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. 

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).

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.

She swore

She swore she was led there.
The ants did it all.

Some Days are Like That

and then she was taken for a ride

I remember stealing a fork from a bar. I was bored. My kitchen was a fork short anyway.
I remember living on just tea for days in a row when in college.


Dealing with a Disorder

Dealing with a Disorder

Recently i saw some amazing paintings by artist Lee Price. Every one of them made me think of myself when i was going through a terrible phase, dealing with an eating disorder which is perhaps the most common among adults. Price's paintings were all about women and food. I thought about my own relationship with food and thought of sketching some thoughts.

My problems became acute in the past couple of years. It is now under control but i know that like anybody who has ever gone through something like this i am susceptible to a relapse, any time.

There are a lot of reasons for Binge Eating Disorder. In my case i figure it was humiliation i faced as a child and teenager regarding my weight. I was not fat, not even overweight. But people somehow thought i needed to be size zero. In my late teens, i grew out of all of that and learnt that the obsession about weight was only a construct, a norm that existed only to be broken. From the age of seventeen i was never conscious of my body or anything about it. I was happy the way i looked and couldn't care less about what people thought of me. Even now i don't get happy if called beautiful or sad if called ugly. At the same time i make a point to tell people not to comment on my body when they do so. It is a practice that needs to be stopped. It has effects, i now know.

The harsh and cruel words that were hurled upon me as a child did have an effect. It did result in bizarre eating habits. Mind works in strange and mysterious ways, i realized. Food became a preoccupation and a nightmare. I stopped eating with people. Even now when things are under control i mostly eat when nobody is around. I get conscious when in a group and eating. I observe people when they are having food. I make people talk about food. I cook and feed others and not eat myself. Then i would have a private little secret eating spree, till i feel sick, pukish, unable to move. I would sometimes have purging sessions, sometimes take laxatives. I talk like a foodie, act like a foodie and even believe i am a foodie. May be i am one, but an erratic, despicable, unfaithful foodie who hates and loves food at the same time.

Rapid weight loss and gain cycle resulted in stretch marks. After i realized that my eating disorder was not my fault and that i had a genuine problem i flaunt them as a mark of my strength and ability to survive. They tell me, 'You have come past all this, you have come a long way'.

I hope to sketch more on this. It makes me happy.

2. Some Days Are Like That