The Art of Pretending to be Fancy

Living away from home comes with several perks and nuisances. I’ve found that cooking falls under both those categories. Tanisha and I are lucky, because we enjoy food and cooking. However, that means we spend inordinate amounts of time in the kitchen preparing each meal, trying to make them as interesting as we can. It’s safe to say that the novelty is beginning to wear off, and that the prospect of cooking makes us consider stepping out for a cheap dosa or a plate of chaat…often. But our limited supply of money keeps us in the kitchen on most days, and we’ve plated many a masterpiece.

I shall now conceal from public view items like aromatic burnt khichidi and dry parsley-mint sandwiches, and share these with you instead.

Garlic mushroom salad

Baby potato garden salad

Dalia (broken wheat) upma

Shezuan noodles with mushroom and capcicum

Spaghetti in green pesto

Spaghetti in tomato sauce with mushrooms and cheese

Vegetable shezuan fried rice

Vegetable hakka noodles

Spaghetti with tofu and baby corn

Jeera rice

Sprouts

Yellow dal fry

Tabbouleh

Open-face vegetable pizza

Yummy, no? 

Yes.

Very.

Chikoo, it's all yummy.

Dear Chikoo,

I write to you with a content smile across my lips and a cool, spicy tingle on my taste buds. Imagine a blissful glaze across my wide-open eyes as I watch the chaat walahs layer my masala puris with nothing but meticulous love.

Turns out, Goa has kickass street food.

You know how Mumbai has those chaat carts on wheels like our bhel walah’s? Goa has them too, but with little fancy embellishments. Each cart has both chaat and pav bhaaji. Mmm. The vendors give you a little bowl full of flat puris sprinkled with chaat masala to chomp on while they prepare your order, no matter what it is. Their sev puris are made in round puris, so they fill your mouth with an explosion of chatpata flavour. Their meetha chutney is tangy and sweeter than the ones we’re used to, but in a good way. In an interesting way. Their pani puris are large, filled to the brim with icy-spicy pani. Their aloo tikkis are soft and filling- making the ragda even more delicious with them.

Now, all this being said, I still prefer the chaat back home. But the pav bhaaji here is a buttery dream. This is the closest it has ever come to tasting as good as it smells. And that’s saying a whole lot.

I think I’m this excited about the street food here because of how low I placed my expectations when I first got here. I was dejected to think that I won’t have real chaat for six whole months, and although I was excited when I first spotted a bhel walah, I was also prepared to be completely let down. But now my cravings will be ever-satiated, and I can fall asleep each night knowing that no matter what goes wrong, there will always be a cart of chaat waiting for me at the end of it.

The road perpendicular to our office is dotted with a series of chaat walahs in the evening and Tanisha and I drive past them all every day on our way home. We are now regulars at the ‘Miramar Goa Spacial’ bhel puri stall and the vendors wave and smile at us even when we don’t stop to grab a bite. In a strange way, that makes me feel like I’m settling down into this place more than anything else.

Now all I need is a sudden gush of monetary wind that will let me gorge every evening and I’ll be the happiest girl you’ve ever met.

Love always,
Poodle

PS: They call pani puri ‘water balls’.

The Bhel Walah

Just over two weeks ago, I was walking down Hill Road in Bandra and saw the bhel walah I often go to. I gave into temptation and asked him for a plate of pani puri. It had been over two months since I was in the city and it was delicious to indulge in my favourite street food again. Three puris in, I noticed a small 12x12inch solar panel board resting on his cart. Intrigued, I asked him about it and he said, "Haan, yahan kaafi dhoop milti hai."

I took a picture of his proud panel and tweeted it.

Moments later, my phone beeped, notifying me about a couple of retweets. I was glad more people were sharing this. What I didn't expect was just how much people would respond to this one man's thoughtfulness. A handful of retweets catapulted into a whole brigade of them and I constantly had notifications and responses to that one particular tweet all day long. Some people even posted it on other social media where they got several responses as well. I was amazed by how many people this man had impressed with one simple device.

 

When people began asking me questions about the bhel walah and his choices, I decided to go back and talk to him once more. I also wanted him to know about the little ripple he had created among those who cared.  So, yesterday, I walked up to his little cart on Hill Road and had a chat with him over only-slightly-spicy pani puri.

Rakesh Gupta is from Uttar Pradesh. His family has a farm back home that derives almost all its energy from solar panels. The ones back home, he says, are huge in comparison to the little plate he carries on his cart. They use that energy for heating and lighting and for running their phones and TV. The one on his cart helps him charge his phone battery on the go and gives him the power he needs for lighting. He says that it's relatively easier to set up these panels in a village or farm where there are vast expanses of land. He feels that most people don't install panels on buildings and other places in the city due to fear of branches and other heavy objects falling on the glass chips and breaking them. Pointing at the roof of St. Stanislaus High School, he said that the school has done good by installing solar panels somewhere inside. A newspaper reporter discovered his solar panels one day and came by to take a photo of him with them. He joked about how he was made to pose and with the panels, after agreeing to connect the cart's bulb to them. 

What strikes me most about Rakesh is that he is a very, very cool cucumber. He knows he's saving money with those panels, he knows people are interested and he knows that we would all do a lot better if we followed suit. Yet, he quietly goes about his day, cracking into delicate puris and charging his phone with sunlight. When I look back, I don't think I've ever seen him looking anxious or stressed out, even when he's running three orders behind with several people standing around him impatiently. He talks to everyone warmly and doesn't hesitate to reply no matter what you ask him about. That man always seems happy.

If you live around Bandra, I would suggest paying him a visit. Even if it's just for a plate of bhel. His is, after all, one of the few places left in the area that still charges 20 rupees a dish.

Day Seven

Nothing much happened today. I woke up, took a nice dump, brushed my teeth and ate food. (Maybe I shouldn't have put all those things in the same sentence.)
Anyway, in the evening after Ilina came home from school, we were both very hungry. So we ordered from McDonald's and I shamelessly asked for a Large Masala Grill Meal with Piri-Piri fries. Keeping to their trusty promise of delivering within 29minutes, our food arrived soon after. We distributed the contents.

She walked hastily to her room, her hands full of delicious edibles. The tops of the fries popping out of their cover teased her arm as she walked. She set down the glass of coke, burger, fries and masala on the little cupboard by her window. There, in the afternoon light filtering in through the curtains, her food gleamed in yellow splendor. She emptied her fries into a paper bag, adding the intended masala generously and then gave it a good shake. She shook the little paper bag to an unknown beat, listening to the fries bump against each other and the walls of the bag. She could almost hear the crunch as the aroma from the spices seemed to penetrate from the paper to her nose. She opened the bag to expose slender, gorgeous french fries, each covered uniformly in red spices. She took a long piece and bit into it. An explosion of flavour spread over her tastebuds like hyacinth over a still lake.

My picture for today is that greasy, fattening, over-filling, indulgent meal.
(My stomach still complains.)

Quickies

The YUMMY cake that was.

YUMMY CHOCOLATE CAKE

1.5 cups of flour
3 cups powdered sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2tsp vanilla essence
2 whole eggs
2 cups milk
2 tsp baking powder
150 gm butter

Pre-heat oven. (~180degrees)

Mix up all these fellows in a nice big bowl. For this you will need a spatula and stamina for continuous, vigorous mixing. Ideally, try to get rid of all the lumps, even though it may seem impossible. Whisper to yourself, "You can do it." If no one's looking, give yourself an encouraging fist bump and carry on mixing.

Once mixed, transfer into a greased and floured container for baking purposes. Then bake for around 45 minutes at 180 degrees. The timing may not be accurate- so just stick a knife into your cake every five minutes or so once you cross half an hour and turn off your oven when it comes out clean.

Do not be over-excited. Do not forget oven mitts or a thick towel. Do not start touching or kissing your beautiful cake yet because it will be hot.

But woohoo! It's now ready. Upturn and keep it ready on a flat plate for icing.

YUMMY CHOCOLATE ICING

500 gm dark chocolate
400 ml fresh cream
Pinch of salt

Make while your cake bakes.

Melt the dark chocolate. It looks beautiful, believe me. Simultaneously heat up the cream in another pan. Add the melted chocolate to the warm cream and mix it up with a pinch of salt. This looks even more beautiful. Watching the white cream turn to dark brown will make your mouth water. Try not to drool into your mixture.

Try not to eat it up before your cake finishes cooking. To satiate your watering mouth, you can lick up the residual chocolate from the melting bowl.

Woohoo! It's ready.

 

YUMMY CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH ICING

1 Yummy chocolate cake

1 Bowl of Yummy chocolate icing

1 ladle 

1 flat spatula to spread

Dollop the icing GENEROUSLY over your cake and cover it completely. Spread it and make it look pretty.

Serve with extra icing to use as chocolate dip. This is MUCH tastier than chocolate sauce. 

TaadaaA! 

 

Remember, it's CHOCOLATE, so it will ALWAYS be yum (even if you mess up the recipe). Happy baking!

PS- this recipe was the result of messily following two separate recipes.

 

Porridge with lumps

I came home from school today wondering what to eat. There wasn't much. I saw an unopened box of porridge mix up on the shelf. I wasn't feeling so virtuous and healthy so I decided to keep scouting for something a tad yummier. But I found nothing else. So porridge it was.
I read the back of it. Mix 3 heaped tablespoons of the powder in 1and1/2 cups of warm milk. Boil for 2-4minutes. Stir continuously without any lumps. Add sugar to taste. Okay; simple enough. So I get the milk from the fridge and pour in the required amount into a deep pan and start heating it. I left it there for a minute to check a couple of messages on my phone and when I got back it had begun to boil. "Great!", I thought. my warm milk is now boiling hot. So I added a little cold milk to it and then put in 3, heaped spoons of the ash-coloured mix. It landed into the milk as 3 stubborn dollops. 'No lumps' was my ultimate goal. I began my 2-4 mins of continuous stirring. I started breaking into the islands of powder. They fragmented and soon I had a pool of lumps. These lumps began soaking in the milk and got bigger. I was now looking down at an extremely unappetizing gooey mess with more blobs than milk. So I added some more milk hoping the excess would provide more scope for dissolving and started mixing vigorously. This wasn't such an easy task considering that I needed one hand free to keep pushing Juno (my cat) away from the stove; who was eager to taste this scalding concoction of mine. Poor guy, if only he knew what a disaster it was turning out to be....
So my 4 minutes was long finished and I was still trying to get it to look more liquid than solid. I was making slow progress. I turned off the gas and transferred the contents into a bowl. I now used a spoon to smash whatever was left of the powder. No luck- whatsoever. The lumps merely stuck to the back of the spoon making it look even more revolting. Ugh! This was exasperating. I was seriously beginning to doubt the solubility of this powder. I decided to taste it. I began with the parts that were fully dissolved and it was really yummy! This raised my spirits. So I took a spoonful with some lumps in them; It was disgusting. I tasted like mud. Really coarse, wet mud. (not that I have ever tasted coarse, wet mud- but if I did, I'd bet it'd taste just like that.) So I gave up. There weren't any more 'good' parts left and each spoonful had at least five lumps.
All I could think of was-- Yuck.
Moral of the story- if you can't get the lumps out, don't taste it.

Street food!

I'm a foodie. Food excites me. And what excites me even more than swanky food in swanky restaurants is street food! Food is becoming increasingly innovative-you have indianised chinese and chinese-ised indian. Frankies, dosas, chaat- you name it, there's going to be something new and wacky to try. The latest on the list is baked vada pav! For those who don't know, a vada pav is a yummy fried batata vada (full of potato) put between a bun, sometimes with hot n sweet chutneys (heaven!). But this new vada pav, introduced to me by a friend of mine- is just too good. They've eliminated the fried batter around the batata and have put it directly into a round bun with garlic and sweet sauce. Now a combination of all that- piping hot, is an absolute treat! Especially on an empty stomach after a long day at school. But of all street foods, my unbeaten favourite is pani puri. The hot ragda, the sweet imli chutney and the icy-cool, spicy pani filled into a nice, big, round puri is sheer genius! Brilliance like none other! No variations with this classic food for me, thank you...you just don't mess with perfection.