Kokan Nexus for Urban Dazzle's Contest at IFBM 2014

Urbandazzle- Indian Food Bloggers Meet Monsoon/ Summer Cocktail (or Mocktail) Contest

was announced and I was excited about creating a drink that can make me a winner!

They say the best creation is under duress so here I am waiting until last minute to creat and post. With motivation and inspiration from Urban Dazzle's product range I have chosen flavors from the land I come, Kokan or coastal Maharashtra. Hapoos, Coconut and Pomegranate spiced with black pepper and mustard seeds.Yes mustard seeds taste the mocktail and I'd love to hear what you think of it. 

Besides this I have brought the lush green of the Kokan into this drink by using sprigs of mint both to flavor and to dress it up. The pomegrante bejewels the mocktail and elevates it further. 

Won't you want to make it with me now?

Servings 2

Ingredients

The Pomegranate Jewels

1/2 cup pomegranate seeds

water

Make pomegranate jewels in advance and keep them available when you plan to make this mocktail.

Fill an ice tray with pomegranate arils and top it with water. Freeze overnight to get lovely ruby ice cubes. I used an ice tray with small cells for this as they look dainty than the standard large ones.

The paste and extract

2-3 tablespoons fresh grated coconut

1 teaspoon black mustard seeds

100 ml water

Make a paste with coconut, mustard seeds and 100ml water. Strain it thru a fine sieve to extract the thick liquid. Discard the cake left behind after extraction. Keep aside the extract.

The rest of the mocktail

150 ml Hapoos mango pulp (from my Eshop)

100 ml water

30 ml honey

1/2 teaspoon pink salt

1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

In a drink shaker measure out exactly mango pulp, water and honey. Add salt and pepper. Shake vigorously to ensure honey is dissolved completely and the salt and pepper is homogenized.

At this point add the 100 ml coconut and mustard extract. Just shake once to mix.

Pour out the mocktail in a measuring cup. You will have a total of aproximately 380ml liquid.

The Final Touch

2 sprigs of fresh mint (from my Window Grill Box)

Prepare 2 elegant tumblers (350 ml) by adding to them the Pomegranate Jewels, 20 of the small cubes in each.

Take the sprigs of fresh mint in hand. Except the top 3-4 leaves remove rest of the leaves and drop them into the tumbler. Place the sprig of mint standing in the tumbler which now looks like a tree.

Divide the mocktail into the 2 tumblers, 190 ml each.

Serve immediately to your family or guests and see them enjoy every sip.

To enjoy the drink, sip slowly move it around in the mouth feel the smoothness of Hapoos and coconut. Crunch on the Pomegranate jewels and the mint leaves. Take another sip notice the faint pungency of mustard seeds. Wait and feel your throat warm up to the black pepper. Enjoy the slow sips over wonderful conversations or go to your favorite nook at home and sit with a book.

I would love to serve it in the Urban Dazzle's Longchamp Highball Tumbler 360ml. It is the right volume for this mocktail and the design is regal so it goes with my theme of jeweled ice cubes and the smoothness and warmth of my Konkan Nexus!

Eat, Drink, Cool with Watermelon

Life's summers are beautiful when its a table for two.

Some time ago I spent half a day with my friends Johnson, Shirley and Shimon. Shirley as usual went out of her way to make lots of food for me, imagine I was the only guest and the table was laden every inch. Since she knows my food preferences she made a similar watermelon deliciousness instead of a dessert. I adapted it and tried the make it more healthy by skipping out sugar and using honey. Thanking Shirley for this lovely recipe.

Ingredients

1 watermelon (approx 3kg)

1 lime

2 teaspoons honey per glass

Makes 5 Tall glasses.

Scoop out the watermelon with a baller. Try to get as many round balls but don't dicard the scraps just cut them up into small bits. Save aside.

Collect the juice don't thro it away while you are scooping, its a good idea to use a large bowl to hold the watermelon.

Measure out 1 litre of  chilled water into a bin, add the melon balls and the juice to it. Squeeze out the juice of 1 lime. Pass thru strainer to remove the seeds. Give a nice stir and a shake to the bin. This will ensure the lime juice homogenizes into the water and juice mix and also permeates into the watermelon balls.

Chill the bin in the fridge for atleast 4-5 hrs.

To serve fill up glasses with the water melon balls and juice upto 3/4th of each of the glass. Pour 2 teaspoons of honey over the melon balls, it will glaze the balls and fall thru the juice and sweeten it.

Provide a long spoon to scoop up the melon balls and pop them straight into the mouth and stir the juice to mix the honey. Enjoy the cool sips of lime laced watermelon and eat it too.

Real Kala Khatta is Pink!

The pink is the final diluted drink, in the middle syrup plus ice, the last glass is the color of Jamun concentrate or Kala Khatta.

Want some Jamun?

This week Dad brought home Jamuns along with his regular fruit haul from the Nerul market. My first question was how much did they cost? Must be expensive? 

Yes in Mumbai they are expensive at Rs. 45 per 250 gms. So the day was about Jamuns eating them, staining the tongue with them. Posing with them for 365project and feeling impish about clicking the stained purple tongue for the day's submission. But better sense prevaled.

It was a day filled with memories of walking under the Coconut and Bettlenut shaded paths in Thal and going Jamun and Karvanda hunting with friends. They would be ripe and fallen below the tree, we did not even have to take the effort at throwing stones at the fruit to fell them. We would pick the fallen fruit carefully. Ensuring no insect had bitten it, a little smash is ok, infact it is desirable for a squishy fruit gauranteed sweet juiciness.

Then there were days of walking down with MJ Kaka to VT from home in Fort. Next to Canon Pav bhaaji there used to be a sarbat stall that did roaring business. (I think both  still are Mumbai landmarks!). They sold the best Kala khatta! The location was prime oppositive VT station along the Azad maidan. It mostly would be a reward for studying well and accompanying uncle to J B Petit library for a afternoon read. You guessed it right this 4 - 5 o'clock drink was Amrit for me.

Now the Kala khatta that I remember from childhood was from that cold drink shop or the one made from Rasna or that Rajput Kaki made with some magical potions at home and bottles of dark almost wine black concentrate would be stashed away in the fridge door. Here is a post that voices eloquently the past that we cherish about "I love you Rasna" and the girl with the Fountain ponytail. 

Cut now I dread anything artificial. So I decided to make the real Kala Khatta. I had Jamuns in hand and I was not going to let go this opportunity. Before summer ends you want to give it a try with me?

Ingredients

100gms Jamuns

400 gms sugar

2 limes

3 teaspoons pink salt

500 ml water

First wash the Jamun fruit. Put it in a deep sauce pan or cauldron. Add 500ml water to it. Boil till done on medium heat. The Jamuns will start disintegrating and the water will get a purple color from it.

Next add the sugar and boil till you get a sticky thick syrup and a darker shade of purple.

At this point add juice of two limes into the syrup, it will clarify. Add the pink salt and put off the heat, you do not want to loose the sulphorous smell and taste of the salt.

Let the syrup cool and then strain it thru a juice sieve or a coarse mesh. This should trap the seeds and skins from the jamun and seeds of lime too.

Fill in a clean jar and store in the fridge. Stays well upto 3-4 months. This is your concentrated Jamun syrup or Kala Khatta concentrate.

To serve

Fill glass with 1-2 tablespoons of concentrated Jamun syrup. Add as many ice cubes as you like and top up with water to fill the glass to a little below the brim.

(Note : pl. use the concentrate in the proportion you like to get the sweetness and saltiness of your choice. )

Stir n shake.  Lo! there you are, making your own real Kala Khatta. Suprise surprise it's pink!

Real fruit juice makes a big difference and it's not a big deal to make your own concentrates for this summer. Hope you will dump all those artificial packets and the convenience of 1-2-3 for your health's sake.

Mango Chilly

Ever since I sourced Mango pulp for my E-shop I have not missed Mango through the year. It is available for me to use when I want and in whatever I want without much thought. That does not mean I do not enjoy the fresh fruit. The fruit will be enjoyed soon now is time it will start flooding the market. Until then I have my mango pulp.

Today I am sharing this lovely cooler that I made. Did you note the pun in the name, its Mango with chilli and served chilled!

A sip and you feel the sweet taste at the tip of your tongue, as the swig progresses on to the middle of your palate you taste the hints of salt and the lime. Then the chili hits the back of the throat and you hold the glass at eye level to say...hummmm...good stuff!

That's the kind of a drink it is, and ready in just 10 mins.

Ingredients

For a single drink

3 tablespoons Mango pulp

1 tablespoon sugar

1 small pinch red chilli powder

1 large pinch pink salt/ rock salt

1/4 teaspoon red chili flakes
1/2 a lime

150 ml water

6-7 ice cubes

for decoration

1 red dried chili 

a sprig of mint 

wood skewer

In a drink shaker or a jar with a tight lid add the sugar, red chilli powder, pink or rock salt, chili flakes and water. Squeeze half lime into it. Shake shake shake till the sugar and salt dissolve completely. Add the mango pulp to it and shake well again. 

Pour out into a serving glass, I used a large tumbler. Top with ice cubes. 

Dress up the drink: On a wood skewer fix a chili and poke in the sprig of mint into it. Insert the decoration into the drink filled glass.

Enjoy sipping on it as you relax in your chair and look far away into to the  hot summer afternoon.

This Mango Chilly is excellent to entertain. Serve it up with Gol gappas. Let people dip the puffed up puris into their tumblers and enjoy the pani puri shots!

P.S: Will update the pani puri shots pic when I have a beautiful model for it. Yesterday I made it the 5th time again for family after we returned home from a 3 day trip into the country. It was an ideal hot summer treat after the entire day on the heated express way.

Gulkand Kulfi

Kulfi, Kulfi-yo~~ 

That was the call of the Kulfiwala. Every summer night he would roam the backstreets of the Fort, Mumbai that went silent after all the commercial activities closed and the locals would find their peace and go down for a walk and the boys and men gathered to chat at the street corners.

We as kids would go running to window and call out to the Kulfiwala, "Bhaiya upar aana" calling him up to our third floor home. There would be much excitement as he would climb the stairs and we would keep the change ready. He would put down the huge basket which nestled the large urn or matka on to the floor. The urn would be filled with salt and ice to keep the kulfi frozen. It would then be covered with a red cloth which he ensure was always wet to retain the chill. Barely would he have settled the basket down and each one of us would demand our own flavours, Malai, Kesar pista, Pista. These were the basic 3 flavors he carried. The Malai kulfi tasted the best. Simple with no artificialness. Then he'd pick out one kulfi mould cone and rub it between his palms to loosen the set kulfi inside and pop it out on a leaf, cutting it up into bite sized pieces. There was never a time when we did not lick up the last bits of kulfi from the leaf!

The Gulkand kulfi is a more sophisticated version that I had never tasted on the streets but in a fancy restaraunt. Any kulfi is pure joy but Gulkand kulfi is romance of the flavors of boiled down milk and rose petals. It transports you into the era of the Mughals. They who brought to India the Persian influences, the use of rose in cooking and what better way than in a Indian cool treat.

You will find many recipes of Kulfi across the internet and in books that include corn flour as a thickner or other modern adaptation of a quick fix recipe using condensed milk from a can. However I choose to go the traditional way. Making Kulfi is a love affair you cannot rush thru it. It is just not the same, it has to be done slowly and over time. I prefer to do it over two days savoring every stage of the making as much as letting the sublime flavors melt in the mouth with every morsel.

A great Gulkand kulfi need two things, full fat milk and good quality rose petal jam that gives the name "Gulkand".

First let me explain to you what is Gulkand after all. When the roses are blooming, the best are picked, cleaned and petals are separated. Then in a glass jar the petals are layered with sugar and suncooked. The suncooking pales the bright red color of rose petals but the sweet smell is encapsulated by the sugar and you get a lovely jam. You can make your own jam at home with this method if you have access to organically grown roses. Gulkand boasts of wonderful ayurvedic properties and it's best know for its cooling effect on the human body. It is either consumed as is in spoonfuls or had mixed in the daily glass of milk in the summer months. 

Stay away from anything that is bright red on dark pink colored and labeled as Gulkand. It would without doubt have artificial food color. A good Gulkand in kulfi lends a creamy shade to the kulfi. I succumbed to the pressure of making it colored to give it a rosy look as the name suggest the use of roses so I used a little bit rose syrup, yes the pink colored liquid from a good brand but I could have avoided it easily.

Are you ready to enjoy the wonderous art of making Kulfi with me?

Lets begin...

Ingredients

3 litres Full fat Milk

100 gms Gulkand

25 ml Kalverts rose syrup (skip this if you do not want the rose tinge)

100 gms sugar

10 cardamom pods

Day 1:

Pour milk in a large thick bottom vessel. Boil it and reduce the quantity to about half the amount. It takes about 1 hour on the smallest burner and on simmer. Ensure you are stirring intermittenly and the milk is not charring at the bottom. If it does there is nothing that can be fixed as it will smell burnt and affect the taste too. So stay close. 

Once the milk is reduced add the sugar. Now remove some milk into a different pot and mix the gulkand and Kalvert syrup into it. The pic below shows the steps and the difference in colors at every stage. Pour back the Gulkand mix into the reduced milk pot. Let it simmer for 10 mins. Peel the cardamom pods and separate the seeds. Add the seeds to the thickened milk and give a stir to distribute evenly.

Put off the gas and allow it to cool completely. I generally do this at night after I finish cooking and in a clean work area so there is no chance of any other flavors or smells affecting the purity of milk. Never do it parallely with other activity else its easy to spoil milk.

Day 2. 

In clean kulfi moulds fill to 3/4 capacity the cooled thickened milk, sugar and gulkand mix. I filled 6 kulfi moulds and the rest I put in 2 plastic containers. Chill for a 24hrs in the deep freezer. You can check in 2hrs if set completely and you are in a hurry to serve it. 

Serving

Each kulfi mould can be rubbed between the palm to warm up and then demoulded into a serving dish. It can be cut up into bitsized pieces or left whole.

To demould the kulfi from the pastic contains just dip them in warm water and invert on to a plate. Them slice up into roundels. Serve a slice on a nice plate.

So you see Kulfi making takes time but it has just 4-5 ingredients that make this cool treat a lasting memory.

Note: For a plain malai kulfi you need to skip the gulkand and instead increase the amount of sugar to your taste. Once you have the basic kulfi play around with flavors, colors textures using saffron, fruits and nuts.

Jardaloo Ice Tea

Well so if you read the previous post and you are back then you are curious about what I did with the water in which the Jardaloo soaked?

In a jar I poured the Jardaloo juice enriched water and topped up with more water to a total of 500ml. I adjusted the sweetness by adding sugar to my taste. Then about 1/2 teaspoon of tea powder and let it steep all night in the fridge.

The next day I had a wonderful Jardaloo iced tea ready for a afternoon sipper. Just strain it before serving. Serves 2 small tumblers or one huge glass. 

Make sure the Ice tea is consumed the next day else the Jardaloo pulp in the tea starts spoiling. While serving you can add slices of lime but don't add lime juice, it does not go well with the steeped Jardaloo juice and tea.

Enjoy!

On a sultry day I chose to sit near the balcony and the natural breeze was much welcome to relieve the heat that the whirring of the fan did not help. The Jardaloo iced tea was perfect!

Kokum Sarbat

It is summer time and more than the last year I am feeling the heat more this year. Last year when I came back to Mumbai I was fearing being hit by the heat but the summers just passed away. This year I am deliberate in attempting to make lots of cold drinks for us to sip on especially in the afternoon instead of tea.

Here is a post by my dear blogger buddy Saee, on how Kokum juice concentrate is made just the way it is made traditionally in the villages of the Konkan region of Maharashtra.

I haven't gone to Thal in a while and no fresh Kokum for me yet. So I use the Kokum juice that comes in a plastic can to make this thirst quencher.

Ingredients

300 ml Kokum juice concentrate

700 ml chilled water

1/2 a lime

1/4 teaspoon pink salt

few sprigs of fresh mint

Ice cubes

In a glass jar measure out the kokum juice concentrate. It is all natural fruit preserved in sugar. Since this concentrate is made in sugar you won't need extra sugar to make the sarbat. 

Squeeze into it half a lime. The lime should be thin skinned and juicy to lend a nice citrus twist to it. 

Add pink salt, this sets off the sweetness a hint and lends a balance.

Crush the mint between your palm and add to the jar.

Top up with the water to get 1 litre of sarbat.

Add ice cubes into the glasses and fill them to the brim as you hand out the sarbat to a parched soul as the person steps into your home. 

In summers in the Kokan this Kokum sarbat is the welcome juice of choice due to the abundance of this fruit. It is called  Ratambe (plural) in the local dialect. Funny that we love our Hapoos and Payari so much yet this completely different fruit with it cooling properties and antacid effect is called Ratamba (singular) or mango of the night. It must be simply because we love both the mangoes and the night mangoes equally!

Look for Kokum sarbat in any Marathi locality in Mumbai or tell your Mango supplier, I am sure he will get you a drum of Kokum sarbat concentrate.

Make a glass won't you! 

Hazelnut Cold Coffee

The last week just zoomed past, for me the fun begins on Wednesdays itself, when I attend my Marathi Sugam Sangeet Class. This week we learnt Nij re nij re bala it is such a beautiful Angaee geet or lullaby that I sang it to bed and was up at 3.30 am with the song still playing in my head. I lay in bed looping it until 6 am. Woke up and did all my Thu morning chores to it.

Thursday evening is my most favorite, it is my Bharatiya Shastriya Sangeet class with kids aged 7, 9 and 13, 3 women in the 40s and the eldest is 60 plus and that does not include Mrs. Dabke, my Guru! Yet this class is absolutely fun. We are incorrigible gigglers. Last week the kids in between singing picked up some spectacles that were lying around and wore them on their noses to give us the bespectacled 40s and 60s company. It was hilarious, to watch Dhruv wearing 2 pairs one on top of other. In chorus we sang sa, ga re, ga pa~~~ dha, ni, Sa~~

Friday I sat down for riyaz for 2 full hours and followed it on Sat morning for another 2 hrs. Thru the day I moved around the house, cleaning, cooking, gardening, clicking pictures for the blog and more...

Saturday night went to a Kathak recital by Ntriyadarpana Foundation, it was an excellent experience with Paullomi Mukherjee Naik compering the show as she educated the audience on the nuances of Kathak and the characters played by her students. The brightest performance was by Vidhi Sampat whose abhinay and nimble footwork as Abhisarika captivated me. All the other girls were all decked up in Solah Shringar and were quite entertaining in their individual acts. I must bribe my friend Ashita to invite me for such concerts more often as these are non commercial focused on learning performances.

On Sunday I was too tired to cook as it was late the previous night. So we went to my favorite not a Dhaba but Punjabi homestyle outlet in Belapur called Bimal Paratha House. Guys you must visit this place. They chopped the sarson for us after we placed the order for Sarson da saag and Makai ki roti. Everything is always absolutely fresh, tasty and laden with ghee! Loved the indulgence as I was off rice and roti thru the work week.

Well today was a hectic day too even though I worked from home. So here is a treat I just made and posting as the Monday night turns to Tuesday.

It's a simple recipe but does wonders for my tired body.

Ingredients

300 ml chilled milk
1 teaspoon instant coffee
1 teaspoon nutella
Sugar to taste

Put everything in a shaker and serve in a tall glass.

Sipped slowly. Reflecting on how I love my life, this is the life I want to live and enjoy!

Now I am off to bed. Good night!

Sparkling Strawberry Float

If all the menu for the Birthday Party was fun then this mocktail was super fun, said my family. What you need is...

Ingredients

1.5 litres Sprite or any colorless sweet soda

1 cup Strawberry crush

1/2 litre pack of Vanilla icecream

Take 6 large glasses. Divide equally the strawberry crush into the 6 glasses. Slant the glass and pour in the Sprite slowly, to about less than 3/4 level of the glass. Finally lightly drop a blob of icecream on top. The icecream will float atop. 

Insert a bent straw into the drink. Pass around the drinks. Inform the party that it is a sparkling drink so they must not stir vigorously or else they may be showered by a bubbling fountain.

As you stir and sip the icecream forms a cloud over the liquid. The color is a lovely electric pink with a baby pink couldy float. 

Enjoy the drink and that brings us to the end of the Birthday party menu. Hope you enjoyed following this series as much as I did posting it! Before you go away let me tell you there is another interesting theme that is coming up. So see you again after the 20th.

MaTha: It's Summer Time And When The Weather Is Not Fine

The summers call for many drinks to cool the hot bodies. MaTha or herbed n spiced buttermilk is a sure way of quenching the parched throats.

It's a much better drink than your sugar laden ones, I need not stress on that. MaTha tastes best when cooled in terracotta pots with the flavor of clay lending a nice aroma but unglazed terracotta is difficult to clean as it is porous so the next best thing are there ceramic tumblers. They don't lend the earthy taste but definitely take you straight into the lush green villages where the cool breeze blows and summer calls for sitting out on hand woven cots to beat the heat while everyone discusses life as it goes by at a snail's pace.

MaTha is a lovely drink that refreshes you without giving you a sugar high yet the spices and herbs get your blood circulation going. I remember consuming bottles of MaTha when I used to visit Gujarat for work after sweating it out in the summer sun that blinded any one walking the Industrial areas.

Ingredients

1 cup thick curd
water

Masala

few leaves of Pudina
handful of cilantro
1/4 green chili
1 small knob of ginger, skin peeled
couple of blades of Lemon grass (not traditional)
salt to taste

Crush to paste using mortar and pestle, all the masala ingredients except lemon grass. Use salt  to get the aromatic oils release faster.

In a bowl beat the curd well, transfer to a bottle and make it to 1 litre by topping up with filtered water. Slip in the gently bruised lemon grass blades into the bottle. Don't crush lemon grass, the splitters will cause you to choke if you don't filter the liquid. Leave them whole and long so you can just pull out the lemon grass blades just before serving. Chill it for couple of hours.

Before serving shake the bottle to mix well, remove the lemon grass blade then pour out the MaTha into the tumblers.

Hand out to thirsty visitors and family members a chilled glass of MaTha and they will bless you for the welcome drink.

The cool cover that makes our summers bearable, a look outside the window and I feel relief when I am at home and the sun is burning outside in the high skies, while the Gulmohar blazes on the earth...I am drifting into a slumber.

Musk Melon Panak

Celebrating Ram Navami 

My home owner is a lady who believes in feeding anyone who enters her door. I have been subjected to her overwhelming hospitality many a times. Her home delivered parcels of food never find a way to my mouth. The masalas are strong and impossible for me to consume. On Ram Navami I was subjected to one such moment. She offered me a huge glass of Musk Melon Panak. I sipped slowly on it and finished it in time that felt like infinity while her son tried telling me that Panak must be drunk like a shot! Gosh and what get choked I thought. Yet I found this Panak interesting and so sharing it here. I think if I make it myself I might enjoy it more. I will ofcourse customize it to my taste and so should you.

Here is what will work for me. My home owner's version was an overdose of jaggery but Musk Melon stood out even in that one.

Ingredients

1 cup of ripe Musk Melon

2 tablespoons of crushed Jaggery

water for dilution

In a jug add the musk melon and jaggery mash it with a Masher. Top up with chilled water to desired consistency. Enjoy this summer cooler.

I came back home assaulted by the jaggery high and plonked on my bed. The next day when I narrated it to my colleagues at work I became the butt of jokes for being a teetotaler who cannot even handle a jaggery high. The Musk Melon I think has an intoxicating smell, I say. As a kid I would have never touched this fruit and would have run away from the room it would be cut in and see the change I am recommending this Panak to you today.

I love the Kairi Panha a lot and guzzle it in jug fulls. Must make some soon, the Kairi in the fridge beckons me.

Guava Nectar

Just 1 guava yeilds thick creamy cooler for 2. All you need to do is wash and clean the guava fruit. Peel the skin. Cut up into pieces. Place in a blender. Add 1 glass of water and a pinch of salt or chat masala. Give a good long whirrrr~~ Strain the seeds out or have it as it is. It will clean the bowels well the next morning that is a promise!

This is a good glass for dieting, keeps you full for hours together.

Strawberry Lassi

I love fruit flavored lassi. There is a little shop on the Daman side of Vapi station that got me hooked to it. When you are on the field in the hot summer visiting customers and also trying to rush back home on the same day, the downer has to be a cool lassi. I was really fortunate Vijay bhau lived in Virar, many times I would hop off the train dead tired and stay over at his place.

Fruit lassi always reminds me of my adventures to Vapi. Read about it in this old post.

This one is with Strawberry. I just gave it a bit of my touch in the presentation. For those who are not familiar with a lassi here is how you make it with strawberry.

Ingredients

4-5 strawberries

1 cup thick curd

sugar as much as you like

First puree the strawberries with some sugar. Keep 1/4 of it aside.

Then blend together with curd and more sugar if you please to get a frothy lassi. Add water to make a consistency of your choice. I sometimes use 1/2 cup of water and add it while blending. 

Now to present it, first dip the rim of the glass in water. Dust the edges with sugar or dip the rim in sugar spread out in a plate. Carefully add some strawberry puree on the inside of the glass. Swirl it around to get a sash of strawberry coating on the glass. Then fill carefully with the blended strawberry lassi. The glass will show bands of red and pink and the sugar crystal clinging to the glass rim adds the glitter to the drink. Chill for an hour or more. Insert a straw and pass it into eagerly outstretched hands of your family or friends. Give them a spoon to scrape the strawberry puree off the sides of the glass as there is a chance of the stork's beak being stuck in the glass ;)

Here are my posts on other curd based drinks:

• Plain Lassi - is potent on its own
• Mango Lassi - the alphonso or hapoos is atleast once married to curd in this one
• Piyush - The nutmeg adds subtle notes of aroma to this Maharashtrian favorite.

Bel Phal and Nectar

Bel phal is called Wood apple in English. Many times as a child I have seen my mother use certain fruits that  she associated with her childhood and she enjoyed them in different forms. I never ventured near some of them. Bel phal is one such fruit. It is the first time 2-3 weeks ago I saw wood apple in the supermarket and picked it up for experiments. I knew I could make a chutney or a drink. Chutney would go waste if it smelt strong I thought so the safest was a drink. We can always dilute drinks right!

Now after bringing it home the fruit lay in the tray for weeks. I was seeing it every day and was very sure I would have to throw it out. However this one is a tough nut, literally and metaphorically. It has a hard woody shell. It does not go bad so easily. I used a pestle to break it open just like a coconut. The pulp was ripe brown and very aromatic with a very faint fruity sourness. This fruit is know to be a cure for all ailments of the digestive system.

I went to my bookshelf and referred to "Annapoorna" by Mangala Barve. It gave a recipe that I knew I would atleast like if not love. Enumerating it here for you.

Ingredients

1 bel phal / wood apple

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup water

2-3 cardamoms powdered

1/2 teaspoon pepper powder

Juice of 1 lime

More water to make the drink

After breaking the fruit with a spoon scoop out the pulp. In a steel box put the pulp and add sugar. Mix it a bit add a cup of water. Close the box and put it in the fridge. The sugar will dissolve over a couple of hours and will make the fibrous pulp easy to extract. The fibrous pulp has a lot of seeds embedded in it. To remove the seeds the pulp has to be strained through a mesh. 

Pour the pulp in a juice strainer and press it down with the back of a spoon or spatula. Tap the strainer a bit to remove all the pulp. Spice up the drink with powdered cardamom seeds and pepper powder. Add the   lime juice to impart a freshness. Now this pulp can be refrigerated and used when needed. 

To serve in a glass take thick pulp and top up with chilled water. Adjust the consistency of the drink as you like. I wanted to consume all of it so made just three glasses of the juice. It was very thick hence you can call it Bel Nectar!

Teppanyaki Kiwi Icecream

In this era has anyone escaped the influences of the TV? I too fall prey once in a while.

This is one such recipe.

Saw a food show that showed Teppanyaki cooking and the shock factor came from the reduced ice cream on the Teppanyaki. Now you will wonder what that is. Well by definition:

Teppanyaki (鉄板焼き, teppan'yaki^?) is a style of Japanese cuisine that uses an iron griddle to cook food. The word "teppanyaki" is derived from teppan (鉄板), which means iron plate, and yaki (焼き), which means grilled, broiled or pan-fried. Source: Wikipedia

Restaurants take this Tava frying (if you compare it to Indian cooking) to a new height. The chefs are performers. I guess anything grilled on a Teppanyaki should taste good. Fifty % of the game is won by the hot food and 50 % by the chef's style. I am not even considering taste as a factor.

I tried this desert in the Teppanyaki style. I cheated with readymade vanilla icecream. The chef on TV fried mix fruits with a lot of garlic! I din't dare. So this recipe is my own in that sense.

Ingredients

1 cup Vanilla icecream
1/4 cup Kiwi puree
1 Kiwi sliced

I filled a bowl with Kiwi puree. Then heated a nonstick frying pan, transferred 1/2 cup vanilla icecream onto it. Reduced it until lumpy. Put the reduced icecream lumps on the Kiwi puree so as to give a second layer in the bowl. Then added the other half cup of vanilla icecream on top. I was tempted to add nuts but stopped. The Kiwi seed lends a nice texture as well as a kinda crunch to the deliciously cool bowl. Decorate with Kiwi slices.

This proportion is for a single person. A treat for me.

Dig to the bottommost layer and scoop up the rest of the layers, devour!

Panha Stands For The Advent Of Summer Truly...

Cheers to Ratan Tata for giving us the Nano !!

Cool Panha and bowls of steaming hot boiled corn
with pepper and a drizzle of ghee

I think most women start making pickles when they are just about turning 35yrs. If that is a standard then I must say I started making at a young age of 20 may be. Devaki Kaki was an expert pickle maker and I guess that's why Bal became a expert pickle nibbler. He needs pickle with every single meal.

Devaki Kaki made loads of pickle in summer. Now you must be wondering when this is a post about Panha why am I talking about pickles. Well the amount of pickle we made specifically mango pickle yielded lots of mango seeds which we never really scraped clean when cubing it for the pickle. The seeds with some pulp on would go into a large pressure cooker get boiled and then juiced and pureed to get the raw mango juice for Panha making.

In Tata colony in Mothe Baba's home there was a mango tree in the backyard that gave fruit once in two years. The fruit was small and sour. It could not be used for pickles so we made Panha or Kairichi Amti.

It is end of March and the advent of summer is marked by the appearance of the mangoes on the grocery stacks. I bought two medium sized Rajapuri Mangoes for Rs. 54 but was worth every penny. It yielded nice thick smooth pulp on boiling and the other one was used to make Kejyarcha Kairi Lonche so you see a new picture there.

Let me warn you this Panha should be made just for tradition's sake it is loaded with sugar even though I used jaggery I had a lot of guilt while consuming it. Even after that I know you do want to try it.

Ingredients

1 raw mango
1.5 cup crushed jaggery
10-15 cardamons

First dice the mango into large chunks. Boil them so it is ready to pulp out. Peel the skins and puree the pulp in the juicer or by passing through a juice strainer. I like Panha made from hand mashed pulp and with little pieces floating in the glass. My dad likes a smooth sip. So we make batches of both.

After pulping dissolve crushed jaggery in the pulp and add crushed cardamom powder to it. Mix well. This concentrate is generally frozen and diluted while serving with chilled water. Adjust the jaggery and dilution to your liking. Traditionally Panha is syrupy sweet.

There is nothing better than sipping on Panha in the backyard of your home under the huge mango tree in an arm chair on a sultry late afternoon. Tata colony is that place in Chembur where we lived with Mothe Baba for a part of our life. The little cottage with a garden of fruit trees and ornamental plants which was home to sweet singing birds was provide by Tata Electric Company to my Uncle who was the captain of the speed boat first for JRD and then for Ratan Tata. My family loves the Tatas. They took very good care of all the employees to the point of pampering them.

So its time to rejoice when Tata Nano has just been launched. Cheers to Ratan Tata for making the average Indian's dream come true!!

You watched Ratan Tata talk about it a year ago and now it is reality.



Tata Nano Launch Event - Part II
Tata Nano Launch Event - Part III

Spiced Pineapple Orange Drink

It is the season of pineapples. I guess besides strawberries, pineapple is the second most favorite flavor in the world. The reason being the artificial flavors have almost reached the perfection of the real taste of the fruit. Fresh Pineapple tends to be expensive sometimes and there is a good reason for it. The Pineapple fruit can be harvested only after 15 months of cultivation which means one fruit takes 15 months to reach the market and to be available for us to enjoy.

Pineapple is grown vastly in Kerala. To a Mumbaikar like me pineapple was meant to be eaten fresh or juiced. It is only when I went to Kerala did I get to taste pineapple curry, called Mor Kuzhambu.

This drink is not a regional delicacy nevertheless I'm riding the Kerala wave with the current RCI. The smell of a very ripe Pineapple transports me to Alleppey. I remember hoping out of the car at the site of a almost orange colored ripe pineapple as the vendor was cleaning it. It was a large fruit, immediately I declared to Dad that I was going to live on Pineapple that day. We went straight to hire a launch with a wonderful deck covered with a canopy and surfed the backwaters for 6 hours from Alleppey to Kumarkom bird sanctuary. They were the most idyllic hours in my life. Dad even took over the controls of the launch for sometime and he was happy like a child who is gifted a new toy. We nibbled on the pineapple all day long and yet I was not tired. I was smelling all fruity that night.

Here is a drink I made yesterday with a nice pineapple I laid my hands on. I have some more left and the next dish you can expect would be savoury. This recipe is for my friend, Deepa for she has pineapples beckoning in her pantry.

Ingredients

2 cups pineapple juice
2 cups orange juice
a small piece of ginger ground to paste
1 small piece of cinnamon
1 clove
1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons honey
2 slices of pineapple to dress up the glasses

Pound the the spices together to a fine powder with a mortar and pestle. Keep aside.

Next in a big jar add the juices, ginger paste, honey and the spice powder. Chill the juices covered for 2 hours. This will help the spice flavors to blend into to the juices well. Shake and serve in a glass of your choice. Insert a pineapple slice onto the rim.

A spiced drink even if chilled will give your throat a nice warmth as it increases blood circulation.

Mango Lassi

and a Weaving Tradition

India has a very rich tradition of textiles. The colors are inspired by nature so when one goes shopping for sarees the connotations of color are like Baigany for purple like brinjal, Mor panki - colors of the peacock feather, amra pali - of the mango leaf, kesariya-the color of saffron, haldi- kumkum for turmeric and vermillion.

My favorite combo is amra pali that too the green and yellow one. This cotton dupatta/ scarf is one of my favorite. It is a ikat design inspired by the colors of the mango. It is very old and feels so soft. The cool cotton reminds me of the famous mango cooler ofcourse the Mango Lassi.

Ingredients

1 cup curd

2 tablespoons sugar

1 cup mango pieces

few ice cubes

Blend together for just 1 min and serve.

Papaya Banana Smoothie

Here is how I relax on a lazy sunday afternoon. It is my time with a cooler, some music and hair let loose after the wash rolling on this dhurrie with a book in hand.

The ipod nano you see here has a story. My dear friends Alok and Varsha or should I say my siblings, long lost in the Kumbh Mela we found each other now, wanted to gift it to me. I am one ungraceful person when it comes to accepting expensive gifts. I promised to use it if they kept it with them. So since then the ipod has become my partner in crime for blogging. I use it as a pen drive to carry data from home to work from where I finally post. Alok and Varsha are my adorable guinea pigs in My Kitchen lab. I have seen their faces twist up on gulping some experimental stuff and yet say its good with a funny smile. Then we laugh at our joke on Belbin's theory and Myers-Briggs instrument. It is our passtime to apply it to silly things. They have missed this cooler so posting it here for them untill I make it next time just for them.

My guinea pigs at Nandi hills. Its the closest I could get them to pose ;)!!

How to make it:

Equal amounts of papaya and banana blend together with sugar if required. I don't use any as these fruits are really sweet. When serving add few cubes of papaya and banana slices to dress up the smoothie. Serve chilled.

Carrotini

No No this is not orange juice scroll down to read the recipe.

Ingredients

1 glass carrot stock from Warm Carrot n Cabbage Salad.
1 cup sweet lime juice/ Ginger Ale
2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Blend all ingredients in a blender and pour into glasses and chill for an hour before you serve. Even warm tastes good.