thecookscottage

Veni, Vedi, (Tik)vitchki -Yogurt and Zucchini Raita

Tikvitchki-Bulgarian Zucchini Raita

There are few things in the world that can connect nations as far apart as India and Bulgaria the way cuisine does. Having visited Sofia last winter, my daughter returned home with a great deal of memorable experiences, and some of the best of them involved food.
With a tumultuous history of invasions, Bulgaria was at one point a Turkish conquest, and this, in my opinion, could be a reason for its intensely kebab- and dairy-laden cuisine. Yogurt figures significantly in the dairy aspect, and the Bulgarians attribute their famed longevity to the Lactobacillus bulgaricus culture in it. Perhaps because of the common stage of Middle Eastern invasion in both Bulgarian and Indian history, the food of both countries seem to complement each other very well; a great example of this is the Bulgarian dish tikvitchki, literally zucchini, which would serve as a wonderful dish alongside mutton curry. My daughter smuggled this recipe back from her hosts in Sofia just in time for our hot Indian summer, where it makes for cooling, yet far from bland fare.

Ingredients:

• 4 1/4 cups dahi / greek yogurt
• 1 tbsp water
• 3/4 cup shepu (dill), finely chopped
• 2 tbsps chopped garlic

300 gms zucchini, cut into round slices
2-3 tbsp lemon juice
1 cup vegetable or olive oil
3/4 cup flour
Pinch of salt
Pepper to season

In a large mixing bowl combine the yogurt and the water to a smooth yet firm consistency. Add the dill and the garlic and mix well.Chill.
Sprinkle the lemon juice over the zucchini and set aside for 5 minutes.Meanwhile heat 1/3 of the oil in a nonstick frying pan. (Check heat level by popping a mustard seed).
Mix flour with the salt. Lightly coat a handful of the zucchini slices with the flour on both sides. Fry for a few minutes on each side till light brown.They should not be soggy but retain some bite.Remove with slotted spoon.Repeat till all slices are done.
Let fried slices cool.
In a serving dish alternate layers of the yogurt mixture with layers of fried zucchini.Garnish with a sprig of dill and freshly ground pepper.
Serve chilled.

Sugarcane Juice-Ganne ka Ras

Bullock Carts with Sugarcane

All along the highways, byways and village roads, convoys of bullock carts wind their slow way to the factories, overflowing with freshly harvested sugar cane.It is a familiar sight near Kolhapur, Sangli and Satara,the Golden Triangle in the southern part of Maharashtra, so named because of its rich soil and plentiful supply of water.Even closer by to Pune, at Uruli Kanchan and other sugarcane growing areas it is a common sight. Traffic crawls to a halt quite tolerantly as the carts trundle along.There is a festive feel to this journey because nobody returns empty handed .Ribbons and bows are bought for the children and a new sari for women in the family. At least there is something to celebrate this season, as the last harvest was washed out in Maharashtra due to the heavy rains and flooding, and at the co operative factories, farmers were not receiving even the SMP ( statutory minimum price) for their cane, as stipulated by the government.

Cane prices are still manipulated by the big guns of the sugar industry who, like the oil barons in North America are known to have political connections and form a powerful lobby.Though many factories are ostensibly co-operatives they do not always function cooperatively. Farmers have had to pay 'deposits' or 'share money', under several pretexts. This money has accumulated to form massive funds, the use of which has not been made clear,and which has not been repaid nor refunded to them.There has been talk of reforming the societies but any restructuring of the cooperative schemes, under which these farmers operate, must take these funds into account.

Meanwhile the common man takes pleasure in the sight of those carts as it means fresh cane juice and cane to chew on. How often have we fantasized about pulling out one long stem of sugarcane while passing , to risk losing our front teeth while stripping off the outer skin of the cane to get to the juice beneath.

Cleaning cane

A small amount does find its way to the sugar cane crushers who find a shady spot to set up business and churn out the golden liquid.

Crushing sugarcane for juice

Teenagers whirl around holding the rotating lever with manic energy, looking forward to the haul they will make from travellers when the sun is high.

Wooden crushers

While many of the crushers are now made of metal gears and pulleys, the old style wooden ones look a lot cleaner. Sometimes a bit of pineapple and lime is squeezed along with the cane and provides the piquant taste to the suprisingly light and not too sweet sugarcane juice.

This Is the Real Thing

You bet!

Pomegranate Salad

Pomegranates among other fruit

There is something sensual and romantic about the pomegranate.Subject of poetry, remember the part it had to play in the proposal that Elizabeth Barrett made to Robert Browning:

" -some 'Pomegranate', which if cut deep down the middle.
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity!" -

a verse to which he promptly responded with an offer of marriage..

It is also such a beautiful fruit.

Botticelli's Madonna
Still lifes would not be the same without it , nor would Botticelli's "Madonna of the Pomegranate", neither the sentimental rendition of Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was a popular symbol for the resurrection, for wisdom and fertility, for good deeds and prosperity.

Proserpine

Pomegraates are seen in Dara Shikoh' s (son of Shah Jehan  the builder of the Taj Mahal) "muraqqa" an album of pictures of birds and fruits , trees, animals and portraits. dating back to 1650.

 

In two  portraits of a prince and his saqi , pomegranates feature quite prominently against the background of a vast desert.

Here pomegranates are redolent of  earthly pleasures and require some leisure in which to enjoy them. Almost everyone I know enjoys this pomegranate salad.Fresh, crunchy and a little sweet it tastes as good as it looks.

Pomegranate salad

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of small cauliflower florets
• 1 1/2 cups of chopped cabbage
• 2 cups of chopped cucumber
• 1 cup of chopped simla mirch/capsicum
• 1 cup chopped spring onions with greens
• 1 cup cooked sweet corn
• 1 cup pomegranate seeds

Mix all these vegetables and the pomegranate together in  a large salad bowl.

1 1/2 cups Yogurt dressing made from dahi/curds hung in muslin for a few hours to thicken.

Add

• 1 tsp freshly ground pepper
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp freshly ground mustard seeds
• 1tbsp tomato sauce

Add these last two just before mixing the dressing into the salad, a minute before serving.

• 1 tbsp vinegar. (Reduce if the yogurt is not thick enough.)
• 1 tsp salt.

Tastes out of this world with any crusty bread , broon or pau.

Masala Panna

Green mangoes are still growing on farms around Pune and vegetable sellers offer green mangoes along with other seasonal vegetables. It is the best time to make a cooling drink called Panna. Masala Panhe is available on the footpaths around Pune and sellers use different masalas to vary the taste.

The type of mango to use is Rumali , a plump, shapely mango which does not have strings.The recipe that follows is Vijaya Deshmukh's (from Warje) version.

Take 4 green rumali mangoes  and wash them well. Add 500 ml water to a 5 litre pressure cooker/pan with a trivet. On the trivet place a stainless steel pan ( not aluminium ) filled with with the 4 mangoes and 250 ml water. Place weight and cook for three whistles. Take the cooker off the fire and let it cool normally for half an hour or so.

Open the cooker and remove stainless steel pan. Take out the mangoes and peel them Reserve the water in which they were cooked. Remove all the pulp from the mangoes and add 3 1/2 cups of sugar.Dissolve the sugar and whip the pulp in a blender.Add 5 ground elaichis (cardamom) and 2 litres of water to the concentrate and store in a stainless steel pan in the refrigerator immediately.

Deliciously cooling.

Gol, Gol, Gola

Golas are all over the place now. Colourful redi gadi's (push carts), are visible on every street displaying tall bottles with jewel like juices waiting to be sprinkled over a lolly of crushed ice. The welcoming ring of the brass bell draws children out of their homes.

Is there a human heart that does not thrill to the herald of the ice lolly man ?

What an exquisite quandary to have to choose a flavour. Kala Khatta (made with black rock salt), Orange, Lemon, Mango, Pineapple, Gulab (Rose), Wala (Khus), Katchi Kairi.

And then to watch the ice being crushed into crystals and formed into a lolly around a split bamboo stick.

Then sprinkled liberally with the syrupy fruit squash of one's choice; to be sucked and drawn out with much relish, until the ice crystals have become compacted and colourless once again.

It would be great if sorbets ,(which is really French for Gola), could be offered in between courses at Indian restaurants with Indian flavours like kala khatta, katchi kairi , kokum or even paan. It would provide that touch of freshness to cleanse the palate of heavier flavours and prepare the tongue and taste buds for more to come.

Cuppa Cantaloupe

 

You might have gathered that pavements are in heavy demand here. Pedestrians generally take to the road along with the two, three and four wheelers and weave their way in and around all sorts of life threatening potholes, excavations, manholes and other hazards of a nation on the move.

It makes daily life a challenge. When your heart leaps up, at least ten times a day, as you behold a lorry coming straight at you, or feel the slip stream of a motorcyclist with pretentions to being Evel Knievel, you cannot ever take life for granted and remain in a perpetual state of gratitude for every breath you take.

Melons , among several other things contend for that space on the pavement and what colourful contenders they are. The large red melon is known as Kharbooza here and the small cantaloupe as kalingad . Musk melon , Cucumis melo, is part of the cucumber family the Cucurbitaceae family of herbaceous vines which originated in India and is one of the oldest plants in the history of the world.

Also known as honeydew it is one of the sweetest and most reasonably priced fruit available this season. It is typically grown in kitchen gardens in villages in India as well as on a larger scale, making fields of pretty blossoms. It is a very healthy food with high amounts of Vitamin A , C and potassium and is also full of anti oxidants.

I make an interesting dessert with cantaloupe by cutting it into cubes and then mixing the cubes into equal parts of cream and ice cream sprinkling the whole with a spoonful of caster sugar. What follows is another nice dessert which is as simple to make:

One 6"-7" medium sized melon
Juice of 2 lemons
400 gms cream
3 tablespoons caster sugar
1/2 cup ginger syrup

Ginger syrup: 3 tsps grated or ground fresh ginger steeped in 1/4 cup water and strained. 3 tablespoons sugar. Heat the ginger water with the sugar till it melts. Take off the fire and leave to cool.

Cut the top of the melon and take out the seeds with a spoon. Scoop out the pulp leaving the case intact. Make a serrated edge to the top of the melon and refrigerate.

Blend the melon pulp, sugar, lemon juice, ginger syrup and 200 gms of the cream in a mixer. Pour into a bowl . Cover and freeze. When thickened but not set blend in the rest of the cream with a fork till smooth. Refreeze. When set scoop out the ice cream into the melon case and serve immediately.

Chill out

Today it is close to 39 C ( 100 Fahrenheit ) in Pune.Electricity cuts carry on regardless of the heat.The MSEB (Maharashtra State Electricity Board) euphemism for this is 'loadshedding.' The unbearable heat of being is shed on tax paying citizens  and today they have announced that power cuts will be increased to 4 hours a day in Pune and 9 hours a day in the rural areas ! April , by the way, is the worst month of the year for unrelenting heat in Pune, without a bit of breeze to stir the air.

Okay this is not a grouch blog so here is the bright side.To battle the heat there are all sorts of lifesavers.Sliced cucumbers, large helpings of watermelon and then sugarcane juice, nimboo sherbet,chhaas,nira, lassi and falooda. Cool, cool , cooling drinks with inventive additions to multiply the chill factor.

Around the corner from us on Koregaon Road, in front of the Botanical Survey of India , there is a small booth run by Vaishali. She sells Nira  among other cool drinks,a great favourite in Maharashtra and other parts of India where it is sold along the highways and on the streets in towns.

It is  transparent white in colour much like coconut water and smells and  tastes sweet. It is really very cooling with the added benefit of being excellent for digestion.

Nira ,otherwise known as sweet toddy, is an unfermented juice which is collected from the wild date palm, phoenix sylvestris.  A cut is made in the top of the tree and a  pot placed strategically to catch the steadily dripping  sap.It is gathered by the toddy tapper at least once a day. Where the trees are tall, this requires him to shimmy up the trunk with the aid of a flimsy hemp rope .This is as dangerous as it looks.

Vaishali brings the Nira from Walchandnagar in Baramati district where it is collected in the early hours of the morning around 4.30 a.m. or so. She is part of a co-operative who share a Tempo ( three wheeled vehicle) to transport the toddy to different parts of Pune District. Each sales booth is expected to stock 50 litres of Nira at the start of the day.

Toddy tapping needs a licence and the quality of the drink must come up to certain standards regulated by the government. For example there can be no foam on its surface nor fermentation.It must be without acid or colour.A licensee must have an icebox or refrigerator to prevent fermentation as well!

The sap is also used to make palm sugar or gur which is lighter in colour and has a more delicate taste than regular gur made from sugarcane.
Since the wild date palm grows in many areas which are otherwise uncultivated due to lack of a steady source of water and because of poor soil, toddy tapping is a welcome source of income for many  rural folk and a blessing to all those townies like us  who are reeling under the summer heat without recourse to relief in the form of fans let alone air conditioning!

Cheers to Nira.