Summer Love

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she has to play second banana to someone else. For me, it happens each June, when my husband rekindles a romance with his summer love.  

Truth be told, his infatuation doesn't surprise me. Her sweetness is legendary. Her succulent, saffron-colored flesh has toppled empires and brought princes and poets to their knees. How could a normal, red-blooded man not succumb to her wiles?

I guess it could be worse. After all, it’s not like my husband sneaks around, meeting her for dalliances in seedy orchards or grocers of ill repute. No, he courts her right out in the open for the entire world to see! He even invites me along on some of their rendezvous.  Normally I don’t mind, as I enjoy her company too. But sometimes when I see them together, I can’t help but wish he would look at me the same way he looks at her.

Sure, I knew what I was getting into before our marriage.  Friends and family tried to warn me, but I thought I could make him forget about her. Boy, was I naive! Going forward, I will admonish any woman about to marry an Indian man to proceed with caution and to listen to one who has learned the hard way.

Brides-to-be, heed my words:

“Nothing comes between a man and his mango!”

Here is my recipe for Mango Ras. It’s best when topped with ridiculous amounts of ghee (clarified butter).

4-6 ripe mangoes

1 tablespoon sugar (optional if mangoes are not sweet enough)

Method:

1. Wash the mangoes and dry them.

2. Roll the mangoes between your hands to release the juices.

3. Skin and cut the mango into diced pieces, discard the stone.

4. Place diced mango pieces in a food processor.

5. Puree the mango.

6. Add sugar only if the mangoes are not sweet enough.

7. Mix thoroughly and transfer to a serving dish.

8. Chill and serve with plain puris or chapattis.

Sugar & Spice=A Happy Life

One of the many customs surrounding a Marathi wedding is the kelvan – a meal organized for the engaged couple. This feast can be given either by the bride or the groom’s parents or by friends of the family. Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a kelvan thrown by my mother-in-law for some dear friends whose son will be married next month. Of course, as with any gathering that involves my mother-in-law, if you leave hungry it’s your own fault!

At a traditional Marathi kelvan, the bride and groom are seated first and take their meal on silver plates called thalis, circled with flower garlands or powdered rangoli designs.  The meal features five sweet dishes, each served in a small silver bowl placed in a semi-circle on the thali. (This presumably is to wish the couple a life filled with sweetness.)

My mother-in-law also prepared a variety of vegetable bhajis and rice dishes, including one called masala bhat in which she used a green vegetable called tondli, which resembles a gherkin or small cucumber. As she prepared the dish, she explained that she uses tondli only for auspicious occasions and religious ceremonies. For an ordinary meal, cauliflower, potatoes or peas can be substituted.

Here is my mother-in-law's recipe for masala bhat, which literally translates to ‘spicy rice’. Look for tondli (pictured below) at your local Indian grocer.

Masala Bhat (serves 8-10)

2-½ cups basmati rice, washed

4 T oil

8 cloves

5 cardamom pods

2 dried red chiles
1 spoon asafoetida
2 spoons turmeric

12-15 fresh kadhi leaves

4 dried tamal leaves

12-15 tondli, sliced lengthwise

1 red bell pepper, sliced 

salt

½ cup cashews

2 heaping spoons garam masala

2 heaping spoons chhya masala

1-½ spoons red chile powder

1/4 cup grated coconut

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

2 T sugar

2 T yogurt

Heat oil. Stir fry leaves and spices. Add vegetables and continue to stir fry on medium heat. Add masalas, red chile and salt to taste. Cover and cook about 8 minutes. Add coconut and cilantro. Add uncooked rice.  Stir well. Add sugar and yogurt. Stir-fry 3 minutes. Turn off heat and continue to stir-fry about 2-3 minutes. Put mixture in rice cooker. Add 5½-cup water.  Cover and cook according to manufacturer’s directions. 

Lentil Stew

I'll never forget my first experience with lentils. It was the week before Thanksgiving. I was in my fourth-grade classroom, pasting dozens of the little buggers onto a cardboard cutout of my pre-pubescent hand. My mom still has my split-pea turkey (and I’ll bet yours does too!)

When I met my husband I learned that, for many Indian families, lentils are a way of life. They smash them and mash them; they boil them and blast them. They even grind them and roll them into crepes! But cardboard turkeys not-withstanding, my experience with lentils has been, shall we say, rocky.

Recently, while trying to prepare a quick vegetable stew for dinner, I discovered that not all lentils are created equal.

Carrots-check; Celery-check; Lentils-check. After adding the ingredients, I popped the lid on the pot and simmered the stew for the required 45 minutes. Then I served it up to my hungry hubby, waiting for that look of ecstasy that often overtakes him when eating a delicious meal.

Instead I saw a look of pure horror.

It was a look I had seen before; It's the one where he is weighing whether he should tell me the god-awful truth about my food.......or just grin and bear it.

With trepidation, I raised the spoon to my mouth, wondering what could possibly have gone wrong. After all, I had made this stew a half dozen times to rave reviews. With the first bite, I instantly knew there was something different about this stew.

The second bite almost cracked one of my fillings.

Like a lion protecting its young from a herd of charging elephants, I snatched my startled husband's bowl from him mid-bite.

“I think the lentils are just a little undercooked,” I explained as I dumped the contents of our bowls back into the pot.  “I’m gonna cook them for about 10 minutes longer.”

Three hours (and a trip to Taco Bell) later, the stew was done.  And so was my husband, who had fallen asleep on the couch an hour earlier.  So much for quick-cooking stews!

Somewhere during this debacle it occurred to me to check the package of the lentils I had used. And therein I discovered my mistake: Instead of using the red lentils the recipe calls for, I had grabbed a package of yellow split peas!

I turned to my facebook friends yet again and found out that yellow split peas require soaking overnight and take several hours to cook. One friend joked that I should use my pressure cooker (and if you don’t understand why she was joking, see my April 15 post “Under Pressure”).

My facebook status garnered 16 comments and some great advice. But when I tried to serve the stew to my hubby the next night, he balked.

“I can’t eat something that has been so thoroughly dissected by our friends on facebook,” he protested. “Let’s go out instead.”

Fortunately, all was not lost. Last night my husband’s cousin Sudhanwa came over and insisted I serve the much-maligned lentil stew for dinner. He brilliantly suggested that I give the stew a face-lift by garnishing it with chopped sweet onion, cilantro and slivers of chile-lime almonds.  

If my hubby knew it was the original stew from Tuesday night, he wisely chose to keep his pie-hole zipped. (And I think I even caught a glimmer of that ecstasy I had been hoping for!)

Here is my recipe for Lentil-Barley Stew (adapted from Taste of Home magazine). It only makes 2-3 servings so double if necessary:

1 medium carrot, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 celery rib, chopped
1 tsp minced fresh gingerroot
1-2 serrano chilies, minced (optional)
1 garlic clove, finely minced
1 TBSP olive oil
1/4 cup dried red lentils, rinsed and sorted
1/4 cup pearl barley
1 can (15 oz) diced tomatoes
1 can (15 oz) vegetable broth
1/2 tsp seasoning Italian seasoning (or curry powder if you want Indian flavors)
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
additional water as needed while cooking

• In a large saucepan, saute the carrot, onion and celery in oil until crisp-tender. Add ginger, garlic and chile and cook 2 minutes longer. Add lentils and barley; cook for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Stir in the tomatoes, broth and seasonings. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 40-45 minutes or until lentils and barley are tender. Add more water as it cooks if you like your stew more soupy. Add basil, if desired, the last few minutes of cooking. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Under Pressure

When I got married five years ago, there were three simple things my Indian mother-in-law suggested I learn how to do:

1. Make chai
2. Prepare an easy “go-to” dish, like poha
3. Use a pressure cooker

Having mastered the first two, I am left to grapple with #3, a befuddling contraption that clearly harbors passive aggressive tendencies. How can such an innocuous-looking little pot be so diabolically evil?

I had high hopes when I brought my pressure cooker home from India. Buoyed by my cousin’s promises of culinary nirvana, I boldly envisioned the tasty three-course meals I would set before my hubby each night:

Creamy lentils the color of a Mumbai sunset; perfectly cooked basmati rice; rainbow-hued vegetables, expertly seasoned and steamed until crisp-tender.

I imagined him taking his first bite, a look of ecstasy spreading across his face as he exclaims “Honey, these are the most delicious lentils I’ve ever tasted...even better than my mom’s!”

Choirs would sing. The heavens would part.  Out of nowhere, friends and family would appear in our dining room, moving in unison to the Bollywood dance hit “Om Shanti Om”.

Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Now here’s what really happened:

I opened the box containing my new pressure cooker, spread the agglomeration of parts on my kitchen counter, and threw the owner’s manual in the drawer with about 500 others collecting dust.  

Then I phoned my mother-in-law for help.

I guess I should have realized that using a pressure cooker is harder than it looks when Aai refused to give me instructions over the phone.

“Just wait.....I will show you when I come,” she insisted.

True to her word, she appeared at our doorstep the following week armed with a package of yellow lentils and a potful of advice. Glued to her elbow, I made mental notes as she worked.

“Listen for the whistle,” she explained as she snapped the lid of the cooker shut.  “When it blasts three times, it’s done.”

In what seemed like mere seconds, the lentils were cooked to golden perfection, ready to be seasoned and whipped into aamati, the soup-like staple of every Maharashtrian meal.

What could be easier? I thought. A week later I was ready to try it on my own. There was only one problem: those mental notes I made the week before had evaporated as quickly as the steam in my cooker!

Was it 1 cup lentils to 2 cups water....or the other way around? High heat or low? Five minute cool-down....or longer? The only thing I could remember was to listen for the three whistles, which came quickly and close together and left ugly brown steam marks across the lid of my cooker.

(At this point I should mention that I did consult my owner’s manual, which was about as useful as lighting a match to bake a cake.)

Still clueless, I decided to wait 10 minutes before prying open the lid. When I did.....

KABOOM!!!

Weeks later, I am still cleaning up gluey remnants (now the color of Mumbai swamp water) that have pasted themselves to unexpected spots in my kitchen.

Still I remained unfazed.  After all, I’ve cooked Thanksgiving dinner for 25 and prepared homemade tamales so authentic you’d swear they came from a Guadalajara kitchen. And not to brag, but my pav bhaji once brought a visiting swami to tears.

I wasn’t about to let a stinking stainless steel pot take me down without a fight!

So when it happened again - this time with cauliflower (way less offensive than lentils) - I appealed to my Facebook friends for help. And considering the diversity of my friend list, I wasn’t surprised when they returned some remarkably constructive advice.

The first comment came from Kenton, a 33-year-old IT tech, who opined that maybe I didn’t let the pot cool down long enough.

Shipra, a researcher originally from Delhi, explained that I must ensure all the steam is out of the pot by slightly lifting the whistle with a serving spoon.

And Wayne, an L.A. photographer, added that I should cook on low heat and run cold water over the lid of the cooker to speed up the cooling process.

But the best comment came from my friend Bonnie, who nailed it when she said that exploding pressure cookers are “just one more reason not to cook.”

Bonnie, I’m not ready to throw in the towel on my pressure cooker just yet. But it’s nice to know I have an easy “go-to” dish like poha in my repertoire, just in case.  And when all else fails, there’s a great Indian restaurant just minutes from our house. The food is tasty and the prices are reasonable.

And to be totally honest, the thought of my family bhangra dancing around my dining room every night was pretty overwhelming!

The Karmalized Kaku in India - Wedding Fever

Subodh, Appa Kaka and Sejal

In a land abounding with paradox, my discomfort seemed only fitting. I was 10,000 miles from home; my legs were cramping, my nose was burning, and the sickly stench of cow dung rose in waves from beneath my six yards of silk.

It was the happiest day of my life.

Renewing our marriage vows in India was never part of the plan. My husband and I were there to attend his cousin’s wedding in the city of Pune and to visit his large extended family. We had been in India nearly three weeks and, as a first-time visitor, I had weathered the culture shock of Indian toilets, cold baths and warm Coke surprisingly well.

I had committed most of the requisite cultural faux pas, including eating with my left hand and calling my husband’s uncle “auntie” by mistake. I had namaskared to every cow in Baroda (and a few surprised bulls as well!)

Our trip was coming to an end when, in a burst of bravado, I announced to several aunties that someday I would like to return to India and remarry my husband in a Hindu ceremony.

A word to the wise: be careful what you say in India between November and February, when wedding fever sweeps the country. When my husband’s famously eccentric uncle, Appa Kaka, heard my wish, he exclaimed: 

“Why wait?  You’re in India now . . . if you have three hours to spare, we can make it happen!”

Why wait indeed? With that, my Hindu wedding began to take shape.

Will the Karmalized Kaku get the wedding of her dreams? Watch for the upcoming novel, "Becoming Sejal."