Cooking Desi in Videsh

This year's summer project was to "Learn to cook an Indian dish every day."  After my first attempt, I decided to set a more realistic goal "Learn to cook an Indian dish every week."  After my second attempt, I watered that down to "Learn to cook an Indian dish.  Any dish.  However long it takes."  This seems to be a bit more than I can handle all summer, but I'm gonna make it work no matter what.  I know what you are thinking: Not another blog on cooking!!  Well, this is more than that (for me, but for you it may just be another blog about cooking).  My goal on this blog is to combine my family tradition of cooking tasty Indian food, with learning about the Indian spices which go into the food, and my childhood memories of Indian food in a not so Indian environment.

Let me start by telling you about my first experience cooking an Indian dish for the very first time (with no mommy supervision).  In fact, my mother is the one who gave me that idea.  She called from work one afternoon and randomly said, "There are a few boiled potatoes in the refrigerator.  Cook them."  I said, "Ok."  What I wanted to say was, "Do you know which daughter you are talking to?"  I am the youngest of three sisters and well, of course I'm the spoiled baby of the family.  I don't cook, I just have the two older ones do it for me.  In college, my friends knew me as the "Microwave Queen" because I knew how to warm up a frozen dish, courtesy of my mother, just the right amount to make it taste like it was freshly cooked.  Of course, I also managed to learn how to make grilled cheese sandwiches, Campbell's soup, garlicky mashed potatoes, tomato sauce pasta, and all sorts of veggie salads and subs.  BTW, I love carbs and vegetables.  I've been a vegetarian since Jr High so this is pretty much the only options I have on a regular basis.  But now I'm out of college and understand that adults need variety.  Plus, I'm Indian - that makes knowing how to cook mandatory.  Do you know how many times people have come up to me and said "I love chicken tikka masala and those little triangles with potatoes in them."  The latter are called samosa and they are a staple, as well as a cheap option for snack/breakfast/evening munchies and go great with Chai (not the powdered kind and please do not get me started on that).  Going back to cooking potatoes, I embarked in a journey to replicate my mother's potatoes.  My mom makes the best food ever.  She knows how to make everything under the sun.  Realistically, I knew I can't make the potatoes exactly like hers, so my goal became just to please her, make her say that I was the best daughter she had, rub it in to my sisters who have learned how to make a few dishes that are enjoyably edible.

Potatoes are a staple in many cultures and they are so versatile that it is difficult to go wrong with them - unless of course if you are me, then you will manage to screw up boiling water.  My fondest memory of eating potatoes was when we would ride the train to and from Calcutta and Jabalpur to visit my maternal grandparents.  My mother would make puris (fried puffy bread) and dry potatoes as both of those items do not need refrigeration and make good travel partners.  My mother would role up the potatoes inside the puri and hand one to us to eat while exploring and playing on the train.  Puris and potatoes (aka aloo) were also a popular dish during festival season or parties, as again, you can eat them any time you get hungry and carry the role everywhere in one hand so you don't miss a moment of the celebration.  I also remember stuffing sour mango pickle into the roll which made the dish 10 times better - especially if the mango was pickled by my grandmother.  This combination continues to be popular and can be commonly found in religious institutions as blessed food that is passed out to the parishioners after the prayer ceremony.

Back to me cooking the potato.  A side note: I live with my parents (and I'm damn proud of it) and one day I came home from work to find my mother glued to the computer.  She had her headphones on and was intently watching something on YouTube.  Once I got her attention, she screamed (not realizing that the headphones were still on her ears and at maximum volume) "Here, watch this and learn how to cook it."  It was a recipe to make Upma (another common breakfast dish in Indian - similar to cream of wheat) using bread crumbs and vegetables.  My mother had found the joy of YouTube was not only watching Hindi films (which is what I do regularly - another thing I'm not ashamed of), but also learning new variations of dishes she knew how to make and how to cook new dishes she hadn't attempted yet under the gentle guidance of Indian housewives and mothers living all over the world.  My mother had also realized that this is the easiest way for me to learn how to cook Indian food and there is no excuse why I should continue to avoid this art.

On that fateful day, when my mother instructed me to cook the vegetable of the day, she even told me some of her favorite YouTube chefs who can give me step by step instructions on how to cook a potato.  I am not going detail all the ingredients and step by step instructions as you can probably find those yourself on either Google or YouTube.  Rather, I'd like to keep this blog about the lessons I learned and the mistakes I made while attempting this art.  I researched on as many recipes as I could find on reliable websites to make dry potatoes as curried potatoes seemed too daunting.  FYI, a traditional North Indian Thali (lunch plate) consists of the following: Roti (hand made tortilla), basmati rice, one dry vegetable dish (aka sabzi), one curry or dal (lentils),  yogurt, papad (a salty and crunchy cracker), achaar (pickled vegetable), and a fresh green chili with onions (optional).  Some regions put a pile of salt on the side which just seems unreasonable as there is so much salt in food itself - but it's tradition and people follow it without question.  That's the one thing you will notice about India if you ever get a chance to visit, people follow family tradition, religion, and medical advice without questioning the usefulness and applicability of said ideas.  Now, if they just followed instructions on how to wash my clothes, I would loose fewer buttons from my shirts and my jeans would be softer.

Back to the potato, so I found a simple recipe for dry potato and all I had to do was put the ingredients, along with the boiled potatoes, into a kadai and let it cook on medium for 5 minutes.  I was able to easily find the ingredients (since I know exactly where my mother keeps all of her spices and I am able to sniff them out with my trusty nose - and if you know how many spices Indian people like to keep in our cupboards, you will know why I call my nose trusty).  I did exactly what the recipe told me to do: I ensured the correct measurement of all spices and salt, and stirred every few minutes to make sure that the potatoes are not getting stuck the bottom.  The potatoes were almost ready, when I stupidly decided to kick it up a notch and put some tomato paste into the dish, similar to how I have seen my mother do a million and one times.  Well, I ended up putting half a can of tomato paste into the dish made of four small potatoes.  Then I added water and pretended that I made the worlds best curry.  It was in fact the world worst version of curry.  The dish was so bad, when my mother came home and looked at it, she didn't say anything.  I asked her how it tasted, her reply was, "Why don't you taste it and tell me.  I already know how it's gonna taste."  Hm...I screwed up.  I put too much tomato paste and it was overtaking all the other flavors.  In fact, there was so much past, that the potato (a carb that soaks up almost anything it touches) couldn't handle it and was folding under pressure of the acidic nature and sweetness of the past and the thick consistency of the gravy.

*Lesson learned: put less than one spoon of the tomato paste, just enough to make the curry red but not so much that you can see the paste floating on top of the vegetable.

My mother had to fix the dish by adding lots of rajma (kidney beans) and even more water.  I was very disappointed in myself for screwing up the first Indian dish I tried to make.  I thought cooking would be a natural talent in me because all the women in my family know how to make really really good food.  I know everyone thinks their mom makes the best food, but seriously, I have other people who are not blood related to me tell me that my mom makes the best food.  I have a secret feeling many of my friends remain so just because of the cuisine which so often accompanies my friendship (also courtesy of my mother).  Well, I'm sure they also get a kick out of my sarcastic and admittedly naive point of view.  This is when I realized that cooking is actually an art, a God gifted talent, and a blessing.  If you don't like the spiritual analogy, think of it as a chess game that you have to play using the kadai as your board, the ingredients as your pieces, and strategy is to use the pieces one at a time in a way that they work together and achieve one goal - to blend together perfectly as one yet retain their individual qualities, taste and texture.  In my case, the potatoes lost the battle against the tomato paste.  But this was just the first time, the trial run, and ice breaker.  

It took a couple of weeks before I revisited my goals of learning how to cook Desi, but it turned out more edible the second time around.  The second experience will be continued in the next edition of "Cooking Desi in Videsh."

Erased - Changes and Discoveries

The first thing Rhea learned about her past was that the country no longer used analog television.  In fact, the hospital room was equipped with TiVo and Netflix.  HDTV and smart phones were a part of daily life for everyone around her, including the nurses who chatted over the latest app they downloaded to help them keep track of their overtime wages accrued and diet fads accomplished.  Rhea also learned that most of her favorite weeknight shows were off air and replaced by new shows with the same theme but different actors.  Twilight was a descendant of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Friends was replaced by comedic antics of employees for a paper supply company featured in a mock documentary about medium sized corporations.

Everywhere she went, Rhea was reminded that she always had an option to rewind and repeat what she missed.  Rhea watched the shows and listened to the music she missed during the car ride to her parent's home, while she got refreshed in her parent's bathroom, and as she got comfortable on the bed which still belonged to her, even after ten years of being the guest bed.  This was comforting for Rhea.  Though she woke up with ten years of her life missing, she was able to catch up with ten years worth of television within the first few months of her discharge from the hospital.  Now if they only made TiVo for real life, Rhea would've relived her entire life in one sitting.

Rhea had to get used to sharing her bed very quickly with people she did not know.  The biggest hurdle was how do tell a two-year old girl that she can not sleep with her mommy after weeks of visiting her mommy in the hospital.  Rhea did not know this two year old girl, but felt enough love for her that she let the little girl drift off on what used to be Rhea's favorite pillow ten years ago.

That night, Rhea did not sleep.  While her daughter slept, Rhea searched her room quietly for answers, clues, and reminders of what life was like now and ten years ago.  On her night stand, the AM/FM alarm clock was replaced by a digital docking station for an mp3 player.  The glow in the dark stars on the ceiling were overshadowed by a nightlight for her daughter which accurately reflected the entire solar system as seen from Earth.  The biggest change was that Rhea's IBM computer with Windows XP and a DVD drive was also replaced by a Mac with Windows 7 and a DVR drive.  Rhea could not even begin to imagine why there was a huge flat screen monitor with an apple icon staring at her from across the room. How was this possible?

Rhea used MACs in school when the screen was black and green and the best games were Snake Byte and Oregon Trail.  As she grew up, schools and pop culture gradually shifted to PCs like IBM and Hewlett Packard.  In fact, it seemed like yesterday when Rhea set up DSL in her college apartment so she and her roommates can share illegally downloaded music on a home network.  Ten years later, how did the MAC get in the room.  Rhea's hand gradually began foraging through the bag brought home from the hospital for answers.  The bag had Rhea's clothes, purse, and other belongings which could be salvaged from the car accident.  The most astonishing item was an object about two inches in height and width that was engraved with Rhea's name and New Years Eve 2010.  When Rhea's husband Keith walked into the room, Rhea was tossing this object in the air trying to figure out what in the world she was supposed to do with it.  Keith explained that this device was the Fourth Generation Ipod Shuffle and had 2 GBs worth of Rhea's favorite songs.

Erased - Tragedy Tuesday

Her life was ideal enough.  A decent job put Rhea in a middle class tax range and a brand new Lexus made her even more valuable to her social counterparts.  Her husband Keith was a scholar who spent most of his time crunching data into a machine to evaluate trends and predicted patterns that were not yet explored.  The remainder of this couple's life involved a charming 2 year old daughter, who had wavy hair flowing to her shoulders and could spell almost any one syllable word with her alphabet cereal.

Rhea would have spent her whole life doing exactly what she did on a normal Tuesday.  The problem was, she did not remember her normal Tuesday.  In fact, the last Tuesday she remembered, Rhea was at her favorite college pizzeria playing a decent game of beer pong.  That was the last Tuesday Rhea remembered.  That Tuesday happened ten years ago.  The Tuesday which Rhea did not remember happened about a month ago, when a slightly intoxicated driver was busy texting his girlfriend when he slammed his Tacoma into Rhea's Lexus, causing Rhea's Lexus to hit the corner of a UPS truck that was making a left turn on the adjacent lane.  The slightly intoxicated driver was not badly hurt, just some whiplash and a broken arm - the arm that he was using to hold his phone while texting.  The UPS truck driver was badly traumatized since this was his first day on the job, luckily he did not sustain any injury due to the crash.  It was Rhea who felt the worst pain.  

The doctors in the hospital and forensic examiners on the scene could not determine whether Rhea's head was injured as a result of the crash, or due to the airbags which exploded on her face moments later.  Either way, Rhea suffered severe brain injury.  They say that different parts of the brain use memory in different ways.  Some memories come from learned behavior, while others come from distinct stimuli embedded through our daily experiences from birth onward.  After the crash and subsequent coma, Rhea lost memories worth ten years.  She did not remember how she met her husband, when she had her daughter, or even how she landed her mid-career level job at a Fortune 500 company.  Rhea simply remembered drinking too much beer on a Tuesday and waking up in a hospital attached to an IV drip on a Wednesday.  

Day 1 in the Cave

I enrolled myself in the "Caveman Diet" at work, not because I didn't want people to think I'm not a team player.  I enrolled because I wanted to test my ability to say no.  The other reason, which I reluctantly admit is because I want to test my power of control.  Yes, I call it power, not need.  I use my control for good things and as long as I stay in control, everything will be right. 

What do I control in the Caveman diet?  Well, food is one thing of course.  I also control how much to eat, what to substitute, and how much can I cheat without forgoing the entire plan.  The caveman (or woman in my case) diet is essentially a fad diet in which you only eat the food that was available to humans in the Paleolithic era.  Fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, fish, and meats.  Since I am a vegetarian, I will not be hunting or fishing for my own animal.  And although this diet strictly forbids dairy, I can let that slide since I am Hindu and we believe that various dairy products are a gift from God and were available long before humans existed.  :)  I'm not proud of this slight misinterpretation and rule bending, but a girl's gotta live to tell about this experience of being in a cave. 

So what did I eat today?  I started the morning with a banana and chai.  I am lucky enough to have the greatest sisters on earth who made me some tomato soup and a salad for lunch.  I cheated once during the day (and no, I will not reveal the details of my relapse) and I'm so going to try harder tomorrow.  For dinner, I had two cups of milk (I explained the dairy thing already right).  So essentially, I am cutting down on carbs and processed foods in my life.  This diet began on a Saturday and will last through the month of October.  This means that I will have to control myself and look away from the Diwali goodies our family enjoys every year.  I think the trick is to be full before everyone else begins to eat.  That way, hunger does not control you.  The other trick seems to be to always keep yourself busy.  I learned that if I am studying, browsing the Internet, or driving around running errands, I don't have time to eat.  However, if I am busy watching my latest obsessions (Desperate Housewives and Heroes ~ don't judge!) my thoughts seem to wander around the pantry and popcorn basket. 

So tomorrow will be another day to triumph over my food cravings and addiction.  Maybe this journey will help me learn why my eating habits are so horrible and which need I'm substituting with food.  Or maybe, I'll just learn to cook!

Fruits and Flowers

Happy Holi!

I was supposed to continue writing last week, but I couldn't put the words together.  Therefore, I am more determined to write two blogs this week.  However belated this maybe, I'd like to wish you a very Happy Holi!  As you may know, Holi is the festival of colors vividly played in India to welcome the new crops and harvesting season.  Many believe that when Lord Hanuman swallowed the sun (because there is no fruit that is as ripe as the sun), men and women threw different colors towards the sky to emulate the sun's bright colors and bring light back into the world.  When nothing else worked, Lord Hanuman was offered great knowledge of the environment in exchange for the sun.  Another more popular story of Holi describes the efforts of a vain demon Holika who could touch fire without burning herself.  Holika attempted to kill her Prahlad who worshipped Lord Vishnu instead of his own father, demon king Hiranyakashyap.  Eventually the battle was won by "Good" when Holika pershished in the fire that was meant to burn Prahlad.  As this story suggest, most families in India throw fistfuls of Holi and other offerings into a sacred fire signifying the end of evil and the beginning of happier and colorful days.  On this note, there is no mention of India of a bollywood movie is not involved.  Here is one of my favorite Classic Hindi Flim Songs for the occasion:

I want World Peace.

LAUSD Superintendent recently proposed to reduce the academic year by 6 days in order to save money. The supporting argument is that if we reduce costs this year, we can keep the school district running in the long run. The choice is difficult: do you purposely make children dumb or do you allow bad economic decisions made by politicians and corporations make children dumb? Apparently, it is very important for the LAUSD board to have control over our children's ignorance.


Well, it's very important for me to have control over world peace, so here's what I suggest:
1) Withhold education from all the children in our community.
2) Give our soldiers PTSD by forcing them to go to war unnecessarily.
3) Raise taxes for middle income population and give the money to CEOs of multi-national companies.
4) Make the CEOs buy expensive yachts and Oil Refineries so that our coastline can completely disappear.
5) Cancel all welfare aid so that we don’t have to keep track of the low income population.
6) Shut down mental health agencies which serve those who make us look bad.
7) Blame everything on terrorists.
8) Burn all the terrorists at the stake in the town square.
9) Hope that lightening hits everyone who doesn’t agree with us.
10) Eat Cake.

If everyone just does what I say, we will have world peace.