Vegetable Biryani

Biryani is my most-favoritest(sorry for my inability to use a better word) dish. You give it to me anytime and I would be more than ready to eat - whether I am hungry or whether its night or day.

Mom used to make yummy biryani. It was a delicacy back then, a dish made rarely and only during the weekends. She made it in large quantities and I would feast on it the whole day. Each time I thought my tummy had a little space, I would munch in a bowl full. Recently, when my cousin visited, she made delicious briyani for lunch, I ate until my stomach couldn't hold even one extra spoon.

At restaurants too, my first choice would be biryani. A lot of people wonder how I would never get bored of eating the same dish, but I choose to eat it. I used to be in night shifts at work sometimes, when there was one cafeteria that would be open at that time of the day, to cater to the food needs of people working at nights. They would most often serve yummy hot biryani at 12am sharp, and I would be there well ahead. The guy who sells the food tokens would give me an ugly look, but who cares, as long as I get biryani. There was yet another cafeteria that served good egg biryani and my last day at work, I made sure I ate it one last time before I quit. I have even had the biryani they sell in streets. As far as biryani in India is concerned, it has never been bad for me.

US has given me some of the worst biryani experiences. There are only a couple of restaurants where they served average biryani, the best of which was in a restaurant called "Woodlands" in Chatsworth near LA. The house in which I stayed was right opposite to the restaurant, I used to frequent there so much, that the people who served there, no more gave me the menu card, they just confirmed if I was ordering biryani. We were once damn hungry during lunch time, and spotted an Indian restaurant, so ordered biryani. All they did was mix a couple of curries they had for their buffet and called it biryani. A few other restaurants also did the same crap to me. Despite this, I still used to order biryani, hoping that atleast one restaurant would make it eatable, but in vain, and I stopped eating biryani outside.

This is when I was desperate and wanted to make it at home. Tried a few recipes, but I found them complicated and not worth the time spent. I bought "Priya" briyani powder, followed the instructions on it, and ended up with a considerably good one. My cousin mailed me "Parampara" biryani paste from New Jersey(now you know how desperate I was) and she gave me instructions of making it. I tried it and it came out very well. So, with the same steps, I tried doing it with the same "Priya" biryani powder, and I'm glad that I got exactly what I wanted.

Its so easy to make(takes exactly 30mins), really tasty and you don't have to worry about an elaborate side-dish - onion raita, chips, applam is more than enough.

Recipe - I owe it to my cousin :)

Tips:

1. Cook basmati rice in such a way that they don't stick to each other. Use minimum amount of water. An electric rice cooker would be ideal. I don't have one, so I cook it in my pressure cooker. I don't put the weight. Once steam comes out, I reduce the flame to medium, cover it with a cup. 15minutes and rice it done exactly the way I want it.

2. Mint is the most important taste giving ingredient. I have prepared it with and without it - trust me, mint does the magic.

Ingredients:

Vegetables, onions, mint, briyani powder, curd, chilli powder, garam masala, oil, ghee, salt

Method:

I start out by cooking the rice first, so that, by the time the rice is ready, I can chop all the vegetables. Take 3 Tbsp of briyani powder, make a paste by mixing the curd with it and keep it aside. Now chop the vegetables. The vegetables I usually use are potato, cauliflower, beans, carrot,bell pepper, peas, broccoli, etc. and mushrooms. In a pan, take 2tsp of oil and one tsp of ghee and once it is hot, fry the mint and onions and then add the vegetables. Then add the briyani paste, a little chilli powder, garam masala powder, salt for the vegetables, mix well and cook covered. Make sure you don't overcook them. Once cooked, add the cooked rice to it, enough salt for the rice and mix well. Serve hot with onion raita.

This is the easiest and the tastiest dish I have ever made. I prefer to use very less oil, which makes the dish look a little dry, but it doesn't matter to me, as the taste it still good and I anyways have it with the raita and above all, its healthy.

I love to have a lot of vegetables in it, so I use more, but its upto you. And as far as the quantities of the briyani, chili and garam masala powders go, when you make it once, you'll know how it tastes, depending upon which you can use them to suit to your tastes. It doesn't make sense for me to tell the exact right amount here as tastes differ.

Happy eating :)

Happy birthday Krishna!

Patram puspam phalam thoyam

yo me bhaktya prayacchati

Tad aham bhakty-upahrtam

asnami prayatatmanah

- Bhagavad Gita 9:26

Meaning - Whosoever offers Me with love a leaf, a flower, a fruit or even water, I appear in person before that selfless devotee of sinless mind, and delightfully partake of that article offered by him with love.

This verse is close to my heart. It teaches us two important qualities - humility and devotion(love). How you offer something is the only thing that matters and not what you offer. You may offer just water, but the pure love with which you offer the same is what counts. You may offer the most expensive thing on the face of the Earth, but if you think its the material value of the offering that counts, thats not true. Irrespective of the material worth of the offering, offer it with all the humility and the love.

Makes total sense. When somebody gives me a gift, I don't really care of how much it costs or what gift it is. The fact that the person was so thoughtful enough, makes me immensely happy. How annoying would it be if someone gives you an exorbitant gift, just for the sake of showing off to his friends what he is capable of?

Anyways, Krishna Jayanthi preparations for me, started keeping this in mind. I made vella seedai and uppu seedai, the 2 important dishes that are usually made a couple of days before and by the look and feel of it, I thought it came out very well. I was even planning to post the recipe, but unfortunately it was not as I had thought it would be. Who cares man? Its the love that matters :)

Last night I took up this task of drawing "ezha kolam", which of-course I am very bad at. But considering that fact that I didn't have a deadline, I searched up on the internet and ended by drawing considerably good kolams. This is the kolam blog that I referred to. I liked it, beacuse it had the method step-by-step. And I would have looked funny to anyone who saw me in action, as I had my laptop in front of me, and was copying from it.

The actual pooja was today and I planned to make "Mysore Pak" this morning and it was the first time I was into making this. And surprisingly it came out very well. It was neither too hard nor too soft. It was in the right consistency and taste.

Recipe in brief:

Ingredients - besan flour - 1 cup, sugar - 2 cups, ghee - 1 cup, Water - 1/2 cup (This was the exact quantities I used, from some website online)

Heated the water in a heavy-bottomed vessel and added all the sugar to it. After the sugar dissolved and reached the string-consistency, added the flour to it little by little, and kept stirring simultaneously, so that there were no lumps were formed. I wasn't able to handle it by myself, so had an assistant, who did the stirring for me. After it was mixed well, added the ghee, mixed it well again, and once it all fully mixed, poured the mixture in a greased plate and sliced it after a couple of minutes.

(Don't have a picture of it after having sliced it, this was taken before. Sorry about that)

In-spite of all these dishes, lots of fruits and a delicious meal, Krishna's all-time-favorite Aval and butter were the most important ones. The pooja went on really well and we offered everything to Him with utmost love and humility.

I take this occasion to thank my wonderful friends who gifted the Krishna idol and the Radhe-Krishna picture for my wedding. This is a treasure for me, guys :)

Let Krishna shower his choicest blessings on us, and let us offer all the love that we have to him :)

What is cooking for me

I don't call myself a person who is very interested in cooking, rather a person who cooks out of necessity, because, necessity is the mother of invention ;)

I started cooking 6 years ago. I learnt a little bit of cooking from my dad when I started, and the rest from cook books, internet and of-course, from a lot of people like aunts, cousins, friends, etc. The most pitiful part is that I never learnt an inch of cooking from mom(who was a great cook), because I never thought I would ever have to cook in all my life. When mom used to say "A woman has to end up having to cook, at some point of time or the other", I strongly refuted saying, I would have a full-time paid cook at home when I get married. Those were the good times :)

Back then, somehow, I was into this routine menu. I restricted myself to cooking dishes that I was familiar with and hardly tried out anything new. It was mostly rice, dhal, vegetable, rasam or sambhar. This was also because we had the best restaurants in Chennai, that if I had a craving for a certain food, its easy to go out and eat, rather than cook at home :)

I still remember the first time I made roti. I asked my aunt over phone and started making the dough. As I started mixing the flour and water, at one point I thought there was more water and added little flour, now I thought there was not enough water, and this happened for a while, until I felt the dough was too sticky and I couldn't handle it. Totally annoyed, I called my aunt in hope of asking her a remedy. She had a hearty laugh, after which she came home from work, made the dough and made the rotis for me as well. What a shame! I didn't even know how to make dosa, leave alone making the batter. This was until 3 years back. But I should admit I did start improving. Last month I made 40 rotis with ease, when I invited people for dinner :)

The past year was glorious for me in terms of cooking. I was bored of cooking the same kind of stuff and coincidently the person who was dependent on my cooking preferred variety. I love eating outside often, but having dined at almost all the places that I liked to, some sort of a boredom crept up, with the same same menu that I found in the restaurants. And my favorite dishes here(in the US), lacked the authentic taste. These are some of the factors that forced me to try new stuff, not because someone was waiting on me, but because, I have a huge craving for good food :)

I used to cook for my dad who had restrictions in oil consumption, and ended up cooking with bare minimum oil. Till date I am in the same habit. Of-course this sure does no compromise in the taste. I have had people call me names because of this.

I am at the top in the list of the "laziest people on the face of this Earth" and my cooking sure reflects this. I won't feel like cooking until I'm hungry and once I'm hungry, I have to finish cooking before my hunger can reach the peak :)

So, for all the lazy bums out there, here I go.... planning to document anything interesting that I cook/have cooked, with all the funny tales associated with the process and of-course the tips that I get/got from a lot people.

Hope I enjoy doing this and you enjoy reading too.

Happy cooking.... no.... errrrr..... Happy eating :))))))))))

A proud Indian

Dear Mother India,

Help us realize how proud we should be, for having born on your soil. Despite having so many children, you have made sure that you have been gracious enough to all of us. You have given us rich values and traditions besides satisfying our basic needs. You have made us feel unique in the midst of the rest of the world, in terms of the diversity of cultures prevailing in the different parts of the country. You have given us the unlimited freedom to do whatever we desire to, which no one else gives. Above all, the warmth, care, love and brotherhood that we get from you, can't be had from anyone else.

Despite taking so much from you, I have a feeling that we are not giving back enough. We live our life like a race and are always concerned only about our wellness. We don't even have the time to offer a word of prayer for you everyday. Yet, you have not stopped giving unto us. Who can ever be so benign?

In the name of religion we fight and hurt others' feelings, failing to understand that all of us are your children and that no religion demands that you hurt others' feelings. Child abuse, slavery, rape, corruption are on the increase, as little do we think that we are hurting our siblings. We have read how much of a toil it was years back to gain the freedom that we have now, but we are using it in the wrong way. Are we shackling ourselves again?

Mother, open our eyes. Help us be considerate and respect others. Let us shower all the love that we have on our fellow human beings, so that we are an example for the future generation.

سارے جہاں سے اچھا ہندوستان ہمارا
ہم بلبلیں ہے اس کی یہ گلستاں ہمارا
(Better than the entire world, is our Hindustan;
we are its nightingales of mirth, and it is our garden abode)

பாருக்குள்ளே நல்ல நாடு
எங்கள் பாரத நாடு - பாரதியார்

-A proud Indian

Staying calm

I was talking to my cousin a couple of days ago and she was telling me about a close friend, Amy(name changed), who was in stage 4 of cancer. Amy has 2 kids, and my cousin says that for all the mischief and misbehavior of the kids, Amy stays as calm as ever. She was amazed as to how any mom would not get annoyed or angry, for which Amy says that cancer cells multiply faster when angry or stressed, so she'd rather stay calm.

This conversation struck me big time. I started searching the internet about the ill-effects of anger and stress and no wonder every search result came up with a unanimous answer - it does take a toll on your body. It can be anything from head-ache, migraines, rapid breathing or chest pain to stroke, heart attack or cancer.

I am no exception. I tend to get triggered easily and have been trying to work on it. Sometimes I deal with it consciously and a lot of times I don't. Talking about dealing with it consciously, I know what/who the cause for my anger is and I talk/shout about it to someone else who can patiently listen. Having vented it out, I become normal. But the best thing that worked for me(though I most often forget about it) is not to be reactive at all. When I know the cause for my anger, if I analyse the whole situation all by myself, thinking in terms of others as well, I do come to a rational understanding. But this involves immense practice. This method is really helpful when the person who you are angry at is right in front of you. The former method of talking it out, most of the times doesn't work, because I'm not sensible when I'm angry and this might end me up in talking something that the other person wouldn't like to hear. Once I calm down and think about what happened, if I realize that I was wrong, I am going to feel really bad for it. So, not immediately reacting is good for us and those around us as well.

The worst thing is when I don't know why I am angry or stressed, and any amount of thinking about it will go in vain. This is when I get easily irritated and show it out on others for no fault of theirs. And once calm, I go behind the people-affected-by-me, apologizing.

I had been to the temple last week when there was a special pooja. After everything was over, I was doing some washing(there were a lot of vessels to be washed and it was already late at night), when the priest's wife told me that she'd take care of it later. I told her that I'd be glad to finish it now, so that she doesn't have that pressure the next morning. She smiled and calmly said that God will somehow make it happen for her and she doesn't worry about it. And I for sure knew she meant what she said. I felt ashamed. Loads of vessels were piled up for washing and they were required the next morning. There were lots of instances when my sink at home had a few dishes to be washed, and I brooded over it badly. Stress and pressure is what we define and how we look at things.

My heart-felt prayers go out to Amy and her family and to every individual in every corner of the world to have an anger-free life.

Let peace be on Earth!!!