Three Chutneys White | Mallus Like Chutney

Sometimes i think if Kieslowsky ever had chutney. Hot chutney, white, over hot dosa. You have to mix it with your hands and let the crispy dosa melt in the heat of the moment. When you have a sip of tea along with it you are all ready to make your next trilogy. 

For Kieslowsky :-o

I am sorry. I am mad about a lot of filmmakers and i imagine them having all this mallu food whenever i cook. And even though my partner thinks i cook for them, i actually cook to blog. *Shrug*

So chutney is coconut ground with stuff with a little water. Thanks to non mallus who like 'south Indian' food, there are a lot of names for chutney floating around. So let me tell you what chutney is for me. It is not chammanthi. Chammanthi is solid. Chutney is watery. Chammanthi can be had with rice. Chutney can't be had with rice unless you are one of those who eat beef with pazhampori. 

Even malayalees mix these names sometimes and since it is language, we can't call anything authentic. But that's allowed for mallus. We make this stuff. Non mallus should really stop calling stuff by weird names like 'mendu vada' etc. I once heard a guy ask for 'mehndi (henna) vada' you know! 

So if you want to make chutney, you have to scrape coconut. There is no way around it. I scrape an entire coconut. It gives me two cups of grated coconut. 

Cracked-open-a-minute-ago coconut.

Add chopped small onions called shallots or cheriyulli or chomannulli. I used six or seven robust cheriyullis. Add a piece of chopped ginger. Add 5 green chillies. (I like it hot) I add two curry leaves just for fun. We will be adding them later anyway. Add salt. I added 1.5 teaspoon.  

Mix all of this in a mixie after adding a bit of water. Don't add a lot of water or else the mixie won't be able to handle it and splatter it on your kitchen walls. This does not mean that this happened with me. Ever. 

Little by little i added almost 1 cup of water to the mixie coconut mixture. 

Now heat coconut oil in a pan or cheenachatti or a meenchatti, add  and splutter mustard seeds. Add two or three dried red chillies. Add some curry leaves. 

Now pour the coconut mixture to the chatti. Add more water to get the consistency you want. For the two cups of coconut i used, including the water used in the mixie, i usually end up using three cups of water. Check salt. I added half a teaspoon more. When bubbles come switch it off. Don't heat it till it boils like crazy.  When you see small volcanic eruptions from the sides and the centre, you can turn off the fire. 

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To grind in mixie

Coconut scraped - 2 cups
Green chillies - 5 
1 inch ginger - chopped
7 shallots chopped
salt - 1.5 teaspoon
2 curryleaves

To heat in coconut oil

Mustard 1/2 teaspoon
3 dried red chillies
Curry leaves 6/7

Pour the mixture. Add water. Adjust salt. Eat. 

It takes me 30 minutes to make. Including coconut scraping. 

Cabbage Thoran | Cabbage With Grated Coconut | Eating This Makes Your Hair Grow

Well, that was what Amma always told me about cabbage. I hated vegetables. Vegetables and curd. Gawd, yuck. Mother has this story about her trying to smuggle in a little curd into me with a ball of rice and me puking it out even as a baby. Both Amma and Mother tried to make me eat cabbage when i was a kid saying that it would grow my hair. This could be from the guilty feeling they had from once tonsuring me when my head was a ball of curls. The new hair that came was straight as a stick and Amma was distraught. She used to love my curls, apparently.

But yeah, when i developed a liking for cooking, i started liking handling these things -too. To make biriyani, it was necessary to marinate chicken in curd. Inji told me that  it was called wet marination. And then you have these vegetarian friends. So yes, now i like handling vegetables and also eat some. Amma is dead or else i could have told her that i had started eating cabbage. It hasn't helped the hair much, though.

So cabbage thoran - these things in which grated coconut is added are called thoran in Malayalam - i found the recipe from Mishmash, again. Seriously i have no idea what i would have done if not for her blog. Please come back and please drag Inji along with you. I feel sad whenever anyone stops writing. It's unusual. I always wish bad things to other people. So. 

Cabbage thoran - cabbage side dish with grated coconut from Kerala | Reusable with attribution

1 cup of cabbage chopped into small pieces. I chop and then put it in water till the time i finish grating coconut. I strongly believe that's called cleaning cabbage. Also, in the actual recipe, they use 2 cups of cabbage. With me cooking that amount is always a problem because 

a) Not enough people to eat
b) No fridge (yet)

So i dared to cut down the amount of cabbage and keep the other ingredients the same. It tasted just as great as the best cabbage thorans i've had. You see, i hate vegetables but have an advantage in that i am capable of identifying great cooking even in vegetarian dishes. Yaay!

Grated coconut 1/4 cup
To this add, 

1 shallot chopped
1 clove of garlic chopped
1/4 tsp cumin seeds
3/4 green chillies chopped
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp salt

These are to be crushed using hands or mortar and pestle or just pulse them once in the mixie. 

Heat oil in a pan and splutter 1/4 tsp mustard seeds
Then 1/4 tsp urad dal (white lentil)
Then put in two dried red chillies

 Be careful with the flame or you'll end up burning them. 

Add cabbage and you'll hear the 'sheee...' sound. It's fun. 

Add 1/2 tsp salt [It depends on how much salt you added to your coconut so be careful there.]
Cover and cook in medium heat for one minute.
Open the lid, add the coconut mixture, mix and cover and cook for 1 minute.
Open the lid, cook till cabbage is cooked. 

You might want to check the salt at this point and make reparations. 

Add curry leaves and mix. It's done. 

I almost always forget to add curry leaves in the end. This happens with me in dishes where curry leaves are to be added in the end and not sauted in the beginning. 

If i am in the mood to eat, i have it with rice, dal, pappadam (papad) and achar (pickle) and it's heavenly. Yes.

Pazhampori | Banana Fritters | Kerala Snack | For Amateurs Like Me

Pazhampori is sliced banana fritters. My non-mallu friends all go, 'what?' when i tell them that pazhampori is banana. The banana used to make this is not common in other Indian states. It is nenthrappazham in Malayalam. The kind of bananas that are usually available in Kolkata are those we call robusta, a variety of Cavendish bananas. That's what is commonly seen in Bombay too. I get my nenthrappazham from a Malayalee store nearby and they cost Rs. 80 per kilo. Half a kilo gives me three bananas and i can make a 24 small pazhamporis. I can also eat so many by myself. *Wide grin* Sometimes that's all i eat in a day. Apart from tea. Oh by the way, for people with normal eating habits, this is a snack that is usually had with tea.

In the snack and tea shops in Kerala, the pazhamporis that you get are longer than the ones i make. Probably because they have bigger pans to fry it in. 

Slice the bananas into thin discs. Usually, i slice one banana into two first and then slice each of those slices into two. Then i cut it into half to reduce the length. So each banana gives me 8 small pazhamporis.

Take 1 cup of maida (all purpose flour)
Add a pinch of salt
Add sugar - i add 5 tsps of sugar.
Add water to it to make it into a smooth paste, the kind that can cover each banana slice. Like the dosa batter. I use a little less than 1 cup of water for the right consistency of batter. 
Put all the banana slices in this batter.
Heat vegetable oil in a pan. Drop in a bit of batter to see if it rises and makes the 'shhhhh' sound. If it does, it's hot enough. Keep it in medium flame.
Take the banana slices one by one, coat it in batter and gently drop into the pan. 
You can fry three or four or even more bananas at a time, depending upon the size of your pan. 
Turn the slices over to the other side after a minute. I judge it by the colour. If it is golden brown, it's done. This is in the right amount of flame. If it is too high, you might still get the right colour but the insides might not be cooked. 

Pazhampori, Kerala snack. Banana fritters

Some make it adding an egg to the batter. I tried it and hated it. It completely changes the taste and it is not for those people who don't like an added taste to usual tastes. If you know what i mean. If you are used to the egg pazhampori from the beginning there is not much change in the recipe. Break an egg into the batter and mix it well. Keep in mind that adding the egg will make the batter more loose, so keep it at a slightly thicker consistency than required before adding the egg. 

There are very few things that i make better than my mother. I have realised that pazhampori is one of them. At home, i would be the first to know when she decided to make pazhampori. The smell tells me that. No, this is not the pazhampori frying smell i am talking about. Even when she is just beginning to make the batter, i somehow smell something i associate with pazhampori. Now that i have started making them myself, i have understood what she was doing wrong. Her slices were thicker than required. Instead of 8 thin slices, she was making 4 thick slices. Also, sometimes the maida wouldn't be cooked through. Anyway, she won't have to make these anymore now because i have learned how to. I can make it for her. I also want to find out how many she can eat.

Oh, if you haven't guessed it yet, this snack is not healthy at all. Lots of oil and things that health conscious people should keep away from.

How to Make: Kerala Rich Fruit Cake

So this year, when it was time to make cake, I decided to shoot the making. You can read what I soaked over here. When it was time to shoot, Han lent me his equipment, Deep lent me his tripod and Vai Vow and I shot the making baking. This is the video I edited. You can find the recipe below it. Next year, I hope to come up with something else to bake. Hopefully by then, I will be in a position to buy ingredients myself.

Soak Dry Fruit a month ahead/ 2 weeks/ 1 week ahead in brandy.

I soaked:
Tropical dried fruits 220g Rs.250
California orange peel bits 100g Rs.350
Seedless black raisins 200g Rs.199
Golden raisins 200g Rs.175
Dates 250g 500g costs Rs.165
Cherries 300 g cost Rs 90 [I used 250 g of that]

Soaked in the cheapest brandy available. 3 bottles of 375 mL, each cost Rs.220

I soaked them for almost a month before starting on the cake.

I made the caramel by first heating half a cup of water (100 ml) and bringing it to boil. Set it aside to cool. Then took half a cup of sugar and started heating it with 1 tablespoon water. Waited till it turned dark brown. The colour of the cake will vary according to the brown of the caramel. I like it dark brown. You can have lighter shades as per your taste. Added the cooled water and brought it to boil and again and set it aside to cool. Be careful when you add the cooled water because it splashes. Caramel has to be cooled completely before making the batter.

Took 1 cup of unsalted butter (room temperature) and beat it. Add 1 1/2 cup of sugar to the butter and mixed it well. Add three egg yolks and mixed it well. Add the cooled caramel.

The flour, 1 1/2 cups of maida (all purpose flour) has to be sieved thrice with 1 teaspoon of baking powder. Take 1 1/2 cups of dried fruit from the soaked bunch. Toss it all in flour so that they won't sink to the bottom of the batter. If you have nuts, and i didn't, for the cakes i made for myself because i don't like nuts in my cake, but if you have them add chopped nuts 1/2 a cup after tossing that too in flour. Now add the sieved flour to the butter mix and mix well. It's hard. Have patience. Add the white of three eggs whisked with 1 teaspoon vanilla essence. Now add the fruit and nuts. Mix well. Set the batter aside for 6 hours.

Preheat the oven. My oven is a basic model. I pre heated the oven in the highest temperature mode. While the oven is getting heated, line your cake tin with cutter paper. Apply some butter on the tin first and then press down the butter paper on it according to the shape of the tin.
For baking i used the medium mode. It takes 1-1.5 hours for me to bake one cake in my model.
The cake is baked if when you insert a toothpick in the middle of it and pull it out, it comes with moist crumbs.

After baking you have to keep it aside for a week. The cake has to age, that is, absorb all the flavours and trust me, this is an important part. It was very difficult for all of us here to do this but if you manage to, you'll see a world of a difference in taste. Open and eat after a week.

This was my cake making last year

Cooking Heals: PITFB Fried rice and pyaazi

With the playback project i realized that the season of losing had begun. It all started with people telling me that i had lost weight. Soon after i lost my cinematographer. D Jeet let me know that he wouldn't be working with me in Diploma project. One week into prep (Pre-production) my producer and line producer withdrew from the project because Ramana, my producer wouldn't be in Kolkata during the time of shoot. Oh yes, even before that Aalayam, my editor had let Ramana know that he wouldn't be working with me. His department started forcing me to work with him and i as usual didn't budge. I approached my senior, Subha, and he agreed to edit for me. This is outside the rules, so basically i am royally screwed.

D Jeet and i started going on recce without a producer and without money and almost decided upon a location. But while this was happening an epiphany happened to me one morning. Vai Vow came with the good news that his film had been selected for Munich film festival and they would even provide for his to and fro travel. I got really excited and laughed. Then he said victoriously that a lot of films had been sent and only his was selected. That sentence hit me hard in the head. The obsessive compulsive that i am i couldn't hear anything else after that. Even though i had not thought of that aspect till then the realization struck a severe blow that i felt i was bleeding. What he said made me think that my own work will never ever be selected anywhere and that my own film making was absolute crap. I didn't know how to make films. I started crying. It looked really funny and embarrassing. I was crying after having heard a good news. Vai Vow was worried and i tried all i could to make him understand that it had nothing to do with him or with what he said, it was just one of those lines which made you think of all things under the sun and feel like shit. So i cried till afternoon, got a terrible headache and then slept on it.

I started working from the start like how i had after my DV film which was certified shit. I was back to square one. I felt like a loser. I was depressed. So i turned to cooking. That is how i decided to make fried rice after one night i tasted the fried rice they made at the mess and felt sorry for people who ate it.

Like i said i like the colours while cooking. Hence the customary picture of beans and carrot. I used my favourite gobindobhog rice. I prepared it the previous night. It was still a little sticky. I made raita (salad) because Vai Vow loves it and had a bit of it myself (i hate curd in most forms, raita is still okay).

I used her recipe which she said always ended up looking indian somehow. I like flawed food. It makes me feel at home.
Then when i was sad again after a few days (i swear sadness after break up is so much better than sadness after life changing realizations) i decided to make pyaazi which is ullivada of non-mallus. I got the recipe from the most energetic cook on screen i have seen, Mia Kitchen. Sometimes after attending screening at main theatre most of us make a stop at the couple which makes pyaazi, aloo bhaja, gobi ka pakoda etc next to hardworking tea shop . It was when Subha once, some months ago gave me a pyaazi from his packet that i realized what they were selling and what was called pyaazi was ullivada. So i was again a loser who never had that for over two years of being here.

Anyway the ullivada i made tasted good. I had it with a little ketchup. Since we ate all of it before sethuvamma came i will make it one of these days. I can also try and prove that even though i didn't learn how to make films, i learned how to make ulli effing vada

Sandwich Maker

I hated cheese. So when Sethuvamma got me a sandwich maker (she sometimes feels like buying this i have never asked her for) i was at a loss of what to do with it other than toasting bread. I don't like the usual potato filling sanwiches which Amma nd Sethuvamma made. Trust me, when you are in Kolkata you will hunt down things which don't use aaloo (potatoes) and have just that. Bengalis have their infamous aloos in even their biriyani. I went to some food blogs and saw some sandwich recipes. Most of them had cheese. So then i decided i would make it with cheese and ask Vai Vow to eat it. That is how i made my first sandwich. Egg and cheese sandwich. It was easy as hell to make. I got the recipe from here

A slice of bread, butter it, add your egg in whichever way you like it (i used scrambled egg), a slice of cheese on it, then again buttered bread, all of it goes to the sandwich maker and it will grill it for you. Super cool. I saw that Vai Vow was liking it. I took a chance and had a bite with ketchup. It tasted yum! Did that mean that i had started liking cheese too? I didn't have time to answer those mental questions because i was soon gobbling down the rest of the sandwich. What came out of the sandwich maker was just some great filling breakfast that i had difficulty in stopping myself from making a few more. I had to stop myself because the cheese i bought was so expensive and i couldn't finish it all in a day. I had no idea that cheese was expensive. I used to think that it cost something close to what butter cost.

Sethuvamma made a visit to feed Pinchu (my cat) in the evening and i made her two sandwiches without egg. Even that tasted great. I felt so good. I decided that to make it again on Sunday. This time i would make it for three people, myself, Vai Vow and Sethuvamma. So it would be vegetable sandwich Vai Vow being an egg eating vegetarian and Sethuvamma a fish eating vegetarian. (I don't know how the most ardent non vegetarians like me end up being around people from whose lives meat, fish etc are missing. Sigh)

So on sunday i made egg sandwich with boiled egg, onion, red bell pepper, capsicum (i was taught that green bell pepper alone is called capsicum. Wikipedia says that's not true. Indianism, may be.), carrot, cucumber and mint leaves. What i like the most about vegetarian ingredients is the colour. I love all of them. I spread butter over the slices of bread and put a slice of cheese in between. When it was grilled and out it was just so lovely. Sethuvamma asked me to make an eggless one and i did. I had an eggless one myself. Even that tasted great. I cursed myself for never trying sandwiches ever since i started cooking two years ago. It is just so easy to make and just so filling and good.

With this sandwich incident i have come to realize that cinema doesn't matter after a point. If i were asked to make sandwiches through the day and didn't have to shoot my playback project i would still have been happy i guess. Now that i like cheese i think i should learn how to make cheese as well. (Yes, i am (half) crazy).

Two Ariyunda Days

I lost track of time in no time. Therefore there are no dates for my days with Vai Vow in Kozhikode. One day i decided to make ariyunda (a sweet rice ball with coconut and jaggery). I loved this snack. Sethuvamma's ariyundas were the best. Recently i noticed that they were at sale in most confectionery shops. I once had one of them and realized it was nowhere close to what we made at home. So it was that Vai Vow and i approached Sujatha that day.

Sujatha was the new mixer grinder at home. Sethuvamma had got rid of her beloved meenu mix and got Sujatha. So great was her grief about Meenu that i felt it was a member of the family. Why are mixer grinders always given female names like is the case with hurricanes and malayalam fonts?

Vai Vow said that the name Sujatha had a story. Vai's editor Lodhi had two imaginary characters in his room. One was 'doctor' and the other was Sujatha. I was very impressed with this concept. I am always impressed with madness. Sujatha in our kitchen but let us down that day. It just didn't grind the matta rice to a powder. I was so disappointed but Vai said that he would eat whatever was the outcome. Still i felt pathetic with the rice balls which looked so sad with the visible crumbs.

Then one day when i was thinking of elephants i thought may be it was not Sujatha after all. It was me. I had used normal rice. It would have been ground properly if i had used broken rice perhaps? I rushed to the Reliance store nearby and looked if they had broken matta rice. They did. So it was time for Ariyunda. With bated breath i roasted the broken rice. I gave the spatula to Vai and asked him to stir and he was quite intrigued when the rice made sounds and shrunk in size. Then i approached Sujatha. Grrrzzzzzz.... said she and lo! i had my fine rice powder. Absolute bliss!

This time i only had to click the picture of the rice balls because the rest had been clicked the last time. Vai was surprised at the difference the texture of just one ingredient made in the 'final product'. He loved the ariyundas and i was happy. I myself found that it was exactly like Sethuvamma's, may be a little better. Vai rolled a few of them and as usual named the smallest one 'chintu'.

I was on top of the world that day and forgot all about elephants.

You can get the recipe here. I don't like cashew nuts in my ariyundas so made it without them.

Ada ada ada: When Classmates Met (PITFB)

In Kozhikode I always run into people I know. It's as natural as it is uncomfortable for me. First there is the wonderment at seeing some person when you are least expecting it. Then there is the problem of what to say. If the other person is a loquacious kind I'm saved. Otherwise I end up asking 'what do you do now' a couple of times and succumb to awkward pauses. 

My classmate and friend, Vai Vow was coming to Kozhikode that day. It was his first journey to the south of India. He was from Amravati, Maharashtra. I had invited a lot of my classmates home but most of them were as lazy as I was and so didn't make it. Vai did.

I had decided I would make ada for him. This was because Calico couldn't eat the kappa I made him because it was bad for his tummy and I felt I had to make him something he liked. I would make six. Three for Vai and three for Calico. 

I had made it once in the institute and had given it to NN and Hari. I had burnt the jaggery then and I burnt it this time too. And like how all people say, I loved the burnt taste. Next time i am sure to get it right and the shape and texture too. Taste-wise i am more than happy. Recipe again from Mishmash, the food haven.

The filling

I kept the tiffin box of adas at Calico's door, on his backless washing machine, to be precise, (yes, he has a backless washing machine propped up outside his house) I caught a bus to the railway station. There I met two people I knew.

Jeenachechi used to give me math tuition when I was in high school. Pooja was her daughter. They had returned from Kannur, where Pooja was studying. I asked her what her course was and forgot her reply immediately. Then someone patted me on my back. It was Vai. I let out a shriek and started laughing. He laughed too. It was the most absurd thing for both of us. We would never have imagined that we'd meet in Kerala. 

I was relieved I could take leave of Jeenachechi and Pooja. Vai and I proceeded out of the station to have our first tea together in Kozhikode. After tea he bought himself an umbrella like we had decided earlier. That was one thing he would need while in Kerala in June. 

When we reached home I gave him ada and he liked it. I was happy. My days as a host was starting. I was tense. Also excited. I didn't know what to do. Two film students stuck with each other is more awkward than silences in my opinion.

Play it the Eff Back: At Home and Brooding, and Cooking for Calico. Yo!

So on saturday i felt like cooking. Decided to make kappa (tapioca) erissery for Calico and his wifey. He in turn would give me my evening tea. Nice deal. I love kappa. Always loved what Sethuvamma made at home. She used to make us kappa with simple seasoning to eat with yummilicious and hot chilly chutney (mulakuchammanthi). With kappa erissery which was kappa with ground coconut paste she would give us fish curry. It's a combination made in food heaven. Mouth waters even as i type.

The day before Calico had bought me my favourite chicken biriyani from Paragon, Calicut's busiest restaurant. After food he took me to their bakery and treated me to Kashmiri halwa which i was having for the first time. It wasn't great, but was not bad either. So it was pay back time too, for Calico's biriyani treat.

chicken biriyani at paragon

Kashmiri halwa

I am an erratic cook. I cook when i feel like it not when i am hungry. I don't have a family to feed so i don't have to be a responsible cook. I didn't make fish curry or even a chutney to have with kappa. Calico would definitely have some pickle at his den, i said reassuringly in my head.

At Kolkata i never got kappa. Once when NN went to Bombay, where her home is, she got me kappa from a malayali store there. That was our first kappa in Kolkata. I had overcooked the kappa that time and wanted to get it right this time at home. I did.

The recipe from one of my favourite food blogs, Mishmash, was the same as Sethuvamma's and that was what i always used. I crushed the coconut with my hands because like i said my cooking is rather bizarre and i was lazy to find the lid of the mixer jar. Hand crushing works just fine.

Cooking at home is the best thing. You have everything you want at your disposal. Only have to step out to get curry leaves. Have a vaakkathi (a big knife which is great for breaking coconut shell) in your kitchen to break coconut. A coconut scraper fixed to the kitchen slab. Bah! As a Bengali would exclaim.

When i went to calico with my kappa i realized that he didn't eat it. It was not good for his tummy. So i gave it to his wifey and his parental home and had a lot of his tea and left to buy some gold (within Rs 1000 to wear in my many ear piercings. Like stingy mother, like stingy daughter) from Bhima. Got just what i wanted in Rs 990. Ah, precision, i say.

It was a kappalicious day and i felt good. For some time. As for the work regarding our Playback project (where a track has to be played back during shoot. In a very narrow sense, a song picturisation) which i call the play it the fuck back project, i did nothing. I was just being at home and alone. I liked it that way. D Jeet was happy with this arrangement too. He always liked it when i was at a distance from him. I wonder if it's just me or all cinematographers prefer it that way with their directors. I hope it's the latter but know that it's the former. :)

kappa erissery

Note to self: Need to get a good camera as soon as possible to get the colours right. Food in wrong colours is a sad sight. Hmmph.

Pirannal Palppayasam

15th April 2015

I was drained after a shoot the previous night. I didn't even remember when i hit the bed. NN told me in the morning that when she was back in the room i had a chat with her. I had no memory of it. It was all in my sleep. NN is the one who was witness to my weird habits during sleep. For almost two years. We became roommates after we shifted from the staff quarters called D 11. It was in D 11 that she and i bonded over coffee and started having long conversations which pissed off my then roommate. I was always laughing and my laughter was not exactly a low pitched lady like one.

NN is leaving. For Pune. This month is going to be our last one as roommates. So when Bengalis and Malayalees were celebrating noboborsho and Vishu respectively i was thinking of what to do on NN's birthday which fell on the next day. I decided to make Palppayasam (a kind of rice pudding) for NN's birthday (pirannal). The matta rice that i used was the last cup from the packet NN brought me from Bombay. I had used it to make Palpaysam, ariyunda (sweet rice ball) etc the previous year.

Apart from being roommates we were also in the same crew. She did sound for our films here. With the playback project fast approaching i only hope she will somehow find time to visit Kolkata and work.

To NN, Palppayasam and much love.

I used the recipe from Spicyana except that upon Sethuvamma's instruction i cooked the rice a bit before adding it to milk and sugar.

Good Friday Gone Bad

When i went to bed on Maundy Thursday i asked Sethuvamma to soak some rice in water. I had made up my mind to make Pesaha appam the next day. The only time Pesaha appam was made in our family was when we were with Amma, my grandmother. She called it Inderi ഇണ്ടേറി (some call it INRI appam or indri appam) appam. I liked the name but had no memory of its taste. I decided to try it out even though i was late by a day.

So on Good Friday gone bad because all days are bad when you are not working, i made the bread and milk porridge which was to be made on Maundy Thursday. I had two recipes with me. One was from Ria's Collection and the other was from her. I knew that she liked making food from scratch. If she liked it that way i liked it that way too. Sometimes i think i need no evolution. My likes and dislikes which were formed in the course of years matched hers so much so that i felt it was better to ask her what she liked and didn't and just copy it blindly. So many years saved. But you know what they say, that the process is important. So i rebel against her likes and in two years end up exactly there. Dare anyone question me about undergoing the goddamn process.

Speaking of rebellion i am reminded of the first year after losing belief that all atheists have. They feel liberated all of a sudden and want to rebel against everything they gave up. They would oppose everything religious around them in that first year. I was there once. It was the long break of uncertainty after SSLC (Secondary School Leaving Certificate) exams. Till then every year i would observe lent before easter. No chicken, no meat, no eggs no fish and all boring veggies. It was hell for a person like me who loved meat and fish. The whole of that year i went vegetarian. Food was where i wanted a rebellion first, i must have thought. By the time i was in +1 (higher secondary school) my folks had stopped being surprised at my vegetarian phase. They had other things to worry about anyway with the principal calling Sethuvamma to say that i had 'killer instinct'. That wasn't true, i was only throwing calculators at my Chemistry teachers not stabbing them with a knife... What my folks didn't know was that on the very first day of Lent i bought a very bad chicken biriyani from the nearest restaurant and ate it while no one was at home. I buried the plantain leaf and bones in our backyard. I placed a stone over it so that dogs wouldn't dig it up. My folks would be devastated if they knew that i had not observed lent i thought.

The only thing in my life that i am absolutely happy about is my atheism. I am glad that it happened during my teenage and therefore i got more time to be in it. I am not hard on believers now. I don't rebel against them. My rebellions happen without noise and without chicken bones being buried. No energy expenditure. You could even think up revolts. You were a revolt by yourself. [Nothing of the sort. Just a plain girl, alive]

The reason why i decided to make Inderi appam was so that i had her year in food. Steal her memories and make it mine. Her mother was fidgety in kitchen and used only new cookware to make it. The children were asked not to waste any of the paal because it was all holy. I would imagine myself as a child and being told all this by Amma. Replace her with me and her mother with Amma. There! I had my childhood memories of Maundy Thursday albeit stolen. I could steal from her like how i could steal from Appachan. I felt good stealing.

To steam the appam i had to use a pressure cooker and a vessel with holes.

Pesaha Paal/ Milk Porridge

The appam didn't turn out to be perfect. I didn't lay the cross made of palm leaves either. May be next year when i think of Maundy Thursday on a Christmas day or something. Seasons came for no reason other than food.

Sunday Brownie

Life was unbearable to begin with.
To top it all my relationship with D Jeet had taken a different turn. I was scared. My habit of subjecting people i like to my own violence was happening with him too. Over the past week i had come to realize that i could talk in length to him, hang out with him etc. This was strange because in more than two years on this campus and more than a year of working with him i had not realized it.

When we went to meet Florence together D Jeet had asked me to gift him a book. There always is a list of 'giftable' books with me. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and the Little Prince are about it. I thought of going to College Street where you only have old books shops. Was lazy and settled for the ones in Gariahat. I got the Little Prince and wrote
'To D Jeet, so that you learn, love, laugh and live. 
Love, me.'
[A day ago he had said that all he wanted to do in his life was to learn.]

During the day he was again running away from me and i couldn't give it to him. While i was talking to him at night i got up from my chair like i was possessed and rode my bicycle to Lake Market, where D lived. Incidentally my topic of discussion with my shrink the previous week was 'impulsive nature'. No shrink was helping me none. Evidently.

So around midnight i cycled around ten kilometers to reach the alley from which i could see his room. 'Come out', i texted him. He must have got the shock of his life. Said that i had gone mad. Oh there was no denying that. I gave him the book and cycled back.

Back in the room i told him about my problem with violence, invasion of space etc. He didn't seem to understand so i told him that it was better we stayed away from each other for some time. I couldn't hurt one more person.

The next day i asked Sri out on a date. I felt like spending some time with her. She refused.
Not talking to D was turning out to be more difficult than i imagined. I was missing him terribly.
I tried baking brownies on the OTG she gifted me. Added too much vanilla essence and it went bad.
When i got up on Sunday morning i was determined to be brave and push my idiosyncrasies away. I only had brownie' in my mind.

It was in March 2015 that i realized that i missed being in love. I missed me in love. And love was a distant dream. I had none left after all those years of neglect i subjected my mind and body to. This time the brownies were good.