Senigivithnalu Chutney Pudi

I love the humble peanut. Peanuts take me back to my mom’s native place-Naravalapalli- where beautiful ladies sat in the fields, and bumped groundnuts to the ground cracking them open and separating the peanut from it. They do this so fast that you hear a tap, a crack and a gentle throw amidst giggling and chattering—in a quick sequence. It is a beautiful amalgam of sounds.

The groundnut plant freshly plucked off the wet earth has the most amazing tasting peanuts: soft, crunchy, fleshy and tasty all at once. The wet earth stuck to the shell lends the nut an earthy aroma-an aroma of purity, innocence and a lush countryside.

Peanuts add so much texture and life into a dish. I hate the process of toasting, skinning and halving them before adding them into the puliyogare, pulusu atakulu, or any dish for that matter. Peanuts must be whole, shiny maroon, and lurking around aplenty in the dish!

Move aside peanut butter, I think the most beautiful, gorgeous delicacy that this nut lends itself into is the Senigivithnalu Chutney Pudi, or Kadalekayi Chutney Pudi.

In the Naravalapalli home, we would be greeted by Ramakka and Narayanamma heaving and pounding the roasted and skinned peanuts with tamarind, jaggery, roasted red chillies, rock salt and a truckload of garlic! Their breath is a hum which is in sync with the pounding (thump-hum-thump-hum-thump-hum)-it’s beautiful; I could hug them right now for doing it so well!

And by the end of it, a big bowl of fresh, crackly, crunchy and spicy pudi awaits you at dinner. In my father’s family, eating modestly is the norm-dad and all my uncles being picky, unadventurous eaters-but in the village, it is a different tale altogether. We scooped out huge tablespoons of the pudi on to our dinner leaves (no, no plates please) and mixed it up unabashedly with the rice and ghee and tucked in. And if dinner is served on the terrace under the stars…..ah the joy is unmatched.

While the mixer in our kitchens simply cannot recreate this flavor, it is still a top-of-the-charts recipe. This one is from my maternal aunts and mom: Indira, Shamantha, Manjula and Malathi. A true-blue Naravalapalli original-don’t miss it!!

Ingredients

1 cup peanuts (the larger the nuts, the better)
5 pods of garlic
2-3 medium size red chillies
1 small ball of tamarind
1 small lump of jaggery
1 tsp rock salt
Oil for roasting

Method

Roast the peanuts in a kadai, without using any oil. The skin must be browned, and must separate easily from the nut. Place the roasted nuts on a plate and rub your hand against them, in sweeping movements, so the skin loosens, and you can blow these away.
Heat some oil in the kadai and roast the chillies and garlic in it. Add the tamarind, jaggery and salt and roast it all for another minute. Leave it to cool.

Blend this mix with the peanuts in the mixer. A brief run will do, as the texture must be crunchy. Store in an airtight container. Keeps well for a week, keeps you well for that week!

A Slice Of Paradise!

A glimpse of fruits and vegetables drooping down tree branches and swaying lazily in the breeze is manna to sore, city eyes. I’m sure you agree. My dear friend Jayashree and I jumped with joy when we when visiting the Parkfield Resotel, off Chintamani main road. We were out on a recce inspecting resorts before we finalized on one for our impending office trip.

With glasses of chilled, fresh mango juice (the juice was fresh and sweet with no added sugar) we walked beside Bindu, the care taker who showed us around the place. A lung-full of this air can do you good-and with wisps of your hair fluttering in the warm breeze, and your feet touching the soft grass-you just can’t help breaking into a song.

The fruit and vegetable orchard did it for us. It is a vast, wildly-growing, mini forest where every tree, shrub and plant had something to offer in terms of its fruit, root or leaf. Huge golden yellow pomegranates touching the earth as the small tree refuses to bear its weight anymore, unripe, green guavas yet to attain adulthood, a wild patch of mint spreading an intoxicating aroma in the garden, huge papaya clusters waiting to be picked….we explored every nook and corner soaking in the ripe scents that enveloped us.

Purple-streaked brinjals; bright orange bitter gourds peeping out of the green foliage; cabbage patches with huge fleshy leaves; bottle gourds, ridge gourds, and lady’s fingers looking ten times healthier than their seniors who sit pretty in the food market shelves; oh, this was a sight to see.

The icing was the mango orchards- Malgova, Totapuri and Neelam varieties mostly, the sweet scents invited everyone from the mooing cows, to the cawing crows and the hissing snakes even…….so we had to watch our step!

We returned to Parkfield for the trip and I ensured that everyone go and see the orchard. Bindu mentioned that we could go and pick the fruits and veggies we wanted and buy them right here. I swear John Verghese bought at least 15 kilos of mango (he says 11), and so did Praveen. Vishal bought some pomegranates as well and said that the gardener threw in a bunch of mint for free, and Lakshmi bought massive looking cucumbers along with the mango-for her mom to make pickles.

I wish Parkfield gives customers charming little wicker baskets for picking this fresh produce, as it would add to the magic of this little orchard experience. Oh and if they ever give it a name, I think it must be called ‘a slice of paradise’.

Onion Sambar is ready for dinner!

It often happens that you find a song so catchy that the tune just settles in your head refusing to budge. I’m presently latched on to one. This song is not only catchy, but extremely cute.
Why am I talking music in a food blog? Well, because the song in the spotlight is actually a recipe. Imagine that.
I bought my son the Karadi Rhymes CD this January- and yeah, we’re so in love with it, the both of us: 2 ½ year old Samit, and __ year old me!
This CD (it is a must-buy!) has songs rendered by the adorable and spunky Usha Uthup and covers various contextual ‘Indian’ situations: trains, kites, monkeys, temples, monsoons, onion sambar and more.
Yeah, Onion Sambar!

The rhyme goes something like this:

Peel the Onion, Dice them small
Soak tamarind in water that’s warm
Cook some dal and mash it soft
Add some salt and turmeric strong…………..

Coconut and red chillies
Roast and grind them ever so fine
Add the paste to the dal to simmer…..

Onion Sambar is ready for dinner!
Ready for dinner, ready for dinner………

(I didn’t take help from the CD at all; told you I’ve been humming this!)

So while we hum this day and night, it got me thinking about the perfect onion sambar recipe.
Bubbling hot, thick, and bursting with the fragrance of onions, this sambar makes a riotous combination with rice, idlis, or even better, with ragi mudde.
And the best onions are the small ones. These little warriors so endorse the old saying, ‘good things come in small packages’. They are pungent, sharp in flavor and a perfect fit for South Indian cuisine. My mother-in-law chops them fine, fries them in coconut oil with mustard, garlic and bay leaves, and uses them as tadka (or seasoning) in most of her curries. It is a dash of super flavor!

Ok, here’s a version pulled out from my mom’s kitchen!

Ingredients

1 cup toor dal
200 gm small onions peeled
1tsp turmeric
Water for boiling the dal
A small ball of tamarind soaked in warm water
Salt to taste
Two pinches of asafetida
½ teaspoon jaggery
A spring of curry leaves
Mustard for seasoning
Ghee for seasoning

Roast and grind into a paste:
2 tbps fresh coconut (grated)
½ teaspoon jeera
½ teaspoon coriander seeds
4 red chillies

Method

Pressure-cook the dal. Steam the onions till they are soft (don’t pressure cook, as they will simply disintegrate into the dal. Add the turmeric, salt, jaggery, and tamarind into the dal and simmer on open medium heat. Add the coconut paste and continue to simmer for another 6 minutes. By this time the sambar would bubble on the surface and give out a lovely aroma.
In a separate pan, heat the ghee (clarified butter) till it melts, add the mustard seeds and when it splutters, add the asafetida and the curry leaves. Turn off the heat.

Transfer the dal into the serving bowl and pour the ghee seasoning over it. Onion Sambar is ready for dinner!

Gorge on it. Enjoy.

Chutney Tricks

For me (and I presume for most south Indians) a good meal must have: rice, ghee, one nice chutney, one vegetable maybe, spicy and piping hot rasam, well-set curd and a tangy pickle. The pickle definitely adds zing to the meal, but a good chutney is like a magic wand – SWOOSH and it sets your meal chugging merrily on the right track.

My mom’s treasure chest of chutneys is pretty deep. She can create chutney with the regular tomato; the unyielding ridge gourd; the acerbic radish; the quirky, piquant gongura; and why even with the plain old cucumber. Oh these chutneys are intrinsic to an Andhra meal-can do without sambar and rasam, but chutney, no way! These chutneys, with hot rice and ghee, catalyze the entire meal making it that much more exciting!

The one chutney that I absolutely vouch for is the coarse, raw tomato chutney. It leaves you absolutely delighted! And for this, the slippery, shiny green tomato is a must. So just head to your local vegetable bazaar and ask the vendor for these fresh, little things, they come with stalks intact and look absolutely wonderful!
Bring them home and dish up this chutney like zip, zap zoom–it won’t take you more than 15-20 min.

The flip side: This is fresh chutney that must be consumed preferably, the same day—maximum 2-3 days if you refrigerate it.

Go-on, this one in particular is fun to do!

Ingredients

½ kg green tomatoes, remove the stalks, wash, clean and quarter
2 onions (medium-sized), chopped
4 red chillies broken into pieces
½ teaspoon chopped ginger
1 teaspoon jaggery
Salt to taste
2 pinches of asafetida
½ teaspoon mustard
A sprig of bay leaves
2 teaspoons chopped coriander
1 tbps oil

Method

Heat oil in a kadhai. Add the mustard seeds and when they hiss and splutter add the broken red chillies, the chopped ginger, the bay leaves and stir well. Now add the chopped onions and stir again until it is pink and soft.
Throw in the chopped green tomatoes and mix well. Add the asafetida, jaggery and the salt and mix until it spreads well. Keep the heat on till the tomatoes wilt and turn soft.

Transfer this entire mixture into a blender, and send it whirring not more than 5 seconds. This chutney is meant to be coarse (if you like it fine instead of chunky, blend it for another 5 seconds). Add the chopped coriander, mix well and transfer into a serving bowl.

I can’t help but repeat myself like a parrot; but this tastes its absolute best with rice and ghee. Enjoy…

Grandma’s Rasayana

I remember grandma scurrying into the kitchen displeased that there was not enough on the evening snack menu for her four sons, when they returned from work. This comprised of my father and my three dear uncles, all younger than dad.
She wouldn’t say anything to her daughters-in-law, she would instead amble into the dingy, cool corner in the store room and take the basket full of bananas perched on the topmost shelf.

She would then in a brusque, business-like fashion march back into the main kitchen and start chopping them into thick discs, and in the same breath, order my aunt to quickly grate some fresh coconut. I remember being called in to discard all the peels into the dustbin outside. I’d always ask if I could chop the bananas or grate the jaggery maybe, but grandma would flatly refuse—her way of minimizing mistakes in her culinary preparation.

The banana slices would inadvertently all be of the same thickness, and covered with a plate to prevent them from forming a brown surface. And she would tell me how even the simple act of chopping fruits and vegetables is an art in itself. My aunt would then start grating jaggery, into light, textured flakes that would melt immediately when in contact with the bananas. Ground cardamom powder would be prepared next.

All this culminates into the mixing-which really was the climax of this lovely food episode. Grandma would first add the jaggery and toss the bananas with a spoon. She would then throw in the grated coconut, and toss the banana once again, so you see a bowlful of beautiful, sunny-yellow discs coated with molten jaggery and fresh, white strands of coconut flesh. Finally, the black flecks of cardamom would be sprinkled and the bananas tossed one final time. And me, I would savor all the drama until I dribbled on to my clothes.

But, I would be sent back to get four bowls of uniform size, washed and cleaned till they sparkle and she would dole out large spoonfuls of fruit into them. I remember handing out the bowls to the four of them in various parts of the house, and rushing back into the kitchen for my share. As grandma would say-we had to eat it all before the bananas browned.

I don’t know about my father and uncles, but I thought this treat was simply kick-ass!

Ingredients
4 big bananas, ripe but firm
3 tbsp grated jaggery (buy the soft jaggery oval-shaped lumps that give into the grater easily, not the hard cubes which are tough to grate)
1 tbsp freshly grated coconut
½ tsp cardamom powder

Method
Grate the coconut first. Grate the jaggery as well and keep the measured amount handy. Keep aside the cardamom powder. And finally, go for the bananas. Peel and chop them into medium-thick discs into a serving bowl (preferably glass so you can see it from all sides). Sprinkle the jaggery liberally and toss. Add the coconut and toss once more. Finally add the cardamom powder and give it one final swirl so it spreads. Eat immediately.

P.S. I recently tried replacing a tablespoon of jaggery with two teaspoons of date syrup. It turned out great! You could even warm this for 30 seconds in the microwave and serve it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. This makes amazing dessert.

Tuck-in. Enjoy.

Guthi Vankaya-the way my mom makes it...

Stuffed brinjal or Guthi Vankaya, as it is called in Telugu, is one of those ambrosial dishes an egg plant/brinjal will yield itself into amazingly well. For us, when we were much smaller, it was a rare treat, something my brother and I were really fond of— a dish we would have liked at mealtimes everyday, but it was not to be. Succulent well-cooked baby brinjals in their entirety: waiting to be mixed with rice and ghee—oh so fragrant and delicious!

My mom’s version is extremely simple and basic in terms of ingredients, but it calls for some amount of skill, and presence-of-mind, a quality that completely fails me sometimes! Okay, there are two sutras that do the trick:

a) Buy purple baby brinjals, and not the ones that are slightly bigger. It is seasonal, so try finding them in the big vegetable markets or ask your local vegetable seller to source them for you.
b) Forget about using your non-stick kadhai for this one. You need a heavy-duty, thick, fat, wok or a similar shallow-fry pan to cook these. If you don’t have it, it really makes sense to buy one. You’ll be amazed at its versatility in the kitchen. A tip: if you have a thick-bottom pressure pan, try using it without the lid.

Try this out, and serve it with simple sona masuri rice and a nice big spoonful of ghee (that goes right on top of the rice mound and melts along its way downhill). To eat, use your hands and mix the brinjal with the rice, crushing the soft vegetable to mix evenly with the rice and ghee. And the taste…tell me about it!

Ingredients

½ kg baby brinjals (the purple ones)
1 cup gram flour (besan)
2-3 teaspoons chilli powder
Salt to taste
¼ teaspoon turmeric
¼ teaspoon asafetida
Oil to cook

Method

Clean the brinjals thoroughly with water, and after this wipe them dry. Slice away the stalk portion, such that the brinjal now has a base and can sit straight in the pan. Cut the brinjal through the length, just till the end, but not fully that the pieces separate. Cut it once more so that the two cuts form a ‘cross’. Or the brinjal now has four parts but all still joined at the base.

Mix gram flour, chilli powder, salt, turmeric and asafetida and sift into even flour. Stuff the brinjals with this and place it in the wok gently, so they all sit pretty, next to each another. Once all brinjals are stuffed, dust the top with the remaining flour mix. Pour a spoonful of oil over each brinjal. And just swish a last spoonful of oil deftly across the pan, like a good luck charm.

Now cook the brinjals on low flame, with a plate gently placed on top of the wok/kadhai.
Check on them occasionally, talk to them as well… Cook until the brinjals are tender and done.

Eat. Enjoy.

Draakshi Gojju

Sweet, plump grapes are best eaten off the bunch, spitting out the cumbersome seeds. If they're seedless, even better. The only time grapes were brought home in my mom’s place was prior to a festival. The bunch would adorn the fruit plate kept as an offering to the god. And since festival season is not necessarily the season of the grape, the bunch was purely for decorative purposes.

But we didn’t throw the sour grapes out. There is this old recipe my grandma fished out, that could kill two birds in one stone—make use of the sour grapes, and also make a piquant, spicy-sweet curry for the next meal. Hah!

Here it goes.

1 medium size bunch of grapes-either the green or the wine-red variety is as good (about 150 gm)
1 teaspoon chilly powder
1 and ½ teaspoon jaggery if the grapes are too sour... Reduce the jaggery if the grape has some sweetness in it
Salt to taste
A pinch of asafetida

Grind well (adding very little water):
1tablespoon grated coconut
½ teaspoon jeera
2 teaspoon til seeds
¼ teaspoon fenugreek seeds

½ teaspoon mustard seeds
2 broken red chillies
A sprig of curry leaves
1 teaspoon of oil

Method

Chop the grapes into halves, and discard seeds if any. Take a kadhai and add the grapes, plus the pulp and liquid that oozes out while chopping. Add chilly powder, salt, jaggery and asafetida and cook on a low flame.
As the grape mash starts to cook with the spices, it becomes a pulp of nice consistency. When the mixture starts bubbling, add the ground coconut-jeera-til-fenugreek mixture to this.

Cook for another five minutes.

Now in a smaller kadhai, heat oil, add mustard seeds and wait for them to splutter, and now add the curry leaves and red chillies. Pour this hot oil mix straight into the curry and listen to that beautiful hissing sound.

Draakshi Gojju is now absolutely ready to eat! Serve hot with rice and a dollop of ghee.