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Showing posts with the label Food

When Destiny Sends Its Helpers

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Keep running. The right people find you on the way. At different stages of life, you’re confronted with different challenges. And each time you cross a hurdle, you feel that familiar sense of accomplishment. It’s tempting to attribute that success to your own skill, tenacity, and willpower — to pat yourself on the back and feel proud of how you handled it. But when you zoom out and look at the moments where you somehow managed to trump the odds, a quieter realization sets in: It’s never just you. There is always an unseen army that shows up at the right time. It was 2005. I had decided to pursue my Master’s in the US. I picked a few schools in the Midwest where the expenses were manageable, and that’s how the University of Missouri–Rolla entered the picture. But funding was still a massive question mark. I hadn’t secured any assistantship, and we didn’t have the means to pay out of pocket. We went from bank to bank, hoping for an education loan. Each manager aske...
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CTR, Vidyarthi Bhavan & Rameshwaram Cafe

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The iconic CTR Masala Dosa Bangalore is home to the best benne masala dosas in the world.  I have had dosas in many places around the world, and I keep coming back to the ones in Bangalore.  Even a simple darshini - a quick stand and eat joint - serves a dosa that lingers in memory.  People often debate Karnataka vs. Tamil Nadu dosas. For me, there’s no comparison. Tamil Nadu dosas are fluffy, while Karnataka’s are crisp, thanks to a touch of rice flakes in the batter. That crisp magic keeps bringing me back. Anyway, during the current trip, I made my customary stop at CTR (Central Tiffin Room) .  Malleswaram itself is a place I miss dearly - the bustle of 8th Cross, the street vendors, the old trees lining Margosa and Sampige roads. And there, on the corner of 9th Cross, stands CTR - unchanged for decades.    I ordered my favorite masala dosa. The wait always feels the longest, but once it arrived, I was transported. The crisp golden dosa, the chutneys, th...
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Limitless wonder

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Certainly not the way I eat! I remember that, in school, fellow students made it a point to ask this question to put a timid and meek lad in trouble.   Do you live to eat or eat to live? It was after considerable deliberation that the right answer was arrived at.  Right answer in this case was the one that did not invite the giggles and that condescending look of You can't even come up with the right answer.  Anyway, now, nobody would ask that question, and the answer would be way different.  The passage of time has corrected several of my answers now, which I had presumed to be right back then. Food has always been a priority.  One does not have to go through any kind of difficulty to get awesome vegetarian food in Bangalore.  By default, all the good restaurants are pure vegetarian only. In fact, till I was in Engineering, I had never entered a restaurant that had non-vegetarian food. Anyway, all this is for another day.  As I got exposed to t...
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Congress kadalekai

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For my friends who know what kind of a passionate Bangalorean I am, it will come as no surprise that Congress kadalekai figures in my list of posts. Kadalekai (groundnuts/ peanuts) is more or less a staple chaat (snack) in Bangalore (don't want to get carried away just by mentioning Bangalore, since it is popular throughout India) with various alterations to the preparation style lending a lip smacking effect. Groundnuts can be roasted, boiled, peeled and boiled (note the difference between the two), added to sambar (south Indian lentil soup, to give a loose translation, though soup in no way adds justification to the translation), to curries (a sort of a side-dish when having your meal with sambar or rasam (a bracket within a bracket is required just to say that rasam is a toned down version of sambar with less lentils) or curd rice). I feel happy to know that I have closed the brackets properly, thanks to the numerous compiler errors I have faced because of incomplete bracket...
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Indian restaurants at Boston, Sigh!

Boston, easily one of the biggest cities in US with considerable Indian population and of course, lot of Indian restaurants by the wayside. The suburbs have a good number of restaurants well balanced with North Indian and South Indian food. The weekends give us good time to explore these restaurants and rate them based on the delicacies served. Being a dosa freak, my eyes involuntarily go to that section of the menu which serve different types of dosas. In Bangalore, whenever I used to venture out to eat outside, even if I made up my mind for dosas, I would not feel complete without eating the Masala Dosa. Here too, it is no different. Though the menu lashes out ten different kinds of dosas, I would simply settle for the Masala Dosa. Habits die hard, and towards masala dosas, it is impossible. We have easily visited about ten different joints over the last couple of months. One bite of the dosa, and I know that it is nowhere, not even remotely close to what I get in Bangalore. ...
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Thanks...But...!!!

I remember those days when my parents used to go out on important functions to travel out of Bangalore. It used to fall on a weekend, and generally, my brother and I stayed back home fighting out minor squabbles. I would make it a point to tell my mother not to tell the news of her travel anywhere outside, lest neighbours and relatives invite us for lunch or dinner. Anything appealed to us, except going out to somebody else's house for the sake of food. That has somehow not fascinated me or my brother much. Both of us would rather shell out that extra money on a good hotel outside and fill our stomach. But, going out to somebody's house exclusively for the sake of food is a strict NO NO. OK! If a couple of extra bucks have to be saved, save it on other things. Why cringe to buy good food? In all my years, anywhere, I have never cared to find out what my neighbour is cooking or what is going to be offered by whom. I still remember the times when my brother and I used to...
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Pitlai today...slurp!Slurp!

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For close to ten months now, I was aching to have Pitlai , made from Pavakka/agalkai/karela/bitter gourd . After a long wait, Yadu got agalkai from St. Louis. As today was my cooking turn, I experimented with this dish. Treating agalkai is a pretty tough job since the bitterness from the vegetable has to be removed. So, the vegetable has to be boiled in tamarind water for close to 15-20 minutes and then washed in ordinary water before draining the water completely. The actual preparation of the dish has to be started then. Though there are a number of recipes available on the internet to make pitlai , can it beat the home made recipe. So, I called up back home in India to find out the actual mode of preparation. Lo! My mother was spontaneous with her response. Obviously, she has been cooking for ages, while I am just a starter. But then, I guess even I can tell you how to do this in a jiffy. You see, even I have the experience now in cooking! It took me about an hour and a half to mak...
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Poruchcha Kuzhambu

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It does get frustrating to cook the same things and have it time and again. So, that's when I decided that for a change, I will look into something different. I got the recipe for Poruchcha Kuzhambu from India and decided to experiment with it. It is always a 90-10 ratio of getting a dish right. Come on! We are staying in the United States for ten months now and that's already a good learning experience as far as cooking is concerned. Even if it goes the other way (I am referring to the ten per cent chance), we have no other choice than to eat it up. To be honest, it is not a bad proposition to eat it even if it is not as good as the way it comes at home. On a lighter vein, I tell my friends Nowadays, I can mix up rice even with sauce and eat it! I know that's a lot of exaggeration and we are not bad cooks either. Luckily, the dish turned out pretty well and the two vessels of kuzhambu that I made got over in no time. Don't hesitate to ask me for the recipe. I...
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Vegetarianism....

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When in one of those highly contemplative moments where time seems to be at a standstill, one gets a wide array of thoughts transcending across momentary happiness driving (stray)thoughts of wisdom that seemed no where within your thinking boundary. As I was reflecting on the past seven months of stay in the United States, I thought of the little things that can so easily get magnified at such moments. This is purely from a religious perspective. As the vedas proclaim, a Brahmin should never cross the seas. It sounded funny when my friend told me about this initially. I was of the view How does it matter whether a Brahmin crosses the seas and the oceans? In what way is he going to be affected? Being a strict vegetarian, I have to pour over the contents of any small item that I purchase here. Anything can get into your stomach in any form! All sorts of animal based ingredients lurk in the most innocent of meals, and the clear winner in such a product is undoubtedly Gelatin. To ...
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Masala Dosai....The most I miss!

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Wow! Imagine the crispy nei (ghee) roast filled with ullakazhangu (potato) curry or more commonly called the masala coated with a layer of melting butter in your mouth. Whoa! What a feeling! The feeling itself paralyses me for a moment. Nothing in the world can beat the delicate roll of a masala dosai . Get me the dishes - burgers, pizzas, enchiladas, burritos.... I am sure nothing can come close to this most famous South Indian dish. The crunchy masala dosai gives a feeling of immense satisfaction and pleasure as it finds its way through the esophagus, conveying the dosai from the pharynx to the stomach ( I think I remember some Biology). Inevitably, back in India, a weekly bout of four-five masala dosais used to find its way into my stomach. Any hotel, any place, the dish used to be dosai. I am reminded of the number of new darshinis (stand-in restaurants) lining up the streets every other day. One place that stands out for fantastic masala dosais is Central Tiffin Room (Shree Saga...
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BLO-JJI

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Last evening was pretty eventful. As the thermometer was struggling to get the mercury levels rising, the dipping temperature provided us the ideal platform to test our Bajji making skills. The Bajji mavu, potatoes, chillies (rather Jalapeno) and onions were laid on a platter, with one of us cutting the potatoes and onions, and the other making the dough. It is always exciting to try something new and we weren't sure how good the final product would be. Of course, we were smacking our lips by just imagining how good it would be. As the oil in the tava warmed up to a nicety, the potato was dipped into the semi-solidified bajji mavu , propped up beautifully and finally immersed into the frying pan. KccchhhhK! Wow! What a noise! After a long time, it was good to hear the splattering potato in the oil. It was music to our ears. As the bajji emerged out of the frying pan, all of us were eyeing it with a sense of contentment and pride. Obviously! Who gets to make bajjis everyday. The b...
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Mor Kuzhambu

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Whoa! What's this mysterious sounding word. This is nothing but a South Indian sambar made from curds. What a paradox! Sambar and curds getting combined. Yeps! That's the speciality of this item. It was Saturday evening at 6 o' clock. The baays in my room got ready to experiment on yet another item. Oh! I had a sound sleep for an hour and as I got up, I was smacking my lips seeing the dish. We laid down the matress on the carpet, the mor kuzhambu and aloo curry. One of my roommates got up to take the container of yoghurt from the refrigerator. On seeing the brand of yoghurt, I let out a scream. We can't have the curds. It has gelatin. So, I told them, we won't have the curds today. So, my roommate gave out an equally loud scream... In that case, we can't have the kuzhambu too! Then it struck us what had happened. There was curds in the kuzhambu. For a moment all of us were caught on the wrong foot. Here we have a mouth watering dish right in front of us but ...
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What's cooking up?

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So, here we are, a bunch of four gluttons, ready to devour almost everything in the world provided it is absolutely vegetarian. What do we cook today? is a question that gets our taste buds rollicking. To be honest, we are not bad cooks either. From Sambar to elimichapazham (lime) rasam, semiya (vermicelli) upma to godhuma ravai upma, everything has come out highly edible. We are getting the basic ingredients right to match our ever-demanding appetite. It was just a matter of a couple of days, and we were getting bored. We tried to shift the protocol to something slightly different and jeera rice it was. We were absolutely bang on target. It was perfect and different from what was cooking up every other day. What surprises all of us is that whatever gets cooked, doesn't last for more than a course of meal. The quantity does not matter, but the quality definitely does! No wonder it beats us as we tend to realise the quality of food thats being prepared. Is it that good? To top it ...
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