Table of Contents Title Page The Ad Waiting for Ganesh Vishnu of Suburbia Krishna and Curry Leaves MISHTI’S MATTAR PANEER MISHTI’S SAAM SAVERA MISHTI’S KADHI WITH DUMPLINGS MISHTI’S POTATO AND TOMATO CURRY Bollywood and Bitter Melon MEENA’S CHAI MEENA’S MALAI KOFTAS MEENA’S RAJMA MISHTI’S JEERA RICE Sour Tamarind and Sweet Talk SARA’S KHEER SARA’S BOTTLE GOURD KOFTAS (GHIA KOFTA) SARA’S ALOO MATTAR WITH OKRA SARA’S SOOJI HALWAH SARA’S PALAK PANEER Days of Shrines and Dosas SUCHITA’S TOMATO DAL SUCHITA’S DOSAS SUCHITA’S COCONUT CHUTNEY SUCHITA’S PEANUT CHUTNEY Whine Chicken Spice, Spice Baby JASMIN’S BUTTER PANEER (SHAHI PANEER) JASMIN’S MATTAR PULAO Saris and Saffron UJALA’S CHOLE BHATURE UJALA’S GOBI FRY (SPICED CAULIFLOWER) UJALA’S PAU BHAJI UJALA’S BESAN HALWA UJALA’S JALFREZI PANEER Diary of a Masala Junky Bhindi and Brown Eyes MIMI’S ALOO GOBI METHI (POTATO AND CAULIFLOWER CURRY, WITH FENUGREEK) MIMI’S NAVARATNA KURMA, OR NINE JEWELS (NINE TYPES OF VEGETABLES COOKED IN A ... MIMI’S CABBAGE AND COCONUT RICE MIMI’S BHINDI MASALA Spices, with Benefits MISHTI’S PAKORAS UJALA’S PANEER MASALA The Keralan Sea and Fresh Coconuts BANANA CURRY BEENA’S COCONUT DAL (PARIPPU) CHITRANNAM (LEMON RICE) Viennese Days, Gujarati Nights JAYABEN’S WALNUT-DATE HALVAH WITH RICOTTA JAYABEN’S TURMERIC PICKLE SPROUTED MUNG BEAN FRY (MATKI CHI USAL) MILLET ROTIS SPICED LASSI Chaat Rooms and Comfort Zones SERENA’S KHICHDI SERENA AND ROHIT’S BHEL PURI ROHIT’S CORIANDER-MINT CHUTNEY ROHIT’S TAMARIND CHUTNEY QUICK PALAK PANEER Radha and Tamarind Tales RADHA’S SAMBAR RADHA’S EGGPLANT IN PEANUT-COCONUT CURRY Peace and Pakoras UJALA’S BHATURE UJALA’S POORI Getting Started: The Basics of Indian Cooking GARAM MASALA CHOLE MASALA CHAAT MASALA HOMEMADE GHEE MASTER RECIPE FOR PANEER TAMARIND PULP Acknowledgements About the Author Copyright Page O elephant-faced God, Ganesha, you are served by the attendants of Shiva and you eat forest apples and blackberries. You are Uma’s son, the destroyer of sorrows. I bow to the lotus feet of the remover of obstacles. The Ad Please Teach Me Indian Vegetarian Cooking! (Northern Va) I will bring ingredients and pay you $10/hr for your trouble. I would like to know about your culture as well. IN A SIMPLE desire to learn Indian cooking hands-on, I placed this ad on Craigslist not knowing how much it would change my life. I wanted to cook real Indian food. I didn’t want the sterile environment of a restaurant or the studied air of a professional teacher. I craved the person-to-person teaching of yesteryear amidst the homey-ness of a real kitchen. I wanted to learn the art of curries and chutneys through the senses, not just through the measuring and timing of a cold cookbook. You see, I’m not really American, at least in terms of my palate. I seem to be hard-wired with South Asian taste buds, a person that craves the burn of chilies and mustard seed, the warm heat of ginger, cumin, and cinnamon, and the bitterness of asafetida and black salt. I don’t know why. I have been like this as long as I can remember. I go to barbecues, picnics, and dinner parties inwardly yawning. I crave the waft of a fresh masala, the stain of turmeric far beyond the yellow hue it offers French’s mustard. So what did I—spice craver, born in the land of bland food—do before this, during the first part of my life in the casserole-laden, fonduefixing ’60s? What any reasonable person does: I bought cookbooks and studied them. I ground stale supermarket cumin seeds and cinnamon sticks, sizzled spice after spice, a lone voyager for flavor. I wrestled with samosa dough, and ended up eating a lot of watery, soulless curries and stone-hard samosas. Sigh. Went to restaurants and visited the steam buffets consisting of endless anonymous brown mixtures. I was somewhat satisfied (it was better than a burger) and yet, I felt there was something missing. My palate seemed to insist it was so. So many things in my life seem to follow this pattern—the search for love and my vocation, as well. A person exists in a semi-pleased daze of unrecognition, colorless, for the blind do not know colors. Then, there comes the fateful day when you are awakened and color bursts in. Fast forward to now: I am a single woman in my forties who uses Craigslist for most everything—buying an entertainment center or sofa, meeting up with fellow salsa dancers, advertising writing classes. One desperate Friday evening I bought cheap eyelash extensions from a young Korean beauty student, and a rather bad haircut as well. Once, I traded a homemade apple pie with an electrician for installing dimmers in my house. His wife, who was eight months pregnant, was too tired to bake. They came as a couple to my house, where I greeted them with the wafting smells of sweet apples and cinnamon. The wife, young and Filipino, sat and chatted with me, while her husband, an American in a large Redskins jersey, pulled out his tools. But one day, while eating another tepid version of Aloo Gobi, I finally had a brainstorm and placed the ad. TO MY COMPLETE shock, my email account was instantly flooded with responses from every age and from every region. Wading through them—they ranged from perfect English to unintelligible, from polite to sharp—I managed to set up a few appointments. They would supply the ingredients and I would just show up. I was so excited, and still am, every time I stand on the front stoop, listening to the soft rustling of a stranger unlocking the door. It is somehow both a great mystery and a profound gift, to be able to enter someone’s house for food. One surprising thing I found, entering these houses, leaving my shoes at the door, roasting spices with strangers, laughing, tasting, and sharing their lives, was that much more than cooking occurred. A certain antique rite, a female coming-of-age, so to speak, was being reenacted. I was learning to cook in the most ancient of ways—woman to woman, with all the senses and a great deal of warmth. I was welcomed like a family member, and taught in the same patient and loving ways their own mothers had guided them through the years. This book is about the masala of my own life—my journey resembled the separate spices of who I am transforming into an intricate blend. I will take the reader through the doorways of these women, where we lovingly cooked together and bonded in our cultures. The recipes are not your typical Indian curry take-out. These are treasured family recipes from vegetarian homes in India—from Shahi Paneer, a dish of homemade cheese cubes in a rich tomato and cashew curry, to coconut-stuffed okra, to luscious potato-curry dumplings. These recipes will be a welcome addition to any Indian aficionado’s repertoire, as well as a temptation for the average cook seeking to expand his or her roster of healthy vegetarian foods. They are the well-known comfort foods of any vegetarian home in India. Ask an Indian about Pau Bhaji, found on Mumbai’s Chowpatty beach, or the rich, dark chickpea stew with fried bhaure bread called Chole Bhature, famous in the Punjab, and you’ll see a visceral look of desperate home-sickness and drool. These foods are the staples of longing and memory. They are dishes you will make again and again. Almost imperceptibly, the culture of this rich and varied country slithered into my life like a sinuous cobra, combining the modern ways of the United States with the Technicolor of India, while I ate some damn good food. I wanted to understand the Indian culture and people; and what seemed so enchanting was that I was constantly being surprised and challenged by how complex—and contradictory—it can be. While at one time thousands of years old, in another time it seems jauntily modern, yet where this occurs bewilders me. I have learned to keep an open mind. Now, after this year of cooking real Indian food, I realize that the only real way to learn to cook is through the senses and heart. It turns out that it is the only real way to live and to love, as well. LET ME TELL you about myself first. I am a completely untraditional, divorced single mother with two kids; a writer of novels, living hand-to-mouth, essentially, and yet striving to live a life of meaning and substance. I am also a great cook, or so “they” say. Actually, before I became a writer, I eked out a living as a caterer and still occasionally will do so, between books. After a long day of writing, nothing is more therapeutic for me than cooking. On a weekend, I am one of those urban trekkers who loves scouting around and digging through tiny foreign grocers for odd herbs, incense, unusual vegetables. In some sense, it satisfies my wanderlust in a cheap way —a quick afternoon journey to Thailand or Guatemala through the stalls of a shop. And on another level, this habit —albeit temporarily—seems to quell my voracious appetite for sensual adventure, so glaringly absent in these beige plastic clusters of suburbia where I live. I am a new growing species in these states—a Disenchanted, Educated, Single, Boomer, Yearning.