Rajmah Chawal, Spiced Cucumber Sticks with Chaat Masala and Avocado Lassi

As you know, I also write and develop recipes over at The Kitchn. I thought I'd share what I've been up to in the last few months. These spiced cucumber sticks are an all time favourite street food in India. They are easy to put together, and are a healthy snack, with their hints of salty, tangy, spicy chaat masala. Make your own chaat masala or use store bought. Either way, you'll love them. 

 

Recipe: Spiced Cucumber Sticks with Chaat Masala

Recipe: Chaat Masala 

Avocado lassi - another all time favourite in our house. I grew up with avocado trees in my front garden, and I still blanch every time I pay a buck a fruit. Read all about my tropical childhood and check out this recipe that my mom used to make for us after school. 

 

Recipe: Avocado Lassi

My first recipe for The Kitchn was this classic Rajmah Chawal, or Red Kidney Bean Curry with Saffron Rice. This rustic dish is found everywhere in India, and its a filling, hearty dish, that is beloved everywhere. Its a staple in our household, as its easy to put together and also goes well with cous cous, bulgur wheat or plain rice.

 

Recipe: Rajmah Chawal  

 

Enjoy!

Read More

Indian Festival Specials - Thandai (Spiced Chilled Milk) for Holi

It's Holi. Holi-day. Yay!

A celebration of springtime, this year it feels very apt, as after a cold, harsh February, the weather seems to have finally turned a corner here. The sun is warm on my face, the skies are a brilliant blue, the birds are singing and starting to fill the nesting boxes, it stays light later and later in the day and my life just feels brighter and happier. Kay planted his seeds for the garden last weekend, and I started getting excited about all the fresh harvests and bounty coming my way soon.

Holi is characterised by colour. People throw coloured powders up in the air, douse each other with coloured water and celebrate the arrival of flowers and fruit. Holi is also the festival of love and this bittersweet emotion is embodied in Hindu mythology. Legend has it that Lord Shiva, in his anger at being shot by Kaamadeva's arrow (the Indian God of love, similar to Cupid) reduced him to ashes. The arrow worked, however, and Shiva married Parvati. Rati, the wife of Kaamadeva, begged Shiva to revive her husband, and Shiva, understanding true love, granted her wish (and everyone lives happily ever after...)

Read More

Indian Street Food (and Drinks) - Saffron, Cardamom and Rosewater Lassi

There are a few things I miss about India. Having been back for close to four weeks now, Adz and I are slowly adjusting back to normal life... well, if normal life means dealing with early morning school runs, -42 C, layers and layers of clothes and frozen nose hair (yes, really!) February and March aren't usually this bad in Edmonton, but this year seems unusually harsh. Or maybe its just that we haven't managed to get used to the cold after the balmy tropical breezes of India.

So yes, missing the warmth is probably top of the list. And this...

Read More

Indian Classics - Kesar Badam Milk (Indian Almond Milk With Saffron)

Growing up in Catholic Mangalore, the one festival that we didn't really celebrate was the intensely riotous festival of colours, Holi. In India, Holi signifies the arrival of spring and is celebrated by throwing powdered colours at people, as well as buckets full of coloured water.

But that changed when I headed to university in Delhi, and for two crazy years, I celebrated Holi with a passion that belied all my Holi-less days growing up. Our university turned into a rainbow as everyone was doused in every shade of colour known to humankind.

Holi is also about bhang... click on that word at your own peril :) Bhang is an intoxicating drink made with the leaves and buds of the female marijuana plant, and for one day is pretty much legal all over India. At university, we used to be served 'bhang thandai' (a chilled milk based bhang drink) in our residence mess halls. Obviously, you could choose if you wanted to drink it or not, but to be honest, what self respecting university student, away from home, wouldn't indulge? So we started off with bhang first thing in the morning, steadily getting more and more intoxicated as the day wore on and we all were wearing a plethora of colour. We danced out in the streets with wild abandon, and even the most uptight of people let go of their inhibitions, as everyone embraced the beginning of spring and the bounty it brings. Technically we still had classes, but seeing as most of the lecturers were down with the students, I can only assume not much teaching or learning happened. 

And once the day was done, we all scraped ourselves off the ground, and oozed our way back to our rooms, where we spent hours trying to wash all the colours out of our hair and skin, usually to the chorus of 'why are you hogging the bathroom, get out and let others shower too' 'knock, knock, are you ever getting out of there?' 'other people need to shower too'... (these are Indian student halls, about four bathrooms shared between twenty odd girls led to a fair bit of possessiveness and yelling and screaming and threatening and accompanying hilarity :))

Sadly, as I am not so much in with the East Indian population here in Edmonton, I didn't manage to find an, ahem! bhang party to attend this year... to be honest, I would imagine most people celebrated quietly indoors anyway, owing to the freezing temperatures :) So this year, my Holi has been spent vicariously enjoying all the pictures that my friends in India, and some abroad, have been posting on their Facebook timelines! And missing the bhang warmth and colours of India.

Read More

Indian Street Food (and Drinks) - Sugarcane Juice

I'll start off on a weird note. Have you heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? Despite its complicated sounding name, its a simple thing, really. It a phenomenon when you hear, see, or find something unusual, and then suddenly you hear it repeated within a very short period of time. For example, I was reading this book, and one of the key aspects of it was a tuna melt (yeah, I know, I know!! Humour me, OK). The next day I went with Kay to the Blue Plate Diner here in Edmonton, and, lo! a tuna melt was staring at me from the menu. 

At this point, you're probably wondering where on earth this waffle of mine is going, right? Well, its going somewhere... I promise. And it all started with a piece of sugarcane grass. Kathryn and I were shopping at Fruiticana, a local Indian grocery store for our Cook Indian Vegetarian class, and what should be staring at me, but piles of sugarcanes, all beautiful in their green and gold finery! I almost did a little dance right there with excitement (Kathryn and Aditi must have thought I was completely nuts!) as I convinced Kathryn that we should buy one straightaway. The plan was to use them in our South East Asian class, but that never really came about, and the sugarcane was duly stolen appropriated by the chief leftover scrounger, aka, me.

So I get home with this cane, and my Kay just looks at me and goes, is that sugarcane?? Really? And I go, well, yeah. What's wrong? And he tells me that on the very same day, one of the students in his office, a lovely young Zimbabwean chap called Chaka was bemoaning the fact that he couldn't find sugarcane anywhere in Edmonton... talk about Baader-Meinhof phenomenon overload or what!! So Kay happily took a piece of the sugarcane to Chaka, who was impressed and pleased and excited too, and my good deed for the day was done :) And to make things even weirder, just the day before, Michael, another one of Kay's students had just told him about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. As Jughead would say, 'weird, weird'.

Read More