Ice cream : hot cakes

My roomie bought this new denim skirt and it reminds me of my denim skirt that my Dad gifted me a long time ago, oh how I miss my denim skirt, nostalgia! I wish I were closer to home, somewhere so close that I could just hop onto a bus and then go home and grab whatever I had left back there, but alas, home is a place that is so far away! Some things in life are so close yet so far.

We had free ice cream at Stamp today, some marketing tactic and it gave me the inspiration to write about the art of making ice cream. It reminds me of the time I made ice cream for Maria’s brother, a four year old then. He was so excited about it that he convinced his Mom to make fish fry for me in return for the ice cream. Really sweet I know I even had a poem about it.

So this is how you make ice cream, you’ll need milk, corn flour, just to thicken the milk, condensed milk, sugar, vanilla essence (or whatever flavoring suits your palate) and a blender. Firstly boil the milk. Then mix a little bit of corn flour with some cold milk. Add this to the boiling milk, stir this for some time until it thickens and then let it cool. Now add enough sugar and condensed milk and blend the mixture. Refrigerate it until its half set, and then beat it again. Now let it set completely and then voila yummy ice cream is ready to be served.

There was this documentary on Discovery Channel on the science of making ice cream, It was really informative, especially the Nitrogen Ice cream bit. We had something called Maryland Day at school recently, a day set aside for the University to showcase all the interesting experiments and projects to the little children and general public. We had a display of how nitrogen ice cream was made that day, but I guess they got over like hot cakes, hmmm 'ice cream got over like hot cakes' weird (giggles).

Nothing Fishy!

The new sushi place at Stamp is open, and I dropped in to try the food. Sushi, so different from the fish curry back home :)! I had this sunrise sushi, that too with a chopstick for the first time, though I could just manage to pop one roll into my mouth before I pounced on the fork. Chopsticks and me, we still have a long way to go!

Speaking of fish curry, there are so many different fish curries, but the one I am so used to making is the red curry. Fish Moli is really tasty, usually we have fish moli at weddings, it is considered one of those delicacies. My Mom recently coached me through Fish Mappas, not one of the curries we make at home. Then there is the "meen kozhumbu" (மீன் kஒழும்பு), a tamilian way of making fish, which my Mom knows. I know “meen policha" (മീന്‍
പൊളിച്ച) too, that’s fish steam cooked in a banana leaf, interesting huh!

The red fish curry is at the heart and soul of any Syrian Christian meal. It tastes real good with tapioca; I bet not many people have had this kind of food. I wonder why all these lovely dishes remain buried somewhere deep in the middle class households of Kerala. It is high time they start showing their faces on the global platter, I guess am doing my bit to help with that :).

All preparations are underway for the seafood bonanza, guess this would be the first time I will be preparing fish curry in the US of A, hmm! Though I did fry fish for junior last December, that too when I was on lent, so sadly I couldn’t taste the fish fry. So I have to decide, do I go with the regular red curry or should I make moli/mappas?

Puttu

Steamed food is very healthy. In Kerala we have a lot of steamed dishes, so today I am going to talk about making one of the most famous breakfast items in Kerala, ‘Puttu’, which are cakes of steamed rice flour and coconut with chickpea/channa curry, stew or banana as the side.

Puttu can be made with either rice or wheat or ragi flour. It is one of on the easiest dishes that can be made, just that you need the right vessel. It is steamed in a tube shaped vessel specifically used for making puttu. This vessel will be placed over a water pot that provides the steam. I really wanted to pick up on of these vessels when I was down there, but sadly I couldn’t.

So basically you take rice flour and knead it with warm water and a little salt. But you shouldn’t knead it into dough like we do for bread. It should still be coarse shavings of rice flour. You need to then layer this mixture along with grated coconut into the tall tube like vessel and place it over the pot of boiling water.

Let this cake steam cook for a few minutes and then you can serve the steaming hot puttu with some lovely chickpea curry or “kadala” curry as they say in Kerala. In the olden days puttu used to be made in coconut shells and the taste that the coconut shell lends to the puttu is something totally unique.

Some people have puttu with banana, this is very typical in Kerala and it will take time to get used to the combination of tastes. During the mango season people also have ripe mango with puttu. Sometimes they layer ripe jackfruit along with grated coconut it lends an all together different flavor. It is indeed amazing how many variations you can have to the ordinary dish.

The dreaded cold

Woke up this morning with this horrible head cold, have been suffering with it for about 2 days now. Apparently it seems to be some sort of flu virus that my dearest roomie passed on with great generosity to all around. Anyways here I am with the famous “jeladoshm” as we say in my native language and I need to beat the hell out of it. So today I am going to walk you through the general household remedies we take to cure the damn cold.


The first one is pepper coffee, its really soothing trust me. I have observed that this is something we follow around my native and for some reason it is pretty unheard of to the rest of the junta, unlike the next few remedies. Basically you have to make really light coffee with a good amount of crushed pepper in it. This concoction should be consumed warm. I think light black pepper coffee is more effective, but they usually recommend milk coffee with pepper for children. The next is light ginger tea. Again this should be really light with lots of grated ginger and it is most effective when consumed warm.


Another one of the therapies that I know of is, to let water come to a boil with Basil or “Tulsi” leaves, then let it cool down and drink this concoction periodically, this is pretty effective too. When I have a cold I prefer drinking things warm. Water boiled with fenugreek seeds or “Jeera” is also pretty good for cleansing the system. This should be taken regularly during the day. This is a good therapy for fever too. Basically when you have fever you should try consuming as much water as possible so as to cleanse your system.


So well that is about the “gyan” I know for the common cold and hopefully I am going to be rid of this cold soon. Speaking of “Tulsi” we were supposed to get a “Tulsi” plant for our home and at the rate we take care of our house I really wonder how long the plant will survive. I had one at home though which Dad used to take good care of.

Tea tales

Ah so I didn’t have such a great morning, the French Vanilla as usual isn’t there, this time they were out of English Toffee and Hot Chocolate too, so I had to get down to making Hazel Nut coffee, and I don’t like the coffee here, it is so different from the filter coffee we get back home.

The smell of filter coffee is in itself so invigorating; it reminds me of good old Bangalore, which I miss so much. I am not going into the details of making coffee; because that is an art I still have to master. Not sure how many of you will agree with me on this note, but I feel that no Star bucks or Coffee day coffee could come anywhere close to the authentic filter coffee made in a Bangalore household, ah simply banglorean isn’t the word. :).

As I haven’t finished my tea tales, I though I’d continue with that. Tea is something we all miss here; I really don’t know why the West hasn’t caught onto the tea bandwagon yet, hmm. Cutting chai, something very mumbaiya and up North, is half a glass of hot, strong, chai that tastes so good, the stronger it is the better it is. So if we were to talk in terms of US proportions it would amount to quarter part of a small coffee cup. Pretty small for anyone used to the size of a serving we get here, but it would be so rich with milk, sugar and tea and the flavours would just melt in your mouth. It has to be served in that thick glass with ridges, definitely incomplete without it.

When you are on a long drive along the highway and you’ve been at the wheel for hours a tea break is such a welcome change. Back home its so easy to find a tea stall along the highway and take that much needed break and maybe combine it with some hot banana chips simply irresistible.

Where ever you go in India, you are bound to get tea, but its tea that is served in the hill stations that tastes the best, be it Darjeeling, Niligiris, Musoorie, Simla, wow I could just go on, India has so many hill stations and I’m glad I’ve been to most of these places. There is something about drinking piping hot tea when its freezing outside, and every time you breathe you have this vapor formation, its like as though your smoking. As kids that used to be such a favorite pastime, we used to try our best to form rings in the air, if you know what I mean. Talking about tours, my parents are in Kaziranga and I didn’t even know it, just discovered so today, talk about being thrown out of home :(.

In Ooty you get something called chocolate tea, which I haven’t had, but its good is what I’ve heard. Some people have black tea, for this you should make light tea (without milk) and then add a few drops of lime and a little sugar. Green tea is good for the heart and so I’ve heard but green tea is pretty bitter.

My Grandma is into tea cultivation these days, actually for the past 10 years or so, and it’s nice to go on errands with her, with these cane baskets. You need to pluck the tender tea leaves as and when they are formed and then you need to give it to the mill, at least that is what I know, but I think you need to pluck out the tender leaves and then let them dry for a few days and then grind them and you’ll have tea powder. It used to be fun going around plucking tea leaves, we used to make these tiny carts or trolleys for the cane baskets, not that the tea leaves were heavy but its all about experimenting.

Doing justice to my Mom and her botanical names, the tea plant is known as Camellia sinensis :). Tea with bread is good when you have a running stomach, household therapies :) and generally tea is a healthy drink, so here is to you chai ;).

Thirst quencher

In my quest to keep myself occupied I decided to shift from poetry to sharing my culinary ‘gyan’, a welcome break for my roomies and my wellwishers, who think I am so obsessed with poetry, which I think I am ever since I returned form India. So here is my blog on anything that suits my palate which I am sure would benefit a lot of them out here.

So let me start with the simple seedha sadha ‘chai’ or tea. A drink that is very common in India. The ingredients that you will need to make authentic chai are, tea powder, dry ginger, know as shunti in Southern India, cardamom or elaichi, whole milk, sugar and water. I use crushed tea leaves that I got from Ooty, which really tastes good and cost my Dad a fortune, but heck when it comes to a thirst quencher you should, go for it.

There are many ways to go about making tea, the ‘pal tea’ a very common way of making good tea that simply tastes superb involves heating 3/5th portion of milk and 2/5th portion of water on the stove. To this add the required amount of sugar and then you can add a few shards of grated dry ginger and a few cardamom peels. You can also crush the cardamom seeds into a fine powder and add a pinch to enhance the taste.

Let this concoction come to a boil and then add the tea powder in the required amounts. You can switch the stove off when you see the tea rising. Then place a lid over the vessel and let the flavors sink in for about 5 minutes. Now drain out the ‘pal tea’ and serve in cups.

Tea tastes really good with hot banana bajji when its cold outside and everyone in the family is huddled around the table, one of those family moments which is so common in India. Since ‘pal tea’ requires a lot of milk, I make it rarely only when guests come and the likes, my usual tea just consists of water boiling on the stove with the cardamom and dry ginger and tea leaves. I follow the same procedure just that there is no milk. Then I drain out the tea and add milk separately as required.

Here everyone is so diet conscious and so I use 1% milk, and hence the taste deteriorates accordingly. Some people prefer to add the tea leaves in the beginning itself. It’s basically up to you, whatever suits your palate. Notice that I never specify proportions in detail, I just cant measure and add stuff to my dishes, I base it on the aroma, its ‘aandaz aapna aapna’ you see.

Among hot beverages, Ne stop thinking :D, I had to put that in there, I like tea, coffee and hot chocolate, but tea keeps me awake and in the words of my dear roomie, I am a tea freak, but I like coffee just as much, just that it should be made the right way, I love French Vanilla, but for some reason the French Vanilla brew at Deli isn’t working and so I had to settle for English toffee and Hot chocolate, they were so sweet. I like my tea sweet but I do not like my coffee or hot chocolate sweet.