Celebrating Passion for Food
This week we decided to head back to North Indian cuisine and explore something from kitchen of Uttar Pradesh. The motivation behind this exploration is my MIL. She has come to stay with us this month. So we decided to leverage this opportunity and prepare some authentic recipes from Rasois (kitchen) of UP and since Paranthas and pooris are my favorite part, I thought it would be more apt for us to try some stuffed paranthas.
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This was on my cards; the recipe had waited long enough, as an entry in my recipe diary and it was about time I made this dessert.If you are wondering, how it tastes like, I would use a term to describe it, that I heard in the movie “Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory”, “its scrumdiddlyumptious”. I can’t get over the taste of this ice-cream. One of my dear friends “Chaya Ratnaparkhi” had shared this recipe with me some time ago. I had discussed this recipe with Pranay and how we should be preparing this ice-cream sooner than later. Finally, last Sunday we decided to make it.
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Patiala, a fourth largest city in Southeastern part of Punjab is popular in India for several noteworthy items. Its traditional turban, Patiala salwar (a female trouser), jutti (footwear) and the world famous Patiala peg (said to be roughly around 120ml). Patiala is also renowned for its rich gastronomic traditions. Food preparations like tandoori roti, maa ki daal, matar paneer, paranthas, aloo ki tikki, malai kulfi , makki ki roti and sarso da saag are part of the rich culinary list that Patiala can proudly boast about.
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Being an Indian my obvious choice of entertainment like millions of other Indians have been cricket and Bollywood. Let me talk about Bollywood here. While growing up national broadcaster Doordarshan was the only source of entertainment, and weekly they used to telecast some Bollywood movie that I would eagerly wait for. Sometimes they would telecast some serious meaningful cinema by directors like Guru Dutt, Shyam Benegal and I was ill-equipped back then to understand their movies and would go to sleep half way through.
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I love to sleep. In fact my husband is jealous of my sleep, more so when he is prone to even slightest of disturbances like neighbor’s barking dog. I agree barking dog could give many of you sleepless nights especially when other stray dogs decide to join the party and all these canines end up howling and whining entire night for no reason. I do not get disturbed by these unearthly howls and still manage to get sound sleep.
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Indian Cuisine is often described to be as vast as the European cuisine. Indian food has changed and enhanced over the period of centuries. It retains the food traditions of earliest Indians and has gracefully accepted the food habits and food items that were brought in the country by various means. Foreign invasions, trade relations and colonialism influenced our cuisine and played an important role in introducing various food products to the country. One such preparation that has evolved over the period of centuries ever since it was Indianised in the kitchen of Akbar is Korma.
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I was gifted with Rare Gems: A Non-Vegetarian Gourmet Collection from Maharashtra-By Aditya Mehendale on March 8th the international women’s day, a cookbook that I wanted on my shelves ever since it released and I saw it in Crossword. Pranay must have noticed me gawking at the appetizing images that this book had and must have decided to present me with a copy of this book.
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Growing up, we all have our personal likes and dislikes regarding food that influence our eating habits. I had developed aversion for lactose in my childhood and I shied away from milk, curd, paneer (cottage cheese), cream and other dairy products. Initially, mom used to cajole me into eating these dairy products, but later she gave up and I ended up not eating these for my entire childhood.
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India has been predominantly a vegetarian country. As per UN FAO statistics India has lowest rate of meat consumption in world. I have often come across people who are very surprised and wonder how vegetarians fulfill protein requirement of their body. There are actually quite a lot of options for vegetarians (lacto-vegetarians have much more considering dairy products are also a rich source of protein). Beans, lentils, leafy greens, tofu are some examples of protein sources in vegetarian world.
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It is end of April, and summer in India has just begun to get hotter. April and May are hottest months in India. This year in Pune mercury has already soared past 40°C and if one has to go by historical records, month of May is not going to bring any respite, on the contrary it is going to get more unpleasant.
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