Picked up a packet of tender, green Asparagus, from the supermarket… and had been thinking of baking flan. But in the end with the crazy weather outside, I thought rather than pamper my own desire to bake flan, which might have only limited takers, might be a better idea to make something the whole family can enjoy. So I made soup with the Asparagus, and for something crispy to go with it – I baked – Mathri. Mathris are Indian-style savoury biscuits which are traditionally deep-fried. Its often had as a tea time snack, and during winters in northern India mathri is a family favourite. Another popular way of eating Mathri is to dunk it in mango pickle, some of the best Mathri I have ever eaten in my life was in Meerut (Uttar Pradesh), made by Rani Amma. Rani Amma was our Dhoban – washer-woman – an extraordinarily beautiful grandmother. Its hard to say how old she was, but she was a study in contrast, her beautiful unlined face with a permanent yet toothless smile. Her sari, softly covering her frame and head, pale floral cotton, the permitted colours of widowhood. Her boys lived with her, and despite her soft visage she lorded over her daughters-in-law with an iron fist. For most of our time in Meerut, it was Rani Amma who bought in our freshly ironed laundry delicately balanced over her head. On request she would prepare her famous mathris, and one huge batch was reserved solely for me to eat when I came home on off days from my college in Delhi.

There are several kinds of mathris, salted plain, to peppery, spicy ones, mathri with fenugreek (methi mathri), but with one thing in common – its texture – uniformly crisp, yet melt in the mouth. Perfect to offset a mild soup.

Ingredients for Asparagus Soup

450 gms tender asparagus
2 cups water
1 cup milk
1 medium sized red onion, chopped
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoon Flour
1 vegetable bouillon cube
salt and pepper to taste
2 teaspoons butter/oil

Method for the Soup

1. Cut an inch and a half off the top of half the asparagus and set aside for garnish. Chop the remaining asparagus into slices.
2. Melt one teaspoon of butter in a large saucepan and gently fry the chopped onions until pink. There’s no need to brown the onions.
3. Add the asparagus and saute over low heat for about a minute.
4. Stir in the flour, and cook for a minute, and add the water and bouillon, lemon juice, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, cover and let simmer for about 10 minutes, until the asparagus is very tender.
5. Cool lightly and puree in a food processor or blender, until really smooth.
6. Pour back into the saucepan, and add the milk, stir and heat the soup for a couple of minutes.
7. Melt the remaining butter in a pan and saute the asparagus heads set aside earlier, these will soften in 3 to 4 minutes.
8. To serve pour into soup bowls and garnish with sauteed asparagus heads.

These baked mathris are tender and biscuit like in texture, and seriously so easy to make, I think I got this into the oven in 15-minutes, and minus all the fuss of frying. Its my own recipe, based on my CQ (cooking quotient) so if you wish to get the same result use the same instructions as below. Ofcourse you can play around with the flavour ingredients.

Ingredients for Baked Mathri – Indian-style savoury biscuits

1 1/2 cups self rising AP Flour
1 heaped tablespoon grated ginger
1-2 pods of garlic, grated
1 tablespoon peppercorns, crushed lightly
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon carom/ajwain/bishop’s weed
1/2 cup cooking oil (I used sunflower)
1 scant teaspoon salt (or to taste, but first check if your flour already contains salt)
3 tablespoon cold full fat milk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 C and line a cookie sheet with baking paper.
2. Sieve the flour along with the salt, and place in a large enough sturdy bowl which you can use for kneading the dough. Add the ginger & garlic, pepper, cumin and carom, and mix, using your fingers.
3. Make a well in the center and gradually pour in the oil, in quarters, mixing the flour into the oil. The dough will start with being rough breadcrumbs in texture, to being like moist breadcrumbs – so if you squeeze some dough in your fist, it will hold shape.
4. Sprinkle milk one tablespoon at a time, lightly kneading the dough, the dough should just come together, in a flaky sort of way. Do not be tempted to over-knead.
5. Make egg yolk sized balls, and lay on the cookie sheet. Using a dessert spoon flatten the dough balls lightly. Mathris can be made smaller and flatter also, all depends on your mood that day.
6. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, when lightly brown at the edges and top, keeping an eye on them after the first 15 minutes or so.
7. Once done, remove and cool on a wire rack – the most amazing crisp and flakey mathris await. Store in an airtight container, should last a week, if they do.

Sending the baked Mathri off to this week’s Bake-Off.

parikai, pavakkai, karela, bittergourd copyright 2010 eat.write.think

Ingredients
2 large bittergourds, finely chopped
3/4 cup tuvar/arhar dal, cooked
a lemon sized ball of tamarind dissolved in water
3/4 cup shredded coconut
3-4 red chillies
2 tablespoons corriander seeds
1.5 teaspoon channa dal
1 teaspoon urad dal
a few peppercorns

Tempering
mustard seeds
curry leaves

Method

1. Soak the chopped bittergourd in salt water and after a while drain it and squeeze out the pieces. This removes most of the bitterness. [If you like making faces, drink the drained out water...!!!!]

2. Cook the drained bittergourd in tamarind water. Add salt and turmeric.

3. Meanwhile, dry roast the red chillies, channa dal, urad dal, pepper and corriander seeds. Pop them into a mixie along with the coconut and grind to a smooth paste.

4. When the bittergourd is cooked, add the cooked dal. Combine well & add the coconut paste. Stir again. Let it simmer on low heat for about 5 minutes. Don’t let it boil.

5. For the tempering: Pop mustard seeds and curry leaves in a teaspoon of hot oil and pour it over the pitla. It’s spicy with a not so subtle hint of bitterness that I love!

Enjoy! With hot rice, a nice sweet potato curry and crisp appalams, it makes for a great relaxed lunch.

parikai pitla with rice, sweet potato, roasted pappad and ginger pickle copyright 2010 eat.write.think

Variation

You can do the same thing with finely chopped brinjal too – just add half a teaspoon of methi/fenugreek seeds to the roasted ingredients. Kathrikai pitla is a killer too!

Green Papaya, can anything be more effortless than a green papaya. When I go veggie shopping buying a green papaya is like that big kill, that can last for days, and can be turned into all sorts of dishes. It is so effortless that only a moron will think of dunking it in pesticides. For the life of me I have never seen anything pestlike on any papaya trees we have grown in our various backyards. So in that faith I always pick an unripe papaya when I go veggies shopping.  Its so versatile, its like a vegetable waiting to do your bidding, “come make me into a salad, grate me please” or “chop me up into that raita, now, I beg you”  or “boil me till I turn soft and I can be in any dish you want” - at least those are the sounds I hear!

Back home papaya and drumsticks are common to many households, growing in profusion, sometimes ignored, sometimes when there’s nothing else, these are always at an arm’s length to be plucked and prepared into a main course or side dish. Some fruits are allowed to ripen and the sweet orange flesh consumed by the hungry mouthfuls, by humans and the feathered friends alike. And always there’s more from where it came, waiting and waiting and waiting.

Ingredients

2 cups green papaya, pared & cubed

1 cup any tuber, chopped (you can use sweet potatoes, yam, colocasia)

3/4 cup yellow pigeon peas/toor dal/arhar dal

1 small lemon sized ball of tamarind, soaking in 1/2 cup warm water

1 teaspoon turmeric powder

salt to taste

Seasoning

1 teaspoon whole mustard

1/2 teaspoon fenugreek/methi/menthiyam

1 whole dried red chilly, torn

2, 3 shallots/pearl onions, chopped

1 sprig curry leaves

1 tablespoon cooking oil/edible coconut oil

Method

1. Soak the dal for an hour and pressure cook for 5 minutes after the first steam. Don’t be in a hurry to remove, let it naturally cool down before you open the lid, meanwhile just put together the other things.

2. Boil the papaya and tuber until tender, sometimes I find the green papayas take too long to cook, so I pressure cook the papaya and the tuber for just one steam whistle in the cooker no more.

3. Once you have the two main ingredients cooked, that is, the vegetables and the dal, the rest is a cinch – in a large pot combine the dal and the vegetables and bring to a boil, adding turmeric, and salt.

4. Reduce to simmer, and gradually add the tamarind water, now cover and let it simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in between and adjust the salt.

5. Finally heat oil in a small pan and prepare the tempering/seasoning, follow this basic order: torn chillies, mustard, fenugreek, curry leaves and finally the chopped shallots. Fry till the onions get caramelised and the whole house smells like ‘god’s own country‘.

6. Pour the seasoning over the dal, give it a final stir and take it off the fire.

Pulincurry is a very run off the mill sort of home food, and can be rustled up with whatever vegetables are lying in the fridge, I suspect a houswife trying to finish off vegetables in her pantry, but sick of making sambhar might have come up with this. Even so, it tastes good with a sweet vegetable and a tuber. So pumpkin or squash, or ash gourd and yam, plaintain and colocasia all of these can be made into a pulincurry. All the sort of vegetables that are more or less perennial around the tropical coast. It’s usually had with rice, a dried vegetable side, and papadam, if its a good day.

It’s more difficult for me to cook an unhealthy meal than a healthy one… having been raised on maxims of dubious veracity such as ‘lady fingers are good before a math exam’ and ‘spinach at every meal makes you stronger’ I now find it difficult to deep fry, eat instant food or substitute a ‘proper’ lunch with a bowl of ice cream, chips and cola – something one of my dearest friends does quite regularly… while I look on with a mixture of shock and envy.

So keerai kootu or spinach with lentils fits the easy and healthy cooking bill. With either rice or rotis, and a salad or even just consumed by the bowlfuls, this recipe could easily be chapter 1 in ‘cooking for dodos’ [dummies is so harsh!]

To serve 4 you need

Ingredients

1 bunch spinach – washed, roughly chopped and drained

3/4 cup moong dal washed

salt to taste

1 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp sambar powder

Tempering

1 tsp oil or ghee [ prefer using ghee to temper my dals]

1 tsp mustard seeds

1/2 tsp white urad dal

2-3 green chillies slit

Method

1. Pressure cook the dal along with a teaspoon of haldi. You could also load your rice in the cooker to save time and energy.

2. Pour some water in the spinach and set it to cook. Add salt, a little haldi and sambar powder. Once it is done, add the cooked moong dal and mash it a bit along with the spinach so that it combined well. If the dal is too thick add water till you get a consistency you like. When it comes to a boil switch it off. Heat the ghee and add the ingredients for tempering. Pour it into the dal and enjoy!

3. Even easier method: cook the spinach and dal together in the cooker.