and puffed up, you can't help succumbing to the temptation.
Last Sunday my little sister-in-law invited us to lunch. It was
getting on to 45°, it was dry as only Delhi can be in May, she lives
on the top floor of herapartment building, and the loo was blowing. In
other words, it was blazinghot. And she stood in the kitchen and made
us, with her own fair hands, hot pooris with the traditional rase ke
alu , dahi and achar the only other accompaniments.
That was a memorable meal, for many reasons: The company was easy
andcomforting, she had chilledthe house with the air conditioner set
to glacial, and the menu was just perfect. To have added or subtracted
from it would have been criminal.
The boiled potatoes, roughly broken by hand into a thinnish
orange-yellow gravy of tomatoes and dahi were flavoured with just
zeera , cumin and haldi . Just a hint of hing (asafœtida), garam
masala and freshly chopped coriander. The dough, the poori atta , had
been kneaded with dried methi , fenugreek leaves.
Family choices
I asked for mine puffed butsoft, her brother for his crisp, and our
niece for her solitary one without the methi . We all ate till we
collapsed and a crane had to be brought in to lift us.
The main reason was that in my house pooris are inedible ("but why,
bhabhi , there's nothing to pooris — why can't you?") and so I've
given up. The second was the purity of the alu , and the crowning
taste was the aam ka achar . For years I've annually suffered"hints"
about the best raw mango pickle being the one with no stone, no
saunf-methi-kalonji (fennel-fenugreek-nigella), only red chillies and
hing and I've turned a deaf ear because I don't like it. It's cut into
long, limp, thin slivers and tastes only of its ingredients, which
don'twork for me, they're too unconnected, too raw.
But the pickle at Chhoti's house had small triangular pieces of mango,
positivelyreeking of hing , but sweet and hot. The texture was firm
and crisp and naturally the taste was sour, but a large amount ofsugar
added an unexpected kick. With that savoury meal, sweetness did the
trick. I'm still waiting for a consignment and the recipe.
A few days later I went to a mall for a movie, the planwas to eat a
large breakfast and skip lunch. So I filled up on the mandatory
popcorn and then politely agreed to share a sandwich or pizza after.
One look at the menu and sure enough, all three of uswanted to eat
many things. I'm a sandwich fiend, am supposed to avoid red meat, so
ordereda tuna sandwich. Tuna is supposed to be a good source of
vitamins D, B3 and B6, and, in any case, it has a flavour that I like.
Unlike most shop-bought sandwich fillings, which taste and smell of
pink reconstituted plastic, tuna has character.
Tuna sandwich
This came in toasted brown whole wheat bread,cut into four large
trianglesand filled almost to bursting. The filling was held together
by mayonnaise — probably eggless — and its flavour and crunch
explained the name they'd given it: Colaba tuna sandwich. They could
as well have named it Nungambakkam or Defence Colony Tuna Sandwich, or
anything else desi . But to non-Mumbaikars, Colaba has a certain ring.
In it they'd mixed fresh chopped dhania (coriander)stalks and leaves
but there was also the pungent, unmistakeable bite of finely sliced
raw purple onions.
I like onions as much as the next person, but only with hot food, and
only with meat. We were tortured as children and not allowed onions at
lunch, which was usually vegetarian, but they were served steeped in
malt vinegar at dinner — which was always mutton in some form — and
the habit has stuck.
The onion in the sandwich was crisp in the middle of the squishy tuna
salad and its flavour balanced the smell of the tuna without
overpowering it. Occasionally a succulent stem of coriander would
burst freshly into the mouth. Both onions and coriander are "ornery"
and a part of all our larders, butthe unexpectedness of the
juxtaposition was what wrought the magic.
All unusual combinations don't necessarily succeed, sometimes they
manage tobe only just edible. But some act like a magic wand,
transforming pumpkins to carriages and scullery drudges to belles of
balls.
I find that with saunf , fennel. The humble every day dhuli moong
(yellow, hulled mung ), often cooked in combination with masoor ki dal
(red split lentil) is usually tempered, like most other dals in the
North, with cumin.
In the South it's most likelymustard seeds. This one is boiled with
saunf . Sautéing saunf changes its smell completely — it becomes
smoky, crisp, fried.
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