Crisp

Things have a way of working out. When I was about seven, the 'thing' that needed working out was a way to scavenge together five rupees; that was the price of the fat, square little books at the jack-of-all shop behind my school. These were abridged versions of English classics - The Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations - and they were usually the most pressing thing on my mind. This was before the Days of Pocket Money, and times were hard for seven-year-olds. Every time I finished reading one of these books, it would feel like my last. There was not a five-rupee in sight, and no possibility of a windfall. I would give up all hope, and wait for my little classics collection to asphyxiate and die. But, just as the last book prepared to take its last breath, something unexpected would happen. Either one of my Pishis (aunts) would come by for a visit, and before leaving in the evening, would tuck a five-rupee note into the palm of my hand. Or the raddiwala would come knocking, and ask to buy my old school books; for a fiver no less. And Ting! just like that, I'd have enough for the Edgar Allan Poe I'd wanted.

After my last post, after all your lovely, thoughtful messages, and after Chotto-Ma had resigned herself to nannies and childminders, something unexpected happened. Ma and Baba decided to travel to us; they arrive next month, and are going to spend the summer here till Chotto-Ma starts full-time school. Which means I now have a very happy little girl who gets to have a summer squished between grandparents, instead of at a childminder's.

Things have a way of working out; as proved to me, years ago, by the curious ways of crispy five-rupee notes.

A few other crispy things also work out just right:

Crisp white wine on a springtime Sunday. And a rare photo of us (what with either him or me always behind the camera).

Crisp new linen on the bed. Ma gave me these lovely bedcovers and cushions when we went to Kolkata this year. I'm loving the Indian prints; feels like home.

Crisp white paper for Chotto-ma's drawings. For those of you who haven't seen it on my Facebook page, here's a slice of Ramayan - Sita picking flowers, Ram hunting, peacock pecking, sun shining.

Crisp May mornings.

Crisp white light.

And crisp, fried okra from Bulbulma's kitchen. Okra is one of D's favourite vegetables, and he's grown up with this version. I had it for the first time in his house after we started dating, and now he cooks it for me whenever we get fresh okra at the market.



D's Crispy Okra

Ingredients

500g okra
4 tbs wholewheat brown flour (atta)
Sunflower oil
Salt
1/2 tsp red chilli powder

Cut the okra into small circular pieces.
In a bowl, mix the flour with 1 tbs of oil, salt and chilli powder. Mix in with your fingers.
Add the chopped okra and mix well.
Then add a little water at a time till is forms a sticky mix. It should be quite tight and stick to your fingers.
Heat oil in a pan for deep frying. Drop in globs of the mixture, bit at a time, into the hot oil and fry till crispy. It should only take a few minutes.
Drain on kitchen paper, and serve.

Kissed her silly and gobbled her up

Chotto-Ma loves going to nursery. She misses it during long holidays; she skips all the way to the school gate, ponytail bobbing, lips smiling. But last week  it suddenly changed. She didn't want to go. She said she'd miss me, hugged my hand to her chest. And a river ran down her cheek.

Taken by surprise, we ran her through a gamut of questions: Did something happen in school? Was she sad, worried, scared about something? Had anyone been unkind?

Well, a boy had held her by the throat and pushed her a few days ago, she said, but that wasn't why she was sad. Was she sure that wasn't why, we asked. "Yes", she said, "I just make sure I don't play near that him any more." I made a mental note to talk to her teacher about the boy, and moved on to other questions.

D and I asked her every question we could think of, but nothing. She wouldn't say why she didn't want to go to school, but she didn't want to. All the while, she tried to blink back tears. We backed off a little; and told her to take her time, tell us what was bothering her when she felt ready.

A couple of hours later, as I sat there with dark thoughts flitting through my head - I have a viciously fertile imagination that travels like a drunkard's sports-car - she came and sat down on my lap. "Maybe we can hug for A Very Long Time when I come back from school every day?", she asked.

And suddenly, I knew. "Are you worried about me going back to work?" I asked. Many months ago, I'd talked to her about me returning to work after she turned four, I'd explained that she would have to stay at a childminder's till we picked her up after work; I'd told her it would start this year, sometime in the summer. She knows it's nearly summer now.

As soon as I asked the question, she buried her face into my hair. A long silence followed. "Maybe", she mumbled after several minutes. So, there it was. A child, sad because her mother's going back to work - nothing to write home about. But, it was what she said after the mumbled 'Maybe' that made me write this here. Here's our conversation as it happened in Bengali. I'll translate in a bit.

Me: Ma-r job niye tomar ki mone hoy?
She: Aami bhabi Ma office jaabe, tokhon aami ekta onno lady-r baarite thakbo. Ba-o thakbe na.
Me: Tokhon tomar sad laage? 
She nods, then after a silence, says: Aami jaani aami jeta bhaabchi, sheta jodi na bhaabi, tahole aamar school-e jete easy hobe. Kintu (and she touches her head), jokhon amar mathar bhetore eta khali bhaabi aar bhaabi, tokhon bhaaba ta stop kora easy hoy na.
Me: (hugging her, my heart in my dry mouth): Tumi eta niye kokhon bhaabo, shona?
She: Aami night-e bed-e boshe boshe bhaabi. Aar morning hole school-e jete chai na, Ma-r shaathe thakte chai.

Translated, that would be:

Me: What do you think of when you think of Ma working?
She: I think...Ma's going to start work soon, and I'll stay in another lady's house. Ba won't be with me either.
Me: That makes you sad?
She nods, then after a silence, says: I know that if I don't think like this, it'll be easier to go to school. But (and she touches her head), when my head thinks these thoughts, it keeps thinking it and thinking it, and I can't stop it easily.
Me: (hugging her, my heart in my dry mouth): When do you think of these things, shona?
She: I sit in bed and think at night. Then in the morning, I don't feel like going to school, I feel like staying home with Ma.

Of course, I talked to her about it some more, hugged her for A Very Long Time, and she felt better when she went to school the next day. It'll pass, I know. But I still wanted to put her words down here, for nothing else but for me to remember.

{You're just four, Chotto-Ma. Yet you sit at night and try to work through your worries without worrying us. You know your thoughts with utter clarity, yet say them aloud after much consideration. You're just four, yet you try without being told to try. It makes me want to hug you in, in, in, and keep you safe. But, like you say, my tummy's too small for you now.}

And so we did what we do best. We kissed her silly and gobbled her up and made her giggle till she could hardly breathe.

We also did a few other things:

D gave Chotto-Ma her first Aikido lesson - he's been waiting to do this since she was a blip. (Throat-grabbing boy, beware.)

I sewed her a dress! It's the first dress I've ever sewn, and though the finish was far from perfect, it made her a very happy bunny.

We read her this book of poetry by Freda Bedi, which we'd bought in Kolkata this year. Its words and drawings are wonderfully evocative - worth a hunt around bookstores.

And we made Shondesh. It's a sweet that Chotto-Ma loves. It reminds her of Kolkata, and of people she misses very much. 



Notun Gurer Kanchagolla
(A subtle, Bengali sweet made with date jaggery. Jaggery can come in different forms - as a hard cake, or in a more syrupy consistency. The latter is called Jhola Gur, and that is what I used. It's available in most Indian/Bangladeshi stores.)

Ingredients

1 ltr milk
Juice of 1 large lemon
4-6 tbs jaggery
1-2  tbs sugar

You'll notice that the the measure for jaggery and sugar isn't specific. That's because the sweetness should be adjusted to your taste. You can skip the sugar completely and make the shondesh with just jaggery.

First, to make the Chhana or cottage cheese: Pour milk in a pan and bring to the boil. Keep the lemon juice handy. As soon as the milk begins to rise, lower heat, and pour in half of the lemon juice. Stir. The milk will begin to curdle instantly. Keep adding a bit of lemon juice, till all the milk has curdled into cheese. You should be left with the white cheese floating in a pale green water, called whey. Sieve the whey away, till you're just left with the cottage cheese.

Leave the cheese in the sieve for 10 minutes to dry it completely. Then knead the cooled down Chhana (cottage cheese) with your hands for a few minutes.

In a non-stick pan, put the the Chhana, add half of the jaggery and put it on a gentle heat. Keep stirring in a gentle round motion. Taste for sweetness, and add more jaggery till you're satisfied.

In a few minutes, the Chhana will start to tighten up. When it's still soft enough to stir easily, take it off the heat. Don't worry if it looks too soft, it'll dry as it cools.

When warm, but not hot, divide them into portions, and with the palm of your hands, shape them into balls. Top each one with a raisin, or a cashew nut, or sprinkle of chopped pistachio.

I can never tell

I'm in the kitchen by myself, but there's more than one cook here. I can never tell which one's going to have her way.

I walked in to cook a mustardy-coconuty-chicken; I found the mustard oil, made a mustard paste, grated the coconut; I took the bird out of the fridge. Suddenly, there was a bottle of sriracha hollering from the corner, and suddenly the other cook was elbowing her way in. So, now instead of a mustardy-coconuty-chicken cooking on the fire, there's a soy-shriracha chicken grilling in the oven.

Does that happen to you? Tell me I'm not the only one with Multiple Cook Personality Disorder. 

I made a hummus yesterday, from scratch, and not with tinned chickpeas either. But was hummus in the plans? No. The chickpeas, soaked through the day, were supposed to become a Chana Masala. But they didn't. One of the bossy cooks in my head took out the tahini.

The hummus was good. I used this recipe from the Guardian by Felicity Cloake. Her recipe comes with an interesting hummus-debate.

While the chickpeas were soaking, I also made this. Every piece that I make now seems to be soaked syrupy with springtime and posies and happy little birdies; I think the weather's finally starting to take the hint. (You can find the art in my Etsy Shop)

After the hummus had happened, we ate it with hunks of crusty bread. But some of it also sneaked into something that it wasn't supposed to sneak into. There was a stew cooking on the hob, and the bowl of hummus sitting on the kitchen counter. One thing led to another, and the stew turned a corner.


A hummus-y carrot & new potato stew

(You don't need this recipe really. You can make any old stew, throwing in your choice of bits and bobs - vegetables, chicken and what-you-will - and just follow the last leg of the recipe where I stir in the hummus.)

Ingredients

4 carrots, diced thick
5-6 new potatoes, halved or quartered
1 small white onion, sliced
8-10 slices of chorizo (skip this if you want, the vegetarian version is great too)
2 cloves garlic, minced
Olive oil
2 cups chicken stock (water or vegetable stock for the vegetarian version)
1 bayleaf
A few whole, black peppercorns
2 pinches of cumin powder
2 generous tbs hummus, freshly made or store-bought
One quarter of a lemon
A sprinkle of paprika
Salt

Into the heated olive goes the bayleaf and peppercorns, then the onion, potatoes, carrots and salt. Stir, lower the heat right down and cover. Cook till the carrots and potatoes are cooked halfway.
Pour in the chicken stock/water, add the chorizo and the cumin. Season if needed. Simmer till potatoes are cooked and carrots soft.
Take the pot off the heat. Now, stir in the hummus, the minced garlic and a squeeze of lemon.
Transfer to a serving dish and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with paprika. Serve with couscous or a rustic bread.

Drift off into the late

It's been an oddball week.

Large snowflakes drifted past our window; the joke's on you, Spring. Chotto-Ma's skin was burning hot, her fever left us all yesterday. The snow too melted yesterday.  I have a good feeling about the long weekend, unless I'm run over by an Easter Bunny.

Amidst insolent snow, and strips of wet cloth to calm a fever, a few good things slipped in still:

I read some William Trevor. His stories are so warm and wise, they never fail me. They walk and waltz from irreverence to scathing humour to quiet despair, but lightly like snow. That's what his stories are like - frozen, splintered flakes falling on your eyes and nose, each one a different pattern, each one melting at a touch.

The book has his portrait on the cover; his face is kind, and crumpled like an unmade bed. It made me want to  take out my pencils and sketch; I haven't sketched in years, but I thought I'd try.

Chotto-Ma saw me drawing, and got herself a sheet of paper. Her William Trevor took all of  six seconds, and one, cursory glance at the book cover.


This week, D took out his guitar, and played after a long time. One of my strongest and first memories of our time together, is of D playing the guitar, and me sitting on his old, single bed hugging my knees and swaying to the music. That was seventeen years ago, but it feels just the same. Last night, he sat on the bed and played, and he played me to sleep. There isn't a better way to drift off into the late.

Apart from that, we ate well to make up for dying daffodils and a lack of Spring. I cooked Biryani, which is a slow-cooked pot of lamb (or chicken), potatoes and long-grained rice. It smells of saffron, rose water and spices dealt with a gentle hand. There are many versions of this dish, and in different parts of India, Biryani takes on a different avatar, much like its gods. But in Calcutta, the version that's worshipped comes from the Nawabs of Lucknow. It's a subtler Biryani with pale strands of rice flecked with the gold from the saffron, and not a fried onion in sight.

I made Malpoa too. Bengali Malpoa, with a touch of aniseed. Some we ate crisp and hot, the rest we dipped in a light sugar syrup and left to soak. It's my favourite sweet in the whole world.

I'll write recipes another day. It's time to pick up a little girl from Nursery. Sweet 'spring', happy Holi, and a lovely Easter weekend to you all.

My purple-time person

Old ladies have a thing for purple. I don't know whether it's just old English ladies; I think it might be. I noticed it when we first moved here. There'd be soft white hair tucked into a purple hat, the hat matched with a purple skirt. There'd be a purple raincoat with a purple-handled walking stick. A purple bag, purple socks. And not the quiet kind of purple, either. It always made me smile.

A few days ago, I read this poem, and it made me smile too. I read the first line, and I thought - I was right! It's a fact, like belly-buttons are a fact: when you become old, and English, you wear purple. After an entire lifetime of benign greys and polite browns, something rips out of them in purple song. Look, I'm here, and don't you dare think I'm done, they say. It's the way the sky turns purple just before the day ends. Twilights.

This poem is for D, I called him at work to read it out to him. But then, he's my purple-time person. My purple-time, every-time, my in-between-time person.

There's a recipe too at the end. Only because I happened to cook this good, spicy aubergine, and aubergine's purple too. It matches the poem, and it matches the lovely old ladies who make me smile.

The poem first:

Warning

by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple. 

And now the food:

Spicy sesame aubergine with red peppers


Ingredients

6-8 small aubergines, cut into longish pieced
1 large red pepper, sliced
1 white onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, sliced
3 green chillies
2 tsp tahini paste
2 tsp sesame
2-3 tsp sunflower or vegetable oil

Olive oil for drizzling

Heat the sunflower oil, saute the onion and garlic till lightly browned.
Add the aubergines, peppers, tahini, chillies and salt. Lower the heat, cover and cook till soft.
Increase heat and stir to dry up any extra water.
Transfer to serving dish, sprinkle with sesame seeds. Drizzle with olive oil.
Serve hot with pita or steamed rice.