Karamcha (Natal Plum) Jam ....With Just Two Ingradients

Malleswaram, a suburb of north-west Bangalore whose history dates back to late nineteenth century, is one of the very few places that still retains some reminiscence of the old world charm of this garden city. One attraction of Malleswaram is the bustling Sunday bazar of fruits and vegetables where you may stumble upon some rare and seasonal veggies that never show up in the superstores of the IT Capital of India. Sanjit loves to fish around the swarm and most Sundays he comes back with something rare and exotic in his net. By the time he reaches home invariably the Kannada name has slipped out of his memory chip that he learnt from the seller when conversing with his terrific Kannada knowledge! Being clueless, I start asking our neighbor, neighbor's cook, neighbor's maid .... sometimes that solves the problem, sometimes I just get a little clue and take a final refuge to google uncle!

Two Stir-Fried Drumstick Flower Recipes

And ... SHE Just Turned One!

Well, it has been one year since I started blogging! The baby whom I brought to this web world with lots of passion and enthusiasm is now looking frail and hopeless! So any point in celebrating her first birthday.... except the fact that SHE is still alive! Hey! Don't be so pessimistic! May I confide in you something? Though it may be hardly visible from outside, actually SHE lived a rather eventful and fulfilling life last one year and most importantly Slept Happy Everyday! Sooo there is hope! All the new places SHE visited, the new skills SHE learned, the new foods SHE tried made her happy and SHE is so much willing to share it with you.... SHE just needs to be a bit more systematic and focused .... SHE is looking forward ..... keep tuned!

Coming to today's recipes. One year back I started my blog in a spur of the moment's decision when I returned home from a friend's house with a handful of drumstick flowers .... my childhood favorite! I cooked a simple dish, enjoyed it and wanted to share the joy! That was my first post! (you can read it here)
This year when Ananthu-ji came to meet us from Shivani's house she remembered how I enjoyed those flowers and sent another bunch of flowers with him! Thank you Shivani for the treat! I was so touched by her gesture! And decided that drumstick flower is going to the first birthday post of SHE! Something humble but close to my heart!
Surprisingly this weekend when Sanjit went to the local Sunday bazaar, he saw one old lady selling some flowers on road side and immediately picked a bunch .... first-time in our nearly eight years stay in Bangalore.
So I got total one cup of flowers and decided to try something new .... and zeroed in on two different types of stir-fry recipes. You see... scarcity makes things so precious!

Drumstick Flowers and Egg Stir-Fry Recipe

This is mostly a normal egg bhurji recipe with added drumstick flowers! As I never ate these flowers with anything non-veg earlier I decided to give it a try! The drumstick flowers gave the dish an added layer of flavor and extra crunch!

Assam dairy: Aloo dal and Aloo Jhura (Simple and Rustic Potato Recipes)

On our visit to Assam we were staying in our relatives' house in Cachar. It is a village house and on the eve of our visit the whole family gathered there. And we, all the ladies of the house, were spending most of the daytime in the big kitchen that can easily accommodate a small dwelling of our modern city apartments! There were women of all ages .... talking, laughing, gossiping and working hand in hand. Before we realize the array of foods are ready to be served! It was all so fun!

One day I noticed a big cane basket in one corner of the kitchen full of tiny potatoes. ... after the harvesting session these mini potatoes are available in the market for a couple of weeks only! And they have a few recipes in store to make with these babies ...Aloo Dal is one of them. Another one was Aloo Jhura. Though the recipes are very simple but they vouch over the fact that these will never taste the same if you try to make them any other time of the year!
I just noted down the recipes as I saw didimoni was cooking them. But no measurement here ..... I didn't dare to ask such silly things to those kitchen queens! So here is how she cooked them .....

Aloo Dal Recipe (A Potato Curry Recipe That Resembles Lentil Soup)

Nope ... This is not a dal with potato cubes in it rather a very simple potato curry with no lentils at all. I heard about and ate it for the first time there in Assam and got bowled over by the simple rustic taste when served over steaming hot rice with some crunchy fritter on side .... the meal was so delicious!

• First wash and boil the potatoes in plenty of water.
• Now the most tedious part ..... peel and roughly break those tiny potatoes. It was a huge pile .... would easily take half a day for a single person .... but we were in a group ... talking, laughing and enjoying every bit of it in that brightly sun lit kitchen!

• Also cut some eggplants in small pieces and smear with little salt and turmeric powder.
• Now heat some mustard oil in a kadai. First fry the eggplants and keep aside.

• Add more oil if required. Add seasoning of dry red chilies and panchphoron (whole five spices) with little extra jeera as didimoni suggested. Then add the potatoes and fry for some time till it gets a light golden brown coating on it.

Assam Diary | Tit-Begun (Bitter Brinjal) and A Simple Stir-Fry Recipe

It's the haat-bar in the quaint little village Thaligram. We're enjoying our vacation in this village of Cachar (Assam) under the warmth and hospitality of our hosts. This is the first time I meet them (some distant relatives through my MIL), but as we stepped into their house I felt at home immediately. Will talk about these wonderful people later .... I would love to share my memories of this enriching vacation with you.

On the haat-bar local farmers come with their freshly picked produces to the small farmers' market and a good part of them are the tribal Khasi girls who come from the nearby Khasiapunji (land of the Khasi tribe) ...they are simple looking people with a cheerfuller face and sweet smile.

A Khasi woman on her way back from market

As we were strolling through the market we found that the most common produces they came with were paan, supari, wild turmeric and all sorts of banana products that either they grow in their villages or collect from nearby forests. There were some new stuffs as well ..... we found quite a few varieties of beans that I have never seen earlier. While looking at these new veggies we spotted a handful of  tiny tomato like things with one girl. On our query she smiled and spoke a few words in her local language. What we could gather from her that the fruits have been collected from joom farming of a nearby hill. We got interested and  feeling obliged by her charming smile Sanjit took whatever she had in her basket.....a generous fistful .... that's all she had.

On our query back home our Didimoni (sister) told that these are called tit-begun. So essentially these are miniature brinjals with a bitter taste. These are wild fruits and nobody seems much exited about it! My MIL then and there declared that she is not going to taste a bitter tasting brinjal (though she loves neem-begun which is essentially brinjal cooked with neem leaves to make it bitter :)). So we packed them in our luggage and when I finally got a chance to attend, they were more than a week old and beyond their prime time. All got red and crinkled ..... anyway we wanted to give it a try and decided to cook a simple stir-fry with onion- tomato-green chill to offset the otherwise bitter taste.

I googled a bit to find the English name, but got confused with one of its close cousin named cluster eggplant or turkey berry. I tasted turkey berry earlier (courtesy our Navadarshanam CSA box) and found them of much smaller size than this one. Found a web link where they have used the same botanical name (Solanum indica) to describe the fruit that looked like turkey berry(Solanum torvum) to me! HELP needed!
What I gathered (I may be wrong though) that in English it is called Likok or bitter brinjal, in Assamese tit-begun and in Sikkimese beeh .

A Simple Bitter-brinjal Stir-Fry Recipe

Ingredients:
Bitter Brinjal - Handful. sliced
Onion - One small, sliced
Tomato - One ripe, sliced
Green Chilli - one, chopped
Panchphoron - 1/2 teaspoon
Dry red chilli - one
Oil - 1 tablespoon
Turmeric - 1/4 teaspoon
Salt and Sugar - to taste

Chanchra (Malabar Spinach and Fish-head Mish-mash, Bengali Style)

You board a time machine and travel back .... not far ... just around thirty years and land in a Bengali home on a festive day ... the grandest of all ...a marriage ceremony! The event is scheduled sometime in the evening followed by a grand feast. The neighbors and the distant relatives will pour in in the evening ... now only the close family members are around ... a few seem super busy while the rest are leisurely busy gossiping. It's almost lunch time - a waft of appetizing smell makes you hungry, you followed it and reached the terrace. There in a corner of the Pandal, rannar thakur (the head cook) is busy cooking his last item for the lunch .... the inevitable chanchra. For lunch you will get a simple menu of steamed rice, daal, chanchra followed by a light macher jhol (fish-curry), chutney and misti.

Chanchra or Chenchra will consist of any edible part of the day's fresh produce  that were not suitable to go in the main fancy dishes of the feast.  There will be few paka rui (big carps) for the main courses. So after cutting and cleaning the fishes their heads, oils, gills all will go in this chanchra along with all the peels and not so palatable parts of the vegetables and greens (except the bitter ones). So this is literally a mish-mash of all the otherwise throw-able items. Heat mustard oil in a big iron karai/wok. Add seasoning of panchphoron and dry red chili. Then add all the above and cook on low flame until done .... that's it! Simple to cook but delicious in taste! ...... gone are the days! Now that dhoti and gamcha cladded rannar thakur has given way to the sophisticated catering services and the Bengali festive menu has became a hodgepodge of world cuisine ... a mish-mash in its true sense!

Come to present days! After the rain starts the gorgeous Hilsa shows its presence in the local fish markets with a price-tag befitting her queenly status! In spite of the economic condition every Bangalee would try to bring this beauty home at least once in the season. I remember that cartoon: a quintessential Bengali-babu sporting a proud smile and holding in one hand a picturesque Hilsa (hanging from a string from its nose) while a bag-full of vegetables is in the other from which a bright bunch of Puisaak (Malabar spinach) is showing its head. Thats it! ... the head of that precious fish will be reserved for the chanchra only.  The midday meal will be a whole Ilish afair .... macher tel-mach-bhaja, chanchra and kalojire-kanchalonka-begun die macher jhol (Hilsa fish fry and oil, chanchra and light curry of hilsa with eggplant) or sarshe Ilish.

Ilish Mach diye Pui Saak-er Chanchra (Bengali Style Malabar Spinach and Fish-head Mish-mash Recipe)

Now come to the recipe. Though I have given a rough measurement of the ingredients, you don't need to follow them precisely. For such a forgiving dish like chanchra, no need to burden your head with all the teaspoon-tablespoon complexity! Adding a little less pumpkin or little more spinach is not going to ruin your dish in anyway. Follow your own intuition and liking and play with the ingredients.

Ingredients:
Hilsa fish-head - one
Malabar spinach (Puin-saak) - one bunch
Pumpkin (Kumro) -  250 gm
Eggplant (Begun) - 2-3 small ones
Potato (Alu) - 2-3
Radish (Mulo) - 2
Parwal (Potol) - 3-4 (optional)
Broad beens (Seem) - 8-10 (optional)
Jackfruit seeds (Kanthal bichi) - one fistful (optional)
Garlic - 4-5 cloves
Green chilies - 4-5
Mustard oil - 3-4 tablespoon 
Pancphoron - 1 teaspoon
Dry red chili - 1
Turmeric powder - 1 teaspoon
Salt and sugar - to taste

Stop, Look and Listen

Everything natural - every flower, tree,
and animal - has important
lessons to teach us if we would only
stop, look, and listen.

                                                         (by Eckhart Tolle)

Once in a while I post on what is happening there ....just outside our matchboxes ... if we can manage a little time to pause and look .... and feel. One need not to go to the wild to see the life ...just a step out to your terrace or balcony and look ..... sooo many things are happening there ... you will find something new, something fascinating .... it's a promise!

This time my pictures are mostly from our terrace garden and surrounding.  We were not in town for around a month ....who knew nature had so many new things in her basket to surprise us!

To start with... the Strawberries! First time ever in our garden.....

Most were tiny... but  brilliantly red, juicy and flavorful with a sweet-sour taste ..... these are the REAL things! Super happy!

Next the Leaf lettuces .... they are looking gorgeous and eye soothing too! Last year I tried to grow them in winter .... but for a villain .... a rodent whose only goal in life was to destroy any "possibility" in our garden! Well ... one night he found his way to heaven and possibly now destroying god's own garden! Please god! No early reanimation for this guy .... please!

 I tried to grow one batch when it was raining here in Bangalore as the weather was cooler ... they grew well but were not this gorgeous! Season matters!

After providing us with fresh salad greens for a long time, the last batch has now been in seed state ....I'm collecting the seeds .... don't know if they will sprout again or not! Will check that soon ....

My single sweet basil plant is also looking promising with lots of flower stems that have started to settle into seeds (Sabja).... planning to try  those pretty looking (and healthy too) basil-seeds-drinks that are the IN thing in the market nowadays!