Showing posts with label Mangalore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mangalore. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 April 2020
One of the few regrets in my life is that I never had the opportunity to cook with my grandparents. My paternal grandfather passed away before I was born. My paternal grandmother was in the USA for a lot of my life, and though she is still alive today, she is not good shape right now, being all of a 105 years. Both my maternal grandparents were alive for a long time, but it was mostly in my teens and early twenties, when I was naive enough to believe that they would live forever. Or at least I would get to see them often enough, that I could get recipes and instructions from them, and cook with them. But this was the arrogance of youth, to think that they would wait forever for me.
My grandfather died when I was in the UK, in the first three months. My grandmother survived a lot longer, and I was lucky enough to talk to her and get some of her recipes over the phone and through my mother and aunts. She got too old and too sick very soon after though, and I never really got to cook with her. When I went searching for her 'samadde', her hand carved wooden spice box, it had already been given away. I was still lucky enough to have a little of her jewellery, but let's face it, no one really wears that much jewellery here in Canada. They're still my heirlooms though, so I keep them, in the hope of passing them on my daughter sometime.
I am luckier than most though, because after all said and done, I do have some recipes and a lot of memories of my folks' cooking, and those are memories I treasure. Whether it is making boti, or climbing mango trees, or spending summers at my grandparents' house, they are there, and they will be there with me.
The reason I went down memory lane with my grandparents though, is that my recipe today is inspired by another grandmother, my friend Rohan's Nana Betty. This is her, in the below photograph.
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| Nana Betty, photo courtesy Rohan Gonsalves |
Rohan, an old school and college friend of mine, is a lucky man. He has been quarantining with his grandmother in
Mangalore, and one of the things he started doing was posting photo
recipes of his grandmother cooking. You can imagine that went down rather well with the grandparent-parched generation all over the world. Not just mine, but strangely, also the generation before and after mine. The request for recipes became so numerous, that Rohan had to actually create a Facebook page for Nana's Recipes (you have to be a Facebook member to access, sorry), where he posts picture journeys of the recipe with his grandmother, and collection of aunts and uncles.
I call Rohan a lucky man, because, had I had the opportunity, this is exactly what I should have done with my own grandparents. Granted, recording recipes is very different today, with our camera phones, and social media, as opposed to frantically writing everything down as fast as the spices would go in. But even then, what he has with his nana, is a dream a lot of us have had, I would imagine. To cook with our parents, or aunties, and relatives, it is a dream that is not always possible in today's world where a lot of us are away from our families and building our own families. It is a familiar pain, but then Nana Betty (or rather, Rohan) would post a new recipe, and for a while Nana Betty stands in for our own grandparents and everything is okay for a while. And in today's world, we need it.
This recipe is a result of inspiration from Nana's Clam Sukka, or spicy clams with coconut. I wasn't able to go out for clams, but I did have a bag of raw prawns that were perfect for this version of prawn sukka. These prawns can be served as a side dish with rice and vegetables, or as a finger food with toothpicks stuck in them. Either way, they are delicious, just as I imagine Nana's clams were.
250g shelled prawns
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon neutral oil (I use grapeseed)
1 small onion, finely diced
1 inch piece of ginger, grated
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tomato, diced
1 teaspoon (or to taste) bafat spice mix
Salt to taste
1/4 cup unsweetened dessicated coconut
For the seasoning:
1 tablespoon neutral oil
1 sprig (5 - 6) curry leaves
1 clove of garlic, bruised, but left whole
Method:
Place the shelled prawns in a bowl, and sprinkle over the turmeric. Keep aside.
In a shallow pan, over a medium heat, heat the oil and add the onions. When the onions are golden around the edges, about 5 minutes, add the ginger and garlic. Saute for a minute, then add the tomatoes and the bafat spice mix.
Cook this mixture for about 5 - 7 minutes, until the raw smell of spices disappears. Add the prawns to the pan, and cook together for about 5 minutes, until the prawns have cooked through.
Season with salt to taste, then stir in the dessicated coconut. Taste and adjust seasoning.
In a small pan, heat the tablespoon of oil, then add the curry leaves and garlic. Sizzle everything together for a minute, then pour the fragrant oil and seasonings into the cooked prawns, and stir in.
Saturday, 28 March 2015
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One of my friends recently posted a picture of her baby girl – who just turned six. I left an offhand comment on the post, saying that our children would be teenagers by the time we considered ourselves adults. Afterwards, I spent a long time thinking about that offhand comment. I've always considered my generation of Indians a rather unique generation – a lost one. My contemporaries were almost all born in the late seventies, and we are definitely not Millenials. We are also not flower children, or children of the war, or children of the freedom fighting generation. Nowhere else is it more obvious than when I go back to India and catch up with all my friends. In India, I revert back to being a teenager. When my friends and I all catch up – some of us after more than ten years – it is a warm, comforting familiarity, like we were never away, like we were still young and carefree, like we had families, but we were absolutely comfortable with leaving the kids with our parents when we are out
This lost-ness is obvious in our professions, in particular. When we were growing up, we had two options (which increased to four, by the time I'd graduated) – doctor or engineer (or IT/ software specialist and investment banker or both). Somewhere along the line, things changed in my generation. When I go back now, I catch up with architects, advertising gurus, writers, entrepreneurs, those dagnabbed investment bankers, speculators, small business owners, restaurateurs and artists. In my generation, a switch flipped, turning us from robots who did what we were told to do (and what everybody else did), into bright sparks who followed our own way. However, a lot of us are still conflicted and this is where the gap is most apparent.
I mean – take my own story. I moved from a science based background, to being a sociologist to a grad student, to an academic, to a food writer. My teachers thought I'd end up being a poet (okay, I do consider food to be poetry, so they may be right there?). When my sister and I were born, my mom and dad became parents. They behaved like parents, they provided like parents, they loved like parents. When I became a mother, I found the deepest love I could have for another human being. But somehow, I didn't lose myself the way my mom did in us. I still stayed the same, and in many ways, I saw that sameness in my friends, in that retaining of their individuality, of what makes them who they are.
However, when I go back home, despite the familiarity and comfort, and the rightness of hanging out with my friends – there is a gap somewhere. That gap comes in when I meet the next generation, the one born after the Millenials (Generation Y? Z?). That gap acutely brings back to me the discomfort of being old enough to be considered an 'aunty', but young enough to easily get all the cultural references of Generation Y/ Z, thanks to the overwhelming reach of the internet. That gap, which is so painfully familiar to me and my generation of in-betweeners. I am always wondering where I fit in and this lack of space is what I always struggle with when I go back to India.
Monday, 25 August 2014
What do you do when your best friend shows up with a giant bag of fresh, crisp green beans from her garden? Well, first off, you give her a giant hug, cause everyone loves those beans. You then hand over the bag of beans to your mom and bat your eyelashes at her and ask her to make you the most delicious, super simple, vegetable comfort food of your childhood. I am lucky to have my mom visiting, and am aiming to make the best of having here here with me, even if it's for a short time.
Us Mangaloreans are not known for our love of vegetables. Every meal, however, does include a vegetable or two, usually as the sidekick to a main of meat or fish. More often than not, vegetables are an afterthought, designed strictly as filler food. Even though half of India is vegetarian, simple steamed veggies - like you find here at almost every meal - are a rarity. Veggies are jazzed up with spices and sauces, and cooked to within an inch of their lives. The results are usually tasty, but, hey, where is the distinctive flavour of the greens?
Wednesday, 12 February 2014
If there is one thing any blogger dreads, it's those two words - writer's block. I don't know if its post-holiday blues, but I've struggled to even sit in front of the computer, let alone process any pictures, or read or write. Most of the time its easier to pull the covers over my head and stay in bed. The smartphone doesn't help... it just means access to emails and papers, and harder to write on it, so its an easy way out... albeit one that doesn't help in the long term, as it merely enables the wallowing. And I can keep pretending that I am working, with the odd status update on Facebook, or a Twitter message... or an Instagram post. I am fooling no one though, because I am not actually writing.
It shouldn't be so hard. I assumed that when I got back from India, I'd be brimming over with ideas and that words would flow out of me in this easy, effortless stream. I assumed I'd be refreshed and head back with a clear head, with my life in order, with enthusiasm for writing up and testing all the recipes I brought back with me.
Instead, each day has been a drag. Its a struggle to get out of bed in the mornings. Only the fact that my kid needs to be packed off to school gets me up. Jet lag didn't help. I didn't have any on the way in to India, so I naively thought that I'd be fine getting back - I wasn't. It took me a week to get over it, and all I want to do is sleep, sleep and sleep some more.
How do I get over it?
Frankly, I don't know. I just don't. When words are your living, losing them creates a massive hole in your world. How I am going to patch it, I honestly don't know. What I am going to selfishly ask, is for your support, as I fight my way out of this. It feels like a fight, and I don't want to give it up. I love doing what I do, and I love my readers, and it feels like I am letting you down by not posting every week. I am sorry, and I am going to ask you to bear with me while I get my head straight and my inspiration, passion and drive back. I am reading and rereading this Food Bloggers of Canada post, and I am hoping that following its advice will bring me back, refreshed and ready to rock again.
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