Fish Cutlets

I have family scattered all over the world. During those years when I lived in Tenerife and in Surinam, I was totally cut off from my family. The only communication I had with my cousins was through snail mail. Whenever we met, we met like strangers tying up the lost years, by the time the familiarity set in; it was time to go back. 

Social network has made it possible for us to stay connected. Now we live like one-large-closely-knit-family, all the conversation tapped under our thumb. We have a group on 'Watsapp messenger' where it is possible to stay connected with each other at all hours of the day. Everybody communicates at their own convenience, at their own timings, sharing their joys and pains, offering advice and solutions, there are long discussions, or harsh arguments, but the presence of their closeness is felt even in their silence.

There are jokes and forwards, audio and video clips.

If I complain that I have kidney stones, cousin advises. “It’s very easy” she types “take a bunch of parsley and coriander leaves, clean, chop, boil, cool, filter and store in the fridge. Drink one glass daily and you will be free from all the accumulated poison”

Well, if I listened to all the advices on health and wealth, that are forwarded to me, I would live to be 100 years, but I am lazy.

I belong to food loving family, so most of our conversation revolves around food. We can peep into cousin’s kitchen, thousands of miles away.

Me at Mumbai, comfortable under cool breeze of a ceiling fan. My cousins in Manila, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Indonesia have a pleasant weather, it is raining in Lagos, weather is good in Spain, it is freezing in New York, Texas, Albany. 

Everybody in their own comfort zone.

My cousin will not venture out in the freezing cold unless she has to. It’s snowing in Chicago. She spends her time doing what she likes the most…yes cooking. She shares her kitchen tips with us as she cooks.

She is cooking Tuna cutlets.

We all are curious to know her recipe for fish cutlets. Everybody knows to make it but everybody has their own method and we are always willing to learn to make a bit different from the normal ones that we are used to.

She starts to post pictures as she starts cooking.

Dry the tuna on medium flame

Add ginger and cumin powder, salt and pepper

Add onions, green chilies, coriander leaves and spring onions

Add egg and mashed potatoes

The cutlets look good

We all are drooling. We decide to make it at our respective kitchen in our respective town sharing with our families.

Cousin in Indonesia prepares the same day and thanks my cousin in Chicago for the lovely recipe.

I ask my cook to prepare. Its awsum! I share my picture while I munch. "Where is the Chutney?" asks my cousin.

well, who care? It tastes good just the way it is...there are enough chilies in it.

My cook has learnt a new dish, imported all the way from Chicago.

Carrots- The Orange Friend

During my growing up days, whenever I visited my friend, her family would offer me a carrot juice. I was not too fond of this juice but they would inform me that it was good for my eyes.

But is there a truth in it? Or is it just a myth. Most of my friends need reading glasses, irrespective of gallons of carrot juice they might have had.

There is nothing magical about carrots alone. It’s the vitamin A within the carrot that is so important for maintenance of eye health. If the person is deprived of vitamin A for too long, the outer segment of the eye’s photoreceptors begin to deteriote and normal chemical process involved in  vision can no longer occur.

But wait, that does not mean that you will take an over dose of the carrots. No, don’t do that. Eating too many carrots can cause the skin to appear yellow-orange due to  a built-up of blood coroten levels.

Many centuries ago, there were purple carrots that grew wild in the bushes with mutated versions occasionally popping up including the yellow and white carrots. They were thin, spindly and didn’t taste great. They were mostly used for medicinal purpose.  Purple and white carrots still grow wild in Aghanistan where they are used to produce a strong alcoholic beverage.

The orange carrots which we are familiar with, wasn’t cultivated until Dutch growers in the late 16^th century took mutant strains of the purple carrot, including yellow and white carrots and gradually developed them into sweet, plump, orange variety that we have today.

Having just one recipe for every vegetable becomes very boring. It is interesting to combine with different vegetables to recreate a complete new dish and one such combination that I like having is carrots with lotus stem.

 

 Carrot and lotus stem

Ingredients

1 teaspoon crushed garlic

100 grams lotus stem, sliced diagonally

100 grams carrots, finely chopped

2 tomatoes, chopped

1teaspoon ginger, grated

1 Green chilies, finely chopped

1teaspoon turmeric powder

2teaspoon coriander powder

1 cup fenugreek leaves, chopped

½ cup coriander leaves, finely chopped 

Salt to taste

1 tablespoon Oil

Method

1. In a pan, heat oil and add crushed garlic.
2. Add chopped lotus stem, chopped carrots, tomatoes, ginger, green chilies, turmeric powder, coriander powder, salt, fenugreek leaves and coriander leaves.

3. Cover and cook till vegetables are tender. Do not add water.
4. Serve with freshly roasted chappatis

Saturday Challenge with Marathon Bloggers

Just for fun post.

A paragraph is given by participants of Marathon Bloggers  and here I am imagining the impossible, please bear with me cause I am in dreamy mood.... a fiction indeed...or pure imagination...

I ran. Fast. Out of breath. Lungs bursting. Legs hitting the earth. I thudded up the path, around the corner, right up the stairs and reached the door. I flung it open, rush to my room and grabbed the TV remote.

I was just in time for my favorite TV program ‘Junior Master Chef- Grand Finale’

The children were to make Indian Kababs and I was interested to see if they made it well.

Smart kids, just 10-yrs-olds, were making most difficult and exotic dishes so efficiently. But I was sure that Kababs would be difficult for them to make.

Why is Kababs so difficult to make? You may ask.

Well, making kababs is an art. The consistency has to be proper, masalas have to be just right and molding into a proper shape is an art, it depends on the dexterity of the finger. These kids have tiny palms, not enough space to roll the dough.

Their tiny hands minced the mixture of meat and soaked channa dhal in the food processor, added garam masalas, lime, salt and chilies, then started to roll the kababs in proper shape.

“Take enough quantity kid, you have taken too small a portion” said I, hoping they could hear me.

They took just a small handful and made into marble size balls.

“That’s not Kababs, silly” I screamed

The kids continued to shape into small marble size, unaware of my frustrations.

In a non-stick pan, they fried those tiny ten kababs, flattening it a bit with the ladle.

“Okay, since you have made such tiny blotches of meat, I wonder how you plan to plate it?” I grumbled

But kids are smart.

They arranged ten kababs in a fan shaped design, surrounded it with thinly sliced tomato alternating with onion rings and slit green chilies, they placed a small bowl containing green chutney at other end of the plate making a nice geometrical design.

Hmmns..I am impressed.

Though both the contestants had followed the same recipe, the winner would be the one who made the tastiest kababs.

I wished I were the judge.

Hospital Food Needs Improvement

Menu of the day: 4 bread slices, mixed vegetables, lentils, ridge gourd curry.

There are many food related programs on TV nowadays and of course we all love the reality food show called ‘MasterChef.’ of Australia and India. Maybe they could have one episode where the contestants are asked to cook nutritious food for hospitals.

We have many talented cooks in our country but still the food served in hospitals is not up to its mark. The vegetables look limp, the dhals un-appetizing and the rotis  dried and hard. They tell me that the hospital food has to be nutritious but shouldn’t it be tasty too? One glance at the food and my hunger disappears I would rather starve than eat such food which is cooked so carelessly. A good nutritious hospital food could have salad of boiled vegetables, cheese, curd, fresh juice, brown bread, etc.

I am not sure if any hospital employs chefs. There are dieticians who do their rounds asking patients for their feedback but I am not sure that any changes are made to improve the taste.

The hospital where I am spending few days does not allow home cooked food. My family sometimes smuggles home-cooked food for me. I eat that food like a thief, hiding the egg sandwich after every bite. But those are rare times, most of the time I just choke on tasteless food

Hospitals should have chefs who care about the patient’s needs. Fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables can be purchased directly from farmers. There should be more local, organic and sustainable food.

The patients in the hospital are in pain and grumpy, a tasty food would surely pep them up. Isn’t it?