Terra Madre Day.. Celebrating Mother Earth

I'd been racking my brains as to what to create for Terra Madre day (India) hosted by Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal, but sometimes the answer is staring at you in the face! The best dishes in life are those created with the simplest of ingredients, locally sourced and seasoned with an abundance of love and care.

The first dish that comes to mind was a Maa ladoo a delicious confection made with roasted chick pea flour sugar, ghee and cardamom. This is still my all time favorite sweet snack that instantly reminds me of my mother.

The second was a recipe taught to me by my aunt Lakshmi Ramanathan while on holiday in Bangalore, India. The perfect dish for supper, simple eggplant bharta with fresh roti. 'Chithi' as I call her has been the mother figure in my life from the moment I lost my own mother in 2007.

The dominant flavor is brought about, not by any spice or spice blend, but simply the robust smokiness of the char grilled eggplant and heat from ginger & green chilli. What makes the dish all the more delightful was the light hearted 'chick' conversations we had about Bollywood and the like that went on while she simultaneously grilled the veggies, sauteed them, rolled the roti, & before you know it, Dinner was ready!

Lakshmi Ramanathan's Baingan Bharta

You need:

2 'smallish' medium sized Italian eggplants
1 cup chopped tomatoes
1 cup finely diced red onion
1-2 green chiles, diced fine
1-2 tablespoon finely chopped fresh ginger root
Salt to taste
1/2 tsp Turmeric
1/2 cup freshly chopped cilantro + more for garnishing
Juice of 1/2 a lime
2 tablespoon ghee or cooking oil

Slit the eggplants through the center as shown. Place on a gas stove burner set on high and grill until the skin chars and the entire vegetable is soft & cooked through.

Allow to cool and peel off the charred skin.

Using your fingers, smash the flesh into a pulp.

Heat the ghee in a skillet and add the onions along with the green chiles and the ginger. Saute till the onions are soft & have turned translucent

Add the tomatoesto the onion & saute till the tomatoes have turned a bit soft.

Add the eggplant pulp along with salt, turmeric and chopped cilantro and simmer over a low flame until all the flavors have combined.

Transfer to a serving dish, drizzle with lime and garnish with cilantro.

Serve hot with fresh warm rotis.

Bon Appetit! and wishing everyone a very happy Terra Madre Day

Sputtering back....

I seriously feel like this scene from the movie 3 idiots .. remember this one? The way I kept racking up drafts and eventually stopped doing that as well. Lulled into complacence by the quick high from Instagram posts. Recipe measurements hastily scribbled into a Moleskine notebook faithfully depending upon my moods. The truth is that I keep over thinking the backstories needed to make the post more interesting while in reality the truth is that ideas and inspirations just occur spontaneously (like little itches , sneezes or twitches) whenever the opportunity happens to strike. Some really cool ideas that scare the beejeezus out of me and yet prove to be utterly delightful and simple in the end. Others, that seem so trivial that I feel it wouldn't be worth crowing about -- even if there are enough other recipes in that genre that get so much publicity simply because the author happens to have the right marketing knack. So in the past 4 years that I've been

Product Review: Ninja Mega Kitchen system and a recipe for Masala Dosa

One of the biggest reasons for attending conferences is the priceless experience of meeting fellow bloggers and get an invaluable exposure to all things culinary. This includes vendors with new products to savor and get inspiration from. I had no complaints about whatever appliances I had for making traditional Dosa (Traditional South Indian rice & lentil crepes) batter, a sturdy tabletop stone grinder that you could add the Urad dal, turn the timer on , and 30 minutes later, come back to a container full of fluffy, batter with the consistency of whipped egg whites. The The cons of this is the cleaning up, of the various parts, the roller, the grinding bin, the multiple trays on which the rollers need to be placed while transferring the rice & lentil batter, the invariable drips of thick batter on the counter.... you get the point, It takes quite a bit of time. I was pleasantly surprised when the appliance company, Ninja asked me if I'd like to try any of their

Unusual Ingredients - Unripe Blueberry Achar

T'was just another Summer afternoon, The kids were home for the summer holidays, getting bored, there's only so much summer reading you can force them to do, and the Indian mommy in me could no longer caution them against going out in the afternoon (I've solemnly refused to use that horrid excuse of 'You'll get a dark tan if you stay out in the mid day sun'), and so we decided to head out to Terhune orchards for the blueberry picking. The kids never say no to outings to the orchard, they LOVE the trip there, the cute yellow dogs and the cats, the chocolate crinkle and Snickerdoodle cookies, and they positively trip over grabbing buckets and heading joyfully towards the berry bushes... ... And there it ends, the younger one loses herself in her delightful imaginary worlds where she probably thinks she's hacking her way through virgin Amazon jungle, sighing at every branch that brushes against her legs, picks 2 or 3 berries as if they were a new as

Panfusine

Search This Blog