Rural Food 3 – Mumtaz

Mumtaz or Asha didi, as she’s called by everyone, comes from Belgaum in Karnataka from a family of sari weavers. Her father couldn’t find work in the village and moved to Bombay to work in a cotton mill in Prabhadevi. Asha didi grew up both in Bombay and then for awhile in the village. She fell in love with a Tamilian Muslim electrician, Mohammad, at the age of 15 and got married and has 4 daughters. Asha didi cleans our apartment and her youngest daughter helps with the cooking.

Her mother died when she was very young and she was brought up by her aunt who is a really good cook. These 2 recipes using green tomatoes were taught by her.

Green Tomatoes

Green Tomato Chutney with Sesame Seeds and Peanuts

Ingredients

250 grammes green tomatoes

2 dry red chiliies

2 tablespoons sesame seeds

1/2 a cup peanuts

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

10 curry leaves

1 tablespoon oil

salt

Method

Heat the oil in wok and stir fry the whole tomatoes till they’re a little brown Remove. Roughly chop the tomatoes

Add the red chillies, sesame seeds and peanuts to the oil and stir till they start going a bit brown. Turn off the heat.

Cool and then put in a blender with the tomatoes. Add salt

Put a tablespoon of oil in the wok and fry mustard seeds and curry leaves Add tomatoes paste to wok and cook for about 3-5 minutes till the extra liquid dries up

Eat with rice, dal and maybe some fried fish. Happiness….

And then delicious prawns with coastal flavours …

Prawns cooked with Green Tomatoes

Ingredients

250 grammes green tomatoes

1/2 a kilogramme peeled and washed, small to medium sized prawns

oil

salt

fresh coriander to sprinkle

Method

Grind together –

4 dry red chillies

1 teaspoon turmeric

½ an onion

1 teaspoon cumin

4 cloves of garlic

1 tablespoon coriander seeds or 1 tablespoon coriander powder

small handful of tamarind or 1 tablespoon tamarind paste

1 cup grated coconut

Method

Chop the tomatoes into small quarters. Heat oil and cook the tomatoes till they’re reddish brown. Remove from the wok.

Add the ground spices to the oil with salt and cook for about 10 minutes till the oil separates. Add the tomatoes and cook for about 2-3 minutes on a medium flame.

Add the prawns and cook for 2-3 till the prawns are cooked.

Serve sprinkled with fresh coriander leaves and eat with rice, roti, neer dosa or appam.

Rural Food 2 – Varuna

Varuna Thapa is a Ghurkha who comes from a village up in the Himalayas near Kerseong in West Bengal. She left home when she was very young and has worked as a domestic help, a cook and now as my daughter’s s nanny. She’s a great cook. She worked with Punjabis before us and makes good Punjabi food (great parathas – essential skill in a semi Punjabi home). She lives with us and besides looking after my daughter helps out around the house.

She goes home once a year for a month usually in October or November depending on when Dussehra and Diwali are. She takes a train and it takes her 2 days and a night. And then its another 2 1/2 hours to her place by local buses. I have no idea how she does it. It’s a gruelling trip. But she does have the mountains at the end of it. That would be compensation for me. This time she bought a camera and took lots of pictures of her family and home and especially lots that she knew I’d love – pictures of the mountains, foodie pictures and life during the 3 festivals she went home for – Dussehra, Diwali and Bhai Tikka.

Varuna in her parent’s living room. Dussehra tikka on her forehead

Dussehra is their main festival. They say a prayer to the goddess Durga and then the head of the house smears a paste called Nau Durga Bhavani ka Tikka on to everyones forehead. To make the tikka they soak rice in water, strain it, add a reddish pink colour and mix it with yoghurt.

Varuna’s grandmother with family. The table set up for the Diwali Puja

Her grandmother lives in Sikkim and she went there for Diwali and Bhai Tikka. Diwali morning they worship their cow and say prayers to the goddess Lakshmi in the evening. They visit friends and families and sing songs. This is called Bhailo. Traditionally a roti called Sel Roti is eaten and fed to anyone coming over. To make the Sel Roti they soak the rice overnight. The next day it is strained and then ground in a pestle and mortar called an Okhli. They mix the rice with flour, sugar, cardamom, fennel and water and then fry this batter in hot oil.

Sel Roti made specially for Diwali

Bhai Tikka (Bhai Duj in North India, Bhau Bheej in Maharashtra and Bhai Phota in Bengal) is a festival where sisters pray for their brother’s safety and well being. And the brothers in return give presents to their sisters.

Varuna and her brothers after the Bhai Tikka ceremony

She took lots of pictures for me of mooli (or daikon) being harvested. They call it moola and it is a glorious purple colour. They’re packed into gunny bags or lovely conical baskets and sold. Great pictures. These moolas are used in chutneys, they make pickles out of it, eat it as a sabzi (vegetable) with rice and also add it to meat curries. I had to drag this recipe out of her – she said they get so sick of looking at mooli during the harvest that then no one wants to eat it.

Mooli being washed and then packed to be sold in the market

Varuna’s Gurkha Mooli/Moola Chutney

Ingredients

1 mooli

2 tablespoons sesame seeds

3 dry red chillies (more or less depending on how hot you want it)

salt

Method

Cut the mooli into thin rounds and then slice then into thin strips (you could actually just grate it on the thicker side of your grater but this is how Varuna does it). Sprinkle salt and leave for about 15 minutes.

Dry roast the sesame seeds and the dry red chillies till the sesame starts changing colour and the red chillie darken. Let it cool and then grind in a spice grinder.

Squeeze out the water from the mooli and mix in the spice mixture.

That’s it. Simple. And tasty.