Iruvili Kozhambu

This has been my all-time favorite kozhambu of my mom's. And I have never yearned to learn the secret recipe... Until I became a wife and had to think up of new exciting dishes to make everyday. In my defense, I love cooking and experimenting too... And I asked my mom for it and she gave me the recipe. But having the recipe is an entirely different thing than having the final dish made to perfection. I gave it a shot... and it was almost as good as mommy dearest's. So I thought I would be magnanimous and share this simple yet delectable recipe with you all to lend some difference to your taste buds. Its yumm... This pic here doesn't do any justice to the taste of the dish.. but I thought I'd post one anyways...

So here's what you need - (This recipe is for 4 people... adjust accordingly)

For the aracha vizhudhu or the grinding -

1. 1 teaspoon of white rice

2. 2 teaspoons of channa dal (kadalai paruppu)

3. 1/4 teaspoon of methi seeds (vendhiyam)

4. 4-6 dry red chillis

5. 1/2 cup of powdered coconut

6. 1 spoon of oil to fry 1-5 and 1 spoon more to fry 10.

7. 1 cup of buttermilk

For the kozhambu

8. 2 bowls of tamarind juice from squeezed from tamarind roughly the size of a lemon

9. 1/2 cup of chopped tomatoes/ brinjal/ ladies finger/ use your imagination for the thaan (the veggies that go into it)

For the seasoning

10. 1 teaspoon of mustard seeds (kadugu)

11. A pinch of turmeric

12. A pinch of asfoetida

13. 4-5 curry leaves (kadi patha)

and salt to taste.

So how do you go about it?

1. Fry 1-5 using oil and allow it to cool before grinding it in a mixer using sufficient quantity of water for the mixing.

2. Mix the ground paste in the cup of buttermilk and set aside.

3. Meanwhile, start boiling the tamarind juice with the thaan in it.

4. Once it starts boiling, add the turmeric and the asfoetida and let it boil another few seconds.

5. Add in the ground mixture while stirring and let it boil for just a minute before turning the gas off. Additional boiling may result in curdling of the buttermilk.

6. Fry the mustard seeds and the curry leaves separately and add to the kozhambu.

And serve with steamed rice and beans curry....... Delicious! Thanks Amma.

Back to the Basics

I relapsed into many old habits this weekend... I started watching Hell's Kitchen again (on youtube) and I renewed my pledge to the many free TV show links online... And I also got to conference with my best friends from UC... a 3 continent 2 hour conference that left me with a big smile on my face. I also started soaking in on many other TV shows that I had developed a taste for in my last months in the US... Gossip Girl, How I met your mother and some old ones like House and Grey's Anatomy. So apart from the fact that I was glued to the computer for many reasons like TV shows and IPL, I also got to go out quite a bit. The weather was absolutely brilliant and demanded nothing less.. And I also made adai for the first time from scratch and it was a big hit! All in all... not a bad weekend at all! And this week's a short week... Meaning that we are all off from Thursday.. With a trip to look forward to, the flu getting better, everything promises to be great! Happy week, everyone!

Winter Pockets

I have this habit of lapsing into the comfort zone with the winter jackets. I bet I have most of you very confused by now. What I mean is that I tend to dump a lot of my stuff in the usually large pockets of the winter jackets/coats. And because of what they carry, I am reluctant to change jackets till I absolutely need to. Today was one of those days... It was 17 C and sunny and warm and there was no way I could carry off a jacket used for sub-zero temperatures. So I rummaged my closet and pulled out one of my favorite sweaters. But that was the easy part. Then I started emptying the pockets of my erstwhile coat. An assortment of things poured out - coins, ipod, keys, monthly metro card, more loose change, cell phone, bills of a million things bought, grocery list, printout of directions to the post office, student ID card, a pen, and a credit card to name most of them. No wonder the coat weighed a ton and I had assumed it was because of the layers to keep me warm! Gaping at everything, I sorted them out and was left with the tickets, the cell phone and the keys to stuff in my jeans pockets and oh, the ipod. Bulging pockets, a lighter jacket and I was out in the sun to enjoy the brilliant Spring in Paris. Now all I have to do is find dumping ground to lighten my jeans.

Amayadha Naal

I am sure most of us have experienced this phenomenon. Its a vague twist of Murphy's Law. You go out shopping.. you have the money, the mood and the time. But nothing fits. Either the color is wrong or the size is wrong or the style is wrong and just about nothing is perfect. SM used to say this back when we were in San Diego that "love didn't happen". That roughly meant that -"Yeah it fits... yeah its ok.. but is it so great that I need to buy it?" Along the way, I noticed another phenomenon - the adaptation to the prices. Noticed how when you check out something in a new place for the first time you almost always never think its priced right? Either its exorbitant (which is my feeling 99% of the time) or its soo inexpensive that its got to be cheap (that's happened a couple of times too, believe it or not!). But eventually as you settle down to a place, you adapt to the price. And so 40€ boots sound perfectly reasonable. That's what happened to me yesterday. It was evening time... I was done with the cooking and I had about 2 hours before the husband returned. What better time than to visit the nearby shopping strip and take a look? So I went. The prices were reasonable.. the choices plenty but NOTHING fit for the exact same reasons I mentioned above. This was the AMAYADHA NAAL( tamil for the day that doesn't fit right). After 2 hours... 8 pairs of boots.. 2 dresses... 3 skirts and 2 tops later, I left the store.. with nothing.

My star cricketer

Nope... No one from any team on the IPL or anything. This one's reserved for my all time favorite player in whats called the Barclay's National League. Thats the team that my husband plays for here in the weekends. And they take their cricket pretty seriously. All practice and league games and all... So, this match was taking place a little out of the city and so I wasn't joining him for the game. But it turns out that I should've. S turned out to be the star player of the match! So his team, the Indian team scored 189 in a 30 over match which was a decent total. They were up against the Pakistani team in the league. And the Pakistan team got off to a blitzkreig and scored 97 for no loss at the end of 10 overs. S was keeper last season and I thought he still was... my bad. Turns out he was asked to bowl part-time. And guess what? He had them reduced to 130/4 in 20 overs.. all four wickets to S, all caught in the outfield. What seemed like a walk in the park was a game at hand. However the Pakistani team did manage to scrape a victory.. but my man was Man of Match with figures of 5/18 off 6 overs. And looks like the Indian team has now figured out what needs to be done to overcome their counterparts. Good luck to them. But oh, hey S came home with a souvenier too... the ball that won him those wickets. Here's the jubiliant picture...



Am sooo proud of you, my dear! And next match, I am coming :)

Friday Morning Blues

Everyone's heard of Monday Morning Blues... But I think everyone's exaggerating. I think that Friday Morning blues are far harder to get past than the monday counterpart. On Monday, its better if you don't have the blues because you have 5 gruelling days ahead of you whereas its much harder not to have them on Fridays when you know that in afew short hours comes the joy of the weekend. And so, here I am, an hour into work hoping the day just melts away and brings in the ravishing evening ahead. No wonder I am blogging away already...

Cooker Thrills

For anyone who hasn't used the traditional Indian pressure cooker, the tragedies of having a malfunctioning one can't mean much. Especially, if you wasted 4kg of your allowed 20kg into carrying this one piece (alright really 3-4 pieces including the gaskets and the whistle n all) of kitchen utility anticipating it to cook all your dals and chawals just the way it should. But tragedy struck pretty early in our relationship, the cooker and mine. For the cooker just didn't know how to whistle. Neither would he whistle (it had to be a he) nor would he give any warning as he gleefully spewed froth from all directions messing up not just my freshly scrubbed gas... but the walls around it and the minuscule cutting area as well. Not just that, he would slop water all down himself and it would hit the hot plate and burn. It was a mess beyond a mess and it warranted the requirement for a neat round of aluminum foil all around it so that the worst case would be that I took off the dirty foil and put in a fresh one. But this never really worked that great for something would happen to jeaporadize it... and I found myself replacing foil after foil. Especially painful coz I would have to cut openings for the hot plates themselves. It was here that I wistfully recollected that P's pressure pan never once gave us trouble back in Cincinnati. Sick and tried of our ever dwindling relationship and with the rice cooker unable to fulfill any other duty than that of cooking rice (hence the name I guess... duh), I complained to my folks that they'd been tricked ino buying a defective cooker. And instead of sending me replacement gaskets/whistles or valves, they prudently sent me a replacement cooker... which arrived yesterday, complete with spare gaskets, whistles and valves. I tried it out immediately and I have never been happier in our association than when he hissed shrilly and burned nothing.

Next experiment: Put in a new valve/whistle/gasket in the old cooker and try to coax him to function just as well. That way I'll be the only person in the whole of Ile de France with 2 functioning pressure cookers (on a person to cooker ratio)

PS: There's a new entry on the other blog. Check it out if you will.