Food and Culture: My Jackfruit story

I love Kathal aka Jackfruit. I always have since I was a kid. Making it was a pain for my mother since raw kathal is sticky, secretes all kinds of juices, is hard to clean and cut and in short makes a mess. And the green outer skin is also deceptive-it is still green when it goes ripe and hence undeclared unusable. But once cut, cleaned and cooked, the end result-oh yum!

My mother's recipe for her signature kathal-do pyaaza had one element I loved. The amount of onions she used! It is called "do pyaaza" for a reason! And then the taste. It is said that cooked jackfruit tastes like meat and is a vegetarian's substitute for the taste. Maybe that's why Ma took the effort of cooking it like one. I still saunter in to the kitchen when it's cooking (my nose is very good at this), become the official taster and help myself to the dish. Having it with rotis for dinner is round two. Round three is gorging on the leftover masala after the meal and reaching the spicy side of food heaven!

Now imagine my shock when after years of living with the food wonder called kathal, I meet people who have never eaten the cooked form but eat it as a fruit, uncooked! It has taken me a while to understand the cultural difference between the north of India and the south of India and one factor in my study has been this. If I were giving an EVS exam in school and had a question, "Differentiate between north Indians and south Indians", I'd have listed this as one of the top 5! We eat is when it is hard, sticky and unripe. We cook it and serve it hot. For people below the Vindhyas, it is served as it is when ripe golden, uniquely sweet and very strongly smelling.

I finally tasted ripe kathal last week in Mumbai. I'd seen it being sold outside the local stations and every time I passed the hawker, I could smell the fruit. It was overpoweringly sweet, almost honey like. So one day I tried one piece. I liked it for a first timer. I am unsure if I'd go out of my way to eat it again sometime but I am sure I am the first one in my family to taste it. After all, ripe kathal is unusable for a north Indian.

Glutton Discovery

For a random errand, SN and I went to the market pretty late today. I had a class till 5:30 so it wasn't until 6:15 that we finally left for Sakchi. Give or take 30-40minutes that we took to find the required shop and buy the things needed, we were leaving the market from the exit closer to Tata Steel when a strong smell caught our attention. Now we being foodies immediately recognised this aroma as that of fresh roasted chicken and after nothing in sight, we gave up on what promised to be a delectable suprise.

But suprise it turned out to be! Right behind the auto stand was a thela surrounded by people and no prizes for guessing where the aroma was coming from. Couldn't stop ourselves from exploring and we actually found a decent crowd, well behaved and the shop owner treated us like premium princesses(which effectively we probably were). I still don't know if it was cheap or expensive, but sounded attractive to me and his turnover speed suggested that the food was definitely fresh and add to that, the barbeque was right there for all to see!

He picked out fresh pieces of marinated breast pieces in front of us and started to slowly let it char on the smoldering charcoals. Definitely not just another roasted chicken.

Being a Delhi dame, roasted chicken is same as tandoori chicken to me. Not anymore. This was real barbequed chicken and because of certain unavoidable circumstances, it was consumed almost 4hours after purchase and I must say this...it was still soft, juicy and delectible!

I'm so going to recommend it to anyone who had no qualms of admitting that street food can indeed be delicious and hygienic(as much as possible)!

Finally Jamshedpur is playing its magic on me!

ps: check location of this post for exact place!

genius me

inspired by a week full of grax and good anda maggi at midnight-gossiping is good for health-it increases awareness, makes one more perceptive, provides good laughter and usually involves human bonding of various kinds.
my moments of true genius. m good!

weighty issues

yes, as the title suggests this post is all about weight issues. who's? mine!
my brother had once very beautifully written about my battle with my weight, way back when orkut was the "in" thing and having meaningful testimonials was the ultimate need. he'd said, "she'd be perfect if only she could get herself motivated to do something about her biggest problem-her weight". it's funny and embarrassing to admit that it's still true.
a friend tonight very crisply showed me the root of the problem for me. her(very true) observation is that I can eat whenever and whatever I feel like irrespective of hunger! till a few moments after she said it, I could've counted eating as my best time pass and hobby-I love food!
I love all aspects of food! I love to cook, I love to shop for gourmet foods, I love to go shop for vegetables cause I can imagine having them for dinner soon, I can watch cookery shows, I love to experiment with food and I love food! when i qualified for xl and it was time for me to leave home, i went to a book store to buy myself a book-I shortlisted 3books out of which the one i finally picked is titled "The Virago Book of Eating". how much more can i say?
so tonight, sitting at bishuda(midnight food haven), while i gorged on french toast, my friend muddled up the courage to tell me the real reason why I am fat-cause I eat randomly-whenever and whatever. so touched as i was by the concern n the dawn(i keep forgeting, or keep making myself forget) of this knowledge, i sulked. a little. i closed the open box of cookies on my desk and decided to be better at it. then i started writing this entry and just writing about food has cheered me up!
so maybe i'm fat. ok, no maybe, i am fat. but atleast i'm happy!
ok, so sometimes happiness should also be derived from external things like two dress sizes smaller, and it must be time for me to try. again :)

Bheja Curry

CAUTION:: IF YOU ARE A VEGETARIAN AND/OR OF DELICATE NATURE WHERE FOOD IS CONCERNED, PLEASE DO NOT READ FURTHER

ever so often i hear of something-curry, considering how much i love food. i can even say i've eaten most of those curries. Today shall go down in personal history as the day i had brain curry...for real.
let me admit that i had an initial mix of apprehension and excitement when papa ordered bheja curry at Anand's at CP. I'd only wanted to try his, now personally overrated, biryani. So after my eye check up, off we'd gone on our gastronomic hunt!
Enter a plate of bheja curry. At first glance it looks like egg curry...with only egg whites. then pa spoons around and i spot my first perfect piece of brain. i try really hard to keep the biryani i'd had, down. papa urges me to taste it. i break my roti, cover the segment, hold it down and feel it being soft and gooey. i bite into it and i squirm...urgh! i quickly reach for my plate of pudina onions and i gear up to fight this battle of the food. i take another bite, i react less violently. by the next one i'd found a trick to not react to having a brain for lunch...stuff onions in the mouth before chewing, makes it less squishy, gooey and repulsive.
so somehow i got through it. i never could've called myself a foodie if i'd not stood upto the challenge! i had a reputation to keep and keep the fire of exploration alive! but sadly the last bite spoiled it. none of us had realised that the last bite left in the platter for me, when turned over, would be that very perfect piece of a brain complete with it's grooves and hemispherical shape, that can turn any one's (or so i think) stomach over! oh god! i am only glad i didn't throw up!
so after having survived this experience and visibly struggling to not throw up, my very amused father tells me that that curry was a pathetic attempt at bheja curry. it's considered a delicacy and an art when cooked right...more like keema curry than egg curry! damn that cook!
papa did get worried that if such was my reaction to this piece of food, how i'd react to most sea food. yes, it has me worried too. and truthfully i'm most scared of how i'll swallow caviar...they're fish eggs for god's sakes! so much so for my dream of sipping champagne with caviar on the beach in the dimming light of sunset. sigh!

creation in my kitchen

cooking is parallel to creating. it provides an outlet to desires, energies and the euphoria of having created. whenever i have the urge to eat something exotic and the time to wait and devote in its creation, i prefer making it. the Internet is a veritable guide in my pursuits...multiple recipes of the same dish, regional variations of the same dish and the conscience balming variant of low fat!
to celebrate my birthday, i decided I'd have enough of cakes so I'll make ice cream. the newspaper yesterday was in sync...it gave me a super easy recipe of "low fat" banana Popsicles! since my maid, who has a wild mind of her own, decided to clean the kitchen while i was cooking, she promptly treated my paper cutting as trash and threw it out in the garbage before i realised it was missing. this post is my way of saving that recipe, before i forget, and putting up my happiness at its success.
ingredients
1/2, 1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
a pinch of salt
2 cups milk
2 tablespoons vanilla essence
2 diced, big bananas
method
1. in a saucepan mix the the sugar, starch and salt
2. pour in the milk and while continually stirring, bring to a boil
3. simmer, add vanilla and stir. remove from stove
4. in a blender put the bananas and pour half the pudding
5. blend well
6. pour the banana mixture back into the saucepan with the remaining pudding and stir to get a uniform consistency
7. pour into Popsicle mould and place a stick in the middle(couldn't find a stick, i used toothpicks)
8. freeze till set(i left it overnight...my freezer's a wimp)

and voila! homemade Popsicles ready! now even though m not much of a banana fan, less of banana flavoured ice cream, i still enjoyed it. i now plan to try this out with all the fruit variations as and when they come in...strawberry for sure, raspberry for the heck of it, litchis for the taste and maybe even black currants! hahaha...i tried making a pomegranate smoothies once at home, and though it was worse than my papaya smoothie, it looked far better. so if anyone tries out any new dish, try not to go by it's looks!
bon apetit!