My sister's Raita

If you could turn back time, what would you do? Me? I'd learn to cook.... from my mother and both my grandmothers, all of whom were terrific cooks. But, you know, when I was young, I had more important things to do (NOT!) ... like talk about boys, clothes, boys and movie stars. 

Sigh.

I swear, if I have a daughter I would get her interested in cooking ... whether or not she wanted to learn. Chain her to the stove I will (NO, I WON'T) or lock her in the kitchen (No, I REALLY WON'T). I'll just sit her in front of the TV with me as I watch episodes of Junior Masterchef and Top Chef ... am sure she'd be inspired. 

Or, I could chain her ... NO! I AM KIDDING.

So anyways, because I never spent much time in the kitchen growing up, I have no idea how to make many of my favourite dishes. I've tried to re-create them based on how I remember them to be but they always fall short. 

My only lifeline is my older sister. She got with the programme early and so she has learnt how to cook a variety of Indian curries and dishes from not just our mother but other people's mothers too. Every time I need a recipe, I call her. Repeatedly. 

Recently we had a small family reunion luncheon (it being Chinese New Year and all, we decided to have our own reunion) and my sister made Raita, a North Indian condiment/dip/sauce that is made with yoghurt, spices and a range of vegetables, mostly raw. Hers was made with lady's finger/okra and it was meant to accompany the briyani rice I made. 

It was delicious.

The Raita was a hit and had everyone on the table asking for the recipe. It was supposed to be eaten with he rice but I found myself eating spoonfuls of it by itself (stealthily, of course), growing increasingly anxious as I saw it diminishing.

And this for a person (ME) who doesn't particularly like lady's finger.

I got the recipe off my sister the very next day and bought a bag of lady's finger from the grocer.  And some yoghurt. Plain, unflavoured. (My sister makes her own curd but that's a lesson I'll have to learn another day).

 Lady's Finger Raita

Ingredients

3 cups plain yoghurt

10 lady's fingers, sliced thin

1 large onion, chopped fine

2 tsp mustard seeds

1-2 tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar

oil for frying

1 tbsp ghee

Heat the oil in a saucepan and fry the lady's finger slices till crisp. It's ok if they get brown; just as long as they're crunchy. Don't let them get black though!

Heat the ghee in saucepan and fry the mustard seeds until the pop.

Combine all the ingredients together (including the ghee from the pan) and mix. Season with salt and sugar (adjust to taste).

Goes well with briyani, rice pilaf or just on it's own!

Great Balls of Cheese

I'm sporting a little bump on my tummy. Ok, it's more than a little bump. 

It's Thursday night and believe it or not, the bump was from Wednesday night's dinner. I ate way too much. Waaaaay too much. The word 'greed' comes to mind. And 'pig'.  

 I cooked a North Indian dish, Malai Kofta last night. I first ate this dish a couple of years ago while I was on holiday in North India with three of my friends. It was one of my best holidays ever. Great places, great company and great food ...

Great food, but very, very rich food. 

North Indian food is defined by their rich, fragrant sauces and complex blend of herbs and spices. Milk, yoghurt, fresh cream, paneer (cottage cheese), ghee, dry fruits and nuts ..these are key ingredients in North Indian cooking. Often, all these ingredients go into one dish. 

Now, that's about as rich as Oprah, right?  

Well, on my holiday, I was the only vegetarian in the group. But it isn't difficult to be vegetarian in India. In fact, some of the best food is vegetarian food. So my three buddies decided to be vegetarian for most of our the trip. 

Travelling makes people hungry. It seemed like we were eating all the time. We ate at almost-fancy hotel restaurants (almost was all we could afford), tiny dhabas (truck stops) along the highway, fast food joints (we just had to try the McDonalds India's Maharaja Burger!) and popular local eateries.         

Soon enough, Malai Kofta became a favourite dish of ours. We ordered it quite often; for almost every meal. 

What is it? Malai Kofta is a Moghul dish of stuffed vegetarian dumplings in a creamy, spicy, tomato-based sauce. The dumplings are made of potatoes, paneer, (sometimes peas and carrots) and stuffed with cashew nuts and raisins. They are deep-fried and then cooked in the creamy sauce. Oh, the sauce not only has fresh cream but also some paneer.

I don't know what made me crave this dish all of a sudden. Hmmmm.... 

Most North Indian restaurants have Malai Kofta on the menu and it would have been pretty easy to drive out and satisfy my craving. But I wanted to try my hand at it. After all, I had some paneer in the fridge and plenty of tomatoes. I had all the spices necessary and half a box of fresh cream. All I needed to get were some cashew nuts and raisins. 

The first step is making the dumplings. Every restaurant and even home cook would have their own version of the dish. Potatoes, paneer, raisins and cashew nuts are complusory ingredients in the dumplings but you can choose to omit the peas and carrots or add other ingredients like chillies to suit your taste.   

Dumplings:

1.5 cups paneer

2 potatoes, boiled, peeled 

2-3 tbsp corn flour

1 tsp garam masala (Indian mixed spice) 

1/4 cup green peas, steamed till soft (optional)

1/4 cup carrots, cubed and steamed till soft (optional)

salt 

Mash the boiled potatoes with the paneer, peas and carrots till you get a smooth mixture. Add the garam masala, corn flour and salt and mix. Roll into balls (about the size of a golf ball, does not have to uniform in size). Press the balls hard so they don't disintegrate when you deep fry them. If necessary, add a bit more flour.

Heat oil (enough for deep frying) in a pan/wok and when hot, fry the koftas. Try frying one first, to see if it will hold together. Remove and set aside. 

Making the sauce takes a bit longer. First you have to make the sauce base and only then the sauce.

Sauce base

2 tbsp ginger paste

2 tbsp garlic paste

1 stick of cinnamon

3 cardamoms

1 tsp fenugreek

3 cups fresh tomato, cubed and pureed.

1 tsp chili powder (optional)

3 green chillies, chopped

1/2 cup melted ghee or butter

1/4 cup cream/whipping cream

1/4 cup milk

salt.

Preparation:

Heat ghee. Add the cinnamon, cardamom and fenugreek. When aromatic, add the garlic and ginger pastes and chili powder. Mix well. When the ghee separates add the tomato and chili.

Leave to simmer until the mixture starts to leave the sides of the pan. The oil should rise on top and separate.  Add the milk and cream and when well mixed, turn off the heat.

At this stage, you are almost there. Hey... this was a dish for kings, so it should require some extra effort!

2-3 cups of the sauce base (if there is more left over, you can freeze it)

2 tbsp cashew nuts. Soak for 30 mins and grind into a paste

1 tsp sugar

1/4 cup grated paneer

handful of coriander leaves

In a saucepan, heat the sauce base. Add the cashew paste and sugar and let it simmer, covered, for about 15 mins. Flame should be low. Add the dumplings, making sure to coat them with the sauce. Add half the grated paneer and let it simmer for 5 mins. Turn off the heat. Garnish with the remaining paneer and coriander leaves. 

Curd love

Would you believe me if I said curd was my salvation when I was a little girl?

I used to be a problem eater. I was very fussy. I hated anything slimy, which meant I hated eggplant and lady fingers. I hated anything black, which meant I wouldn't eat chicken drumsticks cos they had those dark red veins that looked black. I hated fish and prawns which was quite a big problem because often, I'd find myself having to sit for hours at the dinner table ... long after everyone else  had finished their meal. I'd stare stubbornly at my fish, hoping my mum would take pity on me and tell me I could be excused from  the dinner table.

But, apparently I inherited my stubbornness form her. She refused to let me off easy.

Thank goodness for curd. I finally discovered that fish could be tolerable if I drowned it with curd mixed with tomato sauce. It was yummy. I dare say that the pink 'sauce' was my ingenious creation and it helped mask any flavour I didn't fancy.

Thank goodness also that curd was a staple at all our meals. Well, except for the Western dinners of chicken chop and chips and such, of course.

Understandably, I still love curd. How could I not?

Funnily enough, I never tried curd rice until I was in my twenties. I was in university and one day my friend offered to share her homemade lunch with me. Her mum had made some curd rice and had packed it for her. The curd was special as it was made with buffalo milk. If you've never tried buffalo milk-curd, it is divine. It has a higher fat content (its also richer in minerals and vitamins) and is therefore thicker, creamier and tastier. Yumm.

There was no turning back.

(If you aren't a fan of yoghurt I suggest you skip this post because there is going to be a lot of curd love going on. Lots of gushing)

Curd rice is awesome (see what I mean about gushing?). It's kinda like rice drowned in yoghurt and seasoned with chillies, spices and dhal. It's a little salty, a little sour and a little spicy. It's soft but the addition of toasted dhal adds some crunch to the mush.

It's comfort food. It can be eaten hot or cold. It can be eaten on its own or with some spicy Indian pickle. I like mine on its own as I am not a fan of pickles.

Curd rice 

* What determines how good your curd rice is will be, naturally, the quality of your curd. Buffalo milk-curd is not easy to find. Cows milk curd is. I suggest that you strain your cows milk curd in muslin (pour the curd onto a piece of muslin, tie the edges and let the whey drip) so you get really thick curd

1 cup cooked rice (cook your rice with more water so it's a little wet and soft. Some people cook the rice with some milk: 1/2 measure water and 1/2 measure milk.)

1.5 - 2 cups strained curd

1 green chilli, chopped

1 tsp finely chopped ginger

1 tsp mustard seed

2 tbsp gingerly oil or ghee or any vegetable oil

1 tbsp channa dhal (you can mix urad and channa dhal)

Heat oil in a pan. Add mustard seeds and dhal. When the seeds pop, add chillies and ginger and keep on the stove, tossing occassionally, till the dhal gets toasty and browns. Remove from heat and stir into the cooked rice. When well coated, stir in the curd and season with salt. 

The magic of Tamarind

I am not a fan of rice. Very A-typical of a Malaysian but I've got weight issues and so, rice is my enemy. I know my diet science is kinda screwy but lets leave that for another day. Fact is, I don't usually eat rice. But, there are a couple of rice dishes that i find very hard to resist. 

Very hard.

Curd rice is one. What's curd rice? It's cooked rice (soft grains, cooked with added water) mixed with yoghurt and seasoned with fried finely chopped green chillies,  ginger, curry leaves, dhal, mustard seeds, cumin seeds and coriander. If you don't like yoghurt (this is yoghurt in its natural state, not the fancy RM3.5 per gram ice cream-cloaked-in-yoghurt), chances are this dish will sound like nothing you'll ever want to try. If you DO like yoghurt, it's pure heaven.

My friend's mum used to make this with buffalo-milk curd. She used to share some with me when we were in university and I will always be grateful to her for that experience. Oh! The richness is unbelievable.

But that's for my next post.

I also love Tamarind Rice or Pulli Saadam. Its a traditional South Indian dish and it's exactly what its name suggests: rice thats seasoned with a home-made tamarind paste.  

Some people cook this dish regularly at home. As with most Indian dishes, the spices and the tamarind renders this rice dish a healthy one. Or so my mum and her friends used to say: you know, that tamarind is high in iron and vitamins, it helps in digestions and, would you believe it, conjunctivitis. Anyways, its a common dish among south Indians.

For some reason, we never had home-cooked pulli saadam. Ever. The only time I got to eat this deliciously tangy dish was at  temples. Yes, temples. It's quite a common prasadam or prasad -- a food offered to God and then partaken by the congregation to accept and absorb the blessings. The dish is said to be a speciality of the Iyengars, a cast of Hindu Brahmins ... hence its association with temples.

Yes, so the rice was definitely a pull towards the temple. I love God but I am more the pray-at-home kinda gal and I have to admit, that pulli saadam was one of the reasons I looked forward to my periodical visits to the temple. Is that bad? I do pray at home. Really, I do.  

Ok. Enough justification. This rice is my favourite. Its tangy (thanks to the tamarind), slightly spicy (spices and dried red chilli takes care of that) and just a little salty too. The addition of two types of dhal (channa and urad dhal) makes it almost nutty. Some people actually add roasted peanuts too. 

Most dishes are best eaten hot off the plate. This one however tastes better the day after. Or the day after that. The tamarind acts as a preserving agent and keeps the rice nice and fresh for a couple of days. You can make it with freshly cooked rice or you can use leftover rice: either way, it tastes better if you use long grain rice.

Pulli Saadam or Tamarind Rice

2 cups cooked rice

1 tbsp tamarind

1tsp mustard seeds

2 tsp urad dhal

2 tsp channa dhal

1 tsp finely minced garlic

1/2 tsp finely minced ginger

2 dried chillies, roughly broken

1/4tsp asofoetida 

1/2tsp turmeric powder

1tsp chili powder

1/4tsp fenugreek powder

salt to taste

gingerly oil

curry leaves

Soak the tamarind in 1/2-1 cup hot water for about 30 mins. Extract the juice and discard the seed and pulp. Keep aside. 

Head the gingerly oil in a pan. Add the mustard seeds and curry leaves, mustard seeds and the two types of dhal. Fry lightly till the seeds slutter and the dhal starts to brown. Don't leave it to get too brown or burn!

Add the dried chilies and garlic and stir till the garlic browns a little. Add the fenugreek powder, asofoetida, turmeric and chilli powder and fry till the spices loose their raw smell. About 3 mins. 

Add the tamarind juice and season with salt. Keep on the fire till the juice thickens and becomes almost a paste. 

When done, mix the paste (you may not want to use all; mix half first and add more if you prefer) with the white rice, careful that you don't mash the grains as you mix. 

Garnish with parsley.