Mahanandi

Until after I moved out of my parents home to Hyderabad, I didn’t know about any other varieties of brinjals except these greenish white beauties. They are called Poluru Vankaayalu in Telugu. Vankaaya means Brinjal and Poluru is the name of the village, (near my home town Nandyala) in Andhra where they are grown exclusively. So the name Poluru Vankaayalu. Thanks to Thai and Vietnamese, I am able to purchase them here also in US.

When cut open, brinjal filled with black seeds means it’s very ripe and not good for cooking, tastes bitter. The ones filled with white seeds, only they are used for curries and kurmas. They have mildly sweet and buttery taste when cooked and the greenish white skin outside tastes so delicious. Because they mature very rapidly, I always buy a lot. I have to throw away at least half of them because of black seeds. Curry cooked with the remaining white ones, is a rare treat that makes me remember my hometown tastes.

Recipes with Green Eggplant:
Stuffed Green Brinjal Curry
Brinjal-Potato Curry

Weekend herb blogging – It’ s Sage at Kalyn’s Kitchen

Freshly harvested raw peanuts, boiled in salted water – we grew up eating them and we both love them. They are one of the popular street foods in India. But they are hard to find here in US, particularly in the northeastern states. Imagine my surprise when I saw them at Subji Mandi, NJ during our recent trip.

We bought 5 pounds, we couldn’t wait, ate half of them raw on our return trip. We cooked the remaining half in salted water. They are wonderfully tasty and we couldn’t get enough of them. We should have bought lot more. Perhaps next time, whenever that’s going to be.

For more weekend herb/food ingredient blogging, checkout Kalyn’s Kitchen.

Watermelon Seeds

These beautiful watermelon seeds are rich in taste and don’t have any characterizing smell like sunflower and pumpkin seeds. They were our timepass snack when we were growing up. And in South India, they are added to betel nut(areca) mix (supari) as part of paan masala.

These days I am adding these seeds, spoonful of them to curries/kurmas. They bring subtle flavor and sweet nuttiness to whatever dish I add, love the taste of them.

Checkout for more weekend veggie/food ingredient blogging at kalyn’s Kitchen.

These nuts are called “Saara Pappu” in Telugu. They taste just like almonds and we usually add them in kheers, payasams and kulfis. I am curious to know their English Name, any help from fellow food bloggers and readers of this blog is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

My Sunday Flea Market Find – Made in India, bronze kadai for 25 cents. Isn’t it precious?

Sam of Beck & Posh came up with “Utensibility” meme, a chance to talk about our kitchen gadgets. Who can resist this meme, certainly not me. It’s a chance to show off my precious few, ‘I could live without them but I don’t want to’ type of kitchen gadgets.

My most expensive purchase is a Wet Grinder for about $100 from a friend. The actual price is about $250. She gave this item to me just before she moved back to India. I wanted a wet grinder for so long and when she offered, I couldn’t resist (Thanks Jyothi).

I regularly prepare dosa, idly, vada and also different kinds of chutneys using this wet grinder. It has two parts – a steel drum and two roller stones connected with each other through a plastic rod in-between. Not only perfect in shape and size but also using and cleaning is hassle free.

Advantage of this wet grinder over regular mixie/blender is that stone grinding do not generate heat/overheat the contents like the mixie/blender blade does, and so in a way this preserves the micronutrients of the contents. This is really true, you can taste the difference and the stone grind batter and chutneys are always taste so much better. My mother’s generation prepared different types of batters and chutneys using a big mortar and pestle and their hands. My generation, with this kind of appliances can get the same taste but without the hard work.

Cheap but most valuable one is the mortar and pestle I purchased at Ikea 3 years ago for about 3 dollars, I think. I can flavor my tea with cardamom or prepare fresh ginger-garlic paste in a jiff and also it’s so pretty to look at too.

My favorite bargain basement item is a Sawa 2000 cookie gun/press, I purchased in Houston at a garage sale for one dollar. It’s a brand new item and has all discs, tips etc., and inside the box, the owners even kept the original receipt from William-Sonoma for 19 dollars. Perhaps a wedding gift, I don’t know but I too keep the receipt inside the box and whenever I use this item I always look at the receipt and feel very happy about how good a deal I got.

I never used cookie gun for its intended purpose but I use it to prepare murukulu or chakri, my favorite snack food, same kind of operation only the dough I use is not cookie dough but different. Various discs and tips that came along with cookie gun are very useful to make murukulu in shapes. I didn’t bring muruku maker from India with me, so I decided to use cookie gun for muruku making and it worked.

That’s all for now, I hope you enjoyed reading about my favorites.

I make yogurt at home regularly. I am not sure if I will be saving any money by making yogurt at home instead of buying in stores. But I like the taste of the homemade better than the store bought.

Perugu (Telugu), Dahi (Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, and Urdu), Doi (Bengali), Dohi (Oriya), Mosaru (Kannada), or Thayir (Tamil) is the yogurt of the India, known for its characteristic sweet-tart taste and semi solid consistency. It’s also commonly called as “Curd”. Perugu or Dahi is part of the everyday meal for us, and also I prepare raita with it.

Perugu is really quite easy to make at home. First, bring the milk to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer it for few minutes till a layer of cream forms on top of the milk. Turn off the heat and let the milk cool down to lukewarm level. Now add one tablespoon of live active culture of yogurt to this milk. Stir it once and cover the vessel with a lid. Keep the container in an oven or in a microwave (they act like incubators) undisturbed for about 8 to 12 hours. After this period, milk in liquid state will become semisolid – like yogurt. This is how you will know that the process of making yogurt is complete.

How much milk you need depends on how much yogurt you want to make. Small or large quantity, all it takes is adding one tablespoon of live active culture of yogurt. It’s that simple.

I read somewhere a list of 100 food related things one must do before they die, I don’t know about skinning and preparing the chicken but how about a taste of real yogurt.

Adding a tablespoon of live active yogurt culture to lukewarm milk,
Homemade yogurt (Dahi, Perugu)

Where can one get active live culture of yogurt in US? This is the question I often get asked. Here is the list of sources that I can think of. Hope this helps.

• Try your Indian neighbors and colleagues. A lot of Indians prepare yogurt at home even in this day and age, particularly first generation Indians like us. But there are always exceptions to the rules so do not assume anything and be polite when you are inquiring.

• Try asking waiters at Indian restaurants. Yogurt is used to prepare raita, chutneys etc. Many Indian restaurants prepare yogurt freshly in their kitchen everyday.

• Try kitchens at Indian temples: Indian temples in US serve prasadam or food daily to the visitors. Yogurt rice is often part of the prasadam.

• Health food stores, Natural health stores etc.

My Mother in law sent me this powder. I tried to make the powder here, but the garlic available in US markets is too moist and mild, lack the sharp burning taste of Indian variety.

Few garlic cloves, lots of dried red chillies and salt pounded in a stone mortar into fine powder, adding just one teaspoon gives a kick to bland vegetable curries. Rice, dal and ghee mixed together with this powder, that’s home and comfort food to me.

To prepare authentic Indian meals, you have to make the ghee first. North, south, east and west, people all over in India know ghee is the best, and they love it. All auspicious occasions in life starts with ghee in India. Be it an offering to God, or the babies first solid food – people lavish their love with ghee.

Ghee is as easy to make as it sounds. This is how I usually make ghee here: I would buy one pound (four sticks) of unsalted butter. If you are lucky enough to find bovine-hormone free, organic butter, the ghee prepared from it would be better tasting and more like what we can get in India. Ghee from the four sticks lasts for about three to six months for us.

Take a heavy bottomed vessel. Place the butter sticks in it, and on medium heat melt them. When the butter starts to melt, there will be lot of bubbling and gurgling. Don’t panic. Reduce the flame to low; in a few minutes this action will subside. Next the butter will begin to develop foam at the top.

Simmer on low heat, uncovered and undisturbed, for 30 to 45 minutes, until milk-solids on the bottom of the vessel turn from white to beige-brown, and butter on top becomes transparent like clear water. This is the signal to turn off the heat. Please take caution not to burn the bottom part. That would lead to scalded milk smell, and it would stick. All the effort would be a waste and you have to throw everything away. So never use high-heat to make ghee.

What happening was milk-solids separating into 3 layers. Foaming milk-solids on top, clarified butter in the middle, protein milk-solids on the bottom.

After turning off the heat, do not cover with lid. Let the ghee stand for ten minutes. Remove any crust that rises to the surface with a spoon. Strain, discarding the milk solids at the bottom of the vessel, using a coffee filter or muslin cloth (gangi gudda). Or simply ladle off the clean water like ghee into a dry jar. Let it reach to room temperature. Then cover with a lid. Store at room temperature.

When first made or heated, ghee will look clear, like golden oil. At room temperature it will be in kova or fudge like consistency. It would turn to solid block when exposed to extreme cold temperature. To use, take necessary amount with a dry spoon and add to the food. Moisture spoils the ghee, so never use a wet spoon when handling ghee.

What I do with ghee:

1. Drizzle one teaspoon of ghee on hot cooked rice. Anything with rice tastes so much better with ghee, particularly the dal, sambhar and rasam.
2. To prepare different types of pulaos/fried rice.
3. Saute spices for masala (garam masala, various types of masala and curry powders).
4. For popu or tadka (frying the cumin, mustard seeds and curry leaves in ghee).
5. To prepare sweets like payasams, bhakshalu (puran poli), burfis, kheers, halwas and laddus.
6. On toasted bread and on a boiled potato.
7. Garlic roasted in ghee, spread on the bread is garlic-bread at its best.

Anything with ghee is ghee-licious. It’s simply impossible to go wrong with ghee. For any culinary enthusiast, the authentic Indian food experience has to start with this ancient Indian staple. Try and Enjoy!

Note:
Ghee is often equaled to clarified butter. But it’s a simple-minded simplification. The ghee making process is lengthy and the end result is more refined when compared to clarified butter. Now you know the difference, don’t you go on regurgitating same falsehoods about ghee equals to clarified butter. No, it’s not. And, for God’s sake have the decency to call it by its given name – Ghee. You can say gee, right? Add an ‘h’, and say out loud “ghee” as in geese. There you go. Thank you for indulging me about ghee.

Delicious Mango, Sprinkled with Salt and Chilli Powder

Namaste. Welcome to my website ~ Mahanandi. A showcase of my latest interest, that is recording the age-old recipes my family prepares at home in India.

Indian cuisine is one of the mother cuisines of the world and Indian cuisine is sustenance cooking at its best. In our day-to-day cooking, the local, humble ingredients are elevated through healthy, sophisticated cooking techniques to scrumptious dishes. The precious culinary traditions have been preserved and passed from generation to generation through word of mouth and daily hands-on-ingredients experience, without the need of fancy cooking schools, culinary degrees, cookbooks and recipe cards for so long. But the times are changing…

I am attempting this from my home in Ohio, US. I have come across a number of recipe sites, but I could not find any with pictures of ingredients or everyday meals. My hope is that Mahanandi with food photos will entertain and delight those who already knew the ingredients and recipes, also offers some level of interest and assistance to novice who loves and wants to try Indian cuisine.