This recipe also requires so. The trick is to wash the poha in a colander or vegetable strainer and let it sit as long as you go about other preparatory and cooking work for the poha. The soaked and softened poha should go into the wok as the last or last but one ingredient. Poha in India is available in different thicknesses. I use the thick or medium-thick variety to make dishes which need the poha to be softened, like this recipe. For a flaky dry snack preparation, I recommend using thin poha. And, if you're outside India, you can find it easily in an Indian store or the Indian/Asian food isles in a grocery store or order online. The Maharstrian style of poha is usually garnished with fresh grated coconut which I have skipped in this recipe. Recipe Did you check the pro tip? Ingredients 1 cup thick poha (flattened rice) 1 tbsp oil 1 tbsp peanuts 1 small potato diced into small pieces 1 tsp mustard seeds 8-10 curry leaves (fresh or dried) 2-3 green chilies slit 2 medium or 1 large onion chopped 1/4 tsp turmeric salt to taste freshly chopped cilantro 1 lemon (1/2 to squeeze and 1/2 to serve ) Method Wash the poha thoroughly in a colander or vegetable strainer under running water, and let the poha rest and drain in the same colander. In a wok or thick bottom pan on medium heat, add the peanuts and sauté to lightly roast them. Take them out of the wok and keep aside. Add the diced potatoes to the same pan and sauté. Lower the flame and cover and cook with few splashes of water until the potatoes turn soft. It should take about 4-5 minutes. Note: I usually have a batch of parboiled potatoes that cook fast. If you don't have pre-boiled potatoes, chop the potatoes quite small. This ensures a faster cooking time. Once the potatoes are done, raise the flame to medium and add the mustard seeds, curry leaves and slit chilies. Be careful as everything crackles. Note: Slitting and adding chilies in a tempering tends to make them less spicy while letting the right amount of heat to stay in the dish. Add the onions and let them sweat with turmeric and a pinch of salt. The intention is not to brown them. It should take about 3-4 minutes on a medium flame. If you want to add peas or any other vegetables, now is the time. Add the roasted peanuts and mix, and then add the soaked poha. Toss the poha gently so as no to break the grains. Turn off the heat. Squeeze half of a lemon and season with salt. Garnish with coriander and serve with more lemon wedges. While your poha is getting cooked, keep a hot cup of ginger chai ready. Relish this simple yet flavourful dish for breakfast or an evening snack! If you're like me, you'd probably not mind having it for lunch too on some days. If you wish to reheat leftover poha, sprinkle water over it and cover and heat on low heat in a thick bottom pan.