Indian curry at Java Noodles

After enduring a considerable period of time feeling nauseated by the sight, smell and even thought of food, I felt really happy at having regained a semblance of my former appetite. I still don't feel like eating any kind of meat. But the one exception I can always make is for the Indian chicken curry at Java Noodles, an Indonesian restaurant in Austin. One might well wonder why would an Indian go to eat Indian chicken curry at an Indonesian restaurant. I did run a quick Google search on Indian curries in Indonesia, but not with much success. I have no idea if it is eaten in Indonesia or if this is creation that took place in the US. Since Java Noodles is a good 14-15 miles from my house and the Indian curry is served only for Sunday lunch buffets, it's not a regular feature of our lives. But some days, the craving hits and I start dropping not so subtle hints to R and a few other friends. Fortunately R and our friends like the food there too, so not much persuasion is needed.

Making sure that we have a light or preferably no breakfast in order to do justice to our hearty lunch, we reach Java Noodles around noon. First I head towards the soup counter and help myself to tangy coconut soup. After that although there is a decent spread of other good stuff like satay, nasi goreng, rendang etc, I head directly towards the Indian chicken curry, ladling plenty of curry in a soup bowl along with 1-2 chicken pieces.I also help myself to some the crusty bread, which is perfect for sopping all the curry. One of the key features that makes this curry is that the chicken is not boned unlike the flavorless morsels which are usually served at other South Asian places where boned pieces are poached beforehand and then added to the curry while it is being heated. The fact that the pieces cook along with the curry lends it a special flavor. I am not sure what other ingredients are used, but I would guess there was liberal use of minced onions, grated coconut and lots of turmeric. I have tried the other food there before, and although it is quite good in it's own right, I don't want to to dilute the flavor of my favorite and so have given up on trying anything else. I do hope the restaurant adds this dish to their regular menu soon!

My Favorite Usal

On a trip to Mahabaleshwar a long time back, my family stopped at a roadside 'khanaval' (a restaurant which serves a Maharashtrian thali ) in Wai for lunch. I still have memories of the usal I ate there. It was intensely spicy and had the most delicious aroma. My mother told me that was because of the kanda lasun masala. I have been a fan of usal ever since, spicy usal with lots of rassa (liquid). Although it was part of the thali and was served with chapattis and rice, I find it tastes great with some bread too, especially the crusty kind to sop all the spicy rassa.

One half onion (about 1 cup)diced
2 cups tomoato diced
2 cups matki sprouts
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp asaefotida
1tbsp dry grated coconut
1 tbsp kanda-lasun masala
salt to taste
chilli powder to taste.
1/2 tbsp peanut oil

Heat the oil in a kadhi / wok
Add the mustard seeds to the oil and the asaefotida. When the mustard seeds splutter, add the onion. After the onions turn soft and slightly yellow, add the tomatoes, coconut, salt and kanda lasun masala. When the tomatoes become mushy and start letting out all their liquid, add the matki sprouts and about 2 cups of water. Set the heat on medium and let the 'usal' boil for some time. Add some more water as per your liking and some chilli powder and salt as per taste. Garnish with coriander. It tastes great if some lemon juice is added right before serving.

Tomato Soup

I have loved tomato soup ever since I was a child. Steaming hot soup with lots of croutons, a swirl of cream and generous sprinklings of freshly ground black pepper.. yum! Hotel Darshan in Pune at the intersection of Prabhat Road and Karve Road used to serve really good tomato soup. In Austin, Romeo's serves a really good tomato basil soup. Tomato enthusiasts know that the best tomatoes are available here in summer, but this is a great way to eat some tomatoes in winter too. This is also a great lunch option with some crisp toast instead of the croutons.
However I am not a big fan of tomato soup loaded with cream, it takes away from the natural taste of the tomato. I much prefer a lighter soup with a more concentrated tomato taste. The addition of cream is basically for thickening the consistency and to give it a smoother texture. One way to get round this is to add cornflour, but a better way is to add boiled carrots or potatoes. Carrots are preferable for the color as well as the taste they add to the soup.

Start by washing 4-5 big tomatoes, usually Roma. Cut a cross shape at their stem end to make it easier to peel them later. I take 2 carrots, wash them thoroughly, cutting the carrots into 2-3 pieces each. Set some water to boil, enough to cover all the tomatoes. After the water comes to a boil, add the tomatoes, stem end up, along with the carrots.

Let the water boil for some time, till the skin of the tomatoes starts shrivelling and the carrots turn a little soft. At this point, turn off the heat and remove the tomatoes and carrots from the water with a slotted spoon. I save the water to add to the soup later. I usually wait till the tomatoes cool down before peeling the skin. Blend the peeled tomatoes, and carrots in a blender to a smooth puree, adding some water from the boiling pot if needed. Pour the puree back in the boiling pot. Add about 2tbsp of butter, 4-6 peppercorns, some salt and some basil if desired. Bring back to a boil. Allow to simmer for 5-10 minutes before tasting for salt. Add a little sugar if desired to balance the tomatoes. Simmer for 5-10 minutes more and tomato soup is ready!

Awaiting The Deathly Hallows

Along with many other things, my genetic inheritance from my parents is a love of reading. My mother and my father both love to read, though they both read very different genres. Back in Poona, our house is crowded with book shelves. The one thing I have never been denied (for the fear that I might be spoilt) is a library membership. I even got to choose my own library at the age of seven as I was not too happy with the selection from the library my mother went to. Not too many Enid Blytons there! People who lived in or are living in India will remember that libraries in India are usually small private enterprises, usually housed in an outhouse or garage and run by retired folks or ladies who look at it as a part time occupation. The first thing I wanted to do after some super stressful exams was to go home and read a good book, stay up late in the night reading. I think I always disappointed my peers who would have rather gone out partying or at least for a movie.When I saw the library collection at UT, Austin (yes, I am a Longhorn!!), the tenth largest in the United States, according to the American Library Association, with 8,937,002 volumes, I was elated. Every book that I could think of, I could get.

This week, me and my friends are living in eager anticipation of Harry Potter - The Deathly Hallows, surely the biggest phenomenon in the book reading world to date. Part of the Harry Potter experience has been this waiting period between each book, of going over the many possibilities of what could happen and finding out what actually did. I got into the series quite late - just before the launch of book 4. Once I started reading, I was addicted. Always on the lookout for a good book, the fact there were 3 more books to follow made me extremely happy. Book 7 will be the culmination of the series, when all the missing links get tied in and all the questions get answered (hopefully not too tragically). I wasn't around when Lord of the Rings was being published, so cant really compare it to what it must have felt like to wait for the later parts. But I do feel really lucky to have been around for this series. I am sure having all seven books at hand is not the same! So 5 days, and 10 hours to go .........

The Cool House Tour

Austin is routinely rated among the best places to live in the USA. Most ratings seem to elicit just a good natured yawn from long time residents - sort of like... well we already knew that, didn't we? Tell us something we don't know. I confess I hate Austin summers, but there is little else i don't like about this city I now call home. A booming metropolis on the make, with a small town feel, getting more and more diverse by the day with a young energetic population, Austin offers a lot of opportunities to do well 'Austiny' things. Like spending a Sunday going about town, carpooling of course with good friends S and S, to see and experience 8 environment friendly houses at the start of the Austin summer. The Cool House Tour 2006, organized by the Texas Solar Energy Society and the Austin Green Energy Building Program offered 8 houses that have incorporated different features to go green. Looks like in addition to all the accolades Austin regularly receives, it is now aiming to become one of the greenest cities in the US. Way to go!! As an architect by education, and an environmentalist by vocation, I loved the idea. After visiting each of the houses, (no we did not skip a single one) I was even more impressed. All the houses looked very different, reflecting the personalities of the people who lived in them. All of them were warm and inviting and had none of the cold mechanical look that might be associated with green buildings. Careful and judicious use of green building features like ceiling fans to reduce the load on air conditioning systems, sensitivity to site design, use of appropriate and sometimes recycled building materials, water tanks, bamboo flooring etc. combined into the very distinct design of each building led to a very pleasing effect overall. I and R came back with some resolutions, (The Cool House Tour- our resolutions), which we hope to gradually incorporate into our own house. So if you are in Austin at the start of summer, do try and go for the Cool House Tour!

Tomato Pickle (tomatoche lonche)

Tomato pickle is a finger licking good relish, which both I and R love. Lots of tomatoes, garlic, and chillies, sort of like an Indian version of a cooked salsa. My mother made this frequently and I always ate it more like a bhaji (vegetable) than a lonche (pickle). I love to have it with some simple amti bhat or varan bhat. Though earlier I used canned sliced tomatoes for convenience, I have come back to dicing tomatoes myself, even though it is a fairly laborious task as a lot of raw cut tomatoes yields a comparatively small amount of the cooked pickle. Although the preparation time is not much except for dicing the tomatoes, it does take quite a long time to finish cooking. But being patient pays off when you taste the saturated hot garlicky tomatoey taste! When I recently saw the theme of Regional Cuisine of India - June hosted by One Hot Stove, I knew what my entry would be. This is my entry for RCI June: Maharashtrian Cuisine.

Recipe
About 2.5-3 cups of diced tomatoes.
5-6 green chillies, diced into rounds
5-6 cloves of garlic , sliced thin
salt to taste
some sugar, if needed
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 1/2tbsp oil
5-6 kadhipatta (curry) leaves (optional)

Heat the oil in a kadhai / wok. Add the mustard seeds after the oil is hot. After the mustard seeds splutter, add the garlic, green chillies and curry leaves. After the garlic turns golden and slightly crisp, add the tomatoes. Stir the contents of the kadhai, add some salt.
Leave on medium heat, till all the juices from the tomatoes evaporate and you can see the oil separating from the mixture. This part takes a fairly long time. Taste the mixture and add some sugar if the tomatoes are very sour. Turn the heat off and let it cool down for some time.

Living in Tacoland

After spending almost four years in Tacoland (Austin) with it's umpteen number of Taco Shacks, Taco Delis, Taco Cabanas and of course the ubiquitous Taco Bell, one tends to take the taco for granted. Though I did fall in love with the first ever potato egg cheese breakfast taco that I ever had (lots of hot salsa on the side, of course), nevertheless I have never gone somewhere just to eat tacos. Till I discovered Torchy's Tacos on South First - a humble mobile food place, it reminded me of the Chinese ( really Indian Chinese) food vendors near University Circle in Pune. Though our moms frowned at our eating there, and the food was not perhaps the best (nostalgia makes everthing taste better), it was always a fun place to go to with my friends, sit on our two wheelers, munching chicken lollipops and eating spicy chicken Manchurian with fried rice.

Torchys reminded me a little of the same, though it is located at a much prettier setting, by the side of a creek with red lanterns strung on tree branches. However the rest of it is bare basic functional with a few plastic chairs and tables between the two mobile foot eateries. The food is good and justifies the line of people always seen there. The first time I went there, I had the monthly special Cool Runner taco comprising of Jamaican Jerk Chicken, avocado, mango, cheese and freshly squeezed lemon in a flour tortilla. It was so good that my Ranch Hand ( I hope I remember the name correctly here) taco paled in comparison and I don't recollect it at all. It wasn't bad at all, but the Cool Runner just completely overshadowed it. The unusual combination of the spicy Jamaican Jerk Chicken with the sweet- sour mango flavor and the smooth avocado and a squeeze of lemon juice was just delicious. I was left thinking if only I had ordered two of the same. Two were plenty of food for lunch and more than enough motivation to convince R to make the trip back with me some day.

The next time we went, we also had our friend A ( always willing to try something new), all of us ravenous after a 5k ( to be honest, I walked). We got done with the 5k around 11 am, a perfect time to eat some tacos. After a long and circuitous drive from Mozart's to South First (for some reason, many streets were closed downtown), we reached Torchys only to discover to my great dismay that they had changed the monthly special (yes, it does change every month). So no Cool Runner this time. I ordered the Baja Shrimp and a potato, egg, and jalapeno breakfast taco. R ordered the same while A ordered the breakfast taco along with a fried avocado taco ( highly recommended by vegeterians), all on corn tortillas this time). The Baja Shrimp was yummy with fried shrimp in a creamy sauce and shredded cabbage and carrots. The creamy sauce probably had crushed jalapenos in it. The breakfast taco was good too, but I ll opt for a flour tortilla for the breakfast taco next time as the corn was a little too strong a flavor for the egg and potato mixture. R and A liked their tacos enough to order one more. Go Torchys! I ll be coming back for more.

Climbing The Mango Trees

Just finished reading "Climbing The Mango Trees - A Memoir of a Childhood in India", an autobiography by Madhur Jaffrey which recounts her childhood and adolescence years growing up in India. I have been a big admirer of Ms. Jaffrey's cookbooks ever since my mother bought "Eastern Vegeterian Cooking" more than ten years back. I really like her writing style and for the longest time, I used to read the narrative accompaniments preceding the recipes rather than the recipe itself. My mother then increased her collection of Madhur Jaffrey's books to include the "Far Eastern Cookery" and "Madhur Jaffrey's Cookbook - Food for Family and Friends". I read all of them, they would be my introduction to hummus, tabbouleh, and satay ayam. To a girl growing up in Pune, these were exotic recipes indeed and later after moving to the US, I had a very definite idea of all that I wanted to try eating. In fact, I carted these books to the US with me and my brother gave me " A Taste of India" as a wedding-going away gift. I still had not read the recipes, quite far away from trying to cook any of them. It would still take a couple of years for me to start cooking from them , though my mother had already tried out many of the recipes to great success. Still, I was surprised at how easy it was to follow the recipes and somehow the narratives with each recipe gave me a much better idea of what I should expect the end result to be (a very helpful factor in case one has never tasted the food item before).

So when I saw "Climbing the Mango Trees" on Amazon, I knew I had to buy it. It chronicles Ms. Jaffrey's years growing up in Dehli. What I really liked and which was a natural extension of the narratives which I used to like before, was the writing style which interwove the story of growing up in north India in pre-Independance years, with the eating rituals which seem to be a staple of the Indian culture across geographies and time. The book evokes the varied experiences of life in India, the most poignant perhaps being the one about anticipating the monsoon. The emphasis on seasonality and fresh home cooked food would also be a constant in my childhood although it would be the 1980's then and I grew up in a totally different part of India. Perhaps living in the USA where I see the same vegetables year around and people loading grocery carts with ready made frozen food makes my hyper aware of these facts. Growing up, my mother rarely let us eat leftovers, at the most the next day, but food was cooked to be sufficient for one or at the most two meals and if there was any left over, it was inevitably thrown away. I still do not like to eat food left over from more than a day, although there is not much one can do at times about that. Cooking fresh for each meal also meant a huge variety of food, prepared in different ways. R never likes to see the same dish for more than 2 meals.

The only complaint I have with this book is that it stops too soon,I would have loved to know more about Ms. Jaffreys prolific career, both theatrical and culinary. Hopefully there's another book coming out soon.

Mango Pudding

This is one of those recipes I have grown to depend on. I am not much of a dessert person and am always on the lookout for a quick dessert recipe. I ate this mango pudding in the form of a mango pie at my friend A's place a couple of years back. I loved the mango flavor combined with the 'kharvas' like texture. I used to love 'kharvas' back in India. Since A is a very good cook and I was just testing the waters at that point, I assumed the recipe must be complicated and left it at that. I came across it again at my friend S's place for Diwali. She assured me it was pretty easy to make and well so it was. I looked up the recipe online and tried it out. I was delighted to see that I did not have to stand in front of the stove for hours to make it. In fact after a 15-20 minute preparation, all one has to do is leave it in the refrigerator. I make only the filling and let it set in a serving dish instead of a pie crust. The only other alterations I make are to use fat free cream cheese instead of normal cream cheese and to sprinkle saffron strands on top.

Arrow of the Blue- Skinned God

I just finished reading a thought provoking book based on an interesting subject. The author, Jonah Blank retraces the route that Ram (Prince Rama of Ayodhya, as in from the Ramayana) takes in his years of exile(vanvas). The author follows the route Ram took right from Ayodhya, after being exiled to his time in the forests near Nasik and then southward towards Sri Lanka to rescue his wife Sita from the demon king Ravana. The Ramayana is a story most Indians grow up with, I doubt anyone can pinpoint the exact time they were introduced to the story for the first time. The Ramayana is to Hindus what the Illiad or the Odyssey are to the Greeks. I am sure my parents told me the story long before I could read and later, when I could read, Amar Chitra Katha was my main source. And then of course there were those mega serials on the National television channel Doordarshan which would shut down much of India on Sunday mornings. So I never had much curiosity left to read the Ramayana as an adult, when there was so much else which was new to me.

Browsing through the local public library, I found this book "Arrow of the Blue Skinned God - Retracing the Ramayana through India" and my curiosity was piqued . This wasn't the epic story per se, I had not heard of anyone retracing the route of the exiled prince , even though India offers a million pilgrimage routes. I was not even sure if the places mentioned in the Ramayana could be found, the main exception being Ayodhya of course. It was a decidedly interesting premise for a travelogue. The author goes back and forth , between the Ramayana and his own journey through India. The journey combines his experience of the country, the landscape of the hinterland and the urban cities, his conversations with various personalities like the actors who acted in the mega serial, former royals, and random people whom he met on his travels. Once I started reading it, I was absorbed both by the epic story, read afresh after a very long time as well as the author's insight on the happenings in modern day India and how they related to the Ramayana. However towards the end, I found myself racing ahead to read the original story, though it was not new to me. I discovered many new facets in the story which I had not seen or understood before, some of which were probably taken for granted before. I think that's power of a great epic, even if you know it, it offers something new every time you read it. That being said, the whole book was totally worth a read or two, the author is perceptive and sympathetic in his observations, with a lucid and clear thought process.

Onion Soup

It actually snowed today in Austin! We have had two days of freezing rain and winter storm warnings from the weather bureaus, so have had to sit at home for the two days with not much to do. Snow is rare in Austin, the last really small snowfall occurred in February 2004. It snowed at night and by 10 am it was all gone.This time, we saw the snow falling, the snowflakes getting bigger and the snow accumulating in our backyard, on our neighbors roof and the front yard. After the drab rainfall over the past few days, this was a refreshing and beautiful change.

We went for a short walk in our neighborhood and admired our neighbors daughters snowman. After our chilly excursion outdoors, we decided we needed some hot onion soup for lunch. My father introduced me to onion soup, when he cooked it one day. My father did not cook very often when we were growing up, but whenever he did , it was always good.

Onion Soup
4 yellow onions, cut into half and then sliced thin
8 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
1 cup of milk
10 cups of water
some rosemary
some sage
4 garlic cloves, sliced
4 bouillon cubes
salt to taste
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp all purpose flour


Melt the butter in a deep pot over low heat. The Calphalon soup pot is another of my prized possessions , its absolutely fantastic for making soups and sambar. After acquiring this soup pot we really have started drinking a lot more soup, though not really sambar. Add the peppercorns, bay leaf, sage, rosemary, garlic and sugar. Add the onions after the garlic turns a little golden and cook over medium heat till the onions turn golden brown. Add the flour and mix everything together. Add salt, water, bouillon cubes and milk. Stir for some time and then let it boil on low-medium heat for about 20-25 minutes.

We ate the soup, liberally topped with freshly ground black pepper, with some artisan bread, sliced lengthwise, topped with some cheese and toasted in the oven for 2 minutes.

New Years 2007

Pollo Pibil , a Yucatan speciality of chicken baked in banana leaves at Fonda San Miguel - totally recommended!